v. Weber assert also that, among the people, inheritance passes

from father to son.[563] Le Vaillant and Kolben state the same with reference to the Hottentots and Bushmans;[564] and Andersson affirms that, among the Namaquas, daughters take the father’s name, sons the mother’s.[565] Finally, in the part of Madagascar where Drury was, kinship does not seem to have been, in every case, reckoned through the female, though in that island children generally follow the condition of the mother.[566]

As for ancient peoples, Bachofen has adduced from the works of classical writers evidence for the uterine line having prevailed among several of them. But, to quote Sir Henry Maine, “the greatest races of mankind, when they first appear to us, show themselves at or near a stage of development in which relationship or kinship is reckoned exclusively through males.”[567] Several writers have, it is true, endeavoured to prove that, among the primitive Aryans, descent was traced through females only;[568] but the evidence does not seem to be conclusive. Much importance has been attributed to the specially close connection which, according to Tacitus, existed between a sister’s children and their mother’s brothers;[569] but Dr. Schrader observes that, in spite of this prominent position of the maternal uncle in the ancient Teutonic family, the _patruus_ distinctly came before the _avunculus_, the agnates before the cognates, in testamentary succession. He also suggests that, when the head of a household died, the women of his family passed under the guardianship of the eldest son, and that a woman’s children had therefore, quite naturally, a peculiarly intimate relation to their maternal uncle.[570] It is safe to say with Professor Max Müller, that we can neither assert nor deny that in unknown times the Aryans ever passed through a metrocratic stage.[571]

Even if it could be proved—which is doubtful—that, in former times, a system of “kinship through females only,” fully developed, prevailed among all the peoples whose children take the mother’s name and are considered to belong to her clan, though succession runs in the male line, we should still have to account for the fact that a large number of peoples exhibit no traces of such a system.[572] And to them belong many of the rudest races of the world—such as the aborigines of Brazil, the Fuegians, Hottentots, Bushmans, and several very low tribes in Australia and India. The inference that “kinship through females only” has everywhere preceded the rise of “kinship through males,” would, then, be warranted only on condition that the cause, or the causes, to which the maternal system is owing, could be proved to have operated universally in the past life of mankind. From Mr. McLennan’s point of view, such an inference would be inadmissible, as he cannot prove the former occurrence of a universal stage of promiscuity or polyandry, leading to uncertain paternity—the cause to which he attributes that system.

Yet it is far from being so inconceivable as Mr. McLennan assumes, that “anything but the want of certainty on that point could have long prevented the acknowledgment of kinship through males.”[573] Paternity, as Sir Henry Maine remarks, is “matter of inference, as opposed to maternity, which is matter of observation.”[574] Hence it is almost beyond doubt that the father’s participation in parentage was not recognized as soon as the mother’s.[575] Now, however, there does not seem to be a single people which has not made the discovery of fatherhood. In reply to my question whether the Fuegians consider a child to descend exclusively or predominantly from either of the parents, Mr. Bridges certainly writes that, according to his idea, they “consider the maternal tie much more important than the paternal, and the duties connected with it of mutual help, defence, and vengeance are held very sacred.” But it is doubtful whether this refers to the mere physiological connection between the child and its parents. Dr. Sims informs me that, among the Bateke, the function of both parents in generation is held alike important, and the Waguha of West Tanganyika, as Mr. Swann states, also recognize the part taken by both. The same is asserted by Archdeacon Hodgson concerning certain other tribes of Eastern Central Africa, though, among them, children take the name of the mother’s tribe. Again, the Naudowessies, according to Carver, had the very curious idea that their offspring were indebted to their father for their souls, the invisible part of their essence, and to the mother for their corporeal and visible part; hence they considered it “more rational that they should be distinguished by the name of the latter, from whom they indubitably derive their being, than by that of the father, to which a doubt might sometimes arise whether they are justly entitled.”[576] Moreover, it seems as if the father’s share in parentage, once discovered, was often exaggerated. Thus, referring to some tribes of New South Wales, Mr. Cameron tells us that, although the father has nothing to do with the disposal of his daughter, as she belongs to the clan of her mother’s brother, they “believe that the daughter emanates from her father solely, being only nutured by her mother.”[577] Indeed, Mr. Howitt has found in every Australian tribe, without exception, with which he has acquaintance, the idea that the child is derived from the male parent only. As a black fellow once put it to him, “The man gives the child to a woman to take care of for him, and he can do whatever he likes with his own child.”[578] Again, Mr. Cousins writes that, according to Kaffir ideas, a child descends chiefly, though not exclusively, from the father; and the ancient Greeks, as well as the Egyptians[579] and Hindus,[580] maintained a similar view. Nay, Euripides states distinctly that, in his day, the universally accepted physiological doctrine recognized only the share taken by the father in procreation, and Hippocrates, in combating this opinion, and contending that the child descended from both parents, seems to admit that it was a prevalent heresy.[581] Finally, it seems probable that the custom known under the name of “La Couvade”—that is, the odd rule, prevalent among several peoples in different parts of the world, requiring that the father, at the birth of his child, shall retire to bed for some time, and fast or abstain from certain kinds of food—implies some idea of relationship between the two.[582]

