CHAPTER I
METHOD OF INVESTIGATION

If the theory of the development of the human race, or more particularly that of the two diverging lines of sex demarcation as set forth in the foregoing chapters be correct, it is plain that by it a new foundation is laid for the study of mankind.

If, contrary to the generally accepted idea, within the female organism have been developed those elements which form the basis of human progress, or, if the higher faculties are transmitted through the mother, henceforth all examinations into primitive conditions and all research into the causes which underlie existing institutions must be carried on with reference to this particular fact. Only through a thorough understanding of the principles or forces which govern human development, and a just appreciation of the source whence these principles have sprung, may we hope to gain a clear understanding of the past history of the race, or to perceive the true course to be pursued toward further development. Through the investigation of facts revealed in the records of Geology, and through the study of comparative Embryology and Anatomy, or through an understanding of ZoÖlogy and Anthropology, man has well-nigh solved the problem of his origin, or has almost proved his connection with and development from the lower orders of life, but of the countless ages which intervened between the era of our ape-like progenitors and the dawn of organized society, little may be known without a correct knowledge of the inheritance received by mankind from creatures lower in the scale of being. Only by a careful study of the constitutional bias acquired throughout the entire line of development, are we enabled to note the motives or forces by which primitive society was controlled, or to form a just conclusion relative to the early conditions of human society and its subsequent progress.

Through the attention which in these later years has been directed toward surviving tribes in the so-called middle and later stages of savagery, and in the three successive periods of barbarism, have doubtless been revealed many of the processes by which mankind have reached their present condition. Much of the information, however, which has been obtained by these inquiries still lacks that accuracy in detail demanded by exact science; but, so soon as the array of facts which the last half-century has brought to bear upon this subject shall have been correctly interpreted, logically arranged, intelligently classified, and without prejudice brought into line with the truths involved in the theory of natural development, there will doubtless be approximated a system of truth which will furnish a safe and trustworthy foundation for a more thorough research into the history of the human race.

Although the facts relative to existing undeveloped races, which have been laid before the reading public through the patience and industry of investigators in this particular branch of inquiry, have been of incalculable value as furnishing a foundation for a correct understanding of the origin of the customs, manners, ceremonies, governments, languages, and systems of consanguinity and affinity of a primitive race, and although without these efforts little knowledge of the early history of mankind could be obtained, yet, as a majority of the theories built upon these observations have been based on long-established prejudices relative to the earliest conditions surrounding human society and the forces by which it was controlled, many false conclusions have been the inevitable result.

We have seen that owing to the ascendency which the masculine element in human society gained during the period designated as the Latter Status of barbarism, the popular ideas evolved since that time concerning the origin and development of government, social usages, religion, and law, have been in accordance with the then established assumption that within the male organism lies not only the active, aggressive element, but the progressive principle as well. It is not, therefore, singular that at the present time all the lines of investigation which are being directed toward man in a primitive state, or which are being conducted for the avowed purpose of ascertaining the successive steps by which our social, civil, and religious institutions have been reared, should continue to be carried on under the a priori assumption that the male organism is by nature superior to that of the female.

As in all the theories relative to the development of species the male is the principal factor, so in the theories brought forward to explain the development of human institutions the female has played only an insignificant part; but, as all later facts bearing upon this subject furnish indisputable evidence of the early importance of the female element, not only among the lower orders of life but under earlier human conditions as well, we may reasonably expect from these data the establishment, in the not distant future, of a complete chain of evidence in support of a more rational and consistent theory of development than has yet been put forth, not only of the origin of the higher faculties, but of the organization of human society and the growth of its various institutions.

As, hitherto, all the theories advanced relative to the evolution of the human race and the establishment of society on a political and territorial basis have been founded on preconceived notions of the superiority of the characters peculiar to the male, it is believed, or at least assumed, that the ascendency gained by man over woman during the Latter Status of barbarism constitutes a regular, orderly, and necessary step in the direct line of progress; and, as under masculine supremacy, a certain degree of advancement has been possible, it is assumed that the nobler animal, man, having gained the ascendency over the weaker animal, woman, his progress in the future is to increase in a sort of geometrical ratio, while she, still bound by physical disabilities and weighted by the baneful effects of past limitations and restrictions, must continue far in the rear of her better endowed and more thoroughly equipped male mate. However, in this conception of the facts of biology, woman is not left without a crumb of comfort; for, in the forlorn and helpless condition to which it condemns her, she is given to understand that if for many successive generations girls be constantly trained in masculine methods, they may eventually be able to admire, and possibly in a measure to comprehend, some of the less stupendous mental achievements of their brothers; but, according to the savants, any attempt on the part of women to compete with men in the higher walks of life must result in increased physical weakness, in the immediate degeneration of the female sex, and in disaster and ruin to the entire race.

When we remember that investigations into the conditions surrounding primitive society have for the most part been conducted under the influence of prejudices similar to those which have prompted the above assumptions, it is not singular that in a majority of cases in which the early status of women has been discussed, and in which the organization of society, the fundamental principles of government, the origin of the institution of marriage, the monogamic family, and the growth of the god-idea, have been the topics under discussion, the conclusions arrived at have been not wholly warranted by the facts at hand.

In an investigation of the subject of human development, we must bear in mind the fact that all the principal existing institutions have sprung from germs of thought which originated under primitive conditions of the race. Government, language, marriage, the modern family, and our present system of the accumulation and distribution of wealth, have all been evolved from the necessities of early human existence, or from primitive ideas conceived according to the peculiar bias which had been given to the female and male organisms prior to the appearance of mankind upon the earth, and which have since been developed in accordance with the laws which govern human growth.

With their reasoning faculties still undeveloped, and, according to our guides, wholly destitute of a moral sense, human beings at the outset of their career could have had no guiding principle other than those instincts which they inherited from their mute progenitors. Therefore, in order fully to understand the status of the human race as it emerged from its animal conditions, we must bear in mind the nature of the inheritance which it had received during its passage from a formless lump of carbon, or an infinitesimal jelly dot in the primeval sea, to a creature endowed with sympathy, affection, courage, and perseverance. We must not lose sight of the fact that passion, the all-absorbing quality developed in males belonging to the orders lower in the scale of being, must have been conveyed without diminution or material change to man. Neither must we forget that those qualities in the female which had been developed for the protection of the germ, and by which she was enabled to hold in check the abnormally developed appetites of the male, were still in operation.

That Nature disdains arbitrary rules, and that she pays little heed to the proprieties established by man, are facts everywhere to be observed among the lower orders of life. She nevertheless jealously guards the germ and the young of the species. The mother is the natural guardian of prenatal and infant life, and as such, under natural conditions, is usually able to control the sexual relation.

Failing to note the fact that among the orders of life below mankind the female chooses her mate, and failing also to observe that through the natural adjustment of the sexual relations his instincts are checked by her will, nearly if not all the writers upon this subject have declared that women and men at the outset of the human career lived in a state of “lawlessness” or “promiscuity,” similar no doubt to that which at the present time would prevail in a community in which women were utterly devoid of influence, and in which there were no laws regulating the intercourse of the sexes.

By the most trustworthy writers on the subject of the primitive conditions of the human race, it is believed that the most archaic organization of society was that founded on the basis of sex, but, as in the infancy of the race, prior to the inauguration of the system based on sex, and during the long ages which were spent merely in gaining a subsistence, no organized form of society existed, it is held that the order which is observed among creatures lower in the scale of life was suspended, and that the universal law which had hitherto regulated the relations of the sexes, and which throughout the ages of life on the earth had held in check the lower instincts of the male, became immediately inoperative.

Here the common ground of belief ceases, and each writer branches off upon his own peculiar line of argument, appropriating and arranging the facts observed by explorers and investigators in the various lines of inquiry according to his own preconceived notions, or as best suits the particular scheme of development which he essays to establish.

In the following pages the attempt will be made to show that the facts which in these later years have been brought to light concerning the development of the human race are in strict accord with the facts as enunciated by scientists relative to the development of the orders of life below man, and that together they form a connected chain of evidence going to prove not only that the higher faculties had their origin in the female but that the progressive principle has also been confided to her.

CHAPTER II
THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES AMONG EARLY MANKIND

We have seen that an investigation of the instincts and habits of creatures lower in the scale is necessary to an understanding of the relations which must have existed between the sexes among primitive races.

Among birds and mammals, the greater differentiation of the nervous system and the higher pitch of the whole life is associated with the development of what pedantry alone can refuse to call love. Not only is there often partnership, co-operation, and evident affection beyond the limits of the breeding period, but there are abundant illustrations of a high standard of morality, of all the familiar sexual crimes of mankind, and every shade of flirtation, courtship, jealousy, and the like. There is no doubt that in the two highest classes of animals at least, the physical sympathies of sexuality have been enhanced by the emotional, if not also intellectual, sympathies of love.52

It has been observed that among the orders of life below mankind, except among polygamous species, the female chooses the individual which is best endowed—the one whose beauty appeals to her Æsthetic taste, or which through his stronger development is best fitted to assist her in the office of reproduction.

Among the more intelligent species of birds, genuine affection has been observed, strict monogamy and life-long unions having been established between mated pairs. Among others, although the conjugal bond is not life-lasting, so long as the mother-bird is caring for her brood, constancy to one another is the undeviating rule. We are assured that with the female Illinois parrot, “widowhood and death are synonymous,” and that “when a wheatear dies, his companion survives him scarcely a month.”53

All eagles are monogamous. Golden eagles live in couples and remain attached to one another for a hundred or more years, without even changing their domicile.54 The conjugal unions of bald-headed eagles, although they are under no “legal restrictions,” last until the death of one of the partners. Among birds, although incubation rests with the mother, the father usually assists his companion. He not only takes her place if she desires to leave the nest for a moment, but also provides her with food.55 So perfect is the bird family life that Brehm declares that “real genuine marriage can only be found among birds.”56 Upon this subject we are informed that “examples of wandering fancy are for the most part rare among the birds, the majority of whom are monogamous, and even superior to most men in the matter of conjugal fidelity.”57

Concerning mammals, it is observed that although polygamy is frequent “it is far from being the conjugal regime universally adopted; monogamy is common, and is sometimes accompanied by so much devotion that it would serve as an example to human monogamists.”58 Bears, weasels, whales, and many other animals choose their mates and go in pairs. Several kinds of monkeys are strictly monogamous.59 Chimpanzees are sometimes polygamous and sometimes monogamous. It is stated what when a strong male has succeeded in driving away the other males of the group, the females, although in a position to subjugate him, are nevertheless kind and even tender toward him. They are doubtless too much occupied with their legitimate functions to rebel, but so soon as the young of the horde are grown, the usurper is driven from their midst. A little observation will show us that even among polygamous species, it is affection rather than strength which keeps the members of a group together. Although among most of the lower orders the female exercises a choice in the selection of her mate, still among animals of polygamous habits the female is said to manifest genuine affection for the father of her offspring.

The polygamic regime of animals is far from extinguishing affectionate sentiments in the females towards their husband and master. The females of the guanaco lamas, for example, are very faithful to their male. If the latter happens to be wounded or killed, instead of running away, they hasten to his side, bleating and offering themselves to the shots of the hunter in order to shield him, while, on the contrary, if a female is killed, the male makes off with all his troop; he only thinks of himself.60

Although among animals a stray male will sometimes drive away or kill all the other males of the group, and himself become the common mate of all the females, they peaceably accepting the situation, so far as I can find, female insects, birds, and mammals, although they generally control the sexual relation, have never been given to polyandry; the reason for this can be explained only through a careful analysis of the fundamental bias of the female constitution. We must bear in mind that although among the orders of life below mankind the male is ready to pair with any female, she, on the other hand, when free to choose, can be induced to accept the attentions only of the one which by his courage, bravery, or personal beauty has won her favours. We have noted the fact that in the earliest ages of the human race this choice was exercised by women, but we have no reason to believe that anything resembling “promiscuity” ever prevailed among primitive races. It is true that under earlier conditions the institution of marriage as it exists at the present time had not appeared; yet the law which had been impressed on the higher organism of the female, until overcome by males through means which will be treated of later in these pages, had sufficed to keep the animal instincts under subjection, or at least on a level with those of the lower species which structurally had been left behind.

From facts to be gathered, not alone from among the lower orders, but from observations among human beings as well, it would seem that any degree of affection for more than one individual at the same time is contrary to the female nature. A female insect, or bird, which feels a preference for a particular mate will pair with no other, hence, among orders where the female instincts control the relations between the sexes, “lawlessness” or promiscuity would not prevail.

A little observation and reflection, I think, will show us that the affection of the female is a character differing widely from the sex instinct of the male—that, while selfishness constitutes the underlying principle of the latter, the former involves not only care for the young and the unity of the group, but, when human conditions are reached, it involves also country, civilization, and the ultimate brotherhood of mankind.

If we bear in mind the conditions surrounding the orders of life from which the human race has sprung, and if we remember the nature of the characters inherited by mankind from these orders, together with the important fact that the lower instincts among them were under subjection to the higher faculties, we shall be enabled to see that the more degraded of the extant savage tribes cannot represent the primitive race as it emerged from the animal type.

Mr. Tylor must have been mindful of the altruistic character of early races when he remarked: “Without some control beyond the mere right of the stronger, the tribe would break up in a week, whereas in fact savage tribes last on for ages.”61

Concerning the relations of the sexes under unorganized society nothing may be known from actual observation, as, at the present time, no tribe or race is to be found under absolutely primitive conditions. Perhaps from no extant people is there so little information in reference to the earliest human state to be gleaned as from the lowest existing races. Among many of these tribes the rules which it has been necessary to establish for the regulation of the relations between the sexes are rigorously enforced, while among others a laxity prevails which would seem to indicate an almost total lack of those higher instincts which are observed among nearly all the lower orders of beings. The following fact, however, in regard to these races, has been observed: the more primitive they are, or the less they have come in contact with civilization, the more strictly do they observe the rules which have been established for the governance of the sexual relation. On this subject Mr. Parkyns says:

I don’t believe that there exists a nation, however high in the scale of civilization, that can pick a hole in the character of the lowest, without being in danger of finding one nearly, if not quite, as big in its own. The vices of the savage are, like his person, very much exposed to view. Our own nakedness is not less unseemly than his, but is carefully concealed under the convenient cloak which we call “civilization,” but which I fear he, in his ignorance, poor fellow, might, on some occasions, be led to look upon as hypocrisy.62

In the West Indian Islands where Columbus landed, lived tribes which are represented as having been “the most gentle and benevolent of the human race.” Regarding these Mr. Tylor remarks:

Schomburgk, the traveller, who knew the warlike Caribs well in their home life, draws a paradise-like picture of their ways, where they have not been corrupted by the vices of the white men; he saw among them peace and cheerfulness and simple family affection, unvarnished friendship, and gratitude not less true for not being spoken in sounding words; the civilized world, he says, has not to teach them morality, for, though they do not talk about it, they live in it.63

The men who with Captain Cook first visited the Sandwich Islands reported the natives as modest and chaste in their habits; but, later, after coming in contact with the influences of civilization, modesty and chastity among them were virtues almost entirely unknown. The same is true of the people of Patagonia.

Barrow says of the Kaffir woman that she is “chaste and extremely modest,” and we are told that among this people banishment is the penalty for incontinence for both women and men. Of the reports which from time to time come from the aborigines of certain portions of Australia relative to the lewdness of the women, Mr. Brough Smyth says that they are irreconcilable with the severe penalties imposed for unchastity in former times amongst the natives of Victoria.64 This writer is of the opinion that the lewd practices reported are modern, and that they are the result of communication with the poor whites. We are assured that the women of Nubia are virtuous, that public women are not tolerated in the country.65 Also that in Fiji adultery is one of the crimes generally punished with death.66

Marsden observes that in Sumatra “the old women are very attentive to the conduct of the girls, and the male relations are highly jealous of any insults that may be shown them.”67 The same writer says that prostitution for hire is unknown in the country; adultery is punishable by fine, but the crime is rare. Regarding the conduct of men toward women he remarks: “They preserve a degree of delicacy and respect toward the sex which might justify their retorting on many of the polished nations of antiquity the epithet of barbarism.”68

Crantz says that among the Greenlanders single persons have rarely any connection.69 According to the testimony of St. Boniface, the punishment for unchastity among the early Germans was death to the man, while the woman was driven naked through the streets.70

Among the Central Asian Turks we are assured that a fallen girl is unknown. Mr. Westermarck, quoting from Klemm, states that although among the Kalmucks and gypsies the girls take pride in having gallant affairs, they are “dishonoured if they have children previous to marriage.” The same writer quotes also from Winwood Reade, who says that among the Equatorial Africans “a girl who disgraces her family by wantonness is banished from her clan; and, in cases of seduction, the man is severely flogged.”71

Mr. Westermarck adduces much testimony going to show that the “lawlessness” of lower races is due not to inherent vicious tendencies, but to the evil associations of civilized peoples. He is of the opinion that the licentiousness among many of the South Sea Islanders owes its origin to the intercourse of the natives with Europeans; and of the tribes who once inhabited the Adelaide Plains, quoting from Mr. Edward Stephens who went to Australia half a century ago, he says:

Those who speak of the natives as a naturally degraded race, either do not speak from experience, or they judge them by what they have become when the abuse of intoxicants and contact with the most wicked of the white race have begun their deadly work. As a rule, to which there are no exceptions, if a tribe of blacks is found away from the white settlement, the more vicious of the white men are most anxious to make the acquaintance of the natives, and that, too, solely for purposes of immorality.... I saw the natives and was much with them before those deadly immoralities were well known ... and I say it fearlessly, that nearly all their evils they owed to the white man’s immorality and to the white man’s drink.72

We are informed that wherever certain vices prevail among the lower races in America, Africa, or Asia, they have been carried to them by the whites. Were it necessary to do so, scores of examples could be adduced going to show that among primitive tribes, until corrupted by our later civilization, chastity is the universal rule.

