In common, then, with their nearest congeners of to-day, we have

found each male head of a group of our anthropoid ancestors in direct

antagonism with every other male, and a consequent disruption of the

family at each encounter with a superior force. This disruption, in its

effects on a species of non-gregarious habits, would result not only in

the dispersal of its members, but in the destruction of what material

progress in the accumulation of property might have accrued. As this

would have included all germs of mechanical discovery, again doubtless

due solely to the superior constructive faculties of the male, it is

evident that advance in a race thus socially constituted was quite

impossible.

Now this antagonism of male with male, with all its retrograde

consequences, a struggle fierce enough in all animals, had a more

intense effect on nascent man than on any other creature that had ever

existed. An added force was caused by the disappearance in the nascent

human species of that season of physical and mental repose, granted

by Nature to the rest of creation, when not actually in the moment

or season of rut. This ever-recurring but limited period, ordinarily

appearing for a certain fixed epoch in each year, by the exigencies

of supply and demand in the necessarily abundant food required for

nursing mothers, had lost its date-fixing power with this new

creation--Man. With the very first steps in progress would come his

adaptation to a more or less omnivorous and consequently more regular

diet. The consequent modification would be profound in the matter of

sexual habit and appetite. Man needed no longer to put limits to the

season of love and desire.[1] This was a crime against Nature, new in

the history of the world, a crime which Nature would probably have

avenged by race-deterioration or extermination, if the germs of mental

power had not been already strong enough to lift him, Man, to be, of

all creatures, almost completely beyond the influence of environment,

thence of Nature herself.

The intensity of the evil led to its cure. In a state of society where

literally every male creature’s hand was against the other, and life

one continual uproar from their contending strife; where not only was

there no instant’s truce in the war-fare, but each blow dealt was

emphasised (fatally) by the intellectual finesse which now directed it,

it became a question of forced advance in progress or straight retreat

in annihilation as a species. However difficult it may be to imagine

by what path such a creature was ever to emerge from the materialistic

labyrinth in which we thus find him involved, it is sure that he

neither could nor did remain there. A forward step was somehow taken,

some road out of the maze was somehow found.

It remains for us to trace, by what dim light of custom and tradition

we may, the faint trail of those momentous footprints, which, however

lame and halting, took the strait and difficult way to a higher life.

We may expect to find, as is but natural, that the path was one before

untrodden. As man followed it, at first unconsciously, from the

shoulders of this new pilgrim, predestined to worthier burdens, would

fall some of the heavy load of the mere animal nature.

There was now, in fact, to be a break in the economy of animal nature,

as regards that vicious circle, where we found an ever-recurring

violent succession to the solitary paternal tyrant, by sons whose

parricidal hands were so soon again clenched in fratricidal strife.

In the dawn of peace between this father and son we shall find the

signpost to the new highway.

Before going further, we may here state our assumption that, when our

ancestor had arrived at this crisis in his life, a crisis involving

the vast psychological step in advance implied in the development of

society, and the intelligence necessary for the evolution of the law

in its regulation, he was already somewhat more than ape. The animal

stage as forming part of the ladder of ascent from brute to man would

be marked by degrees of progression, each a step further removed from

the original type. These very earliest steps we indeed propose to

examine later in detail, for the present we will suppose they have

been taken, and that the influence of environment, under certain

hypothetic conditions, to be also detailed hereafter, has fostered

physical modifications towards the human type such as we found in the

matter of rut. But in nature the relation is very close between the

physical and the mental qualities. The advance in one would possibly

lead to a corresponding development of the other. Each is the necessary

complement of each. For instance, as Mr. Darwin has pointed out, while

the lower extremities become more and more used for progression alone,

so the upper, thus left free, would be specialised as prehensile

organs, so becoming both valet and tutor to the nascent brain. To push

our metaphor to an extreme, we may say that when Homo Alalus trod

the new path, it was already as a biped in an upright attitude, thus

leaving at least his hand free to point it out to others, for as yet

his tongue, at least by the hypothesis, was inarticulate.

Our line of research as regards the new departure was at once narrowed

when we indicated that it ended in the peaceful conjunction of father

and son. Our path will lie in the examination of the question as to

what possible series of natural circumstances, in the domestic life of

the race, could lead to such conjunction, and what law in such an age

could suffice for regulation of such association if formed. We shall

have to examine more closely (as far as our imagination will aid us)

the exact conditions of the family life of the semi-human group which

we have supposed typical in that era, i.e. the small isolated band of

anthropoids, composed of a single polygamous adult male with dependent

wives and offspring. His possible relations with these, especially his

attitude towards his male children, will interest us. Therein should

certainly be found the desired series of circumstances entailing a

critical situation, whose happy resolution shall furnish the clue to

the problem of that possible aggregation on which all future progress

depends. However strange it may appear, it will be found, as we have

already said, that the abnormal conditions imposed by the unnatural

modifications of the sexual functions have served as a means to the end

of advance in progress. And as, by their action in the past, anthropoid

man had become the most sexually jealous and intractable of all

creatures, so it may be expected that the series of causes which shall

have for effect the restraint of such excess of passion, will possess

further vast potentiality of action. Such latency in potentiality is

evidently indispensable when we consider that there is here concerned

the evolution of law in opposition to nature, and its triumph for all

time over the mere brute.

But first as regards the fact of the association of adult males on

friendly terms within the group, which fact has seemed to us to

constitute the whole problem of progress, it would on a hasty view

appear as if it had been already found in the band of exiled sons

which we have seen haunting the parent horde. Here we meet with that

aggregation of individuals whose combination in peaceful union should

apparently be the result of some law in regulation. This idea would

even seem to gain support from the fact that all the members being

brothers, and living most probably in a state of polyandry, we here

appear to find fulfilled exactly those genetic conditions of primitive

marriage imperative according to Mr. McLennan’s theory of the origin

of society. It will not, however, be difficult to prove that, at

least at this stage in evolution, such a group would lack the most

essential elements of stability. Their unity, in fact, as has been

already pointed out, could only endure as long as the youthfulness of

the members necessitated union for protection, and their immaturity

prevented the full play of the sexual passion. The horde would

inevitably dissolve under the influence of jealousy at the adult stage,

especially if, as is probable, the number of their female captives had

increased with the gain in years and power. The necessary Primal Law

which alone could determine peace within a family circle by recognising

a _distinction between female and female_ (the indispensable antecedent

to a definition of marital rights) could never have arisen in such a

body. It follows that if such law was ever evoked, it must have been

from within the only other assembly in existence, viz. that headed by

the solitary polygamous patriarch, ‘the Cyclopean family.’

We have said that this family would be composed of the male head and

his wives, the latter consisting of captured females, and further, let

us note, of his own adult female offspring, accompanied by a troop

of infants of both sexes. The absence of male offspring beyond those

of tender years would be another most notable phenomenon. These sons

would, as we have seen, have been banished at puberty from the herd, in

common with the habit of most animals.

Now we have surmised that at this stage our subject has been modified,

both physically and mentally, to a certain extent in approach to the

human type, and there is precisely one special modification which would

have been of paramount importance in view of the problem of advance in

progress. For if we may thus infer a certain increase in the longevity

of the nascent race at even so early a stage in evolution, then that

evidently entails _a more prolonged infancy_. It follows that, however

precocious, the young males before exile must have passed at least nine

to ten helpless years under their mother’s care. But, again, the rise

of superior intellectual faculties in general presupposes a decided

increase in the powers of memory, and this agent, in connection with

that of the longer companionship, would here set in movement, sooner or

later, a psychological factor of strangely magnified force as compared

with what it is in the mere brute--namely, human maternal love.

Separation, however caused, between this mother and her child would

be far more severely felt than by any other animal. At the renewed

banishment of each of her male progeny by the jealous patriarch, the

mother’s feelings and instinct would be increasingly lacerated and

outraged. Her agonised efforts to retain at least her last and youngest

would be even stronger than with her first-born. It is exceedingly

important to observe that her chances of success in this case would be

much greater. When this last and dearest son approached adolescence,

it is not difficult to perceive that the patriarch must have reached

an age when the fire of desire may have become somewhat dull; whilst,

again, his harem, from the presence of numerous adult daughters, would

be increased to an extent that might have overtaxed his once more

active powers. Given some such rather exceptional situation, where a

happy opportunity in superlative mother love wrestled with a for once

satiated paternal appetite in desire, we may here discern a possible

key of the sociological problem which occupies us, and which consisted

in a conjunction within one group of two adult males.

We must conceive that, in the march of the centuries, on some fateful

day, the bloody tragedy in the last act of the familiar drama was

avoided, and the edict of exile or death left unpronounced. Pure

maternal love triumphed over the demons of lust and jealousy. A mother

succeeded in keeping by her side a male child, and thus, by a strange

coincidence, that father and son, who, amongst all mammals, had been

the most deadly of enemies, were now the first to join hands. So

portentous an alliance might well bring the world to their feet. The

family group would now present, for the first time, the till then

unknown spectacle of the inclusion within a domestic circle, and amidst

its component females, of an adolescent male youth. It must, however,

be admitted that such an event, at such an epoch, demanded imperatively

very exceptional qualities, both physiological and psychological, in

the primitive agents. The new happy ending to that old-world drama

which had run for so long through blood and tears, was an innovation

requiring very unusually gifted actors. How many failures had doubtless

taken place in its rehearsal during the centuries, with less able or

happy interpreters! It is probable that, in the new experiment, success

was rendered possible by the rise of new powers in nascent man. Some

feeble germ of altruism may already have arisen to make its force felt

as an important factor.

It is also certain that, with such prolonged infancy, there had been

opportunity for the development of paternal philo-progenitiveness. It

is evident that such long-continued presence of sons could but result

in a certain mutual sympathy, however inevitable the eventual exile.

The love and care of a parent for his offspring is, after all,

ethically speaking, the normal condition. Habitual desertion at too

early an age would be fatal. Their dissociation, the abnormal and

only one, took place under the influence of the strongest passion in

nature, again largely exaggerated in primitive man. But in such an era

purely physical characteristics would undoubtedly have also a vast

influence in the development of the incident we have tried to depict.

The fiercely solitary patriarch who first consented to the intrusive

presence within his family circle of another adult male was, as I think

we can prove, a being of abnormal physical power as compared with his

fellows. For we have assumed satiety in desire to have been a powerful

factor in the _innovatory_ struggle we have witnessed. But such satiety

implies extensive polygamy, and yet again a large harem composed

exclusively of unwilling outside captives is incredible, escape for

them in the primeval forest being too facile. Thus the harem would

certainly be formed of the female offspring of the tyrant himself.