Admitting, however, that there was a time when fatherhood, in the physiological sense of the term, was not discovered, I do not think that the preference given to the female line is due to this fact. If the denomination of children and the rules of succession really were in the first place dependent on ideas of consanguinity, it might be expected that a change with reference to the latter would be followed by a change in the former respect also. But the ties of blood have exercised a far less direct influence on the matter in question than is generally supposed, the system of “kinship through females only” being, properly speaking, quite different from what the words imply.

There may be several reasons for naming children after the mother rather than after the father, apart from any consideration of relationship. Especially among savages, the tie between a mother and child is much stronger than that which binds a child to the father.[583] Not only has she given birth to it, but she has also for years been seen carrying it about at her breast. Moreover, in cases of separation, occurring frequently at lower stages of civilization, the infant children always follow the mother, and so, very often, do the children more advanced in years. Is it not natural, then, that they should keep the name of the mother rather than that of a father whom they scarcely know? Mr. Belt tells us that the men and women even of the christianised lower classes of Nicaragua often change their mates, and the children, in such cases remaining with the mother, take their surname from her.[584] According to Swann, the Creeks conferred the honour of a chief on the issue of the female line, because it was impossible to trace the right by the male issue, women only exceptionally having more than two children by the same father.[585] And touching the Khasias, one of the few tribes in India among whom the female line prevails, Dr. Hooker states that they have a very lax idea of marriage, divorce and exchange of wives being common and attended with no disgrace; “the son therefore often forgets his father’s name and person before he grows up, but becomes strongly attached to his mother.”[586]

Speaking of certain negro tribes, Winterbottom suggested long ago that the prevalence of the female line was to be explained by the practice of polygyny,[587] and Dr. Starcke has recently called attention to the same point.[588] The Rev. D. Macdonald likewise remarks, in his account of the Efatese of the New Hebrides, that the idea that children are more closely related to the mother than to the father is an idea perfectly natural among a polygynous people.[589] It is a customary arrangement in polygynous families that each wife has a hut for herself, where she lives with her children; but even where this is not the case, mother and children naturally keep together as a little sub-family. No wonder, then, if a child takes its name after the mother rather than after the father. This is the simplest way of pointing out the distinction between the issue of different wives, a distinction which is of special importance where it is accompanied by different privileges as to succession. It is worth noticing that, among the Negroes, who are probably the most polygynous race in the world, the female line is extremely prevalent; whereas, among the Hill Tribes of India, who are on the whole, monogamists, children, with few exceptions, take the name of the father. With reference to the Basutos, a Bechuana tribe, Mr. Casalis observes that the authority of the eldest maternal uncle preponderates to excess, especially in polygynous families, where the children have no strong affection for their father.[590]

