THE FAMILY.
Morgan, who spent the greater part of his life among the Iroquois in the
State of New York and who had been adopted into one of their tribes, the
Senecas, found among them a system of relationship that was in
contradiction with their actual family relations. Among them existed
what Morgan terms the syndyasmian or pairing family, a monogamous state
easily dissolved by either side. The offspring of such a couple was
identified and acknowledged by all the world. There could be no doubt to
whom to apply the terms father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister.
But the actual use of these words was not in keeping with their
fundamental meaning. For the Iroquois addresses as sons and daughters
not only his own children, but also those of his brothers; and he is
called father by all of them. But the children of his sisters he calls
nephews and nieces, and they call him uncle. Vice versa, an Iroquois
woman calls her own children as well as those of her sisters sons and
daughters and is addressed as mother by them. But the children of her
brothers are called nephews and nieces, and they call her aunt. In the
same way, the children of brothers call one another brothers and
sisters, and so do the children of sisters. But the children of a sister
call those of her brother cousins, and vice versa. And these are not
simply meaningless terms, but expressions of actually existing
conceptions of proximity and remoteness, equality or inequality of
consanguinity.
These conceptions serve as the fundament of a perfectly elaborated
system of relationship, capable of expressing several hundred different
relations of a single individual. More still, this system is not only
fully accepted by all American Indians--no exception has been found so
far--but it is also in use with hardly any modifications among the
original inhabitants of India, among the Dravidian tribes of the Dekan
and the Gaura tribes of Hindostan.
The terms of relationship used by the Tamils of Southern India and by
the Seneca-Iroquois of New York State are to this day identical for more
than two hundred different family relations. And among these East Indian
tribes also, as among all American Indians, the relations arising out of
the prevailing form of the family are not in keeping with the system of
kinship.
How can this be explained? In view of the important role played by
kinship in the social order of all the savage and barbarian races, the
significance of such a widespread system cannot be obliterated by
phrases.
A system that is generally accepted in America, that also exists in Asia
among people of entirely different races, that is frequently found in a
more or less modified form all over Africa and Australia, such a system
requires a historical explanation and cannot be talked down, as was
attempted, e. g., by McLennan. The terms father, child, brother, sister
are more than mere honorary titles; they carry in their wake certain
well-defined and very serious obligations, the aggregate of which
comprises a very essential part of the social constitution of those
nations. And the explanation was found. In the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii)
there existed up to the first half of the nineteenth century a family
form producing just such fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,
uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, as the old Indo-American system of
kinship. But how remarkable! The Hawaiian system of kinship again did
not agree with the family form actually prevailing there. For there all
the children of brothers and sisters, without any exception, are
considered brothers and sisters, and regarded as the common children not
only of their mother or her sisters, or their father and his brothers,
but of all the brothers and sisters of their parents without
distinction. While thus the American system of kinship presupposes an
obsolete primitive form of the family, which is still actually existing
in Hawaii, the Hawaiian system on the other hand points to a still more
primitive form of the family, the actual existence of which cannot be
proved any more, but which must have existed, because otherwise such a
system of kinship could not have arisen. According to Morgan, the family
is the active element; it is never stationary, but in progression from a
lower to a higher form in the same measure in which society develops
from a lower to a higher stage. But the systems of kinship are passive.
Only in long intervals they register the progress made by the family in
course of time, and only then are they radically changed, when the
family has done so. "And," adds Marx, "it is the same with political,
juridical, religious and philosophical systems in general." While the
family keeps on growing, the system of kinship becomes ossified. The
latter continues in this state and the family grows beyond it. With the
same certainty which enabled Cuvier to conclude from some bones of
Marsupialia found near Paris that extinct marsupialia had lived there,
with this same certainty may we conclude from a system of kinship
transmitted by history that the extinct form of the family corresponding
to this system was once in existence.
The systems of kinship and forms of the family just mentioned differ
from the present systems in that every child has several fathers and
mothers. Under the American system to which the Hawaiian system
corresponds, brother and sister cannot be father and mother of the same
child; but the Hawaiian system presupposes a family, in which, on the
contrary, this was the rule. We are here confronted by a series of
family forms that are in direct contradiction with those that were
currently regarded as alone prevailing. The conventional conception
knows only monogamy, furthermore polygamy of one man, eventually also
polyandry of one woman. But it passes in silence, as is meet for a
moralizing philistine, that the practice silently but without
compunction supersedes these barriers sanctioned officially by society.
The study of primeval history, however, shows us conditions, where men
practiced polygamy and women at the same time polyandry, so that their
children were considered common to all; conditions that up to their
final transition into monogamy underwent a whole series of
modifications. These modifications slowly and gradually contract the
circle comprised by the common tie of marriage until only the single
couple remains which prevails to-day.
In thus constructing backward the history of the family, Morgan, in
harmony with the majority of his colleagues, arrives at a primeval
condition, where unrestricted sexual intercourse existed within a tribe,
so that every woman belonged to every man, and vice versa.
Much has been said about this primeval state of affairs since the
eighteenth century, but only in general commonplaces. It is one of
Bachofen's great merits to have taken the subject seriously and to have
searched for traces of this state in historical and religious
traditions. To-day we know that these traces, found by him, do not lead
back to a stage of unlimited sexual intercourse, but to a much later
form, the group marriage. The primeval stage, if it really ever existed,
belongs to so remote a period, that we can hardly expect to find direct
proofs of its former existence among these social fossils, backward
savages. Bachofen's merit consists in having brought this question to
the fore.[7]
It has lately become a fashion to deny the existence of this early stage
of human sex life, in order to spare us this "shame." Apart from the
absence of all direct proof, the example of the rest of animal life is
invoked. From the latter, Letourneau (Evolution du mariage et de la
famille, 1888) quoted numerous facts, alleged to prove that among
animals also an absolutely unlimited sexual intercourse belongs to a
lower stage. But I can only conclude from all these facts that they
prove absolutely nothing for man and the primeval conditions of his
life. The mating of vertebrates for a lengthy term is sufficiently
explained by physiological causes, e. g., among birds by the
helplessness of the female during brooding time. Examples of faithful
monogamy among birds do not furnish any proofs for men, for we are not
descended from birds.