Although many of the writers who have dealt with this subject have discoursed freely on the laxity of the conjugal bond among so-called primitive tribes, and the lawlessness which characterizes lower races in their sexual relations, they have failed to account satisfactorily for some of the customs and usages which appear connected with many of the early forms of marriage,—forms which would seem to indicate a degree of modest reserve on the part of these peoples which fail to comport with the popular theory concerning their lawlessness and innate indecency.

We have seen that although among the orders of life below mankind there are no arbitrary laws governing the relations of the sexes, there nevertheless exists a system of natural marriage which in no wise resembles promiscuity. Now it was under this natural system controlled by the higher instincts developed within the female organism, that the extreme “lawlessness” indicated by the savants prevailed—lawlessness seeming to denote that state of female independence in which women were personally free, or in which they were not held in actual bondage as captive wives. In the reasoning of many of our guides in this matter it is implied, if not actually asserted, that the freedom of women which is now known to have prevailed in earlier times denotes a state of laxity in morals, a condition of society directly contrary to the facts which they themselves have recorded relative to existing tribes under less advanced conditions of life, and which would seem to argue for these peoples a sense of decency which among the masses in civilized countries is almost entirely wanting. At the dawn of human existence, had no higher instincts been developed than passion, or the desire for selfish gratification, whence could have arisen this reserve, and these ideas of chastity and modesty which are observed among many of the less developed peoples, notably those which have not come in contact with the higher races? Upon this subject Mr. Tylor remarks: “Yet even among the rudest clans of men, unless depraved by vice or misery and falling to pieces, a standard of family morals is known and lived by.”73

Observing the habits of the lower animals, Mr. Darwin cannot believe that promiscuous intercourse prevailed among the early races of mankind.

At a very early period, before man attained to his present rank in the scale, many of his conditions would be different from what now obtains amongst savages. Judging from the analogy of the lower animals he would then either live with a single female, or be a polygamist.74

We have much evidence going to prove that the marriage contracts among the lower races are well kept. According to Cook, in Tahiti, although nothing more is necessary for the consummation of a valid marriage than an agreement between the parties, these contracts are usually well kept. In case of the disaffection of either party, a divorce is easily obtained. We are assured, however, that although the Tahiti women have the undisputed right to dissolve the marriage contract at will, they are nevertheless “as faithful to their husbands as in any part of the world.” The Veddahs, who are ranked among the most primitive races, are a strictly monogamous people.75 Of the extreme modesty of married pairs among many of the lower races we have much proof. Among the Fijians, husbands and wives do not usually spend the night together, except as it were by stealth, and it is said to be contrary to their ideas of delicacy that they should sleep under the same roof.76 Wholly from a sense of reserve or modesty, the Arab wife remains for months, possibly for a whole year, with her mother before taking up her abode in her husband’s tent. The extreme delicacy of the customs regulating the behaviour of married pairs in ancient Sparta are well understood. According to Xenophon and Strabo, it was the custom, not only among the Spartans but among the Cretans also, for married pairs to meet clandestinely. The same custom prevailed in ancient Lycia. Lafitau says that among the North American Indians the husband visits his wife only by stealth.77

It is stated by trustworthy authorities that among various tribes, during the period of gestation and lactation, the person of the wife is sacred; that the rule of chastity, or continence, between married pairs, during this season, is absolutely inviolate. In Fiji, women furnish natural nourishment to their children for three or four years, during which time their persons are respected.

The relatives of the women take it as a public insult if any child should be born before the customary three or four years have elapsed, and they consider themselves in duty bound to avenge it in an equally public manner.

Mr. Seeman says:

I heard of a white man, who, being asked how many brothers and sisters he had, frankly replied, “ten.” “But that could not be,” was the rejoinder of the natives, “one mother could scarcely have so many children.”

When told that these children were born at annual intervals, and that such occurrences were common in Europe, they were very much shocked, and thought it explained sufficiently why so many white people were “mere shrimps.” After childbirth, among the Fijians, husband and wife separate and live apart for three and even four years, “so that no other baby may interfere with the time considered necessary for suckling the children, in order to make them strong and healthy.”78

Through such wise regulations as these, governing the sexual relations, the drain on the vital forces observed among the women of civilized countries is avoided, and it was doubtless to these rules and others of a similar character that women, throughout untold ages of human existence, were enabled to maintain a position of independence and supremacy. We are informed that among the Fijians the birth of a child is cause for a perfect jubilee; that parental and filial affection is among the manifest virtues of this people. After referring to the truthfulness and honesty of the Dyaks of Borneo, Mr. Wallace says that “in several matters of morality they rank above most uncivilized, and even above many civilized, nations. They are temperate in food and drink, and the gross sensuality of the Chinese and Malays is unknown among them.”79 Although the usual checks to population are absent among the Dyaks—namely, starvation, disease, war, infanticide, and vice,—still the women in the Dyak tribe rarely had more than three or four children. In a village in which there were one hundred and fifty families, in only one of them were there six children, and only six with five children.

In whatever direction we turn, evidences are abundant going to prove that under simpler and more natural conditions, and before corrupted by our later civilization, mankind were governed largely by the instincts developed within the female constitution, and that long after her supremacy over the male was lost, the effects of these purer conditions were manifest in the customs, forms, and usages of the people.

From the evidence at hand it seems more than likely that many of the extant tribes have at some remote period been civilized, and that through some natural catastrophe, the unfavourable conditions of climate and soil, or some other equally disadvantageous cause, they have again sunk to a low plane of existence from which they have been unable to rise. From available facts one is almost led to believe that at a period in the remote past, and while living under purer conditions, a high stage of civilization was reached, a civilization which in many respects was equal if not superior to that of the present. Be this as it may, whenever the environment of a people is such that after having reached a certain stage it is unable to advance, it does not remain stationary, but on the contrary follows a line of retrogression; or, whenever the conditions of a race or tribe are such that the higher faculties which tend towards progress lie dormant, the lower forces which incline toward retrogression and which are peculiarly active in low organisms still continue in operation.

Although the social arrangement of the native Australians seems to be founded on classes based on sex—the earliest form of society—still we find them practising polygamy and monogamy side by side, at the same time securing their wives by capture in exactly the same fashion as did the early Greeks and Romans. It is apparent, therefore, that although this people have not been able to advance in the arts of life, as far as the relations of the sexes are concerned they have taken about the same course as have all the other tribes and races in which the supremacy of the male has been gained. For unknown reasons, during thousands of years, the developing agencies have been quiescent, hence no check to the animal instincts has been interposed; the Australians have therefore departed widely from the conditions which surrounded early human society—conditions under which the maternal instincts developed in the lower orders of life were still sufficiently strong to guard the constructive processes and to continue the chain of uninterrupted progress.

As among the lowest existing tribes—peoples which during countless ages have been unable to advance—only the ruder elements in the human composition have been developed, it is plain that from these tribes little if any information concerning an earlier or more natural age, when the animal instincts were controlled by the higher characters developed in human nature, may be obtained; but from those peoples within the several successive stages of development whose environment has been such as to admit of some degree of improvement in the arts of life, and in whom therefore the higher characters developed in their mute progenitors have not been in a state of retrogression, may be obtained a clue to many of the processes by which our present social fabric has been raised. Among such peoples will be retained certain symbols, habits, and traditions representing former modes of life, from which may be reconstructed much of the previous history of the race. For instance, by means of the symbol of wife-capture, a form of marriage which is universal among tribes in a certain stage of development, has been furnished much trustworthy information relative to the institution of marriage and the development of the modern family. It matters not that the origin of these symbols is so remote that their true significance is lost by the peoples who practise them, they nevertheless repeat with unerring fidelity the past experiences of the race and reveal the origin of later institutions.

As the various tribes and races of mankind have probably sprung from a common progenitor, and as the “nerve cells in the brain of all classes and orders have had the same origin,” their development, although not identical as to time and manner of detail, has been similar in outline and in general results; so it is thought that a correct knowledge of the development of any tribe or race from savagery to civilization must necessarily involve the general history of all the tribes and races of mankind.

CHAPTER III
THE GENS—WOMEN UNDER GENTILE INSTITUTIONS

The earliest form of organized society was that into classes founded on the basis of sex,80 under which the right of individuals to intermarry was restricted to one-fourth of the group. This division of the early race, and the regulations prohibiting conjugal relations with three-fourths the members of the related community, is thought to represent the first coercive abridgment or formal restriction of the then existing conjugal rights, and was inaugurated for the purpose of averting the evil effects arising from intercourse between near relations. Of this early form of society, however, and of the ages during which no organized form existed, little may be known except that which is suggested by the instincts and habits of the highest animals, and that which may be inferred from an investigation of the next higher organization, that into gentes on the basis of kin. Although untold ages intervened between the ancient division of society into classes founded on the basis of sex, and the higher and more important organization into gentes on the basis of kin, this last-named plan for the further development of mankind became universal at a comparatively early stage of human history.

By an investigation of the fundamental principles of the gens, we shall be enabled to observe the similarity existing between the instincts which governed early human action and those which controlled the highest orders of life below mankind. All facts bearing on the primitive conditions of the human race, which in these later times have been brought to light through the investigations directed toward peoples in the various stages of development, only serve to emphasize the importance of the altruistic principle in the formation of organized society and in the establishment of human institutions. Although the gens is the earliest form of organized society of which we have any accurate knowledge, still as within it were encysted the germs of all the principles of justice and equality which our better human nature is beginning again to recognize, and which must characterize a higher stage of progress, a knowledge of its underlying principles is necessary to a correct understanding, not only of the past development of the race and all the existing human institutions, but of the course to be pursued toward the future advancement of mankind. Of the gens, Mr. Morgan says:

The gentile organization opens to us one of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind. It furnished the nearly universal plan of government of ancient society, Asiatic, European, African, American, and Australian. It was the instrumentality by means of which society was organized and held together. Commencing in savagery, and continuing through the three sub-periods of barbarism, it remained until the establishment of political society, which did not occur until after civilization had commenced. The Grecian gens, phratry, and tribe, the Roman gens, curia, and tribe find their analogues in the gens, phratry, and tribe of the American aborigines. In like manner, the Irish sept, the Scottish clan, the phrara of the Albanians, and the Sanskrit ganas, without extending the comparison further are the same as the American-Indian gens, which has usually been called a clan. As far as our knowledge extends, this organization runs through the entire ancient world upon all the continents, and it was brought down to the historical period by such tribes as attained to civilization.... Gentile society wherever found is the same in structural organization and in principles of action; but changing from lower to higher forms with the progressive advancement of the people. These changes give the history of the development of the same original conceptions.81

Early society, as observed under gentile institutions, was established on purely personal and social relations, or, on the basis of the relations of the individual to the rest of the community, a community in which each member could trace her or his origin back to the head of the gens who was a woman. Under gentile institutions, or until the latter stage of barbarism was reached, each individual, female and male, constituted a unit in an aggregation or community whose interests were identical, and as such, to a certain extent, was held responsible for the safety and general welfare of every member composing the group.

Extreme egoism, as it is the outgrowth of a later age, was unknown; and sympathy, the chief promoter of the well-being of mankind, a sprout from the well-established root, maternal affection, was the predominant characteristic of these primitive groups and the bond which held society together. Although the manner of reckoning descent had been changed from the female to the male line, the purely social organization of the gens, on the basis of kin, was, as has been observed, in operation at the beginning of our present civilization, at which time political society supervened, and individuals were no longer recognized through their relations to a gens or tribe, but through their relations to the state, county, township, or deme, to which institutions they must henceforward look for protection and for the redress of injuries done either to person or property.

Although, until a comparatively recent time, the writers who have dealt with the subject of primitive society have been of the opinion that the tribe constituted the earliest organization of society, and that the gens and the family followed, later investigations show conclusively that the gens, next to the remote and obscure division into classes, represents the oldest and most widely spread form of organized society, and that it was through segmentation or division of this archaic group that the tribe was formed.

The natural way in which a tribe is formed is from a family or group, which in time increases and divides into many households, still recognizing one another as kindred, and this kinship is so thoroughly felt to be the tie of the whole tribe, that even when there has been a mixture of tribes, a common ancestor is often invented to make an imaginary bond of union.82

The gens, until a comparatively recent time in the history of the human race, was composed of a female ancestor, all her children and all the children of her daughters, but not of her sons. The sons’ children and their descendants belonged to the gens of their respective mothers. The family, as it appears at the present time, was unknown. The gens was founded on thoroughly democratic principles, each individual composing the group, both female and male, having a voice in the regulation and management of all matters pertaining to the general government of the community. Any injury done to a gentilis was a wrong committed against the entire gens of which she or he was a member, hence to her or his kinsmen each individual looked for protection and for redress of personal wrongs.

The fundamental doctrine of tribal life is unity of blood. Although the early groups, under the system of female descent, were united by the actual bond of kinship as traced through mothers, later, when descent came to be traced through fathers, kinship was to a considerable extent feigned. Kinship, under the system of male descent, meant not that the blood of the great father actually flowed in the veins of all the members of the group, but that under a pretence of unity of blood, they were bound together by common duties and responsibilities from which no one of them could escape. By the terms of the compact, every member must stand by her or his own clan. In fact, in all their movements, they must act as one individual; their interests were identical and the quarrel of any member of the group became the quarrel of all counted within the bond of kinship. If homicide were committed, they judged and punished the culprit, but if one of their number was slain by an outsider, the law of blood-feud, which demanded blood in return, was immediately put into execution. Of the gens Mr. Morgan says:

Within its membership the bond of kin was a powerful element for mutual support. To wrong a person was to wrong his gens; and to support a person was to stand behind him with the entire array of this gentile kindred.83

Although in the later ages of gentile government, all the members of a group were not necessarily bound by blood, from the nature of the rights conferred, and the obligations imposed, the bond uniting them was doubtless stronger than that which now unites mere kindred. Of this tie uniting early groups J.G. Frazer says:

All the members of a totem clan regard each other as kinsmen or brothers and sisters, and are bound to help and protect each other. The totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense.84

As Arabia, at the time of Mohammed, was still under gentile organization, there is perhaps at the present day no country which affords a better opportunity for the study of several of the successive stages of human development. At the time indicated, the entire Arabian peninsula was composed of a multitude of groups varying in civilization, which were bound together by common privileges, obligations, and responsibilities and by a real or pretended bond of kinship traced through males.

In early Arabia a group bound together by a real or feigned unity of blood was the type or unit of society. Sometimes a confederation of these smaller groups was formed, but so strong was the bond between the more closely related groups that they soon broke up into their original units. The genealogists assert that these groups which were patriarchal tribes founded on male descent are subdivisions of an original stock.

At the time of the Prophet the Arabians claimed to trace their descent from two brothers the sons of WÂil. Prof. W. Robertson Smith informs us, however, that the name of one of these “brothers” is a feminine appellation and that it is the designation of a tribe and not of a person. He says: “The gender shows that the tribal name existed before the mythical ancestor was invented,” and adds: “The older facts down to the time of Al-Farazdac personify Taghlib as the daughter not the son of WÂil. It is not unlikely that the mythical legend of Taghlib and Bakr originated at a time when the female principle in human affairs and in the Deity was beginning to give place to the male.”85

Within the traditions of the oldest races of which we have any account, are evidences of a desperate struggle between two races or between the followers of two opposing principles. In all parts of Arabia “these two races maintained their ancestral traditions of bitter and persistent feud.”

Although in Arabia, in the time of the Prophet, descent was traced in the male line, the evidence is almost unlimited, going to show that it was not always so, but, on the contrary, that at an earlier age, relationships were reckoned through women, mothers being the recognized heads of families and tribal groups. In his work on Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Prof. W.R. Smith says:

If a kinship tribe derives its origin from a great father, we may argue with confidence that it had the rule that children were of their father’s tribe and kin; while on the other hand if we find, in a nation organized on the principle of unity of tribal blood, tribes which trace their origin to a great mother instead of a great father, we can feel sure that at some time the tribe followed the rule that the children belong to the mother and are of her kin. Now among the Arabs the doctrine of the unity of tribal blood is universal, as appears from the universal prevalence of the blood-feud. And yet among the Arab tribes we find no small number that refer their origin to a female eponym. Hence it follows that in many parts of Arabia kinship was once reckoned not in the male but in the female line.

