Primary groups are primary in the sense that they give the individual his earliest and completest experience of social unity, and also in the sense that they do not change in the same degree as more elaborate relations, but form a comparatively permanent source out of which the latter are ever springing.
Of course they are not independent of the larger society, but to some extent reflect its spirit; as the German family and the German school bear somewhat distinctly the print of German militarism.But this, after all, is like the tide setting back into creeks, and does not commonly go very far.Among the German, and still more among the Russian, peasantry are found habits of free cooperation and discussion almost uninfluenced by the character of the state; and it is a familiar and well-supported view that the village commune, self-governing as regards local affairs and habituated to discussion, is a very widespread institution in settled communities, and the continuator of a similar autonomy previously existing in the clan."It is man who makes monarchies and establishes republics, but the commune seems to come directly from the hand of God."
In our own cities the crowded tenements and the general economic and social confusion have sorely wounded the family and the neighborhood, but it is remarkable, in view of these conditions, what vitality they show;and there is nothing upon which the conscience of the time is more determined than upon restoring them to health.
These groups, then, are springs of life, not only for the individual but for social institutions.They are only in part moulded by special traditions, and, in larger degree, express a universal nature.
The religion or government of other civilizations may seem alien to us, but the chil--dren or the family group wear the common life, and with them we can always make ourselves at home.
By hurnan nature, I suppose, we may understand those sentiments and impulses that are human in being superior to those of lower animals, and also in the sense that they belong to mankind at large, and not to any particular race or time.It means, particularly, sympathy and the innumerable sentiments into which sympathy enters, such as love, resentment, ambition, vanity, hero-worship, and the feeling of social right and wrong.
Human nature in this sense is justly regarded as a comparatively permanent element in society.Always and everywhere men seek honor and dread ridicule, defer to public opinion, cherish their goods and their children, and admire courage, generosity, and success.It is always safe to assume that people are and have been human.
It is true, no doubt, that there are differences of race capacity, so great that a large part of mankind are possibly incapable of any high kind of social organization.But these differences, like those among individuals of the same race, are subtle, depending upon some obscure intellectual deficiency, some want of vigor, or slackness of moral fibre, and do not involve unlikeness in the generic impulses of human nature.
In these all races are very much alike.The more insight one gets into the life of savages, even those that are reckoned the lowest, the more human, the more like ourselves, they appear.Take for instance the natives of Central Australia, as described by Spencer and Gillen, tribes having no definite government or worship and scarcely able to count to five.They are generous to one another, emulous of virtue as they understand it, kind to their children and to the aged, and by no means harsh to women.Their faces as shown in the photographs are wholly human and many of them attractive.