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THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF MANKIND. [Part Ill.

unpractised steps along that path of filial piety, of fraternal unionand religious wisdom, which themselves, walking together in it,have found throughout a way of such pleasantness and peace.” *

The general duty of cherishing the more remote domestic re-lations which we sustain, has been before adverted to, and noth-ing seems to call for any considerable enlargement on this part ofthe subject. Without any specific causes of alienation, it is in-evitable, in the natural course of events, that families, as theybranch off from the parent stock, should be gradually more andmore withdrawn from the society, influence, neighbourhood, andconsequently sympathy of each other, led by interest, ambition,the love of change, and other inducements. This breaking upof the ties of kindred, however, and scattering of kindred fami-lies, will always depend very much on the condition of society,and on the importance of mutual aid.

In a state of society in which the protection of law is feeble,and it is necessary, in consequence, for many to unite in the com-mon defence, the families that spring from the same original con-tinue to cling to each other for aid, almost as if they lived underthe same roof. It is, in fact, one wide-spread family, rather thana number of families ; the history of the clan, in its most remoteyears of warfare and victory, is the history of each individual ofthe clan ; and the mere remembrance of the exploits of thosewho fought with one common object, around their common rep-resentative and ancestor, is like the feeling of the paternal orfilial relation itself, prolonged from age to age ; while the affec-tion thus flowing from the remembrance of other years is contin-ually strengthened by a sense of the important services, whicheach individual is still able to render to the whole on occasions ofsimilar peril.

In other circumstances of society, the necessity of this mutualaid is obviated by the happier protection of equal law ; and, ob-jects of new ambition separating the little community into fami-lies, that have their own peculiar interests, with little if anynecessity for reciprocal assistance, the duty of giving such assist-

* I am indebted for this beautiful paragraph to “ Sermons on the Conditionsand Relations of Private Life,” by Dr. Palfrey, Professor of Biblical Literaturein Harvard University ; p. 333.