In reply to the suggestion that the several families of polygamous fathers might be designated by the names of their several mothers, Professor Smith observes:

The point before us, however, is not the use of the mother’s name by individuals for purposes of distinction, but the existence of kindred groups whose members conceive that the tie of blood which unites them into a tribe is derived from and limited by descent from a common ancestress. That the existence of such a group proves kinship through women to have been once the rule is as certain as that the existence of patronymic groups is evidence of male kinship. In most cases of the kind the female eponym is mythical, no doubt, and the belief in her existence is a mere inference from the rule of female kinship within the tribe, just as mythical male ancestors are inferred from a rule of male kinship. But even if we suppose the ancestress to be historical, the argument is much the same, for where the bond of maternity is so strong that it binds together the children of the same mother as a distinct kindred group against the other children of their father, there also we may be sure that the children of one mother by different fathers will hold together and not follow their father. And this is the principle of female kinship.86

It is stated that the designation of tribal unity by a feminine appellation “is not an arbitrary fiction of later facts,” but that it is “one of the old standing figures of Semitic speech.” In Hebrew, em, which means mother, means also stock, race, or community.

The name for a tribal group in Arabia was hayy, a term which indicates life. It is observed that in Hebrew and Arabic hayy is used in the same sense. “Hawwa is simply a phonetic variation of hayy with a feminine termination,” and “Eve, or Hawwa, is so called because she is the mother of all living, or, more literally, of every hayy.” We are given to understand that, originally, there was no rule of reckoning kinship in Arabia except by the female line, and that the change in descent from the female to the male line affected society to its very roots.

There seems to be little, if any, doubt that a system of reckoning descent through women once prevailed throughout all the tribes and races of mankind. In Greece, as late as the beginning of the historic period, traces of this early custom are to be observed, and, indeed, at the present time, among many peoples, evidences of it are still extant. The fact that throughout an earlier age of human existence descent and all the rights of succession were traced through women, is at the present time so well established as to require no detailed proofs to substantiate it. Noting this custom among early races, and observing also the natural conclusions to be drawn from such a state of society, a few writers who have dealt with the subject of primitive races have taken much pains to show that it does not naturally follow that under these usages the influence of women was supreme; and their theories to explain this (to them) no doubt singular phenomenon show the extent to which prejudice and long-established habits of thought have influenced their investigations. On this subject C. Staniland Wake remarks:

There is strong reason for believing that the practice of tracing kinship in the female line was very widely observed from a very early period, but this is very different from the establishment of the supremacy of women. Where this was found it was due to the development of the gentile institution and the female kinship which accompanied it, on which, indeed, that institution was founded.87

If, however, during the earlier ages of human existence a system of kinship through women had been established which was able to produce the gentile institution, or, if this institution, which was “founded” on female kinship and dependent upon it, was able through untold ages to direct all the processes of evolution, even though no other evidence were at hand to prove it, then women’s influence must have been well-nigh supreme.

So deeply intrenched has become the idea of woman’s subjection that it is impossible for many male writers to contemplate a state of society in which women are not dominated and controlled by men.

Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory to explain the universal system of kinship traced through woman involves the same idea of woman’s subserviency to man, especially in the sexual relation, and is an illustration of the reasoning usually employed in dealing with this subject.

Although “the very lowest races now existing, Fuegians, Australians, and Andamanese, show us that, however informally they have originated, sexual relations of a more or less enduring kind exist,” he is certain that among the earliest races a state of “lawlessness” must have prevailed and that “promiscuity” must have been the rule among them; and this too notwithstanding the fact that among the lower orders of life from which man has descended, and among the earliest races of mankind the female chooses her mate and refuses to pair with any individual except the one of her choice. To account for the universal system of reckoning descent through the female, Mr. Spencer says that as the connection between mother and child is more “obvious” than that existing between the father and his offspring the custom arose of reckoning descent through females.88 The fact is observed that maternal affection without which organized society would have been impossible, and which alone can explain the system of kinship traced through women, is entirely ignored by Mr. Spencer.

Noting the reasoning employed by many writers to prove that in the earliest ages of human existence, the maternal bond was ignored, and that the child was accounted as being related only to the group, Mr. Darwin remarks:

But it seems almost incredible that the relationship of the child to its mother should ever be completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time, and as the lines of descent are traced through the mother alone, to the exclusion of the father.89

We must bear in mind that under archaic usages not only did mothers nurse their infants two, three, and even four years, but that maternity was the bond which held together related groups and the source whence proceeded all property rights and tribal honours; also, that under the system of female kinship, male parentage was known but habitually disregarded. Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Spencer can see no reason for concluding that in the most primitive groups there were no “individual possessions of women by men.”90

The late Sir A. Smith, who had travelled widely in South Africa and was acquainted with the habits of savages there and elsewhere, expressed the strongest opinion that “no race exists in which woman is considered as the property of the community.”91 The reasoning employed by Mr. Spencer to disprove the early supremacy of women seems scarcely to justify his lofty pretensions to intellectual greatness.

In a state of society in which women were the recognized heads of families and eponymous groups where children took the mother’s name, and in which all rights of succession were traced through them, it is reasonable to suppose that female influence was in the ascendency over that of the male, and especially so as primitive human beings were largely controlled by instincts inherited from the orders of life in which the female chooses her mate and controls the sex-functions.

A knowledge of the customs and tribal usages of the Iroquois Indians throws much light on the early position of women. When this tribe first came under the observation of Europeans it was in the first stage of barbarism, and as the manner and order of development of the various races of mankind are said to be substantially the same, and as many of the facts connected with the history of this truly interesting people through nearly three ethnical periods are accessible, it is thought that by it, as well as by the Arabians, is afforded an excellent opportunity for the study of the general history of mankind during these periods. To Mr. Morgan we are indebted for the results of a thorough research into the customs, manners, and laws of this people.

Through a knowledge of the rights, privileges, and obligations which were conferred and imposed on the members of the Iroquois gens while in the second state of barbarism, we are enabled to perceive the principles of true democracy upon which gentile institutions are based; and this is important, for the reason that later in this work I intend to trace the decline of those principles of liberty and equality established under female influence and to show the reasons for the subsequent rise of monarchy, aristocracy, and slavery.

The rights, privileges, and obligations of the Iroquois tribe of Indians, as enunciated by Mr. Morgan, are as follows:

The right of electing its sachem and chiefs. The right of deposing its sachem and chiefs. The obligation not to marry in the gens. Mutual rights of inheritance of the property of deceased members. Reciprocal obligations of help, defence, and redress of injuries. The right of bestowing names upon its members. The right of adopting strangers into the gens. Common religious rites. A common burial place. A council of the gens.92

As this writer truly remarks: “These functions and attributes gave vitality as well as individuality to the organization, and protected the personal rights of its members.”

Eligibility to the office of chief was based on personal merit, and continuance in office depended on the acknowledged fitness of the individual occupying it. The qualifications required for this office were personal bravery, ability to lead, and eloquence in council. The chief exercised no kingly authority over the tribe by which he was appointed; on the contrary, his personality was respected and his counsels heeded, not because of his official prerogatives, but on account of the qualities by which his character was dignified; therefore so soon as he proved himself unworthy of the trust confided to him he was deposed by the same agency which had elected him. Hence may be observed the truly democratic character of the gens.

Concerning the position occupied by women, and the influence which they exerted in the management of the clan, Ashur Wright, who was for many years missionary to the Senecas, in 1873, wrote to Mr. Morgan the following:

As to their family system when occupying the old long houses, it is probable that some one clan predominated, the women taking in husbands, however, from the other clans; and sometimes, for a novelty, some of their sons bringing in their young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to disobey. The house would be too hot for him; and, unless saved by intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan; or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans, as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, “to knock off the horns,” as it was technically called, from the head of a chief, and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also always rested with them.93

In the Lower Status of barbarism we find intermarriage within the gens prohibited, and the obligation not to marry those accounted as kin as strong as a religious duty.

Although during the latter ages of savagery the idea of property was slightly developed, it is thought that it lay nascent until the latter part of the first period of barbarism. Indeed, until the first stage of barbarism was reached, the idea of personal possession had gained only a slight foothold in the mental constitution of mankind. Egoism, selfishness, or the desire to better one’s individual condition at the expense of the rest of the gens was unknown. All lands were controlled by the group, and as the property of early society consisted for the most part of personal effects and proprietary rights in communal houses and gardens, one of the most fruitful causes for dissensions in more advanced stages of society was avoided. Under primitive conditions, quarrels arising over disputed ownership within the gens were unknown, and liberty, equality, and fraternity, the cardinal virtues and principles of early society were able to flourish undisturbed by the as yet unheard of vices inherent in the excessive desire for property.

In reference to some of the small uncivilized communities which he visited, Mr. Wallace says that each man respects the rights of his fellow,

and any infraction of these rights rarely or never takes place. In such a community all are nearly equal. There are none of those wide distinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the product of our civilization; there is none of that widespread division of labour, which, while it increases wealth, produces also conflicting interests; there is not that severe competition and struggle for existence or for wealth which the dense population of civilized countries inevitably creates.94

Under the archaic rule of the gens, at the death of a male, whether married or single, his possessions descended to his sister’s children; while at the death of a female, her property, including her personal effects, was distributed among her sisters and her children and the children of her daughters, but the children of her sons were not included among her heirs. The sons’ children belonged to the gentes of their respective mothers, and as descent and all the relationships to which rights of succession were attached were traced only in the female line, and as property until the middle of the Second Status of barbarism was strictly confined to the gens in which it originated, children could receive nothing from their fathers. Wives and husbands, as they belonged to separate gentes, received nothing from one another. In later times, when tribal honours were confined within certain families or groups, as descent and property rights were all traced in the female line, each male was dependent upon his female blood relations, not only for his common inherited privileges in the gens, but for any civil or military distinction to which he might attain.

Where female kinship prevails, a Rajah’s son may become a hodman, taking the state of his mother—while the son of the Rajah’s sister mounts the throne.95

Among the Rocch tribe, a people among which descent is traced in the female line, a man goes on marriage to live with his wife and her mother, of whose family he is a subordinate member.96

A Rocch man goes, on his marriage, like the beena husband of Ceylon, to live with his wife and her mother; on his marriage, all his property is made over to his wife, and on her death her heirs are her daughters.97

For the same reason that wives and husbands were debarred from sharing in each other’s property, their bodies, or more properly speaking, their bones, were separated at death, as were also the bones of father and child. The bones of the children always rested beside those of the mother. It was impious to mix the bones of unrelated persons. To such an extent was the Motherright recognized under archaic usages that the child belonged exclusively to the mother and her relations, the father having no recognized proprietary right to his offspring. Indeed, so lightly was the paternal relation regarded that the father was supposed to have little if any interest in his own children.

Although the bond between a man and his offspring was weak, toward his sister’s children, as they belonged to the same gens with himself, a considerable degree of manly interest was manifested; indeed, it has been stated that about the same solicitude was evinced by him for their welfare, as was shown at a later time by fathers for the members of their own household.

Observing the care manifested for a sister’s children among various tribes, certain writers have declared that the relationship existing between a child and its mother’s brother is more important than any other—that the brother is practically the head of his sister’s family. However, if we bear in mind the relative positions of the sexes in primitive groups, that women controlled their homes, and that all the rights of succession were traced through them, we shall doubtless be led to the conclusion that mothers themselves were the real heads of their own families, and that although they may have delegated to their brothers, who until marriage were permitted to reside with them, certain manly offices, they nevertheless reserved to themselves the exclusive right to the control and management of their own households. As the land belonged to the gens, and as the gentes were controlled by women, mothers were absolutely independent.

Each child received a name soon after birth, but at the age of sixteen or eighteen this name was discarded and another adopted. Special rights were thus conferred and specified obligations were imposed. On receipt of this name, the incumbent took upon himself all the duties and responsibilities devolving upon a member of the group and by it was entitled to all its rights and privileges. The greatest precautions were taken with respect to the adoption of names. The office of naming the different members belonged to the female relations and the chiefs. We are informed that the mother might, if she chose, transfer her child to another gens. This was accomplished by simply giving it the name of the gens in which she desired its adoption. It is claimed that among the Shawnees and Delawares the mother claimed the right to transfer her child to another gens than her own.98 It would seem from this, that among certain tribes, the mother, if she desires, may transfer her child to the gens of its father. It is observed, however, that the transference of a child from its mother’s gens is a “wide departure from archaic usages, and exceptional in practice.”

It has been shown that under early usages wealth was never transferred from the gens in which it originated; but later, when property began to be claimed by individuals, and wealth was amassed in the hands of males, it is not unlikely that mothers, considering only the future welfare of their children, in case the father was rich and powerful, would occasionally take advantage of their established privileges to remove their children to his gens, in order that they might share in his possessions.

Something of the humanity practised in early groups may be observed in the custom of adoption, which, at a certain stage in their development, prevailed among them. In the earlier ages of gentile institutions, women and children taken prisoners in war, were usually adopted into some gens. Adoption not only conferred gentile rights, but also the nationality of the tribe. A person adopted into a gens was treated ever afterwards as though born within the group. “Slavery which in the Upper Status of barbarism became the fate of the captive, was unknown among tribes in the Lower Status in the aboriginal period.”99

According to Mariner:

It is customary in the Tonga Islands for women to be what they call mothers to children or grown-up young persons who are not their own, for the purpose of providing them, or seeing that they are provided, with all the conveniences of life.100

According to Mr. E.J. Wood, among the Kaffirs, although the men inherit the property, their influences being in the ascendency, every woman has someone who acts as her father whether her own father be living or not. Kaffir law provides for the protection of all women, and so long as a male relation lives a girl has a protector. It goes even farther than this, and protects women who have been bereft of all their male relations. For such as these provision is made for their adoption into other groups, in which case, although they are received as dependents, they are protected as daughters.101

This practice of adoption is observed among various peoples. Among certain tribes in which descent is traced through women, a woman offers her breast to the person she is adopting, this being the strongest symbol of the unity of blood. Thus may be noted the fact that the fundamental idea, or principle, of tribal life is maternity, or the maternal instinct—that the uniting force which binds a child to its mother is the one which is supposed to unite the various members of a primitive group. So strongly has the maternal instinct as a binding principle taken root, that among certain peoples even where the manner of reckoning descent and the rights of succession have been changed from the female to the male line, whenever an individual wishes to be adopted into a gens he takes the hand of the leader of the group and sucking one of his fingers, declares himself to be his child by adoption; henceforth the new father is bound to assist him as far as he can.102 Adoption “by the imitation of nature” was practised by the Romans down to the time of Augustus.

It has been observed that under the matriarchal system the mother was the only recognized parent, hence, when the father began to assume the rights and prerogatives which had hitherto belonged only to her, in order to make valid his claim, it was thought proper for him to go through various of the preliminaries attendant on childbirth.

Of all the forms practised among lower races there is none, perhaps, which is more singular than is that of putting the father instead of the mother to bed in the event of the birth of a child. Concerning this custom, Mr. Tylor quotes from Klemm the following:

Among the Arawaks of Surinam, for some time after the birth of his child the father must fell no tree, fire no gun, hunt no large game; he may stay near home, shoot little birds with a bow and arrow, and angle for little fish; but his time hanging heavy on his hands, the most comfortable thing he can do is to lounge in his hammock.103

Mr. Tylor quotes also from the Jesuit missionary, Dobrizhoffer, who gives the following account of the Abipones:

No sooner do you hear that the wife has borne a child, than you will see the Abipone husband lying in bed, huddled up with mats and skins, lest some ruder breath of air should touch him, fasting, kept in private, and for a number of days abstaining religiously from certain viands; you would swear it was he who had had the child.

The custom of putting the father to bed when a child is born is called la couvade, and traces of it are yet to be found in France. It is also practised among the Basques, and according to C. Staniland Wake, was anciently observed in Corsica, among the Iberians of Spain, and in the country south of the Black Sea. It is still practised in Southern India, in Yunnan, in Borneo, in Kamchatka, and in Greenland. It is said also to be in use among the various tribes in South America.104 The persistency of this practice shows the importance formerly attached to the maternal functions, and, as has been suggested, was doubtless inaugurated at a time when descent was being changed from the female to the male line.

It was perhaps in the latter part of the Middle Status of barbarism that descent and the rights of succession began to be traced through males. When, through causes which will be noticed later in this work, property began to accumulate in the hands of men, children became the recognized heirs of their fathers and the foundation for the present form of the family was laid. However, long after descent began to be reckoned through males, absolute paternity was not necessary to fatherhood. During the earlier ages of male supremacy, fatherhood, like brotherhood, was a loose term and signified simply the head of a house, or the “lord” or owner of the mother. It mattered little whether a man had previously lent his wife to a friend, or whether he had shared her favours with several brothers, all the children “born on his bed” belonged to him and were of his family.

Later in these pages will be observed the fact that the change in reckoning descent, which occurred at a comparatively late period in the history of the human race, is directly connected with the means of subsistence. So long as land was held in common by the members of the gens, and so long as women were able to manage the means of support, their independence was secure, and they were able to exercise absolute control over their own persons, their homes, and their offspring. Under these conditions men were obliged to please the women if they would win their favours.

From facts which have been demonstrated by various writers on the subject of the early conditions of the human race, it is more than probable that women were the original tillers of the soil, and that, during the first period of barbarism, while the hunters and warriors were engaged in war and the chase, occupations best suited to their taste, women first discovered the art of producing farinaceous food through cultivation, and through this discovery a hitherto exclusive diet of fish and game was changed for a subsistence in part vegetable.