And if strict monogamy is the height of virtue, then the palm belongs to
the tapeworm that carries a complete male and female sexual apparatus in
each of its 50 to 200 sections and passes its whole lifetime in
fertilizing itself in every one of its sections. But if we confine
ourselves to mammals, we find all forms of sexual intercourse, license,
suggestions of group marriage, polygamy and monogamy. Only polyandry is
missing;[8] that could be accomplished by men only. Even our next
relations, the quadrumana, exhibit all possible differences in the
grouping of males and females. And if we draw the line still closer and
consider only the four anthropoid apes, Letourneau can only tell us,
that they are now monogamous, now polygamous; while Saussure contends
according to Giraud-Teulon that they are monogamous. The recent
contentions of Westermarck[9] in regard to monogamy among anthropoid
apes are far from proving anything. In short, the information is such
that honest Letourneau admits: "There exists no strict relation at all
between the degree of intellectual development and the form of sexual
intercourse among mammals." And Espinas says frankly:[10] "The herd is
the highest social group found among animals. It seems to be composed of
families, but from the outset the family and the herd are antagonistic;
they develop in directly opposite ratio."
It is evident from the above that we know next to nothing of the family
and other social groups of anthropoid apes; the reports are directly
contradictory. How full of contradiction, how much in need of critical
scrutiny and research are the reports even on savage human tribes! But
monkey tribes are far more difficult to observe than human tribes. For
the present, therefore, we must decline all final conclusions from such
absolutely unreliable reports.
The quotation from Espinas, however, offers a better clue. Among higher
animals, the herd and family are not supplements of one another, but
antitheses. Espinas demonstrates very nicely, how the jealousy of the
males loosens or temporarily dissolves every herd during mating time.
"Where the family is closely organized, herds are formed only in
exceptional cases. But wherever free sexual intercourse or polygamy are
existing, the herd appears almost spontaneously.... In order that a herd
may form, family ties must be loosened and the individual be free. For
this reason we so rarely find organized herds among birds.... Among
mammals, however, we find groups organized after a fashion, just because
here the individual is not merged in the family.... The rising sense of
cohesion in a herd cannot, therefore, have a greater enemy than the
consciousness of family ties. Let us not shrink from pronouncing it: the
development of a higher form of society than the family can be due only
to the fact that it admitted families which had undergone a thorough
change. This does not exclude the possibility that these same families
were thus enabled to reorganize later on under infinitely more favorable
circumstances."[11]
It becomes apparent from this, that animal societies may indeed have a
certain value in drawing conclusions in regard to human life--but only
negatively. The higher vertebrate knows, so far as we may ascertain,
only two forms of the family: polygamy or pairs. In both of them there
is only one grown male, only one husband. The jealousy of the male, at
the same time tie and limit of the family, creates an opposition between
the animal family and the herd. The latter, a higher social form, is
here rendered impossible, there loosened or dissolved during mating
time, and at best hindered in its development by the jealousy of the
male. This in itself is sufficient proof that the animal family and
primeval human society are irreconcilable; that ancient man, struggling
upward from the animal stage, either had no family at all or at the most
one that does not exist among animals. A being so defenceless as
evolving man might well survive in small numbers though living in an
isolated state, the highest social form of which is that of pairs such
as Westermarck, relying on hunter's reports, attributes to the gorilla
and the chimpanzee. Another element is necessary for the elevation out
of the animal stage, for the realization of the highest progress found
in nature: the replacing of the defencelessness of the single individual
by the united strength and co-operation of the whole herd. The
transition from beast to man out of conditions of the sort under which
the anthropoid apes are living to-day would be absolutely unexplainable.
These apes rather give the impression of stray sidelines gradually
approaching extinction, and at all events in process of decline. This
alone is sufficient to reject all parallels between their family forms
and those of primeval man. But mutual tolerance of the grown males,
freedom from jealousy, was the first condition for the formation of such
large and permanent groups, within which alone the transformation from
beast to man could be accomplished. And indeed, what do we find to be
the most ancient and original form of the family, undeniably traceable
by history and even found to-day here and there? The group marriage,
that form in which whole groups of men and whole groups of women
mutually belong to one another, leaving only small scope for jealousy.
And furthermore we find at a later stage the exceptional form of
polyandry which still more supersedes all sentiments of jealousy and
hence is unknown to animals.
But all the forms of the group marriage known to us are accompanied by
such peculiarly complicated circumstances that they of necessity point
to a preceding simpler form of sexual intercourse and, hence, in the
last instance to a period of unrestricted sexual intercourse
corresponding to a transition from the animal to man. Therefore the
references to animal marriages lead us back to precisely that point,
from which they were intended to remove us forever.
What does the term "unrestricted sexual intercourse" mean? Simply, that
the restrictions in force now were not observed formerly. We have
already seen the barrier of jealousy falling. If anything is certain, it
is that jealousy is developed at a comparatively late stage. The same is
true of incest. Not only brother and sister were originally man and
wife, but also the sexual intercourse between parents and children is
permitted to this day among many nations. Bancroft testifies to the
truth of this among the Kaviats of the Behring Strait, the Kadiaks of
Alaska, the Tinnehs in the interior of British North America; Letourneau
compiled reports of the same fact in regard to the Chippeway Indians,
the Coocoos in Chile, the Caribeans, the Carens in Indo-China, not to
mention the tales of ancient Greeks and Romans about the Parthians,
Persians, Scythians, Huns and so forth. Before incest was invented (and
it is an invention, a really valuable one indeed), sexual intercourse
between parents and children could not be any more repulsive than
between other persons belonging to different generations, which takes
place even in our day among the most narrow-minded nations without
causing any horror. Even old "maids" of more than sixty years sometimes,
if they are rich enough, marry young men of about thirty. Eliminating
from the primeval forms of the family known to us those conceptions of
incest--conceptions totally different from ours and often enough in
direct contradiction with them--we arrive at a form of sexual
intercourse that can only be designated as unrestricted. Unrestricted in
the sense that the barriers drawn later on by custom did not yet exist.