These alone would need no watch or guard, for them the unknown outside

world was hostile ground. But again very many adult daughters imply a

father stricken in years. That one of such advanced age, in an epoch

when force was all in all, could, defiant of rivals, still retain

possession of his female kind, presupposes vast enduring physical

power, or at least the protective tradition of past exceptional

strength, still enduring in terror. If, again, at so early a date in

the history of man we may be permitted to surmise any development of

the faculty of psychogenesis, then we may again perceive how extreme

physical qualities might have facilitated the solution of the problem

of the admission of the intrusive male. For it is credible that long

undisputed supremacy of power as the result of personal vigour might,

in its incredulous contempt of a possible rivalry, show a tolerance of

a situation utterly impossible to a weaker nature.

[Footnote 1: See Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, ch. ii.,

1891. The subject is obscure.]

CHAPTER IV

EARLIEST EVOLUTION OF LAW

Trace between semi-human sire and son.--Consequent distinction taken

between female and female, as such--Consequent rise of habit of Brother

and Sister Avoidance.--Result, son seeks female mate from without Note

by the editor.

In what, then, we are willing to concede, must have been exceptional

circumstances, may thus have been taken that first step in progress

which was to lead to such vast advance. In a development of the

_social_ qualities depended the whole future of mankind, and here we

seem to see their germ and birth.

When, however, we affirm that the triumph of maternal love in the

continued companionship of a male child, constituted the solution of

the social problem before us, we do not intend to convey the idea that

it lay solely in the fact of a simple inclusion of male offspring

within a group. Such a condition, however significant in the actual

case, has nothing in itself but what is common to the family economy

of many animals. It is the normal one, for instance, among many

pithecoids, as baboons, &c., where we find the younger males still form

an integral part of the horde, although denied all marital rights. But,

however inexorable among such species the temporary separation from

the females during the actual season of rut, there is at other times

a propinquity in amity as members of the same herd, which lessened

doubtless the fierceness of the strife during the periodic play of

passion, a truce in fact admitting of peace and alliance in offence and

defence during most of the year.

With our ancestors there could be no such healing pause, the unnatural

sexual modification of the race had rendered it impossible. The

non-periodicity of the sexual function in rut would have made the

whole year, with two adult males in presence, an interval of trial

insupportable to the mere brute. With this race the banishment of the

youth would be for all time, and the loss would be not only that of

an ally, each exile would become an active enemy. Now we have hinted

that the importance, in a potential sense, of a movement towards union,

in such creatures, arose precisely from the fact that, on account of

the intensity of the relations between male and male, and especially

between father and son, their amicable conjunction was only possible

under such exceptional conditions as would probably conduce to its

stability whenever it did take place.

Indeed such inchoate rule or habit, a corollary of the early idea, as

reigns in regulation of marital rights among lower creatures, would

not be fully adequate for this higher creation. With lower creatures,

might alone confers rights, which feebler force ever seeks each chance

to invade, all stratagems being legitimate as a means to that end.

With inchoate man such imperfect rule of action had become utterly

impossible. The greater endowment in memory and reason entailed a too

fatally added hate on non-compliance. For inchoate men the requisite

law required such further exactness in definition as should leave no

doubt of a meaning, not only to be understood, but to be accepted and

obeyed unconditionally.

For between this father and son there was yet no real peace, only a

truce, and that enduring but so long as the latter respected those

marital rights of the former which we found extending over all that

was feminine in the horde. The intelligent acceptance by the intruding

junior of the sole right of the senior to union with the females of a

group, was its _sine qua non_, which the dawn of intellectuality in

the race as inevitably imposed as it happily permitted. Such a step

in advance as a possible obedience, _ex animo_, to such a law would

be immense. Therefrom would issue the vital point of a conception of

moral reserves in marital rights as regards the other sex; the germ

of a profound and fundamental difference between brute and man. For

the first time in the history of the world we encounter the factor

which is to be the leading power in future social metamorphosis,

i.e. _an explicit distinction between female and female, as such_.

The superlative fact, indeed, in relation to our general argument,

appears--namely, that certain females are now to become sacred to

certain males, and that both (_nota bene_) are members of the same

family circle.

But what shall be, in such an age, the notes of a law conveying this

noble sentiment of sanctity, which, disarming jealousy, could permit

peace where before strife reigned? How give the outer expression of

the inner feeling, now aroused, of a change in the past intersexual

attitude of certain group members? Whence borrow the eloquence which

shall ordain rules in restriction of intercourse whilst yet, for

Homo Alalus, they must needs be mute in expression.[1] In the primal

law alone, as I hope in its portrayal to show, can each condition be

comprised and found as such. It will be marked and recognised by a

physical trait whose presence is as significant and imperative as it is

characteristic of the epoch. For a sentiment of restraint in feeling,

whilst articulate speech was yet lacking, could only be expressed by

restrictive checks in act and deed, requiring mere visual perception

for interpretation--acts we may here note, which, as insulating the

individual, would also inevitably tend to consecration.

Now we mentioned in our first chapter that, in connection with the

primal law, certain cases of so-called avoidance, and especially

that between near relatives, would have interest for us and probably

afford aid in proof. We drew attention to the strange features

marking these customs, which had rendered their origin a source of

wondering conjecture to all inquirers. It may be that precisely the

actual anomalism of these characteristics may render them eloquent

in our case. In view of our past argument, in very deed, nothing

now becomes insignificant in these quaint rules of non-propinquity

between certain near relations; nothing inexpressive in the ordinance

of non-recognition between individuals well known to each other;

nothing not suggestive in the dread of mere contact between those whom

nature would place closest together, no lack of import in the strange

taciturnity so incongruous with our garrulous later days of unloosed

tongues. There is a possible vestige of a past era of dumb show in

their eloquent muteness; of connection in their actual utter unreason

with a long dead past of all unfamiliar habits and manners. Further, is

verily aught lacking, in these latter-day customs of avoidance, of the

necessarily archaic features of a possible primeval law? If these in

truth were still existent, would they not, with such traits in common,

be simply classed with those? Undoubtedly so, as it seems to me.

Now in the course of our argument it has appeared that the inclusion

of the son as the second adult male in a group would evolve, as the

most primitive rule of action, restriction of intercourse between

its component females and the intruder. But in such a group, the

former would necessarily be to the latter in the relation of mother

and sisters. Such restriction, again, taking the only possible form,

would be avoidance of these relations, and thus there is a concurrence

in resemblance with that particular habit of avoidance on which we

enlarged in our first pages, viz. that between brother and sister (and

now less strictly), between mother and son. Do we not thus seem to lay

a finger on an actual law, still an every-day working factor in savage

life, which is not only identical with, but is in very deed the primal

law itself, in form at least? The acceptation of such intolerably

irksome restraints as avoidance, in the daily economy of savage life,

has seemed forcibly to imply a fundamental cause of profound depth.

This cause now seems laid open to us. The unaccountable and seemingly

unreasonable restrictions on intercourse which mark it thus betray

their appropriate origin in a time of comparative unreason.

This then, the primal law--avoidance between a brother and sister--with

appalling conservatism has descended through the ages (in conservance

of form, if not of ultimate purpose). It ordained in the dawn of time

a barrier between mother and son, and brother and sister, and that

ordinance is still binding on all mankind [but in Egypt and Peru,

for example, the opposite of this rule, for special reasons, has

prevailed]. Between these for ever, a bit was placed in the mouth of

desire, and chains on the feet of lust. Their mutual relationship is

one that has been held sacred from a sexual point of view, in most

later ages. It only remains for us to repeat that it follows that

this law, as applied in the group composed of a single family, is, as

we pointed out, the parent of exogamy; continuance within the group

necessarily and logically entailed marriage without; but, again as we

said, it was itself the offspring of the early idea. For this idea,

in its assumption that sovereignty in marital right was compatible

with solitude alone, was shaken to its depths when a second presence

threatened rivalry, and demanded remedy in the action of law, which it

has seemed to us could only take the form we have tried to portray[2]

in the primal law.

NOTE TO CHAPTER IV

To the Editor this theory seems worthy of the ingenuity of his old

friend and kinsman. Granting that early man was a speechless jealous

brute, dwelling in groups consisting of a patriarchal beast, and all

the females whom he could catch, and all the females whom he could

beget; granting that he drove all his adolescent sons out; and finally

(under the circumstances described) kept one or a few sons at home, his

rule would tabu all females of the group to these sons. Otherwise there

would be a fight.

The sons would have to bring in mates from without--the result is

Exogamy. But Mr. Atkinson does not observe the numerous tabus existing

among savages, on ordinary (not sexual) intercourse between men and

women; as if each individual, of each sex, was or might be dangerous to

each individual of the other sex; _that_ is no idea of our speechless

brute ancestors, of Mr. Atkinson’s hypothesis. These tabus do not

amount to absolute avoidance, but they do amount to very marked

restrictions; for example, on eating together, or sleeping under the

same roof, even where husbands and wives are concerned. For the facts,

to save repetition, it is enough to refer to Mr. Crawley’s book, _The

Mystic Rose_. Now if these less rigid tabus between the sexes (which

Mr. Atkinson noted in his observations on the life of New Caledonian

natives) arose in the general savage superstitious dread of everything

not a man’s or woman’s own self, they might become more rigid as

propinquity increased. The most dangerous female would be the female

who had most chance of being dangerous, by virtue of propinquity,

namely the sister. She would therefore be the most strictly barred. The

closest of all relations, that of lover and lover, and man and wife,

would be most severely guarded, as most dangerous, by tabus. All this

would happen (granting the verifiable condition of savage superstitious

dread) even if Mr. Atkinson’s theory of our speechless beast ancestors’

way of life were wrong.