It is conjectured also that the first domestication of animals was brought about through a probable “freak of fancy.” That individuals among these animals were first caught by hunters, conveyed by them to their homes, and there tamed through the tenderness and sympathy of women, is considered more than likely. There are, however, so far as I know, no actual facts upon which to base such a conclusion.

The increase of subsistence through horticulture and the domestication of animals marks an important era in the history of mankind. By this means the human race was enabled to spread itself over distant areas, and through the improved condition of nutrition alone, by which the physical conditions were improved and the mental energies strengthened, the arts of life were multiplied and the course of human activities directed into higher and more important channels. Indeed, through the numerous benefits derived from the one source of increased and improved subsistence, the entire mode of life was changed or materially modified.

The religious idea, which subsequently comprehended a complicated system of mythology based on phallic worship, at this early age, consisted simply of a recognition of the bounties of earth. The principal office connected with the religious ceremonies of the Iroquois tribe of Indians, at the stage of development in which it was first known to Europeans, seems to have been “Keeper of the Faith,” a position occupied alike by both sexes. The Keepers of the Faith were chosen by the wise members of the group; they were censors of the people, with power to report the evil deeds of persons to the council. “With no official head, and none of the marks of a priesthood, their functions were equal.”105 For the most part, their religious services consisted of festivals held at stated seasons to celebrate the return of the bounties of Nature. A notable fact in connection with this subject is, that during the earlier ages of barbarism the religious idea was thoroughly monotheistic, and idolatry was unknown, religious worship, for the most part, consisting of a ceremony of thanksgiving, with invocations to the Great Mother-Nature to continue to them the blessings of life. As altruism waned and egoism advanced, however, supernaturalism, or a belief in unseen forces, became more and more pronounced, until, in the Latter Status of barbarism, when the supremacy of man had become complete, the gens became merely the “centre of religious influence and the source of religious development.”

The earlier governmental functions were administered through a council of chiefs elected by the gentes. The thoroughly democratic character of the gens may be observed in the fact that any member, female or male, who desired to communicate with the council on matters of public interest, might express her or his opinion either in person or through an orator of her or his own selection.106 Hence, we observe that government originated in the gens, which was a pure democracy.

Regarding the council of the gens, Mr. Morgan remarks:

It was a democratic assembly because every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it. It elected and deposed its sachem and chiefs, it elected Keepers of the Faith, it condoned or avenged the murder of a gentilis, and it adopted persons into the gens. It was the germ of the higher council of the tribe, and of that still higher of the confederacy, each of which was composed exclusively of chiefs as representatives of the gentes....

All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other’s freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachem and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by the ties of kin. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material because the gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the foundation upon which Indian society was organized.... At the epoch of European discovery the American Indian tribes generally were organized in gentes with descent in the female line. The gens was the basis of the phratry, of the tribe, and of the confederacy of tribes.107

From the foregoing it would seem that the gens—the earliest organization of society of which we have any accurate knowledge—was founded on the “mother-right” or on the supremacy of women. We are assured that the gentile organization is not confined to the Latin, Grecian, and Sanskrit-speaking tribes, but that it has been found “in other branches of the Aryan family of nations, in the Semitic, Uralian, and Turanian families, among the tribes of Africa and Australia, and of the American aborigines.”108

A tribe was composed of several gentes, the chiefs of which formed the council. This council was invested with the power to declare war and to regulate terms of peace, to receive embassies and make alliances; it was in fact authorized to perform all the governmental functions of the tribe. The duties performed by the council of chiefs may be regarded as the first attempt at representative government. In process of time, as the affairs of the tribe became more complicated, a need arose for a recognized head, one who when the council was not in session could lead in the adjustment of matters pertaining to the general interest of the group. In response to this demand, one of the sachems was invested with a slight degree of authority over the other chiefs. Hence arose the military chieftain of the Latter Status of barbarism. That the powers delegated to the incumbent of this office differed widely from those of a modern monarch, is shown in the fact that as he had been elected by the members of the group he could by them be deposed. We have seen that the powers exercised by sachem and chief were alike transmitted through women. The mother is the natural guardian of the family; so soon therefore as the actions of the leaders of the group were not in accord with those principles of equality and justice which had characterized society since its organization, they were deposed, or, as in the case of the Senecas described by Ashur Wright, they had their “horns knocked off” through the influence of women.

At the head of the family, or gens, producing and controlling the principal means of subsistence, and forming the line of descent and inheritance, women, until the closing ages of the Middle Status of barbarism, were without doubt the leading spirits, and thus far the progress of mankind had been in strict accord with those principles which since the separation of the sexes had governed development.

In process of time, however, the simple form of government which has been described was found inadequate to meet the demands arising from the more complicated requirements of increasing numbers and the general growth of society; therefore, during the opening ages of the Latter Status of barbarism, a form of government was evolved which was better suited to their changed conditions. When the idea of a coalescence of tribes, or of a combination of forces for common defence had taken root, and when under such confederation the council of chiefs had become co-ordinated with a military leader for the general management and defence of the community, it was thought that an important step had been taken in progressive governmental functions. Yet, along with the higher development of the governmental idea is to be observed also a growing tendency toward the usurpation of power. Scarcely was the office of military chieftain created, than we find the people inaugurating measures with which to protect themselves against encroachments upon their liberties, and devising means whereby they might be enabled to check the personal ambition of their leaders.

The extreme egoism developed within the male constitution was already manifesting itself in the excessive greed for gain, and in the inordinate thirst for military glory; hence, as a safeguard against usurpation, in the earliest stages of the Latter Status of barbarism, we find the tribe electing two military chieftains instead of one, two leaders invested with equal powers and responsibilities and subjected to the same restrictions and limitations in the exercise of authority. The Spartan government upon its first appearance in history is characterized by the existence of two war-chieftains, who, by historians of later ages, have been designated as kings; a closer investigation, however, of the functions performed by them shows that they were lacking in nearly all the prerogatives which characterize a modern sovereign.

So jealously had the rights of the people been guarded that the basileus or war-chief of the Latter Status of barbarism, who is said to represent the germ of our present king, emperor, and president, had not succeeded in drawing to himself the powers exercised by a monarch of modern times. The selection of a military leader, during the Latter Status of barbarism, doubtless represents the first differentiation of the civil from the military functions of government, and indicates a virtual acknowledgment of the fact that society had outgrown the primary and more simple form of government administered by the council of chiefs.

The third stage in the development of the idea of government was represented by a council of chiefs, a military commander, and an assembly of the people. In this further growth of the administrative functions may be discovered the same solicitude for individual liberty and the rights of the community which had characterized the former stage of development, and also the fact that still greater precautions were deemed necessary to insure the people against tyranny and the usurpation of their established rights. The council of chiefs, although representing a pure democracy, and co-ordinated with two military chieftains, between whom was an equal division of power and responsibility, was found to be an insufficient safeguard against despotism; hence the measures devised for the management of the confederacy must henceforth be subjected to an Assembly of the People, which, although of itself unable to originate or propound any plan of government, was invested with the power to accept or reject any measures offered for adoption by the council.

The gens was able to carry mankind through to the opening ages of civilization, at which time the council of chiefs was transformed into a senate, and the Assembly of the People assumed the form of the popular assembly, from which have been derived our present Congress and the two houses of the English Parliament.

By a careful study of the growth of government, it is discerned that liberty, fraternity, and equality were the original and natural inheritance of the human family, and that tyranny, injustice, and oppression are excrescences which subsequently fastened themselves upon human institutions through the gradual rise of the egoistic principle developed in human nature. We have seen that until the beginning of the Latter Status of barbarism, the gens constituted a sovereign power in the tribe; women controlled the gens, and sachem and chief were alike invested with the authority necessary for leadership because they could trace their descent to some female ancestor who was the acknowledged head of the people, and whose influence and patronage must have extended over all the individuals included within the recognized bond of kinship.

With the deposing power in the hands of women, and with the precautions which were taken by them against injustice or usurpation of rights, it is plain that unless some unusual or unprecedented circumstances had come into play, they never could have lost that supremacy which, as the natural result of their development, had been maintained by females since the separation of the sexes.

CHAPTER IV
THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE

It is an obvious fact that so far as her sex relations are concerned the position of civilized woman is lower than that of the female animal.

The question which presents itself at this stage of our inquiry is: What were the causes which led to the overthrow of female supremacy or what were the processes by which man gained the undisputed right to the control of woman’s person? By contrasting the industrial position of women under gentile institutions with that of later times, after they had become the sexual slaves of men, it will be seen that the question of economics is deeply involved in this change. Although the early independence of women is now recognized, the fact of their industrial supremacy is for the most part ignored. Indeed the part performed by woman in originating and developing human industries is seldom referred to by those dealing with this subject.

As the activities best suited to the tastes of primitive man were confined to war and the chase, those occupations and pursuits which were necessary for the preservation of the group were carried on by women. The reason for this is obvious. Fathers were not regarded as being related to their offspring. The mother was the only recognized parent. As the land was held in common, women were economically free. They were absolutely independent of men for their support. Under these conditions the importance of women’s position may be easily perceived.

Not only did women establish the first industries, but they invented and constructed the tools and implements by which these industries were carried on. Women were the first tillers of the soil. It was they who conceived the idea of preserving seeds whereby farinaceous food might be produced. Corn was not only raised by them but by them it was ground and further prepared for use. They built clay granaries in which to store their food products and tamed the cat to protect them. Implements for tilling the soil, and devices for grinding the grain were invented by women. They were the first architects and the first builders. They first conceived the idea of making cloth with which to protect the body. They were the first spinners and the first weavers. They invented the first spindles and the first looms. Their attempts at decoration were the beginning of art.

As these pioneers in industry were without means of transportation other than their backs, some of the difficulties which they encountered may be readily perceived. It must be borne in mind that for primitive women there was no accumulated store of knowledge and no previous race-experiences; neither were there any established rules or precedents to guide them. All methods and utilities had to be worked out by woman’s unaided brain. When the conditions under which these pioneers in industry laboured are considered, and when one reflects on the obstacles which must have presented themselves at every step along their untried pathway, it would almost seem that their early achievements were quite as remarkable as are those which have since been accomplished by men.

The fact is observed that woman assumed the rÔle of protector and provider, not as is commonly asserted because she was compelled by man to become a beast of burden, but because she was the recognized guardian not only of infant life but of the public welfare. Later, after the primitive groups began to coalesce to form the tribe, after wife-capture became prevalent and men thereby secured the right to the control and ownership of individual women, a right which they still claim, then and not till then did women become beasts of burden. Then and not till then did man gain the right to the control of woman’s person.

It is now known that wife-capture is the origin of our present form of marriage, and that the establishment of the family with man at its head rests on the same basis. It is also known that through forcible marriage and the economic conditions which it entailed, woman became a dependent, a mere appendage to her male mate. The dominion of man and the assumed inferiority of woman are the direct results of the authority which he was able to exercise over her in the marital relation.

We have seen that prior to the decline of female influence women taken prisoners in war were not regarded as the legitimate property of their captors. On the contrary, female captives were adopted into the gens and invested with the same status of personal independence enjoyed by the original members of the group. Later, however, female prisoners began to be regarded as the special booty of their captors, and as belonging exclusively to them; and although in primitive times marriage outside the limits of related groups was prohibited, owing to the esteem in which military chieftains came to be held, this claim was at length allowed them. Any courageous young warrior, conscious of his popularity, might gather about him a band of his clansmen and march against a neighbouring tribe, the women taken prisoners during such expeditions being the special prizes of their captors.

These prisoners were entitled to none of the privileges of the community into which they were taken; and as the hostility felt toward unrelated tribes had become so strong as to be shared by women, the captive woman could no longer look for pity even from her own sex.

From this time in the history of the race may be traced the decline of woman’s power and the subjection of the natural female impulses. As, at this stage, within the limits of their own tribe, women held the balance of power in their own hands, and as they still exercised unqualified control over their own persons, the acknowledged ownership of one woman, who, being a “stranger,” was without power or influence, would be an object much to be desired, and one for which a warrior would not hesitate to brave the dangers of a hostile camp. Hence, female captives were in demand, and the women of warring tribes were sought after singly and in groups. In process of time wars for wives became general and under the new regime women had the fear of captivity constantly before their view as a condition more to be dreaded than death.

In the Mahabharata of India it is stated that formerly “women were unconfined and roved about at their pleasure, independent.” Finally, marriage was instituted and a woman was bound to a man for life. One of the eight forms of legalized marriage in the code of Manu was that of capture de facto and was called Racshasa. This particular form of conjugal union was practised exclusively by the military classes, among which, the women taken in battle were the acknowledged booty of their captors. A definition of this kind of marriage is as follows: “The seizure of a maiden by force from her house while she weeps and calls for assistance, after her kinsmen and friends have been slain in battle or wounded, and their houses broken open, is the marriage called Racshasa.”

Capture as the prescribed form of marriage for warriors may be traced through thousands of years and among various peoples. Of the three legalized forms of marital union in Rome, that by capture was the one in use among the plebeians, the patricians at the same time practising Confarreatio and Usus. In Arabia, as late as Mohammed’s time, the carrying off of women was recognized as a legal form of marriage.109

That capture constituted a legal form of marriage among the Israelites, or that women taken captives in war were appropriated as sexual slaves, is shown by their religious history, in which the instructions given to the Lord’s chosen people after they had taken a city was to “smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city” they were to take unto themselves. This, it will be noticed, is to be done “unto the cities which are very far off,” and which “are not of the cities of these nations.”110

When the Israelites 12,000 strong marched against the Midianites, they were commanded by Moses to slay all the males, adults and children, and all the women except the virgins. These virgins of whom there were 32,000 were to be spared and utilized as wives by the victorious Israelites. The fact will be noted that these women had been taken from their own people, hence they were wholly without influence or power. They were dependents and therefore subject to the will of their masters. They were sexual slaves or wives.

In Australia, among the North American Indians, the tribes of the Amazon and the Orinoco, in Hindustan and Afghanistan, marriage by actual capture is still practised, and many of the details connected with the modus operandi have been given by various writers. The following from Sir George Gray, relative to this form of marriage as it exists at the present time among some of the native Australian tribes, is quoted by Mr. J.F. McLennan.

Although a woman give no encouragement to her admirers,

many plots are laid to carry her off, and in the encounters which result from these, she is almost certain to receive some violent injury, for each of the combatants orders her to follow him, and in the event of her refusing, throws a spear at her. The early life of a young woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivity to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wanderings in strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females, amongst whom she is brought a stranger by her captor; and rarely do you see a form of unusual grace and elegance, but it is marked and scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to distant and more distant points.111

In an account describing the search for wives by the natives of Sydney, Collins says:

The poor wretch is stolen upon in the absence of her protectors. Being first stupefied with blows, inflicted with clubs or wooden swords, on the head, back, and shoulders, every one of which is followed by a stream of blood, she is then dragged through the woods by one arm, with a perseverance and violence that it might be supposed would displace it from its socket. This outrage is not resented by the relations of the female, who only retaliate by a similar outrage when they find an opportunity. This is so constantly the practice among them that even the children make it a play game, or exercise.112

By various travellers and explorers, the fact has been observed that certain symbols representing force in their marriage ceremonies are in use among nearly if not all extant tribes which have reached a certain stage of growth. To such an extent, in an earlier age, has the forcible carrying-off of women prevailed, that among most of these tribes a valid marriage may not be consummated without the appearance of force in the nuptial ceremonies. In reference to these symbols, we have the following passage from Mr. McLennan:

Meantime, we observe that, whenever we discover symbolical forms, we are justified in inferring that in the past life of the people employing them, there were corresponding realities; and if, among the primitive races which we examine, we find such realities as might naturally pass into such forms on an advance taking place in civility, then we may safely conclude (keeping within the conditions of a sound inference) that what these now are, those employing the symbols once were.113

Among primitive tribes, the area controlled by each was small, therefore vigilance in maintaining their possessions was one of their chief duties, and hostility to surrounding tribes a natural condition. Subsequently, however, when friendly relations began to be established with hitherto hostile tribes, they are found entering into negotiations to furnish each other with wives. It was at this time that marriage by sale or contract was instituted, an arrangement by which the elder men in the tribe could be accommodated with foreign wives, at the same time that their own daughters and sisters became to them a source of revenue.

In Uganda many men obtain wives by exchanging daughters and sisters with each other. Of this practice C. Staniland Wake says:

This is not an unusual mode of proceeding in different parts of the world. The perpetuation of the monopoly of women enjoyed to a great extent by the older men of the tribe among the Australians is, according to Mr. Howitt, encouraged by those having sisters or daughters to exchange with each other for wives.114

Not unfrequently actual capture is practised side by side with fiction—violent seizure being in active operation among the same tribes at the same time with the symbol, the frequency of actual violence depending partly on the extent to which hostility prevails between the tribes, and partly on the degree of “uniformity established by usage in the prices paid for wives.” Among certain tribes, when a dispute arises concerning the price to be paid for a bride, if the man is able to seize the woman and carry her off to his tent, the law recognizes her as his wife and nothing is left for the relations to do in the matter but to accept his terms as to the price.