This in no way necessarily implies for practical purposes an injudicious
pell-mell intercourse. The separate existence of pairs for a limited
time is not out of the question, and even comprises the majority of
cases in the group marriage of our days. And if the latest repudiator of
such a primeval state, Westermarck, designates as marriage every case,
where both sexes remain mated until the birth of the offspring, then
this is equivalent to saying that this kind of marriage may well exist
during a stage of unrestricted intercourse without contradicting
license, i. e., absence of barriers drawn by custom for sexual
intercourse. Westermarck bases himself on the opinion that "license
includes the suppression of individual affections" so that "prostitution
is its most genuine form." To me it rather seems that any understanding
of primeval conditions is impossible as long as we look at them through
brothel spectacles. We shall return to this point in the group marriage.
According to Morgan, the following forms developed from this primeval
state at an apparently early stage:
1. THE CONSANGUINE FAMILY.
The Consanguine Family is the first step toward the family. Here the
marriage groups are arranged by generations: all the grand-fathers and
grand-mothers within a certain family are mutually husbands and wives;
and equally their children, the fathers and mothers, whose children form
a third cycle of mutual mates. The children of these again, the
great-grandchildren of the first cycle, will form a fourth. In this form
of the family, then, only ancestors and descendants are excluded from
what we would call the rights and duties of marriage. Brothers and
sisters, male and female cousins of the first, second and more remote
grades, are all mutually brothers and sisters and for this reason mutual
husbands and wives. The relation of brother and sister quite naturally
includes at this stage the practice of sexual intercourse.[12]
The typical form of such a family would consist of the offspring of one
pair, representing again the descendants of each grade as mutual
brothers and sisters and, therefore, mutual husbands and wives. The
consanguine family is extinct. Even the crudest nations of history do
not furnish any proofs of it. But the Hawaiian system of kinship, in
force to this day in all Polynesia, compels us to acknowledge its
former existence, for it exhibits grades of kinship that could only
originate in this form of the family. And the whole subsequent
development of the family compels us to admit this form as a necessary
step.
2. THE PUNALUAN FAMILY.
While the first step of organization consisted in excluding parents and
children from mutual sexual intercourse, the second was the erection of
a barrier between brother and sister. This progress was much more
important on account of the greater equality in the ages of the parties
concerned, but also far more difficult. It was accomplished gradually,
probably beginning with the exclusion of the natural sister (i. e., on
the mother's side) from sexual intercourse, first in single cases, then
becoming more and more the rule (in Hawaii exceptions were still noted
during the nineteenth century), and finally ending with the prohibition
of marriage even among collateral brothers and sisters, i. e., what we
now term brother's and sister's children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren. This progress offers, according to Morgan, an
excellent illustration how the principle of natural selection works.
Without question, the tribes limiting inbreeding by this progress
developed faster and more completely than those retaining the marriage
between brothers and sisters as a rule and law. And how powerfully the
influence of this progress was felt, is shown by the institution of the
gens, directly attributable to it and passing far beyond the goal. The
gens is the foundation of the social order of most, if not all,
barbarian nations, and in Greece and Rome we step immediately from it to
civilization.
Every primeval family necessarily had to divide after a few generations.
The originally communistic and collective household existing far into
the middle stage of barbarism, involved a certain maximum size of the
family, variable according to conditions, but still limited in a degree.
As soon as the conception of the impropriety of sexual intercourse
between children of the same mother arose, it naturally became effective
on such occasions as the division of old and the foundation of new
household communities (which, however, did not necessarily coincide with
the family group). One or more series of sisters became the center of
one group, their natural brothers that of another. In this or a similar
manner that form which Morgan styles the Punaluan family developed from
the consanguine family. According to Hawaiian custom, a number of
sisters, natural or more remote (i. e., cousins of the first, second and
more remote degrees) were the mutual wives of their mutual husbands,
their natural brothers excepted. These men now no longer addressed one
another as "brother"--which they no longer had to be--but as "Punalua,"
i. e., intimate companion, associate as it were. Likewise a series of
natural or more remote brothers lived in mutual marriage with a number
of women, not their natural sisters, and these women referred to each
other as "Punalua." This is the classical form of a family, which later
admitted of certain variations. Its fundamental characteristic was
mutual community of husbands and wives within a given family with the
exclusion of the natural brothers (or sisters) first, and of the more
remote grades later.
This form of the family, now, furnishes with complete accuracy the
degrees of kinship expressed by the American system. The children of the
sisters of my mother still are her children; likewise the children of
the brothers of my father still his children; and all of them are my
brothers and sisters. But the children of the brothers of my mother are
now her nephews and nieces, the children of the sisters of my father
his nephew and nieces, and they are all my cousins. For while the
husbands of the sisters of my mother are still her husbands, and
likewise the wives of the brothers of my father still his
wives--legally, if not always in fact--the social proscription of sexual
intercourse between brothers and sisters has now divided those relatives
who were formerly regarded without distinction as brothers and sisters,
into two classes. In one category are those who remain (more remote)
brothers and sisters as before; in the other the children of the brother
on one hand or the sister on the opposite, who can be brothers and
sisters no longer. The latter have mutual parents no more, neither
father nor mother nor both together. And for this reason the class of
nephews and nieces, male and female cousins, here becomes necessary for
the first time. Under the former family order this would have been
absurd. The American system of kinship, which appears absolutely
paradoxical in any family form founded on monogamy, is rationally
explained and naturally confirmed in its most minute details by the
Punaluan family. Wherever this system of kinship was in force, there the
Punaluan family or at least a form akin to it must also have existed.
This family form, the existence of which in Hawaii was actually
demonstrated, would have been transmitted probably by all Polynesia, if
the pious missionaries, similar to the Spanish monks in America, could
have looked upon such anti-Christian relations as being something more
than simply a "horror."[13] Cesar's report to the effect that the
Britons, who then were in the middle stage of barbarism, "have ten or
twelve women in common, mostly brothers with brothers and parents with
children," is best explained by group marriage. Barbarian mothers have
not ten or twelve sons old enough to keep women in common, but the
American system of kinship corresponding to the Punaluan family
furnishes many brothers, because all near and remote cousins of a
certain man are his brothers. The term "parents with children" may arise
from a wrong conception of Cesar, but this system does not absolutely
exclude the existence of father and son, mother or daughter in the same
group. It does exclude, however, father and daughter or mother and son.