Further, among several peoples a man, on marrying, has to quit his home, and go to live with his wife in the house of her father, of whose family he becomes a member. This is a common practice among several of the North American tribes,[591] and prevailed, in the southern part of the New World, among the Caribs.[592] In some parts of Eastern Central Africa, also, a man who marries a full grown girl “immediately leaves his own village and proceeds to build a house in the village of his wife.”[593] Among the Sengirese, according to Dr. Hickson, the man always goes to his wife’s house, unless he be the son of a rajah, in which case he may do as he pleases.[594] Dr. Hooker tells us that, among the Khasias, “the husband does not take his wife home, but enters her father’s household, and is entertained there.”[595] And in Sumatra, in the mode of marriage called “ambel anak,” the father of a virgin makes choice of some young man for her husband, who is taken into his house to live there in a state between that of a son and that of a debtor.[596]

According to Dr. Starcke, this custom is due to the great cohesive power of the several families, which causes them to refuse to part with any of their members. “Since men are more independent,” he says, “they are also less stationary; they can no longer attract the women to themselves, and are therefore attracted by them.[597] Under such circumstances, there is nothing astonishing in the fact that children are named after the mother’s tribe or clan, which is the case in all the instances just given of peoples among whom the husband has to settle down with his father-in-law. Indeed, Dr. Tylor has found that, whilst the number of coincidences between peoples among whom the husband lives with the wife’s family and peoples among whom the maternal system prevails, is proportionally large, the full maternal system never appears among peoples whose exclusive custom is for the husband to take his wife to his own home.[598] And it is a remarkable fact that where both customs—the woman receiving her husband in her own hut, and the man taking his wife to his—occur side by side among the same people, descent in the former cases is traced through the mother, in the latter through the father.[599] In Japan, should there be only daughters in the family, a husband is procured for the eldest, who enters his wife’s family, and, at the same time, takes its name.[600]

Again, as to the rules of succession, Dr. Starcke has set forth the hypothesis that they are dependent on local connections, those persons being each other’s heirs who dwell together in one place. Among the Iroquois, for instance, at the death of a man, his property is divided among his brothers, sisters, and mother’s brothers, whilst the property of a woman is transmitted to her children and sisters, but not to her brothers. “Owing to the faculty of memory,” Dr. Starcke says, “childhood and youth involve a young man in such a web of associations that he afterwards finds it hard to detach himself from them. The man who, when married, has lived as a stranger in the house of another, clings to the impressions of his former home, and his earlier household companions become his heirs. But the brother who has wandered elsewhere stands in a more remote relation to his sister than do the sisters and the children living with her in the parental home, and he is therefore excluded from the inheritance.”[601]

Though agreeing, in the main, with Dr. Starcke’s hypothesis, I do not think it affords a complete explanation of the matter. It certainly accounts for the fact that, under the maternal system, it is just the nearest relatives on the mother’s side who are a man’s heirs, to the exclusion of other members of the clan. But, if succession really depended upon local relations only, or upon the remembrance of such relations in the past, it would be the most natural arrangement, where father and children lived together till the latter were grown up, for the father to be succeeded by his son. It seems probable that the causes which make children take their mother’s name, have also directly exercised some influence upon the rules of succession; but I am inclined to believe that the power of the name itself has been of the highest importance in that respect.

By means of family names former connections are kept up, and the past is associated with the present. Even we ourselves are generally more disposed to count kin with distant relatives having our own surname than with those having another. And upon man in a savage state language exercises, in this matter, a much greater influence than upon us. With reference to the aborigines of Western Australia, Sir George Grey observes, “Obligations of family names are much stronger than those of blood;” and a “Saurian,” or a “Serpent,” from the East considers himself related to a “Saurian,” or a “Serpent,” from the West, though no such relationship may exist.[602] Among the Ossetes, according to Baron von Haxthausen, a man is considered more nearly related to a cousin a hundred times removed, who bears his name, than to his mother’s brother; and he is bound to take blood revenge for the former, while the latter is in fact not regarded as a relative at all.[603] Speaking of certain Bantu tribes, Mr. McCall Theal remarks that their aversion to incestuous marriages is so strong, that a man will not marry a girl who belongs to another tribe, if she has the same family name as himself, although the relationship cannot be traced.[604] Is it not a justifiable presumption that a similar association of ideas has influenced the rules of succession also,—all the more so, where community of name implies community of worship as well? It should be observed that in every case—at least so far as I know—where rank and property are inherited through females only, children are named after the mother,—but not _vice versa_, thanks to the direct influence of local and other connections. In China, a man is even strictly forbidden to nominate as his heir an individual of a different surname.[605]

