A History of Matrimonial Institutions (Vol. 1-3). George Elliott Howard
growth.'"[142] So likewise the jus primae noctis, instead of being an expiation for an encroachment on communal right, may be more naturally explained either as an abuse of power,[143] in some cases as an evidence of hospitality,[144] or in others as a "common war-right, exercised whenever, under any circumstances, capture of a woman is made by a war-party."[145] The toleration of the custom, like that of wife-lending, may sometimes be due to the "juridical" nature of fatherhood as conceived by primitive men.[146]
On the other hand, the theory that these customs are evidences of original sexual communism has gained support from the recent researches of Spencer and Gillen in their very able and detailed book on the Native Tribes of Central Australia. Among these aborigines, the authors declare, "so far as marital relations ... are concerned, we find that whilst there is individual marriage, there are, in actual practice, occasions on which the relations are of a much wider nature. We have, indeed, in this respect three very distinct series of relationships." First we find the present "normal condition of individual marriage with the occasional existence of marital relations between the individual wife and other men of the same group as that to which her husband belongs, and the occasional existence also of still wider marital relations;" secondly "we have evidence of the existence at a prior time of actual group marriage;" and in the third place "we have evidence of the existence at a still earlier time of still wider marital relations."[147]
But these usages are capable of a very different explanation. That they imply a primitive state of promiscuity is emphatically denied by Crawley. Like sacred prostitution, the customs of avoidance, the couvade, and marriage rites in general, according to his theory, they take their rise in the religious or superstitious ideas upon which sexual taboo rests.[148]
Adherents of the communistic theory are not entirely at one as to the phases in the development of marriage and the family. Very generally the family, regarded from the standpoint of authority and kinship, is said to pass from the unregulated horde through the maternal and the paternal to the parental or two-sided stage.[149] Thus Dargun declares that there is a tendency for the uterine system of kinship to give place to the paternal, but never the reverse.[150] Kohler takes the same position.[151] Lippert regards the history of social culture as beginning with the natural relation of mother and child, producing in course of evolution, long before "marriage" arose, the "primitive family" whose principle is mother-right, and which, in turn, under various influences, generally yields to the "old family" (Altfamilie) in its origin based, not on relationship, but on patriarchal power and possession.[152] Bernhöft denies the invariable sequence of mother-right and father-right;[153] and Kautsky maintains that the two systems are parallel, not successive, developments from the hetairism of the primitive horde.[154]
Marriage also, like the family, is said to pass through several distinct phases of development. Thus, with respect to the number of persons joining in a household, Friedrichs distinguishes four "forms" of marriage which, with equal propriety, may be called forms of the family. These are group-marriage, polyandry, polygyny, and monogamy, the first three forms having several varieties.[155] But, as will hereafter appear,[156] it would be rash to infer that these forms necessarily arise in the order named. Again, with regard to the way in which it originates, marriage presents a number of successive stages. According to Kohler,[157] these are marriage by capture, marriage by purchase, religious marriage, and civil marriage. That wife-capture generally gives place to wife-purchase, and this in turn to marriage by gift, and then to the modern contract between the parents, or later between the parties themselves, is especially insisted upon. Hildebrand,[158] however, reverses this order. A measure of progress he finds in what he regards as the three great industrial stages of human culture: those of the chase, pastoral life, and agriculture. In the first stage, not communism, but a tendency toward monogamy prevails. There is little notion of private property; hence covetousness is not a motive of social action. Marriages are freely formed through presents given to the parents, or even without them by simple agreement of the parties. Later, with the rise of private property, marriage by purchase and marriage by capture come into existence; though capture is always exceptional and of comparatively little importance in the history of marriage.
Similar to the view of Hildebrand, in respect to the initial stage, is the theory of Kautsky.[159] The starting-point is the horde. In this absolute equality of the sexes prevails; and the only divisions are the different generations. Neither the maternal nor the paternal line is recognized, for the children belong to the group. Not promiscuity, but "hetairism,"[160] or rather "hetairistic monogamy," exists. Incessant feuds, however, lead to wife-capture; and wife-capture tends directly to communism, for the captured woman belongs as a slave to the band. But the rights of the band may pass to the individual. The free native woman is "wooed;" the war-captive is "fought-for;" and so she becomes the slave-wife of the strongest, who may win other wives in the same way. Marriage by capture thus conquers the original monogamy, in whose place polygyny appears, either at once, or after a transition-period of community in women. Moreover, in this process may be discerned the genesis of modern individual marriage under the sanction of the law. But the consequences of wife-capture are not yet exhausted. The presence in the horde of women taken from several neighboring bands leads at once to the formation of clans and to the matriarchate; for the connection of children with the clan is naturally determined by the mother. The development of private property produces still further results. The individual may buy his wife. She becomes his chattel; and the offspring also belong to him. Thus marriage by purchase gains the victory over wife-capture; and the patriarchate triumphs over mother-right. This is the order of development in the more war-like hordes. But wife-capture does not always precede wife-purchase as a general phase. In the more peaceful and industrious groups wife-capture does not appear at all. Here hetairistic monogamy runs its natural course. Partly under the external influence of tribes where mother-right existed as the result of wife-capture, but mainly under the powerful influence of private property, the matriarchate arose. In the earlier stage kinship with the father was disregarded or unknown. Naturally, therefore, under the new condition, name and also property were transmitted to the children through the mother, with whom their physical connection was always manifest. So it appears that the conception of private property is the basis of "hetairistic mother-right" as it is of father-right; and hetairistic mother-right, as distinguished from the mother-right which owes its origin to wife-capture, implies the precedence of woman in the family.[161] "Gynocracy and patriarchalism are therefore parallel branches of the same stem," the original hetairism of the horde: the one cannot be a further development of the other. Gynocracy, and with it polyandry, which is its result,[162] is the highest stage in the evolution of hetairistic mother-right; just as polygyny and the patriarchal family are the highest stage in the evolution of father-right or the agnatic system of kinship.[163]