This or a similar form of group marriage also furnishes the easiest
explanation of the reports of Herodotus and other ancient writers
concerning community of women among savage and barbarian nations. This
is true, furthermore, of Watson's and Kaye's[14] tale about the Tikurs
of Audh (north of the Ganges): "They live together (i. e., sexually)
almost indiscriminately in large communities, and though two persons may
be considered as being married, still the tie is only nominal."
The institution of the gens seems to have its origin in the majority of
cases in the Punaluan family. True, the Australian class system also
offers a starting point for it; the Australians have gentes, but not yet
a Punaluan family, only a cruder form of group marriage.[15]
In all forms of the group family it is uncertain who is the father of a
child, but certain, who is its mother. Although she calls all the
children of the aggregate family her children and has the duties of a
mother toward them, still she knows her natural children from others.
It is also obvious that, as far as group marriage exists, descent can
only be traced on the mother's side and, hence, only female lineage be
acknowledged. This is actually the case among all savage tribes and
those in the lower stage of barbarism. To have discovered this first is
the second great merit of Bachofen. He designates this exclusive
recognition of descent from the female line and the hereditary relations
resulting therefrom in course of time as "maternal law." I retain this
term for the sake of brevity, although it is distorted; for at this
social stage there is no sign yet of any law in the juridic sense.
If we now take one of the two standard groups of a Punaluan family,
namely that of a series of natural and remote sisters (i. e., first,
second and more remote descendants of natural sisters), their children
and their natural or remote brothers on the mother's side (who according
to our supposition are not their husbands), we have exactly that circle
of persons who later appear as members of a gens, in the original form
of this institution. They all have a common ancestress, by virtue of the
descent that makes the different female generations sisters. But the
husbands of these sisters cannot be chosen among their brothers any
more, can no longer come from the same ancestress, and do not,
therefore, belong to the consanguineous group of relatives, the gens of
a later time. The children of these same sisters, however, do belong to
this group, because descent from the female line alone is conclusive,
alone is positive. As soon as the proscription of sexual intercourse
between all relatives on the mother's side, even the most remote of
them, is an accomplished fact, the above named group has become a gens,
i. e., constitutes a definite circle of consanguineous relatives of
female lineage who are not permitted to marry one another. Henceforth
this circle is more and more fortified by other mutual institutions of
a social or religious character and thus distinguished from other gentes
of the same tribe. Of this more anon.
Finding, as we do, that the gens not only necessarily, but also as a
matter of course, develops from the Punaluan family, it becomes obvious
to us to assume as almost practically demonstrated the prior existence
of this family form among all those nations where such gentes are
traceable, i. e., nearly all barbarian and civilized nations.
When Morgan wrote his book, our knowledge of group marriage was very
limited. We knew very little about the group marriages of the
Australians organized in classes, and furthermore Morgan had published
as early as 1871 the information he had received about the Punaluan
family of Hawaii. This family on one hand furnished a complete
explanation of the system of kinship in force among the American
Indians, which had been the point of departure for all the studies of
Morgan. On the other hand it formed a ready means for the deduction of
the maternal law gens. And finally it represented a far higher stage of
development than the Australian classes.
It is, therefore, easy to understand how Morgan could regard this form
as the stage necessarily preceding the pairing family and attribute
general extension in former times to it. Since then we have learned of
several other forms of the group marriage, and we know that Morgan went
too far in this respect. But it was nevertheless his good fortune to
encounter in his Punaluan family the highest, the classical, form of
group marriage, that form which gave the simplest clue for the
transition to a higher stage.
The most essential contribution to our knowledge of the group marriage
we owe to the English missionary, Lorimer Fison, who studied this form
of the family for years on its classical ground, Australia. He found
the lowest stage of development among the Papuans near Mount Gambier in
South Australia. Here the whole tribe is divided into two great classes,
Kroki and Kumite.[16] Sexual intercourse within each of these classes is
strictly prohibited. But every man of one class is by birth the husband
of every woman of the other class, and vice versa. Not the individuals
are married to one another, but the whole groups, class to class. And
mark well, no caution is made anywhere on account of difference of age
or special consanguinity, unless it is resulting from the division into
two exogamous classes. A Kroki has for his wife every Kumite woman. And
as his own daughter, being the daughter of a Kumite woman, is also
Kumite according to maternal law, she is therefore the born wife of
every Kroki, including her father. At least, the class organization, as
we know it, does not exclude this possibility. Hence this organization
either arose at a time when, in spite of all dim endeavor to limit
inbreeding, sexual intercourse between parents and children was not yet
regarded with any particular horror; in this case the class system would
be directly evolved from a condition of unrestricted sexual relations.
Or the intercourse between parents and children was already proscribed
by custom, when the classes were formed; and in this case the present
condition points back to the consanguine family and is the first step
out of it. The latter case is the more probable. So far as I know, no
mention is made of any sexual intercourse between parents and children
in Australia. Even the later form of exogamy, the maternal law gens, as
a rule silently presupposes that the prohibition of this intercourse
was an accomplished fact at the time of its institution.
The system of two classes is not only found near Mount Gambier in South
Australia, but also farther east along Darling River, and in the
northeast of Queensland. It is, consequently, widespread. It excludes
only marriage between brothers and sisters, between brothers' children
and between sisters' children of the mother's side, because these belong
to the same class; but the children of a sister can marry those of a
brother and vice versa. A further step for preventing inbreeding is
found among the Kamilaroi on the Darling River in New South Wales, where
the two original classes are split into four, and every one of these is
married as a whole to a certain other class. The first two classes are
husbands and wives by birth. According to the place of the mother in the
first or second class, the children belong to the third and fourth. The
children of these two classes, who are also married to one another,
again belong to the first and second class. So that a certain generation
belongs to the first and second class, the next to the third and fourth
and the following again to the first and second. Hence the children of
natural brothers and sisters (on the mother's side) cannot marry one
another, but their grandchildren can do so. This peculiarly complicated
order of things is still more entangled by the inoculation--evidently at
a later stage--with maternal law gentes. But we cannot discuss this
further. Enough, the desire to prevent inbreeding again and again
demands recognition, but feeling its way quite spontaneously, without a
clear conception of the goal.