It is a difficult, sometimes even a hopeless, task to try to find out the origin of savage laws and customs, and I do not pretend to have given an exhaustive explanation of those in question. But it seems to be sufficiently clear, from what has been said, that we have no right to ascribe them to uncertain paternity; nay, that such an assumption is not even probably true. No one has yet exhibited any general coincidence of what we consider moral and immoral habits with the prevalence of the male and female line among existing savages. Among the Barea, for instance, as among the Negroes of Loango, inheritance goes through mothers only, though adultery is said to be extremely rare;[606] whilst, on the other hand, among the wanton natives of Tahiti, possessions always descend to the eldest son. With the Todas and Tibetans, among whom paternity is often actually uncertain on account of their polyandrous marriage customs, succession runs through the male line only. “If one or more women,” Mr. Marshall says with reference to the former, “are in common to several men, each husband considers all the children as his—though each woman is mother only to her own—and each male child is an heir to the property of all of the fathers.”[607] Among the Reddies, a son—although it often happens that he does not know his real father—is the heir of his mother’s husband.[608] And, in India and Ceylon, female kinship is associated with polyandry of the _beena_ type—where the husbands come to live with the wife in or near the house of her birth; and male kinship with that of the _deega_ type—where the wife goes to live in the house and village of her husband.[609]

Lastly, as Mr. Spencer remarks, avowed recognition of kinship in the female line only, shows by no means an unconsciousness of male kinship. As a proof of this may be adduced the converse custom which the early Romans had of recognizing no legal relationship between children of the same mother and of different fathers. For, if it cannot be supposed that an actual unconsciousness of motherhood was associated with this system, neither is there any adequate warrant for the supposition that actual unconsciousness of fatherhood was associated with the system of “kinship through females only” among savages.[610]

The prevalence of the female line would not presuppose general promiscuity even if, in some cases, it were dependent on uncertainty as to fathers.[611] The separation of husband and wife, adultery on the woman’s side, and the practice of lending wives to visitors occurring very frequently among many savage nations, the proverb which says, “It is a wise child that knows his own father,” holds true for a large number of them. According to Mr. Ingham, the Bakongo, who trace their descent through the mother only, assert as a reason for this custom uncertain paternity; but nevertheless, as we have already seen, they would be horrified at the idea of promiscuous intercourse.

* * * * *

Having now examined all the groups of social phenomena adduced as evidence for the hypothesis of promiscuity, we have found that, in point of fact, they are no evidence. Not one of the customs alleged as relics of an ancient state of indiscriminate cohabitation of the sexes, or “communal marriage,” presupposes the former existence of that state. The numerous facts put forward in support of the hypothesis do not entitle us to assume that promiscuity has ever been the prevailing form of sexual relations among a single people, far less that it has constituted a general stage in the social development of man, and, least of all, that such a stage formed the starting-point of all human history.

It may seem to the reader that this question has received more attention than it deserves. But I have discussed it so fully not only because of the importance of the subject, but because of the insight the customs mentioned give us into sexual and family relations very different from our own, and because the unscientific character of the conclusions we have tested shows most clearly that sociology is still a science in its infancy.

Even now my criticism is not finished. Having shown that the hypothesis of promiscuity has no foundation in fact, I shall endeavour, in the next chapter, to demonstrate that it is opposed to all the correct ideas we are able to form with regard to the early condition of man.