A History of Matrimonial Institutions (Vol. 1-3). George Elliott Howard
condition of primitive men is assumed to be that of strife.[256] Women would naturally be sought as the most valuable of the spoils of war. This would lead to polygyny. Since there can be no certainty as to fatherhood where the practice of seizing the women from hostile tribes obtains, wife-capture is the means of maintaining the system of counting kinship through the women only; and the existence of that system, at some time, must be inferred wherever wife-capture or its form in the marriage ceremony is discovered.
4. Wife-capture leads directly to exogamy, or the rule of not marrying within the group of recognized kindred; that is, at first, among those having the same totem. Exogamy is therefore not regarded as the result of a prejudice against intermarriage of those related by blood. For a time, doubtless, marriage within and without the group was practiced indifferently, as pleasure or opportunity favored. But eventually the possession of a foreign woman was looked upon as the more honorable or respectable; and so at last marriage within the kindred was entirely forbidden. With the rise of wife-capture the original homogeneity of the group gave place to a growing heterogeneity. Soon many alien stocks were represented in the horde. Where polygyny existed, or where several wives were taken in succession, the same family might comprise children representing several totems. These children like their mothers were counted as foreigners. Thus a modified form of exogamy arose. "So far as the system of infanticide allowed, the hordes contained young men and women accounted of different stocks, who might intermarry consistently" with the original rule of exogamy. "Hence grew up a system of betrothals, and of marriage by sale and purchase." But the effect of the system of kinship through males, when it superseded the maternal system, was to "arrest the progress of heterogeneity," and to "restore the original condition of affairs among exogamous races, as regards both the practice of capturing wives and the evolution of the forms of capture."[257]
It would be ungrateful not to acknowledge freely the service which McLennan and his adherents have rendered to the social history of mankind. They have brought to light a mass of very important facts which it is highly beneficial for us to know. It cannot be denied that wife-capture, exogamy, and the custom of taking kinship from the mother have very widely prevailed among primitive races. It is not so certain, however, that the right explanation of their origin or of their relation to one another has been given. In the first place, criticism, notably that of Herbert Spencer,[258] has detected fatal weakness and inconsistency in the argument by which Mr. McLennan has sought to establish his theory. It is doubtful, for instance, whether female infanticide has been so important a factor in social evolution.[259] But, granting that it has generally prevailed, it is hard to see how this would greatly disturb the "balance of the sexes." For "tribes in a state of chronic hostility are constantly losing their adult males, and the male mortality so caused is usually considerable. Hence the killing many female infants does not necessitate lack of women: it may merely prevent excess." McLennan's fundamental "assumption is therefore inadmissible."[260] Again it is held that female infanticide, "rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry within the tribe, and the capturing of women from without." But "where wife-stealing is now practiced it is commonly associated with polygyny;"[261] while conversely, polyandry does not "distinguish wife-stealing tribes," such as the Tasmanians, Australians, Dakotas, and Brazilians. "Contrariwise, though it is not a trait of peoples who rob one another of their women, it is a trait of certain rude peoples who are habitually peaceful;" for instance, the Eskimo, "who do not even know what war is." Furthermore, if wife-capture and exogamy are at once practiced by a cluster of adjacent tribes, the scarcity of women would not be relieved. Inevitably the weaker tribes would "tend toward extinction;" and in the meantime, if a part only of their female infants were killed, they must deliberately "rear the remainder for the benefit" of their enemies.[262] Nor, as Starcke has pointed out, is there anything in a "scarcity of women which could lead a community accustomed to promiscuous intercourse to adopt polyandry; on the contrary, such a scarcity would make it more difficult to set limits" to promiscuity. "Marriage, or the exclusive possession of one woman by one or more men, would become more easy in proportion to the increase in the number of women, since the conflict between the lusts of the men would necessarily become less intense."[263] McLennan believes that exogamy has "been practiced at a certain stage among every race of mankind;" and that endogamy, or the custom of marrying within the kindred, is a "form reached through a long series of social developments."[264] Yet, inconsistently with this, he admits that "the separate endogamous tribes are nearly as numerous, and they are in some respects as rude, as the separate exogamous tribes." He goes even farther, declaring that among a variety of tribes, belonging to "one and the same original stock," endogamy and exogamy are found existing side by side.[265]
Such are some of the results gained simply from an examination of the reasoning of McLennan. They have been here enumerated, not only because they afford an excellent illustration of the extreme complexity of social problems, but also because they may warn us against the perils of hasty speculation. It is not merely in matters of detail that the doctrine of the horde and promiscuity has met with resistance. Its very foundations have recently been powerfully assaulted by the adherents of a totally different view of the origin and development of the human family. How the phenomena of marriage and kinship will appear when seen in a new light, we shall next try to discover.
CHAPTER III
THEORY OF THE ORIGINAL PAIRING OR MONOGAMOUS FAMILY
[Bibliographical Note III.—The theory of the pairing family is not so much the result of a reaction against the theory of promiscuity as it is a consequence of the perception that the problems of society can only be solved by appealing to the laws of human life and organic evolution. Hence Starcke's highly original Primitive Family (New York, 1889), and Westermarck's more elaborate and very able treatise on Human Marriage (London and New York, 1891), showing the influence in some passages of Starcke's acute reasoning, may fairly be regarded as epoch-making. Important also are Wake's Marriage and Kinship (London, 1889) and Letourneau's L'évolution du mariage (Paris, 1888), which is supplemented by his Sociology Based upon Ethnology (London, 1893). These writers have carried farther the suggestions of Darwin, Descent of Man and Animals and Plants under Domestication; and Spencer, Principles of Sociology (New York, 1879), who had already thrown doubt upon the communistic theory. A similar general conclusion is reached in the valuable monograph of Kautsky, "Entstehung der Ehe und Familie," in Kosmos, XII (Stuttgart, 1882), whose original "hetairism" is but "defective monogamy;" and Peschel's Races of Man (London, 1889) tends in the same direction. Hildebrand likewise rejects the communistic theory in his inaugural address on Das Problem einer allgemeinen Entwicklungsgeschichte des Rechts und der Sitte (Graz, 1894); and this work should be read in connection with his Recht und Sitte auf den verschiedenen wirthschaftlichen Kulturstufen (Jena, 1896). On the other hand, Kulischer, in "Die geschlechtliche Zuchtwahl bei den Menschen in der Urzeit," in ZFE., VIII, defends original communal marriage against the views of Darwin. Of special value, likewise, for this chapter are Grosse, Die Formen der Familie (Freiburg and Leipzig, 1896); which is favorably examined by Cunow, "Die ökonomischen Grundlagen der Mutterherrschaft," in Neue Zeit, XVI; Keane, Ethnology (2d ed., Cambridge, 1896); idem, Man: Past and Present (Cambridge, 1899); Frerichs, Naturgeschichte des Menschen (2d ed., Norden, 1891); Bagehot, Physics and Politics (London, 1872); as are also the works of Posada, Crawley, Lang, and Hellwald elsewhere mentioned.
For the family among the lower animals in addition to Letourneau, Hellwald, and Westermarck, consult Brehm, Tierleben (Leipzig and Vienna, 1891); his Bird-Life (London, 1874); Herman Müller, Am Neste (Berlin, 1881);