The group marriage is represented in Australia by class marriage, i. e.,
mass marriage of a whole class of men frequently scattered over the
whole breadth of the continent to an equally widespread class of women.
A close view of this group marriage does not offer quite such a horrible
spectacle as the philistine imagination accustomed to brothel conditions
generally pictures to itself. On the contrary, long years passed, before
its existence was even suspected, and quite recently it is once more
denied. To the casual observer it makes the impression of a loose
monogamy and in certain places of polygamy, with occasional breach of
faith. Years are required before one can discover, like Fison and
Howitt, the law regulating these marital conditions that rather appeal
in their practicability to the average European; the law enabling the
strange Papuan, thousands of miles from his home and among people whose
language he does not understand, to find frequently, from camp to camp
and from tribe to tribe, women who will without resistance and
guilelessly surrender to him; the law according to which a man with
several women offers one to his guest for the night. Where the European
sees immorality and lawlessness, there in reality a strict law is
observed. The women belong to the marriage class of the stranger and,
therefore, they are his wives by birth. The same moral law assigning
both to one another forbids under penalty of proscription all sexual
intercourse outside of the two marriage classes. Even when women are
abducted, as is frequently the case in certain regions, the class law is
carefully respected.
In the abduction of women, by the way, a trace of transition to monogamy
is found even here, at least in the form of the pairing family. If a
young man has abducted a girl with the help of his friends, they hold
sexual intercourse with her one after another. But after that the girl
is regarded as the wife of the young man who planned the abduction. And
again, if an abducted woman deserts her husband and is caught by another
man, she becomes the wife of the latter and the first has lost his
privilege. Alongside of and within the generally existing group marriage
such exclusive relations are formed, pairing for a shorter or longer
term by the side of polygamy, so that here also group marriage is
declining. The question is only which will first disappear under the
pressure of European influence: group marriage or the Papuans addicted
to it.
The marriage in whole classes, such as is in force in Australia, is no
doubt a very low and primitive form of group marriage, while the
Punaluan family, so far as we know, is its highest stage of development.
The former seems to be corresponding to the social stage of roving
savages, the latter requires relatively settled communistic bodies and
leads directly to the next higher stage of development. Between these
two, we shall no doubt find many an intermediate stage. Here lies a
barely opened, hardly entered field of investigation.[17]
3. THE PAIRING FAMILY.
A certain pairing for a longer or shorter term took place even during
the group marriage or still earlier. A man had his principal wife (one
can hardly call it favorite wife as yet) among many women, and he was to
her the principal husband among others. This fact in no small degree
contributed to the confusion among missionaries, who regarded group
marriage now as a disorderly community of women, now as an arbitrary
adultery. Such a habitual pairing would gain ground the more the gens
developed and the more numerous the classes of "brothers" and "sisters"
became who were not permitted to marry one another. The impulse to
prevent marriage of consanguineous relatives started by the gens went
still further. Thus we find that among the Iroquois and most of the
Indians in the lower stage of barbarism marriage is prohibited between
all the relatives of their system of kinship, and this comprises several
hundred kinds. By this increasing complication of marriage restrictions,
group marriage became more and more impossible; it was displaced by the
pairing family. At this stage one man lives with one woman, but in such
a manner that polygamy, and occasional adultery, remain privileges of
men, although the former occurs rarely for economic reasons. Women,
however, are generally expected to be strictly faithful during the time
of living together, and adultery on their part is cruelly punished. But
the marriage-tie may be easily broken by either party, and the children
belong to the mother alone, as formerly.
In this ever more extending restriction of marriage between
consanguineous relations, natural selection also remains effective. As
Morgan expresses it: "Marriages between gentes that were not
consanguineous produced a more vigorous race, physically and mentally;
two progressive tribes intermarried, and the new skulls and brains
naturally expanded until they comprised the faculties of both." Thus
tribes composed of gentes necessarily either gained the supremacy over
the backward ones or, by their example, carried them along in their
wake.
The development of the family, then, is founded on the continual
contraction of the circle, originally comprising the whole tribe, within
which marital intercourse between both sexes was general. By the
continual exclusion, first of near, then of ever remoter relatives,
including finally even those who were simply related legally, all group
marriage becomes practically impossible. At last only one couple,
temporarily and loosely united, remains; that molecule, the dissolution
of which absolutely puts an end to marriage. Even from this we may infer
how little the sexual love of the individual in the modern sense of the
word had to do with the origin of monogamy. The practice of all nations
of that stage still more proves this. While in the previous form of the
family the men were never embarrassed for women, but rather had more
than enough of them, women now became scarce and were sought after. With
the pairing family, therefore, the abduction and barter of women
began--widespread symptoms, and nothing but that, of a new and much more
profound change. The pedantic Scot, McLennan, however, transmuted these
symptoms, mere methods of obtaining women, into separate classes of the
family under the head of "marriage by capture" and "marriage by barter."
Moreover among American Indians and other nations in the same stage, the
marriage agreement is not the business of the parties most concerned,
who often are not even asked, but of their mothers. Frequently two
persons entirely unknown to one another are thus engaged to be married
and receive no information of the closing of the bargain, until the time
for the marriage ceremony approaches. Before the wedding, the bridegroom
brings gifts to the maternal relatives of the bride (not to her father
or his relatives) as an equivalent for ceding the girl to him. Either of
the married parties may dissolve the marriage at will. But among many
tribes, as, e. g., the Iroquois, public opinion has gradually become
averse to such separations. In case of domestic differences the gentile
relatives of both parties endeavor to bring about a reconciliation, and
not until they are unsuccessful a separation takes place. In this case
the woman keeps the children, and both parties are free to marry again.