We should probably find the effects (Avoidance and Exogamy) even if

the primeval causes postulated by him never actually existed. Moreover

any avoidance between mother and son that may exist (as in the case of

the mothers of chiefs, in New Caledonia, and their sons) is perhaps no

more than part of the general rule of restricted familiarity between

the sexes, whether that rule arises from a superstition, or from

the circumstance that men and women sometimes ‘disturb each other

damnably,’ as Lord Byron remarked to his wife. It might be argued that

the exogamous prohibition is only one aspect of the general totem tabu;

and that, in the case of brothers and sisters, incest against the

totem tabu needed to be guarded against (as most likely to occur) by

precautions of avoidance peculiarly stringent. These precautions, then,

would not necessarily come down from the time of our hypothetical

speechless beast ancestors. They _might_ come down from that time,

but the descent, it may be objected, is not necessary. The rules

might have arisen among men as human as we are--Totemists. On the

other hand, it might be argued for Mr. Atkinson that his hypothetical

groups must be infinitely older than Totemism. When totem names were

imposed on the earlier groups, the totem name and mark would only be

a method of distinguishing group from group, probably becoming the

germ of later superstitions by which everything connected with the

totem was tabued, in each case, to the groups bearing its name. Either

alternative hypothesis is easily conceivable: on the whole, I prefer

the theory that exogamy arose, or an exogamous tendency arose, as

in Mr. Atkinson’s hypothesis, and was later sanctioned by the totem

superstition.

As to brother and sister avoidance, if there is an ‘instinct,’ as

Westermarck thinks, against marriage between near relations, if ‘close

living together inspires an aversion to intermarriage’ (pp. 352, 545),

then the avoidance of brother and sister would make them especially

apt to fall in love together. But they don’t. Brother and sister,

under the tabu, are the greatest possible strangers to each other.

They have _not_ ‘lived in long-continued intimate relationship from a

period of life at which the action of desire is out of the question’

(Westermarck, p. 353). They have done precisely the reverse. So why

they do not fall in love with each other is what we have still to

explain. All the rigid systems of brother and sister avoidance exist,

it would seem, to prevent what never would have occurred, had the young

people been allowed to grow up together. For in _that_ case they could

have had (we are to fancy) no erotic desires towards each other; that

is Dr. Westermarck’s idea. But could they not? He tells us that, among

the Annamese, ‘no girl who is twelve years old and has a brother is a

virgin’ (p. 292). And the Hottentots do not ‘marry out of their own

kraals’ (p. 347).

Then where are we, exactly? If there is ‘a real powerful instinct’

against love between persons who ‘have lived in a long-continued

intimate relationship’ from childhood--why does the instinct fail to

affect Annamese and Hottentots, for instance? And if to be absolute

strangers to each other is apt to make two young people fall in love,

why do New-Caledonian brothers and sisters never do it? (Compare Mr.

Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, pp. 444-446.)

[Footnote 1: How do we know that _homo_ was still _alalus_?--A. L.]

[Footnote 2: Later, as we further analyse the chords in the great hymn

of human existence, we shall find that this first of all rules of

intelligent moral action, however little it may have had of ethical

intention in its inception, will ever remain (in its effects) the

fundamental note in the harmony of psychical life. All succeeding

law is its inevitable corollary, and vibrating in cadence with this

fundamental note.]

CHAPTER V

AVOIDANCES

Results in strengthening the groups which admit several

adult males.--Disappearance of hostile band of exiled young

males.--Relations of sire and female mates of young males now within

the group.--Father-in-law and daughter-in-law avoidance.--Rights as

between two generations.--Elder brother and younger brother’s wife

avoidances.--Note on Hostile Capture.

If we can admit the argument as to the sequence of incidents which

thus led to the primary amicable conjunction of two males within the

same group, it is not necessary to enter very minutely into the exact

manner in which it would grow into a habit and spread throughout the

land. We may surmise that, in spite of the advantages presented, its

progress would, from the isolation of the groups, and their mutual

hostility, be very slow. This would specially be the case if, as with

physical variations, this point of departure in social development was

a purely individual one, and so had to spread from a single centre by

natural selection acting through a beneficial variation. It is, in

fact, difficult to conceive, in view of the series of the abnormal

factors we have supposed necessary for the genesis of such evolution,

that any coincident departure of the same nature would be likely to

occur in any other centre. It is even certain that the full possible

benefit of the innovation would not be able to make itself felt even

in the group of its creators. It is easy to understand that, in spite

of the shield-like love of the mother, there would be friction between

father and son in such unfamiliar circumstances, not only novel to

the individual, but unhabitual to the race. In fact, it may be taken

for granted that on the part of the father there was at first only a

sulky tolerance of the new arrangement, a tacit but very unwilling

acquiescence in the presence of the son.

On the part of the son would exist a watchful reserve, with an

ever-haunting sense of insecurity, born of a novel and precarious

situation. Even on such terms, however, and with what little might be

of conciliation between the two, it is evident that a momentous forward

step has been taken: the powers of the group in offence and defence,

as against outsiders, would be enormously increased;[1] the fire of

youth and the wisdom of old age for the first time joined forces, and

paternal experience comes to the aid of filial courage and ardour.

On the death of the patriarch the family found a natural protector,

and what potential germs of advance, material or spiritual, had been

evolved, would remain intact.

The real significance of the circumstance of such conjunction will,

however, be found to lie in the character of its consequences as

entailing further progress. Thus we have suggested that the original

innovation consisted in the toleration of the presence of a single male

offspring. But the way was evidently thus paved for the acceptance, at

least in later generations, of others of the young males, although at

first only of those who, not too much rivalling the fathers in power,

would offer least grounds for jealousy. Now if we may accept it as an

axiom in the matter of social progress in this race, that everything

depended on aggregation of numbers in peaceful union, then such renewed

inclusion presents itself in an important light. When it grew into a

habit, the vast increase in power with every succeeding generation to a

group, which is implied in the fact of each male child counting as an

unit of strength, becomes evident. The new superiority to the original

Cyclopean form of family, with its solitary male head, is enormous. The

extinction of the latter type would only be a matter of time, it would

finally result from the easy capture, by better organised rivals, of

their females. With the gradual disappearance of those who clung to the

old order, the leaven of progress would spread in permanence through

the whole mass. It would eventually become the rule that all the male

offspring should remain within a group, to form henceforth an integral

part of it.

This result would be very important from another point of view. Such

retention of sons would lead to the elimination of one of the greatest

past elements of disorder--that band of exiled young males, which we

found as a constantly menacing adjunct of the Cyclopean family, would

cease to exist. But, again, a very slight reflection will enable

us to perceive that such a modification as the presence of these

celibate young males in the family circle must soon have entailed

consequences in social evolution of a new and strange complexion,

thoroughly embarrassing, in such an era, to those interested. Primitive

social economy was now, in fact, to enter on phases presenting such

possibilities of complication and disruption as must forcibly have led

to the continued evolution of law in regulation. Such complications

will become at once apparent on an examination of the probable sequence

of events in the family life of the race. Such law in regulation will

be shown to have been evolved, and, as before, to be still existent

as a rule of action in these latter days, and with all those weird

characteristics of mutism and general anomalism which prove its archaic

origin.

Granted a group consisting of a patriarch whose marital rights extend

over all its females, and of young males whose attitude,[2] from a

sexual point of view, is marked by the strict reserve ordained by the

primal law, it by no means follows that such celibacy of the young

males would extend beyond the feminine element of their own troop. On

the contrary, the whole of the outside world remains free for them to

choose from. In fact, it is evident that it is there, in the world

outside of the group, that their future mates must be found. On the

component females of the parent horde a ban has been for ever laid,

but all else of womankind are free of the interdict; they are beyond

the law, and ‘Sin is not imputed where there is no law.’ Here, then, in

the outer world, would their wives be sought. The complication we have

mentioned would arise when, after successful captures of females by the

young males, captures which it is hardly necessary to state would have

been ‘hostile,’ the introduction of their captives within the parental

group took place. The presence of females not to be his own within a

circle where all that was feminine had ever been his in undisputed

right, would certainly stir to its depths the soul of the Cyclopean

type of parent. Such a situation must in its inception have caused a

friction full of menace to the new order of things.

The only solution would be, as we have said, in the further evolution

of law in remedy. We shall, as before, expect to find the law ordaining

restrictions on intercourse between certain individuals, and marked

with the archaic characteristic of mere visual action being sufficient

for its interpretation. Such, then, as it was, we still find it, in the

habit still common with many races of avoidance between father-in-law

and daughter-in-law. In mute avoidance between these two could peace

alone endure in the new crisis. The new rule implied the development

of the same respect by the father for the marital rights of the son,

as we have seen the primal law to have had for effect as regards the

paternal prerogatives. Natural selection would come into play in the

consolidation of this new stage in legislative evolution. For the

group which first adopted such a _modus vivendi_ would gain so great

an advantage with each generation, in point of numbers alone, as would

quickly give it supremacy. On the other hand, the forcible infringement

by the father on the rights of possession by the sons in their

captives, would simply result in the withdrawal of the sons and their

women. Hence disruption of the group, and a fatal retrogression to the

archaic type with all the weakness implied in a sole male component.

Here then we find renewed, in act of custom, another bar to

intercourse between certain individuals of different sexes. And not

only as a peace-conferring covenant would the fresh step in progress

be important. It marks another stride in advance from brute to man, in

the further recognition of points of difference between one female and

another from a sexual point of view, the genetic evolution of which

sentiment, in the primal law, foreshadowed such latent potentiality

as already distinctive of mankind alone. Social advance to this stage

has entailed the genesis of law in definition of respective marital

rights as _between the two generations_, viz. fathers and sons, but

further evolution in regulation of the individual right, as within

the generation itself, is evidently indicated. For all members of

the latter, as is the case to-day with many lower people, would be

considered, _de facto_, a _class_, in which all are regarded as

brothers, own or tribal, whose interest in all things regarding their

classificatory rights would be in common.[3]

Such would be more especially the case in respect to female captives,

whose capture would be the act of all. Here sexual jealousy, if

uncontrolled, would inevitably lead to repetitions of that violent

segregation of the members which occurred under the same circumstances

amidst their primitive prototypes--i.e. that band of isolated young

males, contemporaries of and exiles from some Cyclopean family. We

may, however, surmise that, now or soon, the general development of

intelligence and advance in social feeling would permit the action of

the necessary rule in remedy. That rule would doubtless take the form

we still find existing to-day for regulation in parallel circumstances,

a rule which simply accords priority of right in accordance with

seniority in birth. Such right would in itself accrue naturally as

with other animals, from the fact that superior strength is found with

greater age. This prior possession is not incompatible with an amicable

recognition of the privilege of later participation by others. If such

recognition took place in favour of the rights of the juniors, whilst

they again peacefully accepted the larger pretensions of the seniors

within their class, then natural selection would again act in their

favour by the elimination of groups unable to abide such conditions.