The peoples among which actual capture is at present practised, and those among which wives are procured by sale or contract, represent two different stages in the development of the institution of marriage, and it is owing to this fact that the symbols used among the latter may be traced to the realities in which they originated.

Of the Bedouins of Mt. Sinai, Burckhardt says that marriage is a matter of sale and purchase, in which the inclination of the girl is disregarded.

The young maid comes home in the evening with the cattle. At a short distance from the camp she is met by the future spouse and a couple of his young friends, and carried off by force to her father’s tent. If she entertains any suspicion of their designs she defends herself with stones, and often inflicts wounds on the young men, even though she does not dislike the lover, for, according to custom, the more she struggles, bites, kicks, cries, and shrieks, the more she is applauded ever after by her own companions.115

In reference to the Mezeyne Arabs the same writer observes that a similar custom prevailed within the limits of the Sinai Peninsula, but not among the other tribes of that province.

A girl having been wrapped in the Abba at night, is permitted to escape from her tent, and fly into the neighbouring mountains. The bridegroom goes in search of her next day, and remains often many days before he can find her out, while her female friends are apprised of her hiding-place, and furnish her with provisions. If the husband finds her at last (which is sooner or later, according to the impression that he has made upon the girl’s heart), he is bound to consummate the marriage in the open country, and to pass the night with her in the mountains. The next morning the bride goes home to her tent, that she may have some food; but again runs away in the evening and repeats these flights several times, till she finally returns to her tent. She does not go to live in her husband’s tent until she is far advanced in pregnancy; if she does not become pregnant, she may not join her husband till a full year from the wedding-day.116

Cranz says that in Greenland “some females, when a husband is proposed to them will fall into a swoon, elope to a desert place, or cut off their hair.... In the latter case they are seldom troubled with further addresses.” The refractory bride is dragged

forcibly into her suitor’s house, where she sits for several days disconsolate, with dishevelled hair, and refuses nourishment. When friendly exhortations are unavailing, she is compelled by force and even with blows to receive her husband. Should she elope, she is brought back and treated more harshly than before.117

Wherever friendly relations have been established between the tribe of the wife and that of the husband, he pays a price to her relatives for the privilege of removing her to his camp. This purchase price, together with the simulated hatred of the woman’s friends, signifies a sacrifice on the part of the wife and her family. In Nubia when a man marries he presents his wife with a wedding-dress, and gives her also a pledge for three or four hundred piastres, half of which sum is paid her in case of a divorce. Divorces, however, are very rare.118

Among the Circassians, after the preliminaries have been settled by the parents, the lover meets his bride-elect by night in some secluded spot, and with the assistance of two or three of his best friends seizes her and carries her away. Sometimes the pretended capture takes place in the midst of a noisy feast. The woman is usually conducted into the presence of a mutual friend, where, on the following day, her friends, simulating anger, seek her and demand a reason for her abduction. Although the affair is usually settled at once by the bridegroom paying the accustomed price for his bride, custom requires that there shall be still further manifestations of anger on the part of her friends; so, on the following day, all the relatives of the bride, armed with sticks, proceed to the place where the bride is in waiting, there to meet the bridegroom and his friends who have come to carry off the bride. A sham fight ensues, in which the bridegroom and his party are always victorious. Among certain of the Arabian tribes the bridegroom must force his bride to enter his tent, and in France, as late as the seventeenth century, a similar custom prevailed.

In describing a wedding dance in Abyssinia, Parkyns observes:

This dance is performed by men armed with shields and lances, who with bounds, feints, and springs attack others armed with guns, so as to approach them, and at the same time avoid their fire, while the gunners make similar demonstrations, and at last fire off their guns either in the air or into the earth, and then, drawing their swords, flourish them about as a finish.

Finally the bridegroom fires off a gun and immediately rushes across to where the bride and her female relations are stationed.119

Tylor informs us that a Scandinavian warrior generally sought to gain his bride by force, that he conceived it beneath his dignity to win her by pacific means. That the affair might appear more heroic, he waited until the object of his choice was about to wed another, and was actually on her way to the nuptial ceremony, when with his friends he would surprise the wedding cortege, seize the bride, and carry her off. It has been said of Scandinavian marriages that they were matters of deep anxiety to the friends both of the bride and groom, who, until the wedding was over, remained at home in suspense fearing an attack of the kind already mentioned. It was customary for a party of young men to station themselves at the church door, and, as soon as the ceremony was completed, to carry the news to the homes of the wedded pair. “Within a few generations the same old practice was kept up in Wales, where the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried off the bride,” and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the bride’s people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt.120

In the Amazon valley the bride is always carried away by violence. Among the Zulus, although a purchase price is paid for a woman, custom requires that a wife, after having been captured, shall make three attempts to return to her own home.

Of the marriage customs in ancient Sparta, Plutarch says: “In their marriages the bridegroom carried off the bride by violence.”121 In Rome we have the familiar example of the Sabine women, who were captured or carried off by force.

A notable fact in connection with the subject of capture is, that the mother of the bride, or, in case the mother is dead, the nearest female relative, is the individual who assumes the part of the principal defender in this ceremony. She it is who attempts to rescue the bride, and who more than any other mourns the fate of the captured wife. Among primitive peoples, with the exception of the symbol of wife-capture in marriage ceremonies, there is perhaps none more significant than that typifying the hatred of the mother for the captor of her daughter. Customs indicating estrangement or, actual aversion to sons-in-law, usually, if not always, accompany marriage by capture.

The fact that the change in the relative positions of the sexes, as indicated by the sadica and ba’al forms of marriage in Arabia, was not easily or speedily accomplished, is apparent not only in the symbols of wife-capture everywhere practised among peoples in a certain stage of development, but is strongly suggested also by the aversion found to exist among these same peoples between mothers-in-law and sons-in-law, whether appearing as a reality or as a symbol.

Among the Arawaks of South America, it is unlawful for the son-in-law to look upon the face of his mother-in-law. If they live in the same house a partition separates them, and if by chance they must enter the same boat, she must precede him so as to keep her back toward him.

Among the Caribs, all the women talk with whom they will, but the husband dare not converse with his wife’s relations except on extraordinary occasions.122 Mr. Tylor refers to the fact that

In the account of the Floridian expedition of Alvar NuÑez, commonly known as Cabeca de Vaca, or Cow’s Head, it is mentioned that the parents-in-law did not enter the son-in-law’s house, nor he theirs, nor his brother-in-law’s, and if they met by chance, they went a buckshot out of their way, with their heads down and eyes fixed on the ground, for they held it a bad thing to see or speak to one another.

It is observed by Richardson, an author quoted by Tylor, that among the Crees, while an Indian lives with his wife’s family, his mother-in-law must not speak to or look at him. In some portions of Australia, “the mother-in-law does not allow the son-in-law to see her, but hides herself if he is near, and if she has to pass him makes a circuit, keeping carefully concealed within her cloak.”

Among some of the tribes in Central Africa, from the moment a marriage is contracted, the lover may not behold the parents of his future bride. When a young man wishes to marry a girl, he dispatches a messenger to negotiate with her parents regarding the presents required and the number of oxen demanded. This being arranged, he may not again look upon the father and mother of his intended wife; “he takes the greatest care to avoid them, and if by chance they perceive him they cover their faces as if all ties of friendship were broken.” We are told, however, that this indifference is only feigned, that they feel the same friendship as before, and in conversation extol one another’s merit. Mr. Caillie says that this custom extends beyond the relations; if the lover is of a different camp, he must avoid all the inhabitants of the lady’s camp, except a few intimate friends who are permitted to assist him in his love-making. A little tent is set up for him in the neighbourhood, under which he is to remain during the day. If he has occasion to cross the camp he must cover his face. He may not see the face of his intended throughout the day, but at nightfall he may creep silently to her tent and remain with her until the dawn. These clandestine visits are continued for a month or two when the marriage is solemnized. At the wedding festival the women collect round the bride singing her praises and extolling her virtues.123

Gubernatis is authority for the statement that, in many parts of Italy the bride is compelled to go through the process of weeping on her wedding-day, also for the fact that one of the marriage customs prevalent in Sardinia is identical with that which appeared among the plebeians at Rome, namely, the pretence of tearing the bride from the arms of her mother.124

From the facts which have been obtained relative to the practice of wife-capture, it is only natural to suppose that the mother of the captured wife would be her chief ally and defender; that such has been the case seems to be clearly shown by the symbols of distrust and aversion everywhere manifested between mothers-in-law and sons-in-law among the various existing uncivilized races. The practice of wife-capture exists either as a reality or as a symbol entering into the marriage ceremonies among the tribes of Central Africa, the Indians of North and South America, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Arabia, in the hill tracts of India, among the Fuegians, and in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and wherever this system is found the symbol of hatred between mother-in-law and son-in-law also prevails.

The simulated anger and sham violence connected with marriage ceremonies among friendly peoples, which are so far removed from a time when actual capture was practised as to be ignorant of the true significance of these symbols, show the extent to which marriage is based on the idea of force on the one side and unwilling submission on the other.

As the numerous Arabian clans in the time of Mohammed represented the varying stages of advancement from the second period of barbarism to civilization, the constitution of Arab society at that time affords an excellent opportunity for observing the growth of the institution of marriage, and the various processes by which the former supremacy of women was overthrown.

One of the principal objects of war at the time of the Prophet is said to have been the capture of women for wives, a practice which was recognized as lawful. Under Islam the custom of forcibly carrying off women for wives was universal and was carried on side by side with the system of marriage by contract or sale. The position of the captured woman, however, differed somewhat from that of the purchased wife. The former, having been forcibly carried away from her home, lost the protection of her friends, while the purchased wife, although she relinquished the authority which had formerly been exercised by women within the gens, and although she surrendered her person to her “lord,” did not forfeit her right to the protection of her own family in case of abuse.

Although in Arabia, under the form of marriage by sale or contract, the wife lost the right to the control of property belonging to her own gens, she did not, as in Rome, forfeit her claim to the protection of her kindred. If she received ill treatment within the home of her husband, her relatives, who were still her natural protectors, were bound to redress her wrongs. In Rome, on the contrary, under a system representing a later stage in the development of marriage, the wife was adopted into the stock of her husband whose rights over her person were supreme, at the same time that her kindred renounced the right to interfere in her behalf.

It is to the fact, that in early Arabia the wife never relinquished her hold upon her own relations, that we are to look for an explanation of the high social position of Arabian women. We are assured that it is “an old Arab sentiment, and not Moslem,” that women are entitled to the highest respect, and that as mothers of the tribe they “are its most sacred trust.”

According to Professor W.R. Smith in Mohammed’s time, in addition to the two forms of marriage mentioned, namely, that by capture and that by sale or contract, there existed also a more ancient form known as the sadica—a form of conjugal union which was a remnant of the matriarchal system. By observing the facts connected with this last-named institution, we shall be enabled to understand something of the position occupied by women during the earlier ages of human existence before wife-capture became prevalent.

Among certain tribes just prior to Islam, upon the event of marriage, the man presented the woman with a sum of money, which offering was simply an acknowledgment of the favour which she was conferring upon him. The husband went to live with the wife in her tent, and as the contract was for no specified length of time, he was at liberty to go whenever he tired of the conditions imposed on him by his wife and her relations. Any children, however, that were born as a result of this union belonged to the mother and became members of her hayy. If she desired him to go, she simply turned the tent around, “so that if the door had faced east it now faced west, and when the man saw this he knew that he was dismissed and did not enter.” In relation to these marriage customs Professor Smith says: “Here, therefore, we have the proof of a well-established custom of that kind of marriage which naturally goes with female kinship in the generation immediately before Islam.” Of this kind of marriage the same writer observes:

The mota marriage was a purely personal contract, founded on consent between a man and a woman, without any intervention on the part of the woman’s kin.... Now the fact that there was no contract with the woman’s kin—such as was necessary when the wife left her own people and came under the authority of her husband—and that, indeed, her kin might know nothing about it, can have only one explanation: in mota marriage the woman did not leave her home, her people gave up no rights which they had over her, and the children of the marriage did not belong to the husband. Mota marriage, in short, is simply the last remains of that type of marriage which corresponds to a law of mother-kinship, and Islam condemns it, and makes it “the sister of harlotry,” because it does not give the husband a legitimate offspring, i. e., an offspring that is reckoned to his own tribe and has rights of inheritance within it.125

Before the separation of the Hebrews and AramÆans, the wife remained within her own tent where she received her husband, the children of such unions taking her name and becoming her heirs. This kind of conjugal union is known to have been in existence in many portions of the world. In Ceylon it is designated as the beena marriage.

In ancient Arabia, not only did women control their own homes, but they owned flocks and herds, and were absolutely independent of male relations. As late as the fourteenth century of our era, although the women of certain Arabian tribes were willing to marry strangers, they never followed them to their homes.

Among the Bedouins it is a rare thing for a woman at marriage to leave her home and kindred. When a woman marries a man he settles among her kinsmen, and, as she presents him with a spear and a tent by way of dowry, it would seem that he is expected to join her relations and assist in the common defence. The marks of authority under gentile rule are the possession of a tent and a lance; yet we find that these are the objects which, under matriarchal usages, the wife tenders her husband when he enters her family; the first doubtless as a symbol of her protection, the second as indicating her authority and the services which he is expected to render her and her people. Until a late period in Rome it was the custom, during the solemnities of marriage, to pass a lance over the head of the wife in token of the power which the husband was about to gain over her.126

Under the two types of marriage—namely, mota and ba’al—the positions of women were so diametrically opposed that both could not continue, hence when under the pressure brought to bear upon them, women began to accept the ba’al form of marriage within their own hayy, mota unions were doomed. Of the more ancient form of marriage in Arabia, under which the woman chooses her mate, evidences of which are still extant in that country, and that by capture under which she becomes the slave of her lord, Professor Smith says:

There is then abundant evidence that the ancient Arabs practised marriage by capture. And we see that the type of marriage so constituted is altogether different from those unions of which the mota is a survival, and kinship through women the necessary accompaniment. In the one case the woman chooses and dismisses her husband at will, in the other she has lost the right to dispose of her person and so the right of divorce lies only with the husband; in the one case the woman receives the husband in her own tent, among her own people, in the other she is brought home to his tent and people; in the one case the children are brought up under the protection of the mother’s kin and are of her blood, in the other they remain with the father’s kindred and are of his blood.

All later Arabic marriages under the system of male kinship, whether constituted by capture or by contract, belong to the same type; in all cases, as we shall presently see in detail, the wife who follows her husband and bears children who are of his blood has lost the right freely to dispose of her person; the husband has authority over her and he alone has the right of divorce. Accordingly the husband, in this kind of marriage, is called not in Arabia only, but also among the Hebrews and AramÆans, the woman’s “lord” or “owner,” and wherever this name for husband is found we may be sure that marriage is of the second type, with male kinship, and the wife bound to the husband and following him to his home.127

Notwithstanding the humane enactments of Mohammed in the interest of women, their position steadily declined, such enactments having been overbalanced by the establishment of marriages of dominion, by the growing idea that sadica or mota marriages were not respectable, and that women could not depend upon their relations to take their part against their husbands. The history of religion shows that its growth has always followed the same course as have the ideas concerning the relative importance of the sexes. The god-idea and the fundamental doctrines of religion are always found to be in harmony with the established principles and ideas relative to sex domination and superiority. The religion of Mohammed was essentially masculine, all its principles being in strict accord with male supremacy; it is not, therefore, singular that when the weight of religion was added to the already growing tendency toward ba’al marriages that sadica marriages were doomed.

In Arabia, as elsewhere, the duties of the purchased wife were specific. The present which under the older form of marriage had been given to the bride as a love-token, or as an acknowledgment of the husband’s devotion to her, subsequently took the form of a purchase price, and was claimed by her father and brothers as a compensation for the loss sustained by the group through the removal of her offspring, whose services belonged to their mother’s people. In other words, the husband paid a price to the wife’s relations for the right to raise children by her which should belong exclusively to his kin—children which should she remain within her own home would belong to her kindred. The wife was therefore removed to the husband’s hayy, where, so far as the sexual relation was concerned, his rights over her were supreme.

We have observed that wherever the possessions of the gens continued to be the property of all its members, and were controlled by women, the man at marriage went to live with the woman; so soon, however, as men began to claim the soil, and property began to accumulate in their hands, the wife went to reside with her husband and his family as a dependent. Among various tribes, the form of marriage in use depends on the means of the contracting parties; if the man is able to pay to the woman’s father or brothers the full price charged for her, she goes to him as his slave—she is his property as much as is his dog or his gun; if, however, he is unable to pay the amount charged, he goes to live with her and her family, and becomes their slave.

In Japan, among the higher classes, upon the marriage of the eldest son, his bride accompanies him to his paternal home; but, on the other hand, when the eldest daughter marries, her husband takes up his abode with her parents. Eldest daughters always retain their own names, which their husbands are obliged to assume. As the wife of an eldest son becomes a member of her husband’s family, and the husband of an eldest daughter joins the family of his wife and assumes her name, the eldest son of a family may not marry the eldest daughter of another family. Regarding the younger members of the household, if the husband’s family provides the house, the wife takes his name, while if the bride’s family furnishes the home the bridegroom assumes the name of the wife.128

In the marriage customs of various nations, and in their ideas relative to the ownership and control of the home, may be observed something more than a hint of the principal causes underlying the decline of female power. Wherever women remain within their own homes, or with their own relations, they are mistresses of the situation; but when they follow the fathers of their children to their homes, they become dependents and wholly subject to the will and pleasure of their husbands.

