FAMILY

FAMILY. In a restricted sense the word is applied to those who form one household, whether connected by ties

of relationship or not: in a more extended sense it includes the descendants from a common progenitor. Among the Romans the word familia (from famulus, a slave or servant) was applied to the household establishment of servants. It was also applied to a collective body of freemen, or to a particular branch of a Roman gens. Thus, the gens Æmilia had such subdivisions as the families of Mamercus, Scuri, Lepidi, &c. Of all the institutions that have been established among men, that of the family is the most primitive and the most humanizing. The Creator seems to have placed it as the corner-stone of the social edifice—as the foundation of every organization, political, civil, or religious. We have in it the most manifest proof that man was created to live in society, to go on perfecting his faculties through the multiplied connections which bind him to his kind, and to purify his soul by the affections of his heart. In the family sanctuary we have a clear evidence, that the pretended state of nature, which has been represented as the primitive condition of man, is but a barbarous fancy totally opposed to the benevolent designs of the Author of nature.

From the investigation of statistics we learn, that on an average the number of children in one family where polygamy does not exist is—