The arrogation of sole possession could but lead to the disintegration

of the troop.[4]

Another solution of the problem of rights as between brothers may here

be noted: it is that which is common to such widely separated spots as

New Caledonia and Orissa, viz. the law of avoidance between an elder

brother and a younger brother’s wife. It is one of the most strict and

severe. It is, however, incompatible with group marriage, which we are

now dealing with.[5] It marks the genetic stage of monandry.

So far, then, we have thus traced the evolutionary process of group

formation--and we seem to find confirmed that affirmation as to the

primordial order of succession in the genetic growth of custom which

I ventured to submit in my first pages, viz. primo: the existence of

an early idea of concupiscent lust, distinctive of the male head of

a group, which led to his pretensions in marital right over all its

component females in necessary incestuous union; secundo, the evolution

of the primal law (with what little of originally ethical intention

is now immaterial), in protection of such right when threatened by

intruders; tertio, its acceptance by the latter, and, as an inevitable

sequel, their indispensable capture of outside females as sole possible

mates.[6]

But then this question of the absolute necessity of the rape of

strange females as mates by the young males of a group, opens up

to view another remarkable coincidence of effect in custom, still

enduring to our day. As such it may furnish a clue to a feature in

savage habits, to which we have already alluded as the cause of more

discussion, concerning its origin, than any other. For habitual

hostile capture of females outside a group by its male members, with

a coincidental bar to sexual union with its component females, seems

simply a definition of that habit among many actual peoples which has

been called Exogamy by Mr. J. F. McLennan. Hence comes the evident

corollary to the argument that the primal law and exogamy stand to

each other in the mutual relation of cause and effect. We stated that

if this was in reality the case, and if here we have the origin of

marriage outside the group, then the novelty of the view, and the fact

that it finds itself in opposition to other theories on the matter,

weighty from the eminence of their propounders, would still require

the production of a clear series of proofs in its favour if it was to

be accepted. Such proofs, however, we predicted, would with research

be found abundantly. We hope that already in our thesis, as far as it

has gone, we may be considered to have advanced some such testimony

in the seemingly necessary identity of custom, in form at least, in a

hypothetic ancient and an actual modern era. There is surely here more

than mere fortuitous coincidence in social evolution.

It seems, indeed, a legitimate inference that the divers habits of

avoidance which we have cited, intelligible only by their congruency

with such phases of genetic growth of custom as we have surmised,

whilst presenting features utterly anomalous as latter-day creations,

are in reality of the archaic origin we would assign to them.

Their extraordinary vitality, which becomes almost bewildering to

contemplate, may be explained by the fact that, as the first steps in

progress, they would be necessarily woven into the whole social fabric.

It remains to be seen if, in further unravelling its tangled web, other

threads of actual custom may not be found as apparently eloquent of

a far distant, unfamiliar past, in their present abnormal features;

other usages in every-day lower (savage) life, which in the light of

a primal law shall furnish an unexpected solution of many perplexing

problems in social evolution. If it can be shown that their inception

would have been in happy accordance with the resolution of necessary

incidents in evolutionary progress, may we not legitimately infer both

that such customs thus had their origin, and again that these incidents

really occurred? Our further research into the development of social

institutions will point out indisputably, that primitive society was

now on the eve of a succession of events in social order, presenting

quite a series of menacing complications--their resolution will

seemingly entail inevitably the continuous evolution of law in remedy,

which law would have presented features identical with the actual laws

of avoidance and others.

[Footnote 1: It is clear that, for this reason, natural selection would

favour the new kind of group. The arrangement would be imitated.--A. L.]

[Footnote 2: With portentous endurance of custom towards these.]

[Footnote 3: Herr Cunow, as we showed, regards the ‘classes’ (not

the ‘phratries’) of Australian tribes as based on a rough and ready

calculation of non-intermarrying generations.--A. L.]

[Footnote 4: See also Westermarck, pp. 458, 459, on the Khyoungtha, a

Chittagong hill tribe. After marriage a younger brother is allowed to

touch the hand, to speak and laugh with his elder brother’s wife, but

it is thought improper for the elder brother even to look at the wife

of his younger brother. This is a custom more or less among all hill

tribes, it is found carried to even a preposterous extent among the

Santals.]

[Footnote 5: As a fact the ‘classes’ (probably distinctions,

originally, of generations) do not, I think, indicate ‘group

marriage.’--A. L.]

[Footnote 6: Westermarck, _ut supra_, pp. 387-389, 546, agrees. For the

opposite view, cf. Crawley, p. 367. Westermarck does not seem very sure

of his own mind.--A. L.]

NOTE TO CHAPTER V

Marriage by Hostile Capture

Mr. Atkinson accepts, for the excessively early stage of semi-human

society with which his hypothesis deals, the necessity of procuring

mates for the young bucks by capture from a hostile group. Now Dr.

Westermarck writes, ‘Mr. McLennan thinks that marriage by capture arose

from the rule of exogamy;’ and Mr. Atkinson holds that it arose from

the necessity of the case. The old patriarch allowed no female born

within his group to be united to his sons. Dr. Westermarck says, ‘It

seems to me extremely probable that the practice of capturing women

for wives is due chiefly to the aversion to close intermarrying ...

together with the difficulty a savage man has in procuring a wife in a

friendly manner, without giving compensation for the loss he inflicts

on her father’ (Westermarck, 368-369). He admits a period when ‘the

idea of barter had hardly occurred to man’s mind,’ But Mr. Atkinson

is thinking of a state of affairs in which the idea of barter had not

occurred at all. Even at Dr. Westermarck’s stage of the dawn of barter,

‘marriage by capture must have been very common.’ But Mr. Crawley

argues that because, in his opinion, ‘types of formal and connubial

capture’ are not survivals from actual capture, therefore ‘the theory

that mankind ... ever, in normal circumstances, were accustomed to

obtain their wives by capture from other tribes, may be regarded as

exploded’ (_Mystic Rose_, p. 367). This dictum does not affect Mr.

Atkinson’s theory. Semi-human beings, in the conditions imagined by

him, might be obliged to get their wives by capture, whether existing

types of so-called formal capture are survivals of actual hostile

capture or not. If Mr. Atkinson accepts the formal abductions as

survivals of real captures and so as proofs of his argument, and if

such formal abductions are not survivals of real capture--still, as Dr.

Westermarck says, even after the supposed stage of semi-human life,

‘marriages by capture must have been very common’--in Mr. Atkinson’s

hypothetical still earlier stage, they must have been universal.

CHAPTER VI

FROM THE GROUP TO THE TRIBE

Resemblance of semi-brutal group, at this stage, to actual savage

tribe.--Resemblance merely superficial.--In this hypothetical

semi-brutal group paternal incest survives.--Causes of its decline

and extinction.--The Sire’s widows in the group.--Arrival of outside

suitors for them.--Brothers of wives of the group.--New comers

barred from marital rights over their daughters.--Jealousy of their

wives intervenes.--Value of sisters to be bartered for sisters

of another group discovered.--Consequent resistance to incest of

group sire.--Natural selection favours groups where resistance is

successful.--Cousinage recognised in practice.--Intermarrying sets

of cousins become phratries.--Exceptional cases of permitted incest

in chiefs and kings.--No known trace of avoidance between father and

daughter.--Progress had rendered such law superfluous.

A superficial view of the group we have examined might, from its

general resemblance in custom to others among actual lower types of

man, lead to a hasty conception of perfect identity, from a social

point of view, in nearly all other respects. We see that exogamy,

hostile capture, group marriage,[1] and obedience to certain

accepted rules of avoidance, are common to both, to the hypothetical

semi-bestial and to the actual savage groups.

The impression, however, would be very erroneous.

In the former, the hypothetical archaic stage, still lurked as a

festering canker, an archaic element in marital prerogative, which

marks it as of an epoch in the life-history of our race when the brute

still triumphed over the man, an epoch far removed from our own. It

possessed a feature in connubial relations as between certain group

members which placed a profound gulf between it and any existing form

of these days--a trait which, whilst it endured, would tend to render

all further social progress difficult, if not impossible. It barred the

road to that next great gradation in sociological evolution which is

implied in the friendly conjunction of groups in a tribe. The latter

stage was a vast upward step, but still it was only one round in the

ladder of ascent to man, and indeed derived its chief importance from

this fact as such. The tribe was the real goal; there, only, could be

found the vital quality of social stability to be conferred by peaceful

_connubium_ between united groups as opposed to hostile capture between

isolated families. Each group must come to be in itself complete,

and yet each must form the necessary complementary parts of the

actual _Tribe_ common to all lower races, with its typical divisional

inter-marriageable group classes [‘phratries’]. The fatal bar to a

higher platform was a heritage from the anthropoid ancestor, and, as

such, eminently characteristic of an animal stage.

This odious inheritance was the habit of incest between father and

daughter, which we have found to be common to all the mammalia as a

dominant domestic feature. As a factor in evolution we have seen that

it actually had as direct outcome the primal law itself, and thus,

with a strange irony, it may be said to have so laid the foundation of

an ultimate moral sense. In such or other action in the past it had,

however, served its useful purpose. Its operation in the future could

be but detrimental; so opposed to all advance does it become, that,

as we shall find, it is to be finally swept aside so completely as to

permit to some students doubts of its existence, though ‘In Saturn’s

time such mixture was not held a crime.’ Leaving no traces of action in

actual usage save in such exceptions as prove the rule, it will not be

difficult to show that, in giving birth to the primal law, it doomed

its own existence, and this apart from any ethical connection. The

continued progress of society led almost mechanically to developments

eminently inimical to its continuance as a custom, whilst again it

would be found even injurious to the order of things as constituted in

the earliest group-_plus_-tribe stage. If we bear in mind the axiom

that, other things being equal, the largest assemblage of individuals

in amity would have the greatest chance of survival, as possessing more

numerous units of strength, then father-and-daughter marriage would be

pernicious by preventing an assembly from profiting to a full extent

by the productive powers of all its members. For such incest implies

sole marital rights by a senior generation of males over a junior

generation of females. As the latter would always, from mere disparity

of age, outlive the former, it follows that, on the death of a father

the daughters would remain unproductive, the only other males in the

family group being their own brothers, and as such barred to them by

the primal law.

This situation, in itself an element of weakness, became doubly so,

if, as is probable, these young widowed females seceded to other and

hostile groups with whom union to them was free. Such groups would

in consequence be by so much strengthened, at the expense of their

original circle. If, on the other hand, these widows remained in their

own circle, their presence as useless mouths would be embarrassing, and

a possible source of danger as a temptation to outside suitors. Again,

celibacy being quite an anomaly in such an era, complications might

arise from possible infractions of the primal law itself within a group.