The pairing family, being too weak and too unstable to make an
independent household necessary or even desirable, in no way dissolves
the traditional communistic way of housekeeping. But household communism
implies supremacy of women in the house as surely as exclusive
recognition of a natural mother and the consequent impossibility of
identifying the natural father signify high esteem for women, i. e.,
mothers. It is one of the most absurd notions derived from eighteenth
century enlightenment, that in the beginning of society woman was the
slave of man. Among all savages and barbarians of the lower and middle
stages, sometimes even of the higher stage, women not only have freedom,
but are held in high esteem. What they were even in the pairing family,
let Arthur Wright, for many years a missionary among the Seneca
Iroquois, testify: "As to their families, at a time when they still
lived in their old long houses (communistic households of several
families) ... a certain clan (gens) always reigned, so that the women
choose their husbands from other clans (gentes).... The female part
generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common; but woe
to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too clumsy to
contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many children or
how much private property he had in the house, he was liable at any
moment to receive a hint to gather up his belongings and get out. And he
could not dare to venture any resistance; the house was made too hot for
him and he had no other choice, but to return to his own clan (gens) or,
as was mostly the case, to look for another wife in some other clan. The
women were the dominating power in the clans (gentes) and everywhere
else. Occasionally they did not hesitate to dethrone a chief and degrade
him to a common warrior."
The communistic household, in which most or all the women belong to one
and the same gens, while the husbands come from different gentes, is the
cause and foundation of the general and widespread supremacy of women in
primeval times. The discovery of this fact is the third merit of
Bachofen.
By way of supplement I wish to state that the reports of travelers and
missionaries concerning the overburdening of women among savages and
barbarians do not in the least contradict the above statements. The
division of labor between both sexes is caused by other reasons than the
social condition of women. Nations, where women have to work much harder
than is proper for them in our opinion, often respect women more highly
than Europeans do. The lady of civilized countries, surrounded with sham
homage and a stranger to all real work stands on a far lower social
level than a hard-working barbarian woman, regarded as a real lady
(frowa-lady-mistress) and having the character of such.
Whether or not the pairing family has in our time entirely supplanted
group marriage in America, can be decided only by closer investigations
among those nations of northwestern and especially of southern America
that are still in the higher stage of savagery. About the latter so many
reports of sexual license are current that the assumption of a complete
cessation of the ancient group marriage is hardly warranted. Evidently
all traces of it have not yet disappeared. In at least forty North
American tribes the man marrying an elder sister has the right to make
all her sisters his wives as soon as they are of age, a survival of the
community of men for the whole series of sisters. And Bancroft relates
that the Indians of the Californian peninsula celebrate certain
festivities uniting several "tribes" for the purpose of unrestricted
sexual intercourse. These are evidently gentes that have preserved in
these festivities a vague recollection of the time when the women of one
gens had for their common husbands all the men of another gens, and vice
versa. The same custom is still observed in Australia. Among certain
nations it sometimes happens that the older men, the chief and
sorcerer-priests, exploit the community of women for their own benefits
and monopolize all the women. But in their turn they must restore the
old community during certain festivities and great assemblies,
permitting their wives to enjoy themselves with the young men. A whole
series of examples of such periodical saturnalia restoring for a short
time the ancient sexual freedom is quoted by Westermarck:[18] among the
Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and Kotars in India, among some African
nations, etc. Curiously enough Westermarck concludes that this is a
survival, not of group marriage, the existence of which he denies,
but--of a rutting season which primitive man had in common with other
animals.
Here we touch Bachofen's fourth great discovery: the widespread form of
transition from group marriage to pairing family. What Bachofen
represents as a penance for violating the old divine laws--the penalty
with which a woman redeems her right to chastity, is in fact only a
mystical expression for the penalty paid by a woman for becoming exempt
from the ancient community of men and acquiring the right of
surrendering to one man only. This penalty consists in a limited
surrender: Babylonian women had to surrender once a year in the temple
of Mylitta; other nations of Western Asia sent their young women for
years to the temple of Anaitis, where they had to practice free love
with favorites of their own choice before they were allowed to marry.
Similar customs in a religious disguise are common to nearly all Asiatic
nations between the Mediterranean and the Ganges. The penalty for
exemption becomes gradually lighter in course of time, as Bachofen
remarks: "The annually repeated surrender gives place to a single
sacrifice; the hetaerism of the matrons is followed by that of the
maidens, the promiscuous intercourse during marriage to that before
wedding, the indiscriminate intercourse with all to that with certain
individuals."[19] Among some nations the religious disguise is missing.
Among others--Thracians, Celts, etc., in classic times, many primitive
inhabitants of India, Malay nations, South Sea Islanders and many
American Indians to this day--the girls enjoy absolute sexual freedom
before marriage. This is especially true almost everywhere in South
America, as everybody can confirm who penetrates a little into the
interior. Agassiz, e. g., relates[20] an anecdote of a wealthy family of
Indian descent. On being introduced to the daughter he asked something
about her father, presuming him to be her mother's husband, who was in
the war against Paraguay. But the mother replied, smiling: "Nao tem pai,
he filha da fortuna"--she hasn't any father; she is the daughter of
chance. "It is the way the Indian or half-breed women here always speak
of their illegitimate children; and though they say it without an
intonation of sadness or of blame, apparently as unconscious of any
wrong or shame as if they said the father was absent or dead, it has the
most melancholy significance; it seems to speak of such absolute
desertion. So far is this from being an unusual case, that among the
common people the opposite seems the exception. Children are frequently
quite ignorant of their parentage. They know about their mother, for all
the care and responsibility falls upon her, but they have no knowledge
of their father; nor does it seem to occur to the woman that she or her
children have any claim upon him." What seems so strange to the
civilized man, is simply the rule of maternal law and group marriage.
Again, among other nations the friends and relatives of the bridegroom
or the wedding guests claim their traditional right to the bride, and
the bridegroom comes last. This custom prevailed in ancient times on the
Baleares and among the African Augilers; it is observed to this day by
the Bareas in Abyssinia. In still other cases, an official person--the
chief of a tribe or a gens, the cazique, shamane, priest, prince or
whatever may be his title--represents the community and exercises the
right of the first night. All modern romantic whitewashing
notwithstanding, this jus primae noctis, is still in force among most of
the natives of Alaska,[21] among the Tahus of northern Mexico[22] and
some other nations. And during the whole of the middle ages it was
practiced at least in originally Celtic countries, where it was directly
transmitted by group marriage, e. g. in Aragonia. While in Castilia the
peasant was never a serf, the most disgraceful serfdom existed in
Aragonia, until abolished by the decision of Ferdinand the Catholic in
1486. In this document we read: "We decide and declare that the
aforesaid 'senyors' (barons) ... shall neither sleep the first night
with the wife of a peasant, nor shall they in the first night after the
wedding, when the woman has gone to bed, step over said woman or bed as
a sign of their authority. Neither shall the aforesaid senyors use the
daughter or the son of any peasant, with or without pay, against their
will." (Quoted in the Catalonian original by Sugenheim, "Serfdom,"
Petersburg, 1861, page 35.)