It is plain, however, that under a system of marriage by sale or contract, although a woman might exercise little influence in the home of her husband, so long as her relations stood ready to defend her she would enjoy an immunity from abuse. The fact that a woman can count upon her relations for protection against her husband, shows plainly that in a certain stage of marriage by contract or sale, women are not the abject slaves which they have been represented to be. Although in the Fiji Islands a man may seize a woman and take her to his home, she does not remain with him unless agreeable to her inclinations.129

Amongst the Abipones, a man, on choosing a wife bargains with her parents about the price. But it frequently happens that the girl rescinds what has been agreed upon between the parents and the bridegroom, obstinately rejecting the very mention of marriage.130

Among the Charruas of South America, divorce is quite optional. In Sumatra, if a man carries off a virgin against her will, he incurs a heavy fine, or if a man carries off a woman under pretence of marriage, “he must lodge her immediately with some reputable family.”131

Although in the earlier ages of marriage by sale or contract, daughters were regarded as the property of their fathers, still that stage had not been reached at which women were accounted simply as sexual slaves. The Arabs practised marriage by sale or contract, yet they jealously watched over their women,—they “defended them with their lives and eagerly redeemed them when they were taken captive.” They thought it better to bury their daughters than to give them in marriage to unworthy husbands.132 According to the testimony of J.G. Wood, Kaffir women are very tenacious about their relations, probably, it is thought, for the reason that husbands are more respectful toward wives who have friends near them, than they are to those who have no relations at hand to take their part.133 Usually among the Kaffirs, according to Mr. Shooter, although a man pays a price to the parents of the woman whom he wishes to marry, the affair is by no means settled; on the contrary, he must undergo the closest scrutiny by her before she will consent to accept him. Bidding him stand, she surveys first one side of him, then the other, the relations in the meantime standing about awaiting her decision. Upon this subject Mr. Wood remarks: “This amusing ceremony has two meanings: the first that the contract of marriage is a voluntary act on both sides; and the second, that the intending bridegroom has as yet no authority over her.”134

Although under the system of marriage by sale or contract a woman has a voice in the selection of her husband, and although she can count on her kinsmen to protect her against abuse, still, practically, the contract brings the wife under the same condition as a captured wife; she follows her husband to his home, where, as a dependent, he exercises control over her person and her children. In Arabia prior to the time of the Prophet the wife could claim the protection of her kindred against her husband, yet the principle underlying marriage by contract and that by capture was the same, except that under the former the husband paid a price for the woman’s sexual subjection, while under the latter, not only in sexual matters, but in all others as well, he was her “lord” and master.

The Prophet says: “I charge you with your women, for they are with you as captives (awÂnÎ).” Professor Smith informs us that according to the lexicons awÂnÎ is actually used in the same sense as married women generally.135 For long ages after ba’al marriages had been established, so degrading was the office of wife that women of rank were considered too great to marry.

After relating some interesting accounts of certain practices in common with the custom of capture among the Brazilian tribes, Sir John Lubbock says:

This view also throws some light on the remarkable subordination of the wife to the husband, which is so characteristic of marriage, and so curiously inconsistent with all our avowed ideas; moreover it tends to explain those curious cases in which HetairÆ were held in greater estimation than those women who were, as we should consider, properly and respectably married to a single husband. The former were originally fellow-countrywomen and relations; the latter captives and slaves.136

With the development of the egoistic principle, or when selfishness and the love of gain became the rule of action, the protection of her kindred, which in an earlier age a woman could count on against her husband, was withdrawn, and daughters came to be looked upon as a legitimate source of gain to their families. On this subject C. Staniland Wake remarks:

Women by marriage became slaves, and it was the universal practice for a man who parted with his daughter to be a slave to require a valuable consideration for her. Moreover, as a man can purchase as many slaves as he likes, so he can take as many wives as he pleases.137

Thus arose polygamy.

In Rome, in the Latter Status of barbarism and the opening ages of civilization, woman, at marriage, forfeited all the privileges belonging to her as a member of her own family, while within that of her husband no compensatory advantages were granted her. Even a proprietary right in her own children was denied her, and from a legal point of view the wife became the daughter of her husband, and not unfrequently the ward of her own son.

After the power gained by man over woman during the latter ages of barbarism had reached its height, the family was based not on the marriage of a woman and a man, but upon the power of a man over a woman and her offspring, or upon the absolute authority of the male parent. In Rome a man’s wife and children were members of his family not because they were related to him but because they were subject to his control. At this stage in the development of the family, the father had the power of “uncontrolled corporal chastisement” and of life and death over his children.138 If it was his will to do so, he could even sell them. Indeed, a son’s freedom from paternal tyranny could be gained only by the actual sale of his person by his father. Relating to the control exercised by the father over his children, it is observed that he had the right “during their whole life to imprison, scourge, keep to rustic labour in chains, to sell or slay, even though they may be in the enjoyment of high state offices.”139 If a father granted freedom to his son, that son was no longer a member of his family.

That, with the exception of force, there is no quality in the male constitution capable of binding together the various individuals born of the same father, is apparent from the past history of the human race. Mr. Parkyns, referring to the character of the Abyssinians, observes that the worst point in the constitution of their society is the want of affection among relations, “even though they be children of one father.” He says that the animosities which keep the tribes in a constant state of warfare do not exist among the offspring of the same mother and father, but, as the children of polygamous fathers are more numerous than own brethren, fraternal affection is a rare thing.140 A comparison between the family group under archaic usages at a time when woman’s influence was in the ascendency, and the Roman family under the older Roman law, will serve to show the wide difference existing between the altruistic and egoistic principles as controlling agencies in the home and in society.

A significant fact in connection with this subject is here suggested, that, although for untold ages women were leaders of the gens, so long as their will was supreme, no human right was ever invaded, and no legitimate manly prerogative usurped; but, on the contrary, all were equal, and the principles of a pure democracy were firmly grounded. Liberty and justice had not at that time been throttled by the extreme selfishness inherent in human nature.

Although the processes by which women at a certain stage of human development lost their independence were gradual, they are by no means difficult to trace. The history of human marriage as gathered from the various tribes and races in the several stages of growth shows the primary idea of the office of wife to have been that of sexual slavery, and discloses the fact that it was the desire for foreign women who, shorn of their natural independence, could be controlled, which caused the overthrow of female supremacy.

As during the earlier ages of human existence the women of the group were absolutely independent of men for the means of support, they were able to so control their own movements. Only foreign women—captives stolen from their homes and friends—taken singly or in groups could be subjugated or brought into the wifely relation. Indeed, until the systematic practice of capturing women from hostile tribes for sexual purposes had been inaugurated, and the subsequent agency of repression—namely, ownership of the soil by males, had followed as a natural consequence, the usurpation by man of the natural rights and privileges of woman was impossible. The male members of the group had not at that time the power to sell their sisters and other female relations, but, on the contrary, defended them manfully against the assaults of hostile tribes. The foreign captor, the wife-catcher, was an enemy who was both feared and hated, and upon him were showered the maledictions of the entire group upon which the assault had been made. In retaliation for his offence, the men who had been bereft of a sister must in their turn commit a like depredation; thus, through the removal of women, the men of early groups gradually gained control of the common possessions at the same time that they were being supplied with foreign wives over whom they exercised absolute control. In process of time, when wealth began to accumulate in the hands of men, and when friendly relations began to be established between neighbouring tribes, foreign wives, without influence, were received in exchange for the free-born women of a man’s own clan; henceforward a resort to capture was unnecessary. Distant tribes, however, were still liable to attack. Wars were waged against the men, who were sometimes slain, sometimes taken prisoners, the invaders taking possession of the lands and compelling the women to accept the position of wife to them. Finally, negotiations were entered into whereby women were uniformly taken from their homes to become wives in alien groups. Later, the ba’al form of marriage came to prevail within the tribe. Professor Smith, quoting from the advice given by an Arab to his son, says: “Do not marry in your own hayy, for that leads to ugly family quarrels,” to which he adds,

there was a real inconsistency in the position of a woman who was at once her husband’s free kinswoman and his purchased wife. It was better to have a wife who had no claims of kin and no brethren near to take her part.141

Under earlier conditions of the human race women as bearers and protectors of the young were regarded as the natural land-owners; hence, they did not leave their own homes to follow the fathers of their children. The woman who left her own relations for the hayy of her husband could no longer exercise control over the possessions of her own gens, neither could she at a later period inherit property from her kindred for the reason that her interests were identical with those of her children and her children belonged to another clan. As property could not be transferred from the group in which it originated, she was disinherited. Through marriage women gave up their natural right to the soil, and consequently to independence. A knowledge of the facts connected with the origin of the institution of marriage, reveals the fact that women lost their influence and power, not because of their weakness, but because they were foreigners and dependents in the homes of their husbands.

The statement was made at the beginning of this chapter that the origin of marriage and the establishment of the family with man at its head involve the subject of economies.

When property began to accumulate in the hands of men, when women were forced to relinquish their right to the soil and thus to become dependent on men for their support, their slavery was inevitable. Later, when through the exigencies of the situation, woman went without protest to the home of her master, there to become a pensioner upon his bounty, her slavery was complete.

In process of time, women bound to foreign tribes by the children which they had borne, began to accommodate themselves to the situation, and even to claim an interest in the home of their adoption, whereupon friendly relations began to be established between the tribe of the mother and that of the father. Hence may be observed the fact that the maternal instinct was the agency by which the barriers between unrelated groups were gradually broken down, and by which a spirit of friendliness was established between hitherto hostile tribes. As the coherence of the group and the combination of the gentes to form the tribe had been possible only by means of this instinct, so the confederacy of tribes to form the nation was accomplished in the same manner.

The change from female supremacy to male dominion is among the most important of the evolutionary processes. From the facts underlying the development of human society, and especially those underlying the two diverging lines of sex-demarcation, it is evident that evolution does not proceed in an undeviating line toward progress. It is perceived, that seeming retrogressions always involve a gain—a gain which could have been accomplished in no other way.

Among the benefits derived from this change in the positions of the sexes was the development of altruism in man. When fathers began to take an interest in their own offspring, to care for them and to become responsible for their welfare, an important step had been taken toward the establishment of the principle of brotherhood among mankind. The evolutionary processes indicate a constant tendency toward the solidarity of the race, they may be said to represent a resistless force ever drawing the human family together in a closer bond of union and sympathy. Under female supremacy, combination, or association of interests, was confined to the gens. The extension of these interests which resulted from the new order was necessary before humanity could proceed on its onward course. These changes could not have taken place under the early system based on the supremacy of women.

The facts brought out by scientists going to prove that the progressive principle is confided to the female are accentuated by those connected with the origin and subsequent development of marriage and the family. That within the female lie the elements of progress is clearly indicated, not only in the position which the female occupied among the orders of life lower in the scale of being, and during the earlier ages of human history, but also by her career as the slave of man. Simply by means of the characters developed within the female constitution, without material resources, and deprived of recognized influence, women have been able to a certain extent, to dignify the family and the home.

It is more than likely that in the not distant future, even the institution of marriage, through which women have been degraded, will become so purified and elevated that its results, instead of being a menace to higher conditions will constitute a continuous source of progress and a promise of still higher achievement. Before this may be accomplished, mothers must be absolutely free and wholly independent of the opposite sex for the means of support. Marriage must be a co partnership in which neither sex has the right to control the other.

Although our present system of marriage took its rise in the practice of forcing women into the marital relation, it must be borne in mind that it was not inaugurated for the purpose of establishing monogamy. On the contrary, the privileges of the captor remained the same within his tribe as before the foreign woman was stolen. The theft was committed for no other purpose than to augment the hitherto restricted range of sexual liberties, and to give to the father absolute dominion over the individuals born in his house.

The system of marriage in vogue at the present time has never restricted men to the possession of a single woman. Monogamy, as established under male supremacy, means one husband for one woman, while a man may have as many women as he is able or willing to support. As women are still dependent upon men for the necessities of life, the supply of the former is regulated by the demands of the latter.

Marriage still retains its original meaning and significance, namely, the ownership and control of women. With the exception of physical force all the ceremonies, customs, ideas, and usages of primitive marriage have been preserved. When a woman marries she is “given” to her husband by her father or some other male relative. She promises to obey her master and accepts a ring as a badge of her dependence upon him. She relinquishes her own name and family, accepting as her own the name and family of her husband. She follows him to his home where, as she is supported by his bounty, she is subject to his will and pleasure. Until women are economically free they will remain sexual slaves.

Of all the forms of human slavery which have ever been devised there has probably never been one so degrading as is that which has been practiced within the marital relation, nor one in which the extrication of the enslaved has been a matter of such utter hopelessness. The present struggle of women for freedom shows how deeply rooted is the instinct which demands their subjection.

The descent of woman has encompassed the lowest depths of human degradation, but the end of the long and weary road which she has traversed is nearly reached. Already the evolutionary processes which are to release her from bondage are in operation.

From available facts relative to the development of early mankind, it is certain that it must have required centuries upon centuries of time to subjugate women and bring them into harmonious relations with men while occupying a position of sexual slavery; first, physical force, second, dependence, and third the substitution of masculine opinions for the instincts and ideas which are peculiar to the female constitution. This accomplished the processes were begun which were to rivet the chains by which they were bound and by means of which women themselves in their weakened condition were to acquiesce in their own degradation. Religion was the means employed. Apollo, according to Greek mythology, issued an edict declaring that man is superior to woman and must rule, and Athene herself finally accepted the edict. Through religion, women came to regard themselves simply as appendages to men, as tools or instruments for their pleasure and gratification, and as possessing no inherent right either to liberty or happiness.

Religion has its root in sex. As we have already seen the creative force has ever been regarded as masculine or feminine according to the relative importance of the two sexes in human society and in the reproductive processes. So long as woman’s influence and power were in the ascendency the mother was the only recognized parent. She was the creator of offspring. Later, the abstract idea of female reproductive power was manifested in the female deities. It required thousands upon thousands of years to subdue women. It also required millenniums to dethrone the female deities.

When, with the rise of male power, man began to assume the rÔle of parent, he assumed also all the functions which had formerly belonged to woman. As has been noted in another portion of this work he even went to bed when a child was born. With this change in the physical relations of the sexes, the creative principle soon began to assume a masculine aspect. Male deities began to appear associated with the goddesses. In process of time, as male power increased, the god-idea became wholly masculine. The Jewish god is a personified idea of male power and reproductive energy. This subject will be referred to later in these pages.

Thus the ancient plan of government which was the outgrowth of the free maternal instinct, and which had guided humanity on its course for thousands of years, finally succumbed to a system based on physical force. When we remember the conditions surrounding early society we may well believe that civilization was gained, not because of the fact that male power succeeded in gaining the ascendency over female influence, but in spite of it.

Given a combination of circumstances involving the supremacy of the lower instincts in mankind, and the individual ownership of land, the subjection of women, monarchy, and slavery, with all their attendant evils, namely, poverty, disease, crime, and misery were sure to follow.

When we consider the fundamental bias of the two diverging lines of sexual demarcation, it is not perhaps singular that the strong sexual nature which has prompted males to vigorous physical action should for a time have gained the ascendency over the higher qualities peculiar to females; yet the material progress achieved under the inspiration and direction of agencies like this will not, in a more enlightened stage of existence, be regarded as embodying the results of the best efforts of human activity, or as representing the highest capabilities of the race.

Probably no one will deny that the accumulation of wealth by individuals, and the subsequent change in the relative positions of the sexes, were necessary steps toward the establishment of society on a political or territorial basis, or toward the breaking up of kindred groups and the acknowledgment of the idea of the unity of the entire human family. Neither will the proposition be contradicted that the evils attending these changes namely, monarchy, slavery, and the inordinate love of gain have been unavoidable adjuncts to the development of the race; yet, who will doubt that under higher conditions, as the animal recedes in the distance, these blots on the records of human history will be regarded not as regular steps in the advancement of mankind, but as by-paths which, owing to the peculiar bias which had been given to the male organism among the lower forms of life, the human race has been obliged to take in order to reach civilization?

CHAPTER V
THE MOTHER-RIGHT

Among the most conspicuous of the writers who have dealt with the subject of primitive society are Herr Bachofen, Mr. J.F. McLennan, Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. L.H. Morgan. In 1861, the first-named of these writers, a Swiss jurist, published an extensive work on the early condition of society, entitled Das Mutter-recht (The Motherright), in which was first given to the world the fact that prior to the establishment of a system of kinship through males, there everywhere existed a system based on female supremacy, under which descent was reckoned through women.

Bachofen was first led to a belief in a former state of society in which women were the recognized leaders through the evidence which everywhere underlies the traditions and mythologies of extant nations. Upon investigation he found indisputable evidence going to prove that every family of the human race had undergone the same processes of development or growth, and that among all peoples female influence was once supreme.