But it is in special relation to the further movement in advance

implied in the friendly aggregation of groups into a tribe that the

effects of paternal incest would be most fatally felt. For while it

reigned as a custom and a father usurped sole marital right over the

whole feminine element, the immigration into the group of outside

suitors for their hands would be impossible, their possession by the

latter would be only possible after capture, which, being hostile,

would tend to keep asunder the different groups. And yet in the next

and higher stage of social evolution, as presented in the amalgamation

of groups into a tribe, the acceptation of these outside mates in

peaceful connubium is precisely the most characteristic feature. In

later days they will be found as the male members of a certain ‘class’

in one ‘phratry,’ and, _de facto_, eligible in group marriage with all

and certain females of the corresponding category as regards birth in

another phratry, within an all-embracing tribe. As indeed with actual

Australians, where, by right of birth alone each ‘class’ contains the

natural born husbands of the wives of another ‘class.’ Such connubium

is evidently impossible while incest flourished as a custom, it could

only arise after its decay.[2]

It thus becomes necessary to study by what possible conjunction of

affairs so desirable a result was arrived at. We will find that,

however fortuitous the event of the primary inclusion of an outside

possible suitor within a group, however timid and hesitating his entry,

his presence there would be the signal of the beginning of the end.

Now it is evidently hopeless to look for any voluntary acceptance of

his claims by the living father, to whom the temptation to so easy

a procuring of an inmate of his harem as his own daughter would be

irresistible. There would be also on his side all habit and tradition,

and with no direct group interest in opposition, the brothers being

unconcerned. The initiative in change must then arise irrespective

of him, and without the obstacle of his presence. This could only be

possible thus after his death.

Now it is important to observe that precisely the embarrassment we

have seen arise after this event must be a means to the end of the

conjunction we seek. We have noted the danger of the situation under

such circumstances; ineligible in union by the primal law with the

remaining male element, which is composed of their own brothers,

temptations to its infraction would be as frequent as fatal, on the

part of the early widowed sisters. On the other hand, the anomaly of

a celibate existence in the animal stage would tend to the secession

of widows, so to speak, to hostile hordes, or to constant attempts at

hostile capture by the outside suitor. But with the friendly entry of

the latter and his acceptance as a group member, all these disturbing

influences would at once cease; further, the value of an extra unit of

strength in his presence would soon make itself felt.

Let us then imagine a band of brothers willing to aid in the sustenance

of their widowed sisters, strong enough to defy their capture by

others, and determined to frustrate any attempt at escape on their

part. The inevitable result would be the attraction within their own

circle of suitors for their hands. Now it is worthy of note that the

feasibility of the process of such attraction and inclusion becomes

more obvious when we reflect that if, as is probable, they belonged to

a neighbouring group, they would thus by no means find themselves quite

strangers in their new home. For it is precisely from near neighbours

that their wives would have been captured by the males of the assembly

they have now joined. These wives, in fact, would be probably own

sisters to the immigrants. As such, then, we can understand an

easier tolerance of their presence by the resident males, their new

brothers-in-law; as brothers and sisters the primal law created such

a bar in division between their own wives and the new comers, as put

aside any possible chance of friction in jealousy.

Now the significance of the entry of outside males would be vast, from

many points of view. In a general sense we here find that further

aggregation of numbers in unison which we considered important, as

prophetic of the present social condition of to-day. Again, there

arises a renewed distinction of that difference as between one female

and another, so peculiar to mankind. For here we see that for the first

time a sister no longer ranks in exactly the same line, from a marital

point of view, as a mother. A daughter, in fact, may now evidently

have as mate other than the husband-father. As the primitive mind

habituated itself to this idea, the first serious blow was dealt at the

old parental prerogative. Again, in other ways, in other minds than

own brother and sister, will this change in the old order of things be

thus brought home--to no one more clearly than to the outside suitor

himself, when, later, he becomes a father; the trains of circumstances

leading to it are very curious, but would arise in a perfectly natural

manner. The result in this connection would make itself felt by him

in the next generation, with the advent to the adult stage of his own

female offspring.

Is it credible, indeed, that the original male members of a group who

had solely accepted his entry as mate for those ineligible females,

their sisters, would consent to his further participation in marital

right with other female group members? Evidently not: for thus the

sexual prerogatives of the strangers would be much greater than their

own--for the resident males are barred by the primal law from the

wives of the new comers, who yet, as resident females, form probably

much the most numerous section of the feminine element in the horde.

If the new comers further inherited the ordinary right of intercourse

with their own daughters, who would be correspondingly numerous, then

the extent of their rights would entirely outbalance that of their

brothers-in-law. As original residents the latter would, however, be

the law-makers, and we can have no doubt as to what form in such a case

law would take.[3] Thus is struck a blow again, however indirect, to

incest as a custom, a blow whose power would be the more effective,

insomuch as here it is the living father himself, in the outside

suitor, who would be in cause. But even admitting that it is possible

to conceive a complacency in regard to such participation in sexual

rights on the part of the brother, there would still be another much

more formidable obstacle to incestuous license as regards his daughter

confronting the male intruder in the person of the precedent sister,

now his wife.

A psychological factor of enormous power was now for the first time

in the history of the world to make itself felt. It would be the play

of the natural feeling of sexual jealousy on the part of his resident

female mate. The jealousy of a woman, in fact, is at length able to

make its strength appear, to some purpose. As a wife who had not been

captured, who, in fact, as an actual member of the group itself, was,

so to speak, the capturer, her position in regard to her dependent

husband would be profoundly modified in comparison with that of the

ordinary captive female. Whereas such a captive, seized by the usual

process of hostile capture, had been a mere chattel utterly without

power; _she_, as a free agent in her own home, with her will backed by

that of her brothers, could impose law on her subject spouse, and such

law dictated by jealousy would undoubtedly ordain a bar to intercourse

between him and her more youthful, and hence more attractive, daughter.

By these then, and other incidents, each of vast value, we may

perceive how the primitive mind became gradually prepared for a change

so imperatively necessary for all future progress, and how a habit

even so deeply ingrafted as incest may primarily have been forced to

slacken its hold. It is even possible to imagine how from such a point

of departure, the custom might at once have entirely ceased among

all, or at least a portion of, mankind. If we could conceive at this

stage a secession from their original group of its resident component

females, accompanied by their outside mates, with a continuance of the

acceptance of the subordinate strange suitors in future generations of

the new colony, then we could admit the probability of rapid evolution

in approach to a well-known actual group formation. The persistent

importation of the always dependent outsider would accentuate the

movement already begun against incest--with two such associations in

unison, cousinship would be recognised, and peaceful _connubium_ in

‘cross-cousin’ marriage between groups would become a habit, and female

descent the rule.[4] But at such a stage in social evolution, it is

impossible to accept the dominance of the unsupported female or ‘feme

sole.’ _Gynæcocracy_, if it has indeed ever existed, is evidently as

yet incredible. Not thus was dealt the final fatal blow at this last

great trait of archaism. We must rather seek it in the familiar economy

of the type of group we have left, which is characterised, as with

other animals, by the predominance of the male.

In our study of the various incidents in primitive social economy which

would have had effect in a sense inimical to the custom of incest, we

have only considered the matter from the point of view of the entry

of the outside suitor after the death of the paternal tyrant. The

incestuous rights of the living group-fathers are thereby in no way

directly affected. In the absence of any direct personal interest

in the matter on the part of the group-sons, the only other male

components and law-makers might indeed continue to remain unopposed

indefinitely. Thus a resolution of the problem of decay of incest would

seem as far off as ever. Happily this is not in reality the case--the

real significance of the entry of the outsider, even on such terms

as we have examined, lay in the co-ordination of movement of these

resultant primary checks, and the inevitable synchronous evolution of

the most characteristic feature of the next and higher type of group,

as in itself a mere component of a tribe. The outsider’s admission, in

fact, really contained the germ of progress in group formation which

was to entail the total required decay [of incest].

Up to the present, although the entire male element in a group was

divided into two classes, by generations whose interests had little

in common, between them no antagonism had arisen which could not be

appeased by the evolution of such a law in remedy as we have noted.

The case would now be altered; an irreconcilable breach was about to

divide them. It will be seen that the advent of the outsider had been

a real portent. Where, for instance, and under the circumstances we

have portrayed, he had become a more accustomed figure as an immigrant,

he would form a valuable connecting link between groups. Each would

certainly possess some females seized from the other by more or less

forcible capture, but each now possessed a certain proportion of these

males, brothers of those females, whose intrusion had been peaceably

accepted. With less strained relations and greater intercourse, capture

would become a little more rare, and a friendly interchange of women

more common. There would be then discovered by the brother a hitherto

undreamt-of virtue in the young female, his sister; in fact, her value

as a negotiable article would appear.

As brothers and sisters, and thus barred in union by the primal law,

their relative interest in each other had been of the feeblest in the

past. The ultimate destiny of the sister might be a matter of the most

perfect indifference to the brother. With the new order of things she

had suddenly become more precious. As an object of barter for the

sister of another man, she would show herself to be invaluable. In view

of the difficulty and danger attending hostile capture, the temptation

to such easy procuration of mates as sister-barter offered would be

irresistible. Coming at first into practice when only the death of

the father had left his widowed daughter free, its advantages to the

sons would impose a gradual encroachment on the rights of possession

by the living parent. In prejudice to incest were now opposed the two

most powerful passions in human nature, sexual desire, and a love of

material gain, and the successful barter of a sister for another man’s

sister satisfied both. For attempts at capture might be unsuccessful,

and purchase might be more or less unsatisfactory. And these passions

would be aroused in bosoms able to make their power felt. The sons, as

also resident males, would be among the law-makers. However powerful

the father in past authority and tradition, in the end the force

of numbers would tell. However numerous the group of fathers, they

would always be outnumbered by the group of brother sons, and victory

would thus ultimately incline to these.[5] However long and doubtful

the struggle, as the latter possessed the longer lease of life, the

_quantum_ of the exchange value of a sister would always finally be

made to show itself, and the determination to profit thereby would be

more strongly impressed on each generation.

Natural selection would again certainly come into play in favour

of such groups, thus curtailing the monstrous prerogatives of the

old-world fathers, by dint of numbers alone. The superiority which

would ensue with each generation, would speedily ensure the triumph of

that assembly which could definitely accept the presence of the outside

suitor. He would come as a multiple unit of strength, a willing ally

who would otherwise have been an active enemy--the generator of the

productive power to females who would either have remained as sterile

residents, or seceded to hostile hordes as breeders of new foes.