Bachofen, furthermore, is perfectly right in contending that the
transition from what he calls "hetaerism" or "incestuous generation" to
monogamy was brought about mainly by women. The more in the course of
economic development, undermining the old communism and increasing the
density of population, the traditional sexual relations lost their
innocent character suited to the primitive forest, the more debasing and
oppressive they naturally appeared to women; and the more they
consequently longed for relief by the right of chastity, of temporary or
permanent marriage with one man. This progress could not be due to men
for the simple reason that they never, even to this day, had the least
intention of renouncing the pleasures of actual group marriage. Not
until the women had accomplished the transition to the pairing family
could the men introduce strict monogamy--true, only for women.
The pairing family arose on the boundary line between savagery and
barbarism, generally in the higher stage of savagery, here and there in
the lower stage of barbarism. It is the form of the family
characteristic for barbarism, as group marriage is for savagery and
monogamy for civilization. In order to develop it into established
monogamy, other causes than those active hitherto were required. In the
pairing family the group was already reduced to its last unit, its
biatomic molecule: one man and one woman. Natural selection had
accomplished its purpose by a continually increasing restriction of
sexual intercourse. Nothing remained to be done in this direction.
Unless new social forces became active, there was no reason why a new
form of the family should develop out of the pairing family. But these
forces did become active.
We now leave America, the classic soil of the pairing family. No sign
permits the conclusion that a higher form of the family was developed
here, that any established form of monogamy ever existed anywhere in the
New World before the discovery and conquest. Not so in the Old World.
In the latter, the domestication of animals and the breeding of flocks
had developed a hitherto unknown source of wealth and created entirely
new social conditions. Up to the lower stage of barbarism, fixed wealth
was almost exclusively represented by houses, clothing, rough ornaments
and the tools for obtaining and preparing food: boats, weapons and
household articles of the simplest kind. Nourishment had to be secured
afresh day by day. But now, with their herds of horses, camels, donkeys,
cattle, sheep, goats and hogs, the advancing nomadic nations--the Aryans
in the Indian Punjab, in the region of the Ganges and the steppes of the
Oxus and Jaxartes, then still more rich in water-veins than now; the
Semites on the Euphrates and Tigris--had acquired possessions demanding
only the most crude attention and care in order to propagate themselves
in ever increasing numbers and yield the most abundant store of milk and
meat. All former means of obtaining food were now forced to the
background. Hunting, once a necessity, now became a sport.
But who was the owner of this new wealth? Doubtless it was originally
the gens. However, private ownership of flocks must have had an early
beginning. It is difficult to say whether to the author of the so-called
first book of Moses Father Abraham appeared as the owner of his flocks
by virtue of his privilege as head of a communistic family or of his
capacity as gentile chief by actual descent. So much is certain: we
must not regard him as a proprietor in the modern sense of the word. It
is furthermore certain that everywhere on the threshold of documentary
history we find the flocks in the separate possession of chiefs of
families, exactly like the productions of barbarian art, such as metal
ware, articles of luxury and, finally, the human cattle--the slaves.
For now slavery was also invented. To the barbarian of the lower stage a
slave was of no use. The American Indians, therefore, treated their
vanquished enemies in quite a different way from nations of a higher
stage. The men were tortured or adopted as brothers into the tribe of
the victors. The women were married or likewise adopted with their
surviving children. The human labor power at this stage does not yet
produce a considerable amount over and above its cost of subsistence.
But the introduction of cattle raising, metal industry, weaving and
finally agriculture wrought a change. Just as the once easily obtainable
wives now had an exchange value and were bought, so labor power was now
procured, especially since the flocks had definitely become private
property. The family did not increase as rapidly as the cattle. More
people were needed for superintending; for this purpose the captured
enemy was available and, besides, he could be increased by breeding like
the cattle.
Such riches, once they had become the private property of certain
families and augmented rapidly, gave a powerful impulse to society
founded on the pairing family and the maternal gens. The pairing family
had introduced a new element. By the side of the natural mother it had
placed the authentic natural father who probably was better
authenticated than many a "father" of our day. According to the division
of labor in those times, the task of obtaining food and the tools
necessary for this purpose fell to the share of the man; hence he owned
the latter and kept them in case of a separation, as the women did the
household goods. According to the social custom of that time, the man
was also the owner of the new source of existence, the cattle, and later
on of the new labor power, the slaves. But according to the same custom,
his children could not inherit his property, for the following reasons:
By maternal law, i. e., while descent was traced only along the female
line, and by the original custom of inheriting in the gens, the gentile
relatives inherited the property of their deceased gentile relative. The
wealth had to remain in the gens. In view of the insignificance of the
objects, the property may have gone in practice to the closest gentile
relatives, i. e., the consanguine relatives on the mother's side. The
children of the dead man, however, did not belong to his gens, but to
that of their mother. They inherited first together with the other
consanguine relatives of the mother, later on perhaps in preference to
the others. But they could not inherit from their father, because they
did not belong to his gens, where his property had to remain. Hence,
after the death of a cattle owner, the cattle would fall to his
brothers, sisters and the children of his sisters, or to the offspring
of the sisters of his mother. His own children were disinherited.