According to Bachofen’s theory, as there were at this early stage of human existence no “laws” regulating the intercourse between the sexes, human beings lived in a state of lawlessness, or hetairism. Recognizing the difference in the reproductive instinct as manifested in the two sexes, he says that becoming disgusted with their manner of living women rebelled, and rising in arms, conquered their male persecutors by sheer superiority in military skill; and that after they had overthrown the degrading practices of communal or lawless marriage, they established monogamy in its stead, under which system woman became the recognized head of the family.

Children, although they had hitherto succeeded to the father’s name, were now called after the mother, and all rights of inheritance were thereafter established in the female line. Not only did women take upon themselves the exercise of domestic authority and control, but, acting under a strong religious impulse, they seized the reins of popular government and completed their title to absolute dominion by wielding the political sceptre as well, thus declaring themselves unconditional masters of the situation.

At this juncture in human affairs, the belief began to be entertained that motherhood was divine while the paternal office was regarded only in the light of a human relation. Thus, through religion, women were raised from a state of hetairism, or sexual slavery, to a position of independence and self-respect. But that which was gained through a supernatural impulse they were destined subsequently to lose through the same source; for, when in Greece, the doctrine was promulgated that the spirit of the child is derived from its father, paternity at once assumed a divine character, and, as under the new order, the functions of the mother were only to clothe the spirit, or simply to act as “nurse” to the heaven-born production of the father, women lost their supremacy, and under the new rÉgime, maternity and womanhood again trailed in the dust.

According to Bachofen, however, the cause of mothers did not at once cease to be the subject of contention and conflict, but ever and anon fresh battles and renewed struggles proclaimed the discontent and uneasiness of women and heralded the fact that the contest for supremacy had not yet ended. But, in process of time, as resistance proved ineffectual, mothers themselves gradually succumbed to the new idea of the divine character of the father, and, without further murmuring or complaint, accepted gracefully the position of nurse to his children.

The father now became the recognized head of the family, and men at once seized the reins of government. Descent was henceforth traced in the male line, and children took the father’s instead of the mother’s name; in fact all relationships to which rights of succession were attached were thereafter traced through fathers only. The complete and final triumph of males having been established by the all-powerful authority of Roman jurisprudence, the conflict between the sexes was ended forever. Thus, according to Bachofen, was the supremacy of women gained and lost.

Through a profound study of the traditions, legends, symbols, and mythologies of antiquity, this writer was enabled to discover the fact that at an earlier age in human history women were the recognized leaders of mankind; that their influence and authority were supreme over both the family and the community, and that all relationships to which rights of succession were attached were traced through them. In attempting to account for this early period of gynecocracy (the existence of which to Bachofen’s mind no doubt presented a singular and intricate problem) it first became necessary to set forth a theory concerning a former condition of society out of which such a state could have been evolved. But as at the time Das Mutter-recht made its appearance, the theory of the development of the human species from pre-existing orders had not been adopted by scientists, and as many of the various means at present employed for obtaining a knowledge of primitive races had not been brought into requisition, even the vast learning of Bachofen did not suffice to furnish a satisfactory solution of the problem.

We have seen that in addition to the discovery that at an early age in human experience female influence was supreme, he had arrived at the conclusion that the natural instincts of women differ from those of men; yet, notwithstanding this, so accustomed had he become to the predominance of the masculine instincts in every branch of human activity as to be unable to conceive of a state of society in which the characters belonging to females could have controlled the sexual relations. Evidently he was unable to connect these two facts, or to perceive that that tendency or quality required for the protection of the germ and the species, and which so early characterized the female sex, had constituted the most primitive influence by which the human race had been governed. As in the earliest ages of human existence no arbitrary laws regulating marriage and the relations of the sexes had been in operation, he could discern no condition under which society could have existed other than that of “lawlessness” or “hetairism”—a condition under which women were slaves, and men ruled supreme.

As Herr Bachofen was doubtless unaware of the fact that the human animal is a descendant from creatures lower in the scale of life, the idea of connecting his history with theirs had probably by him never been thought of; therefore, judging primitive society, not by the instincts and the natural laws governing them which mankind had inherited from their progenitors, but, on the contrary, measuring them by the standards of later ages when the grosser or disruptive elements had gained dominion over the finer or constructive qualities in human nature, he was unable to discern any way in which the conditions of female supremacy everywhere indicated in the traditions and mythologies of antiquity could have originated, except in an uprising of women, and a resort to arms for the protection of their womanly dignity.

In referring to the military exploits of the women of Lycia, and, in fact, of various portions of Africa and Asia, at a comparatively late stage in human history, Bachofen says that the importance of Amazonianism as opposed to Hetairism for the elevation of the feminine sex, and through them of mankind, cannot be doubted.

There seems to be considerable evidence going to prove that there have been times in the past history of the race in which women were brave in war and valiant in defending their rights. Indeed, the accounts given of the struggles of the Amazons in maintaining their independence against surrounding nations—notably, the Greeks—are tolerably well authenticated.142

Although the fact seems to be well substantiated that in certain portions of the earth, and at various periods in the history of the race, women have maintained their independence and protected their interests by force of arms, it seems quite as certain that actual warfare carried on by them has been confined to peoples among which male supremacy had but recently been gained, and among which a resort to arms represented the last act of desperation to which they were driven to maintain their dignity and honour. We have reason to believe, however, that even these cases have been exceptional; at least, from the facts at hand, we have no reason for thinking that at any stage in the history of women’s career, armed resistance to masculine authority has been uniform or protracted among them.

According to scientists, among the lower orders of life, males are considerably in the excess of females, and among less developed races men are more numerous than women. It has been shown in a former portion of this work that the advancement of civilization is characterized by a corresponding increase in the number of women among the adult population; hence their evident lack of numbers among primitive peoples, to say nothing of their probable aversion to war and bloodshed, would at once preclude the idea that their dominion was achieved through armed resistance to a foe so superior in numbers and in fighting qualities. By a natural law governing propagation— a law which determines the numerical proportion of the sexes, and which creates an excess in the number of that sex best suited to its environment, primitive women, had they relied on physical force, would have had little chance to maintain their independence.

In a former portion of this work it has been observed that it was neither to lack of numbers nor to their want of physical force that women were divested of their power; that it was not through their weakness, but through the peculiar course which the development or growth of males had taken, that under certain conditions women became enslaved.

Not merely from the facts laid down by naturalists regarding the peculiar development of the male, but from later researches into the conditions and causes which have influenced progress, it is plain that no restrictions on the range of sexual liberties could have originated in males. Hence the demand for a more refined state of society must have begun with females. This fact seems to have been perceived by Bachofen, but, as according to his reasoning, at an early period of human existence, women were slaves, exercising none of the powers necessary to personal control, it is difficult to conceive of any manner in which it was possible for them to rise to the social position and moral dignity ascribed to them in Das Mutter-recht.

According to the theory set forth by this writer, however, religion was the cause of the important change which at this time took place in the positions of the sexes. Although, according to him, the religion which prevailed during the ages of “lawlessness” was of a low “telluric chthonic” type, it was nevertheless the cause, or at least one of the causes which led to the abandonment of promiscuity and the establishment of the monogamic family. It will doubtless be remembered, however, that this age of lawlessness or hetairism which Bachofen has described, represents a very early stage of human existence, in which, according to his reasoning, the baser instincts ruled supreme; nevertheless, within it, he would have us believe that a religious system had been evolved capable of lifting women from a state of degradation to which they had been consigned by nature, or at least to which they had always been committed, to a position of influence and womanly dignity in which they were able to assume supreme control over the forces by which they had been enslaved. With sexual desire as the controlling influence in human affairs, and with women in bondage to this power, it is difficult to conceive of any manner in which such a religion could have arisen.

As all religious systems are believed to represent growths, and to indicate a result of the degree of progress attained, it is evident that had a religion appeared at this early age which was capable of elevating women from a condition of degradation, as indicated by the early state described by Bachofen it could not have been the result of natural development, but, on the contrary, must have proceeded directly from a divine source; in which event it would doubtless have remained upon the earth still further to aid development and bless the race. Such, however, was not the outcome of this remarkable but premature religion; for it is asserted by this writer that what women gained by religion they afterward lost through the same source—that in Greece, the loss first came through the oracle of Apollo, which declared the father to be the real parent of the child.

Bachofen assures us, also, that through the Bacchanalian excesses which followed the dominion of males in Greece, hetairism was again restored, and through this means gynecocracy reappeared. From this it would seem that although under the earliest stage of hetairism women were without power and wholly under the control of men, with the return, at a later age, of a like state of society, the basis was at once laid for female supremacy.

It is evident that Herr Bachofen’s confusion arises from a misconception of the early importance of women. Although perhaps more than any other writer upon this subject he has been able to recognize the true bias of the female constitution, yet, as he has mistaken the relative positions of women and men at the outset of the human career, and as he has been unable to perceive the previously developed influences which governed these relations, he has failed to furnish a satisfactory solution of the problem of the early supremacy of women, which from the evidence adduced, not only by the traditions and mythologies of past ages, but by later developments in ethnology, may not be doubted.

Prior to the appearance of mankind on the earth, had there been developed within the female no higher element than that which characterized the male, and had she appeared on the scene of human action as the willing and natural tool of her less-developed male mate, it is plain that she would have been unable to elevate herself to the position of dignity which Bachofen assigns her, and which, until a comparatively recent period in the human career, she had occupied.

As among the orders of creation below mankind the structural organism of the male has been materially changed through his efforts to please the female and secure her favours, it is evident that under earlier and more natural conditions of human life, the appetites developed within him were still largely controlled by her will. From logical conclusions to be drawn from the hypotheses of naturalists, it is not likely that at the outset of human life those restrictions on the nature of the male imposed by the female throughout the animal kingdom were suddenly withdrawn, or that the destructive elements which all along the line of progress had been in abeyance to the higher powers developed in organized matter, were immediately and without good cause put in absolute command over the constructive forces of life.

With a better knowledge of the past history of mankind, comes the assurance that such was not the case, but, on the contrary, that for thousands of years women were the ruling spirits in human society; that the cohesive quality—sympathy, which is the result of the maternal instinct, and which conserves the highest interests of offspring, was the underlying principle which governed human groups—in fact, that it was the principle which made organization possible and progress attainable.

CHAPTER VI
THEORIES TO EXPLAIN WIFE-CAPTURE

The prevalence of wife-capture and the extent to which the symbol of force in marriage ceremonies appears among tribes and races in the various stages of development, have given rise to numerous speculations and theories relative to the origin of these “singular phenomena.” Notable among the works dealing with this subject are Primitive Marriage, by Mr. J.F. McLennan, and the Origin of Civilization, by Sir John Lubbock, both of which works followed closely the publication of Das Mutter-recht by Herr Bachofen.

As at the time these works were published the fact of man’s descent from the lower orders of life had not been established, and as nothing was then known of the origin and development of organized society it is not remarkable that theories concerning the early relations of the sexes should prove worthless except perhaps to show the extent to which established prejudices may warp the judgment and dwarf the intellectual faculties even of those who are honestly seeking after truth.

The avowed object of Mr. McLennan’s volume was to trace the origin of wife-capture which is found to exist either as a legal symbol in marriage ceremonies, or as a stern reality among peoples which have not yet reached civilized conditions. This writer declares: “In the whole range of legal symbolism there is no symbol more remarkable than that of capture in marriage ceremonies.”

After setting forth numerous examples to prove the prevalence of wife-capture among uncivilized tribes and races, and after denouncing as absurd the theories relative to the symbol of force entering into the marriage ceremonies in Sparta and in Rome, Mr. McLennan observes:

The question now arises, what is the meaning and what the origin of a ceremony so widely spread that already on the threshold of our inquiry the reader must be prepared to find it connected with some universal tendency of mankind?

Mr. McLennan’s answer to his own query is as follows:

We believe the restriction on marriage to be connected with the practice in early times of female infanticide which rendering women scarce led at once to polyandry within the tribe and the capture of women from without.

In another portion of this work it has been shown that although marriage was restricted within the gens, the earliest form of organized society, this restriction did not extend to the tribe. Marriage was forbidden among closely related groups. The gentes coalesced to form the tribe. Although a man might not marry within his own gens, he was not forbidden to marry within the tribe.

In Mr. Morgan’s work on Primitive Society, published in 1871, are to be found the systems of consanguinity and affinity of 139 tribes and races representing, numerically, four-fifths of the entire human family. These systems show conclusively that the restrictions on marriage observed in the gens did not extend to the tribe. The author of Primitive Marriage has evidently mistaken a rule of the gens for a binding tribal decree.

Mr. McLennan’s theory relative to female infanticide is found to be equally fallacious. Noting the numerical difference in the two sexes among lower races, he says that as subsistence was scarce, and as war was the natural and constant condition of primitive groups, only those of their members would be spared who could contribute to the defence of the tribe, or who would be able to aid in the supply of subsistence. Males were possessed of strength, they were by organization and inclination adapted to war and the chase, and could therefore be depended upon to assist in defending the tribe against the assaults of its enemies and in securing the necessary food for its requirements. On the other hand, women being worthless in war and in the chase were regarded as useless appendages, and as they constituted a source of weakness to the tribe, large numbers of them were destroyed at birth. Through this practice the balance of the sexes was greatly disturbed, and wives could be obtained only by means of stealth or a resort to force. Thus in process of time, the stealing of women became a legitimate practice, and each warrior depended on his skill in this particular direction to provide himself with a wife.

Finally the children of these alien women began to intermarry and thus the necessity for wife-capture no longer existed, and the practice of stealing women for wives was superseded by a system through which wives from other tribes were habitually obtained either by gift or sale. Thereafter the symbol of wife-capture was retained in marriage ceremonies.

With a better understanding of peoples in a less developed state of society, it is found that infanticide has been less prevalent among them than was formerly supposed; that when through scarcity of food it has been practised it has not been confined to females, neither has it been carried on by tribes in the lowest stages of barbarism.

Regarding this custom in Arabia, Prof. W. R. Smith says that our authorities “seem to represent the practice of infanticide as having taken a new development not very long before the time of Mohammed.” This writer declares that the chief motive for infanticide was “scarcity of food which must always have been felt in the desert.”

Much has been written in the attempt to explain the practice of infanticide which to some extent seems to have prevailed during a certain stage of human development; but with the exception of those cases in which children of both sexes were slain because of scarcity of food, the one cause, namely, the dread of capture, is sufficient to explain this unnatural practice.

Although to a considerable extent, men had come to depend on foreign tribes for their wives, they nevertheless found little pleasure in furnishing their quota of women in return, and as mothers doubtless preferred the death of their female children to the degradation and suffering which was inevitable in case of capture, female infanticide no doubt seemed the wisest and in fact the only expedient.

The blood-tie of ancient society which bound together all those born of the women of the group irrespective of their fathers, must have emphasized the influence of mothers in the matter of infanticide. It is not reasonable to suppose that the law of sympathy which had united the members of a clan by a bond stronger than that which binds together the members of a modern family was reversed without some deeper cause than has thus far been assigned for it. It is indeed difficult to believe, in opposition to all the facts before us, that a practice which involved the destruction of the female members of the group would have gained the sanction of the tribe to such an extent that it would have become an established rule among them.

Regarding the destruction of female infants among early races, Mr. Darwin remarks:

They would not at that period have lost one of the strongest of all instincts common to all lower animals, namely the love of their young offspring, and consequently they would not have practised female infanticide.143

Another reason why female infanticide could not have prevailed to any considerable extent is seen in the fact that any diminution in the number of females, would have involved a scarcity of warriors, thus weakening their means of defence. From available facts it is quite evident that the practice of female infanticide throws no light on wife-capture.

Mr. McLennan declares that women among rude tribes are usually depraved and inured to scenes of depravity from their earliest infancy; hence when property began to amass in the hands of men, in order to assure paternity, it became necessary, that women be brought under subjection.

As the female, when free, is unwilling to pair with individuals for whom she feels no affection, and as under earlier conditions of human society women chose their mates, and so long as they remained together were true to them, it is reasonable to suppose that paternity was known, or at least that it might have been readily determined.

Mr. Morgan informs us that the “Turanian, GanowÁnian, and Malayan systems of consanguinity show conclusively that kinship through males was recognized as constantly as kinship through females,” that a man had brothers and sisters, grandfathers and grandmothers traced through males as well as through females. Although under gentile institutions descent and all rights of succession were traced through mothers, kinship through fathers was easily ascertained.

Hence it is plain that Mr. McLennan’s assumption that women were enslaved in order to assure paternity, that they became subject to the dominion and control of men so that fathers might not be compelled to support children not their own, is not supported by the evidence at hand.

That it was through capture, the forcible carrying away of women at first singly and later in groups to foreign tribes, in which as aliens and dependents they were shorn of their right to the soil, that males were first enabled to arrogate to themselves the individual right to property is a fact which has been overlooked by Mr. McLennan.

From the facts at hand relative to the earliest social regulation of mankind, that into classes on the basis of sex, it is evident that it was inaugurated for no other purpose than the restriction of the marital relation—a restriction to prevent the pairing of near relations. Yet Mr. McLennan would have us believe that “the law compelling marriage outside the recognized limit of near relationship originated in no innate or primary feeling against marriage with kinsfolk.”