Thus, then, we may at length perceive how a custom even so deeply

ingrained in nascent man as paternal incest, may finally have become

extinct as a custom. In the action of such circumstances we can

accept the idea of its ultimate decay and death. By the numerical

preponderance of the individuals within a group interested in its

disappearance, was alone such a result feasible. This necessary

condition we here find fulfilled.

In opposition to the father we now see arrayed not only the

wife-mother jealous of her mate, not only the daughter inclined

instinctively to youth and the unknown, but, most important of all, the

son, now egged on by most powerful personal feelings and interests. And

for these latter ones, as we have seen, time itself would fight; to

youth each hour and day is a gain in strength, to old age each moment

means a loss of power. With the decay of the custom we see that the

way lies clear to progress in group formation. Sooner or later the

presence of the offspring of the outside suitors in the formerly purely

consanguine circle will be recognised, their recognition as cousins to

the younger resident members will be made, and the old type of horde by

a process of cleavage divides itself into two intermarriageable clans,

(phratries?), and the savage tribe is created.[6]

Thus did the custom of paternal incest disappear, and so completely as

not to leave a trace of its passage in recognised usage among actual

peoples. But as an unauthorised habit it long existed, nay, it still

lurks, and as such it is probably much more common among the lowest

classes of even most civilised peoples than is generally imagined.

The continual domiciliary propinquity of such close relatives makes

the crime easy[7] and detection difficult. Amidst the savage races,

although rare, it is by no means unknown. It is not a crime by the

laws of totem kinship with female descent, the daughter in such a case

being always of the same totem as her mother, and thus theoretically

eligible. The only bar is the classificatory system which, based on

sequence in birth, forbids all connection between those of different

generations. Thus this form of incest, when it does occur, in no

way creates the utter horror which we find universal at any union

between brother and sister. An old native chief whom I questioned on

the matter certainly spat with disgust at the idea, but again, to my

own knowledge, a case occurred where a girl bore a child to her own

father, and when the fact was mentioned among the people, it only

caused coarse laughter. It is true that in this case the culprit was

a great chief--it is possible that there would have been more adverse

comment if he had been a commoner. It is certain that the betrayal

of the vested interests of the future husband (for in New Caledonia

all children are betrothed at a very early age) would have been more

resented in the latter case. But license in sexual intercourse within

forbidden relationships seems everywhere the privilege of irresponsible

rank, if we may judge by the Kalmuck proverb, ‘Great folk and the

beasts marry where they please.’

However, its occurrence in such cases may be traced to sources which

show that here the exception proves the rule. Indeed, the fact of its

occurring almost solely among the higher classes [as among the Incas],

points clearly to a probable connection with an idea of pride of race,

or a question of inheritance. Now we may note that with descent in the

female line the right of direct succession to the paternal name, or

place of power, or property, is not in the gift of a father. The only

legal conveyers of the blood right within him are females in whose

veins is to be found that same blood, i.e. his mother and sisters.

However regal a personage his child by a foreign woman, it is cut off

from that heritage, nor in connection with this offspring can pride of

race find a place. Thus, then, we may understand how union, although

illegal, with a sister was so frequent in, and even enjoined on, the

royal race amidst certain peoples. The purity of the royal blood thus

alone remained intact, and from a king was born a king. For it is a

remarkable fact which must be more than a coincidence that amongst

these very peoples, such as the ancient Egyptians, Persians, and

Peruvians, whose rulers were addicted to the habit, female descent

was the custom [?]. At least I am not personally acquainted with any

exception to the rule. In consonance with this descent through females

only and where any approach has been made to gynæcocracy, we shall

expect to find that there would be only one legal wife. Such was indeed

the case also in Ancient Egypt, there is no instance of two consorts

given in any of the inscriptions. This fact, taken in connection with

that which conduced to incestuous union under this form of descent,

invites us to make a digression in a curious reflection, not however

entirely foreign to our general theme. For the same effect as regards

inheritance on the offspring which would be produced by union with a

sister, would also occur in marriage with a daughter whose parents

had been themselves brother and sister. Thus we may guess the lineage

of the unknown mother of the great royal wife Nefer-ari, daughter

and consort of the Pharaoh of the oppressive Rameses the Great. This

daughter had, in fact, been probably chosen among others for wife

precisely because her mother had herself been both his sister and his

wife.[8]

We may now renew our affirmation that paternal incest as a custom, is

no longer generally recognised anywhere. The primitive unquestioned

marital right in incest is quite unknown. It has disappeared, and so

completely have even traces of its past general occurrence faded, that

doubts of the reality of the fact may be pardonably entertained. The

question is of importance in connection with our thesis, for as may

be seen the whole theory of the primal law is based on the idea of

its primitive universal prevalence. We hope, however, to have shown

the inherent possibility of the fact as being a habit common to all

the mammalia--and it has seemed against reason to suppose that man’s

ancestor, whilst in the animal stage, would be an exception to so

general a rule. Our further argument has adduced circumstances in

favour of a final decay so complete that oblivion could not but follow.

Perhaps not the least remarkable fact to the anthropologist in

connection with its life and death, is that only as between a father

and a daughter, of all blood relationships, do we find no trace among

actual peoples of any law in Avoidance. The fact is significant, as we

may thus surmise that the process of decay was very long delayed, in

fact to a time when such inchoate form of law as Avoidance had become

an archaism, or until general progress had rendered any law unnecessary.

[Footnote 1: As to group marriage the editor cannot follow Mr.

Atkinson.]

[Footnote 2: I have here slightly altered Mr. Atkinson’s terminology.

As the passage stands in his manuscript he confuses totem kins with

the Australian intermarrying ‘classes.’ In his manuscript the passage

runs thus: ‘In later days they’ (the outside mates) ‘will be found as

the male members of a certain class generation in one group’ (by which

he means a ‘class,’ say Ippai, in a ‘phratry,’ say Dilbi) ‘and, _de

facto,_ eligible in group marriage with all and certain females of the

_same_ category as regards birth in another group.’ Here he obviously

should have written ‘eligible in marriage with all females of the

_corresponding_ category in the other “phratry” of an all-embracing

tribe.’ ‘As indeed with actual Australians where, by right of birth

alone, each totem group contains the natural born husbands and wives of

another totem group.’ This is not the case: men of one totem kin are

not compelled to take wives from one other totem kin; but men of one

‘class’ must take wives of one other ‘class,’ and men of one ‘phratry’

must take wives out of the other ‘phratry.’. To avoid confusion I have,

in the text, inserted the correct terminology.--A. L.]

[Footnote 3: All the younger generation of females would be reserved

for themselves, and thus not only their own daughters, but the

daughters of their brothers-in-law, who, as of the same generation,

were all classed together as sisters.]

[Footnote 4: These groups would be phratries, or the germs of

phratries.--A. L.]

[Footnote 5: The breach between father and sons could only be healed

by the submission of the fathers. Then prerogative in incest would

gradually decay, for strange to say no vestige of law in avoidance can

be traced.]

[Footnote 6: It will be observed that Mr. Atkinson, when he writes

of ‘the cleavage of the old type of horde into two intermarriageable

clans, creating the tribe,’ differs from the opinions already expressed

by his editor. By ‘clans’ Mr. Atkinson here means ‘phratries,’ and we

have shown that phratries, even now, often bear totemic names, and

probably were, in origin, local totem groups; each containing members

(by female descent) of several other totem groups. Mr. Atkinson, as

far as his MS. goes, appears to have given no attention to the origin

and evolution of totem names, totem groups, and totem kins. Thus he

writes, ‘the presence of the offspring of the outside suitor in the

formerly purely consanguine circle will be recognised.’ But if the

heterogeneity in the circle was only recognised as marked by female

descent, and by the totem name of the female mate from without, _male_

parentage of ‘the children of the outside suitor’ would not come into

the purview of customary laws, would not cause the ‘cleavage into two

intermarriageable clans,’ or ‘phratries.’ There was no such ‘cleavage,’

as we have argued, and the permission of cross-cousin marriage is due

(I suspect), not to such early legal recognition of male descent, but

simply to the natural working of the totemic exogamy, _plus_ female

descent.

Mr. Atkinson’s theory of ‘cleavage,’ it will be remarked, does not

involve the idea that the members of an ‘undivided commune,’ being

pricked in conscience, bisected it for reformatory purposes. He merely

suggests that his clients found, in their group, persons marriageable

according to their existing rules of the game, and married them. But

these persons are, according to him, recognised as the offspring of

‘outside suitors’ _male_, and are also recognised as cousins, on the

female side, though even now no name for cousins exists in Australian

society. This involves counting both on the male and female sides,

which, in practice, may have occurred. But the theory of Mr. Atkinson

avoids all the problems of the different totemic names given both to

the born members of his original group, and to other members thereof,

consisting of the offspring of the outside suitors. If totemic group

names already existed, these suitors must have been of many totem group

names. Whence, then, came the two different and distinct totemic group

names of the two sets of cross-cousins--now phratries on Mr. Atkinson’s

theory?

Give his original group a name, say Emu. With Totemism it will contain

captive wives of various groups, say Bat, Cat, Rat. It will also

contain outside suitors, probably of the same names. These men are

allowed to marry women of the group, and, by Mr. Atkinson’s theory, the

offspring of these unions, or ‘cross-cousins,’ are allowed to marry the

children of their aunts within the group. There are thus, within the

group, two intermarrying ‘sides of the house,’ _veve_, as in Melanesia.

But why or how do these sides of the house, practically phratries,

now receive totemic names, say Yungaru and Wutaru, or Wolf and Raven?

Perhaps Mr. Atkinson would have replied, ‘by a mere extension of the

habit of adopting totemic names,’ which, of course, involves the

pre-existence of that habit.--A. L.]

[Footnote 7: But not tempting, according to Dr. Westermarck!--A. L.]

[Footnote 8: It will be interesting to see if research will bring to

light the fact that even with so irresponsible and imperious a dynasty

as the Ramesids some form of lustration was not considered necessary

in the event of such unions. This is the case with the people of

Madagascar under similar circumstances.]

CHAPTER VII

TRACES OF PERIOD OF TRANSITION--AVOIDANCES

Survivals in custom testify to a long period of transition from group

to tribe.--Stealthy meetings of husband and wife.--Examples.--Evidence

to a past of jealousy of incestuous group sire.--Evidence from

Teknonymy.--Husband named as father of his child.--Formal capture

as a symbol of legal marriage.--Avoidance between father-in-law and

son-in-law.--Arose in stage of transition.--Causes of mother-in-law and

son-in-law avoidance.--Influence of jealousy.--Examples.--Mr. Tylor’s

statistics.--Resentment of capture not primal cause of this avoidance.