In the measure of the increasing wealth man's position in the family
became superior to that of woman, and the desire arose to use this
fortified position for the purpose of overthrowing the traditional law
of inheritance in favor of his children. But this was not feasible as
long as maternal law was valid. This law had to be abolished, and it
was. This was by no means as difficult as it appears to us to-day. For
this revolution--one of the most radical ever experienced by
humanity--did not have to touch a single living member of the gens. All
its members could remain what they had always been. The simple
resolution was sufficient, that henceforth the offspring of the male
members should belong to the gens, while the children of the female
members should be excluded by transferring them to the gens of their
father. This abolished the tracing of descent by female lineage and the
maternal right of inheritance, and instituted descent by male lineage
and the paternal right of inheritance. How and when this revolution was
accomplished by the nations of the earth, we do not know. It belongs
entirely to prehistoric times. That it was accomplished is proven more
than satisfactorily by the copious traces of maternal law collected
especially by Bachofen. How easily it is accomplished we may observe in
a whole series of Indian tribes, that recently passed through or are
still engaged in it, partly under the influence of increasing wealth and
changed modes of living (transfer from forests to the prairie), partly
through the moral pressure of civilization and missionaries. Six out of
eight Missouri tribes have male descent and inheritance, while only two
retain female descent and inheritance. The Shawnees, Miamis and
Delawares follow the custom of placing their children into the male gens
by giving them a gentile name belonging to the father's gens, so that
they may be entitled to inherit. "Innate casuistry of man, to change the
objects by changing their names, and to find loopholes for breaking
tradition inside of tradition where a direct interest was a sufficient
motive." (Marx.) This made confusion worse confounded, which could be
and partially was remedied alone by paternal law. "This seems to be the
most natural transition." (Marx.) As to the opinion of the comparative
jurists, how this transition took place among the civilized nations of
the old world--although only in hypotheses--compare M. Kovalevsky,
Tableau des origines et de l'évolution de la famille et de la
propriété, Stockholm, 1890.
The downfall of maternal law was the historic defeat of the female sex.
The men seized the reins also in the house, the women were stripped of
their dignity, enslaved, tools of men's lust and mere machines for the
generation of children. This degrading position of women, especially
conspicuous among the Greeks of heroic and still more of classic times,
was gradually glossed over and disguised or even clad in a milder form.
But it is by no means obliterated.
The first effect of the established supremacy of men became now visible
in the reappearance of the intermediate form of the patriarchal family.
Its most significant feature is not polygamy, of which more anon, but
"the organization of a certain number of free and unfree persons into
one family under the paternal authority of the head of the family. In
the Semitic form this head of the family lives in polygamy, the unfree
members have wife and children, and the purpose of the whole
organization is the tending of herds in a limited territory." The
essential points are the assimilation of the unfree element and the
paternal authority. Hence the ideal type of this form of the family is
the Roman family. The word familia did not originally signify the
composite ideal of sentimentality and domestic strife in the present day
philistine mind. Among the Romans it did not even apply in the beginning
to the leading couple and its children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus
means domestic slave, and familia is the aggregate number of slaves
belonging to one man. At the time of Gajus, the familia, id est
patrimonium (i. e., paternal legacy), was still bequeathed by testament.
The expression was invented by the Romans in order to designate a new
social organism, the head of which had a wife, children and a number of
slaves under his paternal authority and according to Roman law the
right of life and death over all of them. "The word is, therefore, not
older than the ironclad family system of the Latin tribes, which arose
after the introduction of agriculture and of lawful slavery, and after
the separation of the Aryan Itali from the Greeks." Marx adds: "The
modern family contains the germ not only of slavery (servitus), but also
of serfdom, because it has from the start a relation to agricultural
service. It comprises in miniature all those contrasts that later on
develop more broadly in society and the state."
Such a form of the family shows the transition from the pairing family
to monogamy. In order to secure the faithfulness of the wife, and hence
the reliability of paternal lineage, the women are delivered absolutely
into the power of the men; in killing his wife, the husband simply
exercises his right.
With the patriarchal family we enter the domain of written history, a
field in which comparative law can render considerable assistance. And
here it has brought about considerable progress indeed. We owe to Maxim
Kovalevsky (Tableau etc. de la famille et de la propriété, Stockholm,
1890, p. 60-100) the proof, that the patriarchal household community,
found to this day among Serbians and Bulgarians under the names of
Zádruga (friendly bond) and Bratstvo (fraternity), and in a modified
form among oriental nations, formed the stage of transition between the
maternal family derived from group marriage and the monogamous family of
the modern world. This seems at least established for the historic
nations of the old world, for Aryans and Semites.
The Zádruga of southern Slavonia offers the best still existing
illustration of such a family communism. It comprises several
generations of the father's descendants, together with their wives, all
living together on the same farm, tilling their fields in common,
living and clothing themselves from the same stock, and possessing
collectively the surplus of their earnings. The community is managed by
the master of the house (domácin), who acts as its representative, may
sell inferior objects, has charge of the treasury and is responsible for
it as well as for a proper business administration. He is chosen by vote
and is not necessarily the oldest man. The women and their work are
directed by the mistress of the house (domácica), who is generally the
wife of the domácin. She also has an important, and often final, voice
in choosing a husband for the girls. But the highest authority is vested
in the family council, the assembly of all grown companions, male and
female. The domácin is responsible to this council. It takes all
important resolutions, sits in judgment on the members of the household,
decides the question of important purchases and sales, especially of
land, etc.
It is only about ten years since the existence of such family communism
in the Russia of to-day was proven. At present it is generally
acknowledged to be rooted in popular Russian custom quite as much as the
obscina or village community.
It is found in the oldest Russian code, the Pravda of Jaroslav, under
the same name (vervj) as in the Dalmatian code, and may also be traced
in Polish and Czech historical records.
Likewise among Germans, the economic unit according to Heussler
(Institutions of German law) is not originally the single family, but
the "collective household," comprising several generations or single
families and, besides, often enough unfree individuals. The Roman family
is also traced to this type, and hence the absolute authority of the
master of the house and the defenselessness of the other members in
regard to him is strongly questioned of late. Similar communities are
furthermore said to have existed among the Celts of Ireland. In France
they were preserved up to the time of the Revolution in Nivernais under
the name of "parçonneries," and in the Franche Comté they are not quite
extinct yet. In the region of Louhans (Saône et Loire) we find large
farmhouses with a high central hall for common use reaching up to the
roof and surrounded by sleeping rooms accessible by the help of stairs
with six to eight steps. Several generations of the same family live
together in such a house.