The repugnance of females among the lower orders of life to pairing with those individuals which were distasteful to them, or for which they felt no genuine affection, has already been referred to in these pages. At the earliest dawn of human life there probably existed within woman a naturally acquired aversion to pairing with near relations, yet doubtless many ages elapsed before an idea of kinship sufficiently definite to be incorporated into an arbitrary law for the government of the group was formulated; but in due course of time, with the further development of the higher characters, the idea of relationship began to take shape, whereupon was inaugurated a movement which doubtless represents one of the most important steps ever taken toward human advancement.

As the female among all the orders of life, when free, is unwilling to pair with individuals for which she feels no affection, and as the sex-instinct has ever been restricted or held in abeyance by her, and as according to the savants, it was through the efforts of women that from time to time during the earlier ages of human existence the range of conjugal rights was abridged, it is reasonable to suppose that it was woman who first objected to the pairing with near relations.

The statement of Mr. McLennan that the women of primitive races were depraved, that they were inured to scenes of depravity from their earliest infancy is not borne out by facts. It has been shown in another portion of this work that the most trustworthy writers, those who have personally investigated tribes and races in the various stages of development, agree that chastity was an unvarying rule among them, that before they were corrupted by civilization, a condition of morals existed nowhere to be found among the so-called higher races.

After referring to a state of advanced social existence in which every person knowing what is right would feel an irresistible impulse toward right-living, Mr. Wallace remarks that among peoples low in the scale of development “we find some approaches to such a perfect social state.” He observes: “It is not too much to say that the mass of our population have not at all advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in many cases sunk below it.”

Most of the reports which come to us regarding the immorality of lower races are brought by missionaries, who, although unacquainted with the language, customs, and habits of thought of the peoples whose countries they visit, nevertheless feel called upon to furnish lengthy reports of those benighted races which are “utterly destitute of Christian training.”

As the restrictions on marriage among early peoples were limited to closely related groups, it is evident that the capture of wives was not carried on because of any established law of exogamy, neither was it practised because of the scarcity of women resulting from female infanticide nor because of a desire for recognized paternity. Wife-capture arose from a demand for foreign women, aliens, who, torn from their homes and deprived of the protection of their own kinsfolk, had no alternative but sexual slavery. These women were much more desirable than the free-born women of a man’s own tribe.

After having created a false and wholly unwarrantable hypothesis, an hypothesis in which exogamy and endogamy, two principles which as applied to tribes never existed, play a conspicuous part, Mr. McLennan has thrust nearly all the facts which he has observed relative to primitive society into false positions and forced them to do duty in bolstering up his thoroughly imaginative theory to account for the origin of wife-capture. It is perhaps needless to say that the whole subject, so far as his contribution is concerned, is as much a mystery as before he attempted a solution of the problem.

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Sir John Lubbock, like J.F. McLennan, assumes that the earliest organization of society was that of the tribe, and that a man was first regarded as belonging only to a group. Subsequently, as the maternal bond is stronger than that which unites a father to his offspring, kinship with his mother and her relations was established. In course of time he was accounted as a descendant of his father only, and lastly he became equally related to both parents.

Numerous illustrations are cited by this writer, going to show that among certain peoples descent is still reckoned in the female line, and that all the rights of succession, both as regards property and tribal honours, are traced through women.

In his Origin of Civilization the fact is noted that in Guinea, when a wealthy man dies, his property passes by inheritance, not to his sons, but to the children of his sister. He quotes also from Pinkerton’s Voyages to show that the town of Loango is governed by four chiefs who are sons of the king’s sisters, and from Caillie who observes that in Central Africa the sovereignty remains always in the same family, but that the son never succeeds to his father’s position. These and numerous other instances, similar in character, are cited from various parts of the world, going to prove that a system of descent and inheritance through women was once general throughout the races of mankind.

With Herr Bachofen and Mr. McLennan, Sir John Lubbock is of the opinion that the earliest conjugal unions of the human race were communal. Communal marriage was founded on the supremacy of males, or, was based on the undisputed right of men to the control of women. According to this writer, communal marriage was succeeded by individual marriage through capture.

Although Lubbock coincides with McLennan in the belief that under certain circumstances infanticide has been practised by the lower races, he does not agree with him as to the extent to which it has prevailed among them; neither is he of the opinion that it was confined to the female sex. On the contrary, he cites trustworthy authority to prove that boys were as frequently disposed of as were girls.

Although with McLennan, Lubbock recognizes the prevalence of wife-capture and the principle of exogamy, yet, according to the theory of the former, marriage by capture arose from exogamy, while, according to the latter, exogamy arose from marriage by capture.

Lubbock accounts for wife-capture by the following theory: As under the communal system, women of the tribe were the “common property” of the men of the group, no individual male among them would have attempted to appropriate one of these women to himself, for the reason that such appropriation would have been regarded as an infringement on the rights of the remaining males in the community. A warrior, however, upon capturing a woman from a hostile people, might claim her as his rightful possession, and hold her as against all the other members of the tribe. Since the women of the group were so emphatically the common property of the men, the exclusive right to one of them in progressive tribes which had reached a state of friendliness would involve a symbol of capture to make valid such a claim. This symbol, according to Lubbock, has no reference to those from whom the woman has been stolen, but is intended to bar the rights of other members of the tribe into which she is brought. He thinks that “the exclusive possession of a wife could only be legally acquired by a temporary recognition of the pre-existing communal rights,” and cites the account given by Herodotus of the custom existing in Babylonia, where every woman once during her lifetime must present herself at the temple, there to accept the proposals of the first man who requests her to follow him.

Although Lubbock declares that the symbol of violence in marriage ceremonies “can only be explained by the hypothesis that the capture of wives was once a stern reality,” he claims not to believe that the early conditions under which men were compelled to capture their wives by violence, or do without them, were in any degree the result of feminine will in the matter.

In referring to the fallacious theory of Mr. McLennan, that the capture of women for wives arose from the practice of female infanticide, which, by producing a scarcity of women, created a necessity for marriage without the limits of the tribe, Sir John Lubbock, although seemingly unable to recognize the actual force which was in operation to prevent the “appropriation” of women by men, has nevertheless shown himself able to perceive the reason why foreign women were captured, and what the tendency in males was which demanded their presence.

After referring to the fact that no male could appropriate to himself a female belonging to the tribe, he says:

Women taken in war were, on the contrary, in a different position. The tribe, as a tribe, had no right to them, and men surely would reserve to themselves exclusively their own prizes. These captives then would naturally become wives in our own sense of the term.

Foreign women would become dependents, their captors having the undisputed right to the control of their persons.

At the outset, Sir John Lubbock finds himself confronted with the fact that a system of reckoning descent through women once prevailed over the habitable globe. According to his own reasoning, this system presupposes a condition of society under which property rights and all rights of succession were traced through women, still we find him offering the following belief concerning the matter. “I believe, however, that communities in which women have exercised the supreme power are rare and exceptional, if, indeed, they ever existed at all.”

Were we not already acquainted with the prejudices of most of the writers who have thus far dealt with this subject, in view of the facts everywhere represented going to prove that a system of gynecocracy once prevailed over the entire earth, this “belief” of Mr. Lubbock would be truly remarkable, especially when we learn the reason given by him for his conclusion. He says:

We do not find in history, as a matter of fact, that women do assert their rights, and savage women would, I think, be peculiarly unlikely to uphold their dignity in the manner supposed.144

It is quite true that it is not observed “in history” that women assert their rights. It has been shown, however, that prior to the historic age, through capture and the individual ownership of land, women had become dependent upon men and wholly subject to their control. After thousands of years of subjection to male influence, the movements of women, who are still dependent upon men, furnish little satisfactory information regarding the character of free women at a time before they had succumbed to the exigencies of brute force, and the unbridled appetites of their male masters. Slaves seldom assert their rights, or, if they do, of what avail is it?

Were we in possession of no other facts in support of the theory of an early age of female supremacy than that all relationships to which rights of succession were attached were formerly traced through women, the evidence in its favour would be sufficient to prove it true, but this manner of reckoning descent represents only one of the many indications of such an age which Lubbock himself has been constrained to record; yet, because—during the historic age—an age throughout which the masculine element has ruled supreme, women have not asserted their rights, this writer feels inclined to ignore all the evidence bearing upon the subject, at the same time declaring that women could not have “upheld their dignity in the manner supposed”; that the female, on gaining human conditions, could not have exercised the instincts inherited by her from her dumb progenitors.

If the females among insects, birds, and many species of mammals are able to control the relations between themselves and their male mates, why should it not be inferred that the female of the human species would still be able to uphold the natural dignity of the female sex?

As an argument in support of his theory that the influence of women was never supreme, Sir John Lubbock alludes to the position of Australian women as being one of “complete subjection,” and as the native Australians represent perhaps the lowest existing stage of human society, he doubtless thinks his argument unassailable. However, that the position of Australian women cannot be taken as a reliable guide in estimating primitive womanhood is shown by the writer’s own reasoning when he says:

It must not be assumed, however, that the condition of primitive man is correctly represented by even the lowest of existing races. The very fact that the latter have remained stationary, that their manners, habits, and mode of life have continued almost unaltered for generations, has created a strict, and often complicated, system of customs, from which the former was necessarily free, but which has in some cases gradually acquired even more than the force of law.145

Yet we find him comparing primitive women with this race which for thousands upon thousands of years, because of its environment, or through some cause which is not understood, has been unable to advance.

While this writer perceives clearly that foreign women were much more desirable for wives than those belonging to a man’s own tribe, he has not been able to discover the reason why this was so, but, continuing to babble about the “rights” of the men of the group, overlooks the fact that native-born women were free, and as only those women who had first been torn from their friends and shorn of their independence could at this stage of human existence be forced into the position of wife, it became necessary to secure them by violence from surrounding tribes. He is not blind to the fact that it was a desire to extend the limit of conjugal liberties on the part of males which prompted wife-capture; yet he would have us believe that although women were absolutely independent of men, and although they were the recognized heads of families, and the source whence originated all the privileges of the gens, it was in no degree owing to their influence that the conjugal liberties of males were restricted within the tribe, but, on the contrary, that this restriction was enforced out of regard for the “proprietary rights” of the men of the group. He says: “We must remember that under the communal system the women of the tribe were all common property. No one could appropriate one of them to himself without infringing on the general rights of the tribe.”

As well might we say of the female bird for whose favours the male fights until overcome by exhaustion and loss of blood, that she belongs to him, or that he may appropriate her, as to say that the men of early groups could “appropriate” women. From all the facts relative to the condition of early society, it is plain that if either sex could with propriety be designated as property it must have been the male. It is evident that women were stolen from distant tribes for the express purpose of sexual slavery, a position to which free, native-born women could not be dragged; therefore, when Lubbock assures us that these foreign women naturally “became wives in our own sense of the term,” we may be sure that he is neither unmindful of the origin of our present social system, nor of the true significance attached to the position of wife. Indeed, he informs us that the “origin of marriage was independent of all sacred and social conditions,” and proves the same by actually producing the evidence. He has no hesitancy in declaring that marriage is a masculine institution, established in the interest (or supposed interest) of males; that it was “founded not on the rights of the woman, but of the man,” and that there was not on the woman’s part even the semblance of consent. In fact he declares that he regards it as an illustration of the good old plan that “he should take who has the power, and he should keep who can.” He says also that it had nothing to do with mutual affection or sympathy, that it was invalidated by no appearance of consent, and that it was symbolized not by any demonstration of warm affection on the one side and tender devotion on the other, but by brutal violence and unwilling submission. To prove that the connection between force and marriage is deeply rooted, Sir John Lubbock, like Mr. McLennan, has furnished numerous examples of peoples among whom marriage by actual capture still prevails, as well as many among which the system has passed into a mere symbol. He is quite certain that the complete subjection of the woman in marriage furnishes an explanation to those examples in barbarous life in which women are looked upon as being too great to marry—and cites the case of Sebituane, chief of the Bechuanas, who told his daughter, MamochisÁne, that all the men were at her disposal—“she might take any one, but ought to keep none.”

This instance, together with numberless others which might be cited, proves that long after the practice of appropriating solitary women for sexual purposes had become general, the position of wife was considered too degrading to be occupied by women of rank.

Attention has been called to Lubbock’s idea concerning the “rights” of the males of the group. We have seen that it is his opinion that the exclusive possession of a woman could only be legally acquired by a temporary recognition of the pre-existing communal rights, and that the account in Herodotus of the debasement of Babylonian women was cited by him as evidence to prove his position. He seems, however, to forget that this custom, which was practised in various nations, is a religious rite, and was inaugurated at a time when the adoration of the sun, as the source of all life and light, had degenerated into the most degrading phallic worship. To those who have given attention to the growth of the god-idea, the supposed cases of “expiation for marriage,” cited by Lubbock, are to be explained by the peculiar practices inaugurated under fire and passion worship at a time long subsequent to the establishment of ba’al marriages.

In his chapter on “The Origin of Marriage by Capture,” this writer says:

That marriage by capture has not arisen from female modesty, is, I think, evident, not only because we have no reason to suppose that such a feeling prevails especially among the lower races of man; but also, firstly, because it cannot explain the mock resistance of the relatives; and, secondly, because the very question to be solved is why it became so generally the custom to win the female not by persuasion but by force.146

That female modesty may not account for marriage by capture will scarcely be disputed; it is not impossible, however, that disgust, or aversion, on the part of women, may, in a measure, serve to explain it.

Sir John Lubbock should bear in mind that “choice” in the matter of pairing was an early prerogative of the female; that true affection, a character differing widely from the sex instinct developed in the male was necessary before she could be induced to accept the attentions of the male. While the women among primitive peoples abhorred strangers or foreigners, it may scarcely be said of them that they were too modest to accept them as suitors. Evidently, modesty is not the term to be employed in this connection.

In seeking a reason to explain why force rather than persuasion was used in the consummation of early marriages, we have to remember the wide difference existing between the position of free women and that of those who were obliged to accept the ba’al form of marriage. If, as we have reason to believe, as late as the beginning of the second or Middle Status of barbarism, instead of following the father of her children to his house as his slave, a woman remained in a home owned, or at least controlled jointly by herself, her mother, her sisters, and her daughters, it is plain that a state of female independence existed which was incompatible with female subjection. Add to this the fact that a woman’s children belonged exclusively to herself, or to her family, and that all hereditary honours and rights of succession were traced through females, and we have a set of circumstances which would seem sufficient to explain why force was necessary to bring women into the marital relation.

That the capture of women for wives arose because the independence of free women was a bar to the gratification of the lower instincts in man, can, in the presence of all the facts at hand, scarcely be doubted; and that women submitted to the position of wife only when obliged to do so, or when deprived of liberty and dragged from home and friends, is only too apparent. While modesty as a cause for capture may not account for the resistance of the relations, the sacrifice of a daughter may serve to explain even this knotty point. If the capture of a free and independent girl from her mother by a band of marauders from a hostile tribe for purposes of the most degrading slavery, cannot account for the resistance of the mother-in-law, among most of the so-called lower races, then indeed it is difficult to conjecture any provocation or any set of circumstances which can account for it.

This writer’s assertion that it is “contrary to all experience that female delicacy diminishes with civilization,” proves conclusively that he regards the slight degree of reserve which he is pleased to accredit to women in modern times, as a result of civilization—a civilization, too, which he evidently considers as wholly the result of masculine achievement; in other words, he doubtless thinks that the degree of self-respect observed among women at the present time is the result not of the innate tendencies in the female constitution, but of masculine tuition and training, an assumption which, when viewed by the light which in recent years has been thrown upon the development of the two diverging sex columns, is as absurd as it is arrogant and false. Some time will doubtless elapse before Sir John Lubbock and the class of writers which he represents will be willing to admit that civilization has been possible only because of the checks to the animal nature of the male, which are the natural result of the maternal instinct.

With a system, however, under which for six thousand years every womanly instinct has been smothered, and under which female activity has been utilized in the service of the strong sex instinct developed in males, the outward expression of female delicacy has doubtless diminished; and, in their weakened mental and physical condition, women, dependent not only for all the luxuries but the necessities of life as well, upon pleasing the men, have doubtless given them, blinded as they have become by the conditions of their own peculiar development, some reason for believing that within the female as within the male, passion has been the ruling characteristic.

Sir John Lubbock, as well as other writers who have dealt with this subject, should bear in mind the fact that female delicacy is a subject which can be satisfactorily discussed only in relation to free and independent women; hence the degree of its manifestation at any time during the past six thousand years may bear little testimony concerning the natural tendencies of women, or the condition of society under a system where female influence was in the ascendency.

To those individuals whose minds are not clouded by prejudice, the fact will doubtless be apparent, that the valuable information which has been presented by three of the foremost writers on the subject of the early relations of the sexes and the origin of marriage, instead of serving as evidence to substantiate the fallacious theories which they have propounded, is found to lie in a direct line with the facts and principles which have been put forward by scientists in the theory of natural development.

A review of the theories set forth by these three writers shows that about the only point on which they agree is the lawlessness, or promiscuity, of early races. As they have all started out with a false premise, it is not singular that none of them has succeeded in setting forth a consistent and reasonable hypothesis to account either for the symbol of wife-capture, or for the early supremacy of women.