--Note on avoidance.

With a custom so deeply ingrained as incest would be in the nature of

man’s ancestor, still doubtless vastly animal, we may indeed surmise

that the process of its decay was long and tedious. The temptation, as

we have said, to such easy procuration of a mate in comparison with the

danger and comparatively scanty results of capture, was very great,

whilst the continual propinquity of father and daughter would tend

to constant recrudescence, especially in default of any trace of law

against it. There must, then, evidently have been a transition era of

vast durance, between the type of the isolated consanguine group whose

only resource in matrimony was exogamic hostile capture, as the outcome

of the incestuous lust of its solitary male head, and the all-embracing

tribe composed of an aggregation of several groups, and possessing thus

_ipso facto_ all the necessary elements of an endogamic connubium quite

incompatible with such incest. In such a tribe, a group of women in

many cases formed the pivotal centre, and capture was often found only

as a form in survival. Is it possible to retrace the main features of

an epoch of such evident importance in social evolution? In view of

the fact that, in the past course of our argument, such law as would

seemingly have been necessarily evolved in regulation of each step in

primitive progress has been found identical in form with some actual

savage custom, may not a deeper investigation of savage custom disclose

further co-ordination, and prove equally fertile in interpretation of

the past? Whilst, again, many obscure observances in actual lower life,

in consonance with such archaic genesis, may take a rational form,

though the origin seems apparently lost for ever.

Such research will, I think, clearly show that many social features

in modern savage habit afford internal evidence that, as a fact,

they could only have arisen in such a transition era. They also bear

marks of a very lengthened evolutionary process, and thus confirm the

natural idea of a halt of portentous length at the threshold of the

present haven of comparative social rest. We shall doubtless find that

the door left ajar by the entrance of the outside suitor was not to

yield further with ease to the pressure of new needs, half-hearted as

men would be, from the conservative force of old ideas, of incest and

entire masculine dominance.

There is, for instance, one curious trait in actual savage custom which

evidently dates from a very early stage of this epoch. It is that of

the strange forms of ‘stealthy’ intercourse, being the indispensable

preliminary symbols of the legality of an after marriage between the

resident female of a group and an outside male. These forms are well

known to anthropologists as occurring among many lower peoples. Here we

find that the visits of the male suitor are supposed to be distinctly

clandestine, taking place only by night, although in reality the fact

is perfectly in the cognisance of the whole group. Now such fugitive

and secret meetings are exactly what would have taken place when a

group had arrived at a stage in which, although filial incest was

decaying as a custom, there were still recognised certain marital

rights over his daughter by the living father; when, in fact, tolerance

of the presence of the outsider was yet in a tentative stage--and he

was still regarded with suspicion, if not disfavour.[1]

In consonance with the view we have advanced of the circumstances

attending the entry of an immigrant suitor, it has seemed to ensue that

his position would have been quite dependent, and himself considered

as a foreign element. That such was actually the case seems again

proved by another trait in modern custom, whose genesis, however, was

of very much later date, and when speech had made some progress. In

our own day clandestine intercourse, as above described, may continue

to pregnancy. On the birth of the child alone does the father become

recognised as part of the group. But even so his nomenclatory power as

regards his offspring is absolutely nil. Far from giving a name to the

child, his own is taken from his offspring. Till now, in fact, he has

been nameless; in future he will be known as the father of so-and-so,

of Telemachus, in the case of Odysseus. To this point we will, however,

have to return when we arrive at the question of the evolution of

personal descent from that of descent recognised by locality, which we

consider to have been the most primitive form. [Mr. Atkinson probably

means descent from a local group, say Crow, not descent denoted by a

place name, as ‘de Rutherford.’]

There is another trait in actual custom which also could only have

acquired its most remarkable features in this era of change, and that

is hostile capture itself, in its legacy of those ‘forms’ of capture

which we find connected with more peaceful connubium all over the

world. Such ‘forms’ have rightly been considered as mere survivals, and

thus in agreement with our own theory capture is generally accepted

as the earliest form of outside marriage.[2] But in some minds the

brutality necessarily attending real capture, and its occurrence

solely among very low races with whom any idea of sexual restraint is

expected to be quite unfamiliar, has simply connected the process with

the general lawlessness which, amongst such peoples, is supposed to

characterise the relations between the sexes. Its occurrence in form of

survival among higher races has been considered a meaningless ceremony,

and its evident symbolism in legality dismissed as incredible. Students

are, however, aware how much in error is the idea of utter lawlessness

in connection with the marriage relationships of any savage race. On

the contrary, as is well known, the list of prohibited kindred is not

only much wider than our own, but no stage in the marital arrangements

is without irksome and minute legislative restraints, strictly limiting

and defining the rights of each individual, male and female.

To other minds the fact that a ‘hostile capture,’ presenting as its

most characteristic feature an utter violence, should ever have been

constituted into a symbol of legality in marriage, has given rise to

much perplexity. Mr. McLennan in fact remarks--‘It is impossible to

believe that the mere lawlessness of savages should be consecrated

into a legal symbol’--an assertion which we may accept, however little

we are prepared to accept his general views on early society. It is

evident that the whole difficulty has arisen from the apparent complete

incompatibility of a seeming method in violence with a virtual act

in law. The hypothesis we have presented of the ‘primal law,’ and

its exogamous sequel, would seem however to throw a new light on the

matter. All unions within the group being by the action of primal

law, as we have shown, considered incestuous and illicit, marriage

could only take place with an outside mate. The presence of a captured

female within the camp would thus, as we see, actually constitute in

itself a proof, and the only one possible at the epoch, of the legal

consummation of marriage as ordained by the primal law. It is thus

easy to see how a form of capture should be retained as a symbol of

legality in later connubium. Its continued vitality results from the

intense conservatism of lower peoples, and from the fact of the halo

of prowess that surrounds it.

Its evolution as a _symbol_ only arose, however, when, during the

transition era, by the conjunction of groups into a tribe, friendly

unions were possible. It would not have occurred with the earliest

forms of horde, for these were isolated and hostile, and real capture

itself was the sole form of marriage; nor would it have occurred with

that later type, in which, with matriarchal descent, the relative

positions of males and females were reversed, as far at least as suit

in union is concerned.[3] It took its rise with that other great

type of group characterised by patriarchal descent, which in all the

after history of the world (for, as we shall see, their evolution was

coincident and had for cause the same factor) was to dispute supremacy

with that which accepted uterine descent. Here, as in the original

type, the male continued to preserve his predominance and continued its

traditions of capture.[4]

There remain other actual traits whose connection with this era is

equally evident. For instance, avoidance between father-in-law and

son-in-law could not have had its genesis in the very earliest type of

assembly. Whilst parental incest ruled as the custom, each group must

have been isolated from and hostile to every other. These two could

never have been in habitual presence one of the other. But, again,

the habit could not have arisen in the later form, as represented by

a tribal horde with uterine descent, as primitively composed of only

two intermarrying groups, each of which formed a clan distinguished by

a different totem emblem.[5] The relative clan-relationship of each

member of the horde would, by the aid of this distinctive totem, be

distinctly defined, and, with female descent, the father-in-law and

son-in-law would find themselves members of the same clan [phratry].

As thus being both males and of the same ‘phratry,’ there could not

possibly be avoidance or enmity, real or simulated, between them.[6]

By all the sacred ties of blood [phratry] they were conjoined in

offence and in defence. Further, where descent is uterine we find that

the disposal of a daughter is in the hands of the mother or maternal

uncle alone--the father has no voice whatever in the question, nor

any part in her value as an object of barter or sale. Thus he is

perfectly disinterested in the matter of his children. So far from

being in disunion with his son-in-law, his sympathies, in case of a

tribal quarrel, would be certainly with him. But the younger man, in

internal quarrels, might be found fighting to the death with his own

real father, not (as I have seen it stated in mention of just such an

incident)[7] because he has become part of his wife’s clan,[8] which

could never be, but because, with descent through the female, his

father would be a member of the different group and of other blood to

himself, and to his father-in-law also.

The genesis of this particular avoidance (father-in-law and son-in-law)

took place during that stage of the transition era, when, incest still

lingering, the immigrant suitor was so far acknowledged that his entry

into a group was not always delayed till the death of his proposed

father-in-law. As they were thus possible rivals there was a chance of

friction, only to be averted by the law in question. Avoidance would

arise at the same time between mother-in-law and son-in-law, but this

time as a measure of protection for the marital rights of the husband

of the former.[9] It could not have arisen in the early Cyclopean era.

The son-in-law as such, could evidently not have had existence when the

mother’s daughter was the father’s wife, nor, later, when, with the

general recognition of the classifactory system, there arose a strict

interdiction of sexual union between members of different generations.

There would in such circumstances be no further risk of danger from

the jealousy of a father as regards his wife, and the husband of his

daughter. It had its origin in the fact that when the outside suitor

had originally been granted entry, it would only have been after the

death of the patriarch sire, and as a mate for his widowed females.

But as these would include both mother and daughter, there would

thereby be created a precedent, so to speak, which required regulation,

when later, with the decay of incest, the living father remained in

presence. In fact, avoidance between mothers-in-law and sons-in-law

defined fathers-in-law’s rights.

We may here again note another step in advance to purely human

attributes in the fresh distinction between female and female, which

has now again arisen as between a mother and her daughter as regards

the immigrant suitor. But whereas with these, as indeed with most of

the cases of avoidance we have studied, sexual jealousy has been the

primary cause, we may now trace the action of quite another factor,

which would certainly tend to a conservation of the habit, and in a

manner intensify it. This would be association of idea with hostile

capture.

