It has never happened!" cannot be construed to mean, "It can never happen!"—as well say, "Because I have never broken my leg, my leg is unbreakable,"… - George R. Stewart

To think of that as something bad was merely to think in terms of what had once been and no longer existed.

Oh, don't worry," he thought, putting it into words, "there never had been perfection yet, and it certainly isn't going to start now for me.

But, granting the numbers, the family group was just what it might have been at any time in almost any society—father, mother, and children, tightly grouped to form the basic social unit, so basic in fact that it might be considered biological rather than social. After all, he thought, the family was the toughest of all human institutions. It had preceded civilization, and so it naturally survived afterward.