As regards the father-in-law, however, the custom, as far as capture

is concerned, would not occur with female descent, for the reasons we

have already given of clan kinship in such a case. It might, however,

be found as a factor to a certain extent with male kinship, for here

it is the father-in-law who is of the same clan as his daughter, and

thus interested in her negotiable value. Thus it is possible to

imagine enmity between him and her possible captor, who is also of a

different clan from himself. As regards avoidance of mother-in-law it

has again, perhaps, been accentuated by forcible capture. The effect,

however, in relation to descent would be exactly the reverse of that

with the father. With early male descent in the primitive tribe as

composed of only two clan groups [phratries], it is she who would be

of the same stock as her daughter’s husband, and the habit would not

arise, the captor is, in fact, a member of the tribe from which she

herself has been stolen; although later, when more than two clans

were conjoined,[10] it might happen that her son-in-law belonged to

another, and here there might arise feelings of animosity. With uterine

descent the case is certainly altered. As a mother, and as member

of a clan different from that of the male suitor, the figure of the

son-in-law might be dreaded as a possible captor of her daughter and

other young female members. But here again a difficulty arises, for

when the capture becomes an accomplished fact, the mother-in-law and

son-in-law would probably not meet again, at least in primitive times:

he belonging to the group having patriarchal descent, with capture

as the rule; she, to the matriarchal, where the female is normally

immobile, between which two forms of group no friendly intercourse

could occur. The fact of avoidance in any form presumes contiguity or

the habitual presence of the individuals concerned, and this in such a

case could not arise. So as in Tylor’s figures we find that in W to H,

as the latter is completely cut off from his family, there is not one

single case of avoidance between the wife and the husband’s relatives.

It is evident that the same rarity of contiguity must have arisen also

with the father in male descent; there is here certainly cause of

disagreement in the rape, but if the parties see each other no more

there would be no necessity of evolution of avoidance to mark the fact.

Indeed, I cannot help thinking that the importance of association with

hostile capture has been much exaggerated as a factor in the evolution

of Avoidance. The question of ‘residence’ and ‘descent’ has not been

held sufficiently in account by those who insist on the capture as the

sole cause of avoidance. Despite the eminence of the authors favouring

this view, I would venture to submit that the balance of proof would

much favour sexual jealousy, which we have heretofore found the sole

motive power in all changes.

Those who would uphold anger roused by capture as the cause of

avoidance with the wife’s relatives, for instance, must be prepared

to show that it would be strongest with the one who was most deeply

interested in the wife, one whose voice in her destiny was of greater

power than her own mother’s, and that was her maternal uncle, the head

of her clan. Now I have failed as yet to find a single trace of such

a case as avoidance between the latter and his sister’s daughter’s

husband.

Again, jealousy, or a desire for regulations in matters of sexual

union, will explain certain details in the accounts we have received

of individual cases which seem otherwise obscure or irrelevant. These

have been overlooked, as they are minute, but from my point of view

are full of significance when closely examined. Mr. Lubbock says,[11]

quoting Franklin as to American Indians: ‘It is _extremely improper_

for a mother-in-law to speak or even look at him, i.e. her son-in-law.’

Quoting Baegert: ‘The son-in-law was not allowed _for some time_ to

look into the face of his mother-in-law.’ Further, ‘among the Mongols

a woman must not speak to her _father-in-law_, nor _sit down_ in his

presence. Among the Ostiaks, _Une fille mariée évite autant qu’il

lui est possible la présence du père de son mari tant qu’elle n’a

pas d’enfant, et le mari pendant ce temps n’ose pas paraître devant

la mère de sa femme_’ (Pallas). In China the father-in-law after

the wedding-day never sees the face of his daughter-in-law again,

he never visits her, and if they chance to meet he hides himself.

Among the Kaffirs a married woman is required to _hlonipa_[12] her

father-in-law, and all her husband’s male relations in the ascending

line, i.e. to be cut off from all intercourse with them.

Again, in Australia, it is compulsory on the mothers-in-law to avoid

the sight of their sons-in-law, by-making the former take a very

circuitous route on all occasions, to avoid being seen, and they

hide the face or figure with the rug which the female carries with

her. So strict is the rule, that if married men are jealous of any

one, they sometimes promise to give him a daughter in marriage. This

places the married man’s wife, according to custom, in the position

of mother-in-law, and renders any communication between her and her

future son-in-law a capital crime.[13] Also among the Sioux or Dacotas,

Mr. Philander Prescott remarks on the fear of uttering certain names.

The father and mother-in-law must not call their son-in-law by name,

and _vice versa_, and there are other relationships to which the

prohibition applies. He has known an infringement of this rule punished

by cutting the offender’s clothes off his back and throwing them away.

Harmon says ‘that among the Indians east of the Rocky Mountains it is

indecent for the father or mother-in-law to look at or speak to the

son or daughter-in-law.’ Among the Yakuts, Adolf Erman noticed a more

peculiar custom. As in other northern regions the custom of wearing

but little clothing in the hot stifling interior of the huts is common

there, and the women often go about their domestic work stripped to

the waist, nor do they object to this disarray in the presence of

strangers; but there are two persons before whom a Yakut woman must

not appear in this guise, her father-in-law and her husband’s elder

brother. Again, quoting J. G. Wood, he says the native term for these

customs of avoidance is, ‘being ashamed of the mother-in-law.’ The

Basuto custom forbids a wife to look in the face of her father-in-law

till the birth of her first child--and among the Banyai a man must sit

with his knees bent in presence of his mother-in-law, and must not put

out his feet towards her.

Now an important circumstance to be remarked in nearly all cases of

Avoidance is, that it principally exists between people of different

sexes,--thus an _a priori_ inference may be drawn that the primary

cause lay in some relation to the sexual question. It is significant

that a woman’s avoidance of her husband’s relations is with those in

the ascending line, i.e. with his seniors. Against his juniors he

can defend himself, against his seniors he needs the protection of

law. In the cases we have cited, it is significant that, besides the

father-in-law, _hlonipaed_ among the Kaffirs, the woman must _hlonipa_

all her husband’s male relations in the ascending line. Among the

Yakuts she must not appear unclothed before her husband’s elder brother.

Among the Veddahs of Ceylon a father will not see his daughter, nor a

mother her son, after they have _come to years of maturity_.[14]

If we examine the words italicised in the quotations above, they

seem to convey more nearly an idea of impropriety in any approach

to intimacy than that of ‘cutting’ from enmity, as Dr. Tylor has

suggested. Indeed, we observe here just the same horror that a too

familiar attitude between forbidden kindred, as uncle and niece, would

excite amongst ourselves, arising from the same idea of repugnance.

We see that various observers use the terms ‘improper’ (Franklin),

‘the fear of’ (P. Prescott), ‘indecent’ (Harmon), ‘cut off from all

intercourse with them,’ and no doubt they have[15] each expressed the

impression made on themselves in observation. We note again that the

only case where the native term in designation of the custom is given

that it means ‘being ashamed.’ The limit in time for the avoidance is

again significant. ‘For some time,’ Baegart says; ‘tant qu’elle n’a

pas d’enfant’ (Pallas). ‘Till the birth of the first child.’ These

limitations in time would not exist if enmity because of capture was

the cause, whereas we can quite understand them if, the circumstances

now proving the consummation of marriage, jealousy might then be

supposed to cease. The reserve as to a too familiar attitude that this

idea of indecency would imply, is shown where a Mongol daughter-in-law

‘cannot sit down in the presence of the father-in-law,’ and where

the Banyai man ‘must not put out his feet towards his mother-in-law,

but sit with his knees bent in her presence.’ In China it is the

father-in-law who hides himself, and this surely would hardly be the

act of a captor, nor can we imagine a man having his clothes cut off

his back simply because he had not ‘cut’ some one sufficiently.

However, in connection with our argument we have Adolf Erman’s account

of the custom among the Yakuts, and where we find the husbands elder

brother joined with the father-in-law in an avoidance, there a distinct

feeling of impropriety in connection with these relations in law of the

wife is indicated. The diffidence cited is exactly what would occur if

union was undesirable and yet not impossible, between the persons in

avoidance, and hence temptation was to be avoided. It is very important

to note that no idea of enmity from capture can be associated with

the husbands elder brother. Again, the custom of avoidance with an

elder brother, where its connection with jealousy is evident, is very

widespread, and very strict in observance; as we have already noted, it

occurs in Orissa and among the Kyonthas in India, whilst I have also

observed it in practice in New Caledonia, where it is most undoubtedly

a means to an end, to protect the younger brother’s marital rights. As

to the significance of the fact mentioned in the case of the natives of

Australia, where, as regards their wives, they are jealous of a man--

and give him a daughter to place him in avoidance with her mother,

comment is unnecessary.

These facts seem to me to be conclusive; but the question of the exact

origin of avoidance is so important to my general argument, that I

am glad to be able to find what I fancy is added proof from another

source. If this furnishes the requisite evidence that sexual jealousy

was the real factor, and not hostile capture, our hypothesis of the

primal law acquires valuable inferential evidence in its favour. Such

added proof we hope to be able to show in Dr. Tylor’s figures.[16]

---- Theory as practice --

In Residence, H to W: 65

Avoidance H to W relations (a) 9 cases (b) 14 cases (A)

Avoidance W to H relations 3 ” 0 ” (B)

In Residence, W to H:

Avoidance W to H relations 5 ” 8 ” (C)

Avoidance H to W relations 18 ” 9 ” (D)

These figures, which are extracted from Dr. Tylor’s work, would seem to

be eloquent against hostile capture being the sole cause of Avoidance.

They are derived from a comparison of Avoidance as occurring, (a)

quite independent of residence, and (b) as actually resulting where

coincidence of Avoidance and residence is found.

Now as regards the question of jealousy as cause of Avoidance,

residence and propinquity will evidently have a powerful effect.

(A) As we have seen, any Avoidance under these circumstances would be

remarkable without a prior stage in quite other conditions than those

found generally with H to W residence. We note that whereas we might

expect under even the above conditions to find only 9, there are 14.

Here sexual jealousy has been an important cause.

The Avoidance of the Mother-in-law (for, of course, there was none here

with father-in-law, who was a nonentity in such a family circle, and

of the same clan as the son-in-law) arose as a matter of protection

for the marital rights of the daughter as against her mother, both

inhabiting the same large house common to matriarchal descent.

(B) Here, again, we expect to find 3, and see there are actually none,

from which it would seem to result that W capture had nothing whatever

to do with the origin of A, H to W, for, admitting the almost entire

separation of the W from H family, which would make the case rarer, a

tradition of capture would exist which would have effect when they were

later grouped together. Whereas the non-Avoidance is explained by lack

of jealousy, from absence of male relations of H.

(C) Here it is again quite impossible to accept any idea of W capture

as the motive cause. Avoidance arose between W and father-in-law to

protect rights of son-in-law and mother-in-law. It was evolved, as we

have seen, as a measure of protection for that generation of males who

were the actual captors, each generation by the classificatory system

having individual rights. That the necessity for such legislation was

urgent we see in the proportion of the figures 5 to 8.