Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/32

 22 FAMILY marriage at Sparta: first, betrothing on the part of the father ; secondly, the seizure of the bride. The latter was clearly an ancient national custom.&quot; Mitller then describes the clandestine intercourse, which lasted for some time, be fore the man &quot; brought his bride, and frequently her mother, into his house.&quot; The intercourse of bride and groom among the Iroquois of Lafitau s time was likewise clandestine. For the practice in Crete Muller quotes Strabo, x. 482, D. A similar custom prevailed in Rome (Apuleius, De As. AID: iv.; Festus, s. v. &quot;Rapi&quot;), and was supposed to be derived from the time of the rape of the Sabines. Mr M Lennan finds the practice necessary to the constitution of the relations of husband and wife among the Calmucks, the Tunguzians, the Khonds, the Fuegians, the Welsh, the Arabs, the Irish, and various other races. He explains its existence by the institutions of exogamy (i.e., the rule prohibiting marriage between people of the same blood), nnd by the prevalence of hostility between the tribes of r.ide times. Suppose the rule to exist that a man may not marry a woman of his own community, and suppose that, by an exhaustive division, all other communities without exception are hostile, he must steal a wife if he is to marry at all. The fiction of capture, as men grow more polite, will endure as part of the marriage ceremony when the need of the reality is passed. It is to be noticed that the theft of the woman is, in the fictitious capture, generally the work of more than one man, as it well might be, if the early marriages were polyandrous. If it be granted that the pro hibition to marry within the community is as early as it is widely prevalent, this explanation of the form of capture will seem sufficient. The origin of the early prohibition will be discussed later. Thus, on the evidence of a sport ive feature in the marriage ceremony of civilized peoples, a vestige is revealed of customs connected with a very early f.jrm of the family. A strange piece of barbarous etiquette may hint that the kindred of the bride and groom were once hostile groups. The daughter-in-law, among many races, is forbidden to speak to her father-in-law ; the mother-in-law must hide when she sees her son-in-law. The wives treat their hus bands with what may be a survival of hostility, and never name them by their names. Examples are collected in Sir John Lubbock s Origin of Civilization, pp. 11, 12. The practices are found among races on the border of the Polar Sea, in the Rocky Mountains, in Southern Africa, among the Caribs, Mongols, and Calmucks, in China, in Siberia, and in Australia. To these instances adduced by Sir John Lubbock we may add Bulgaria (Dozon, Chants Populaires JJuh/ares). Herodotus says (i. 1-16) that the wives of the early lonians would not call their husbands by their names nor ssit at meat with them, and instructed their daughters to practise the same reserve. The reason assigned is that the women were originally Carians, whose parents the Ijnians had slain. It may be allowed that this world-wide practice, too, testifies to a time when men married out of their own group, and all groups were hostile each to the other. Perhaps the English local custom, which forbids the parents of bride and bridegroom to be present at the marriage ceremony, holds the same antiquity. We have now to note the widespread existence of a system of nomenclature, which can hardly have arisen in times when the monogamous family was the unit of society. Mr Lewis Morgan of New York was the discoverer of a custom very important in its bearing on the history of society. In about two-thirds of the globe persons in addressing a kinsman do not discriminate between grades of relationship. All these grades are merged in large cate gories. Thus, in what Mr Morgan calls the &quot; Malayan system,&quot; &quot;all consanguine!, near or far, fall within one of these relationships grand-parent, parent, brother, sister, child, and grandchild.&quot; No other blood-relationships are re cognized (Ancient Society, p, 385). This at once reminds us of the Platonic Republic. &quot; We devised means that no one should ever be able to know his own child, but that all should imagine themselves to be of one family, and should regard as brothers and sisters those who were within a certain limit of age ; and those who were of an elder generation they were to regard as parents and grand-parents, and those who were of a younger generation as children and grand children (Timceus, 18, Jowett s translation, first edition, vol. ii., 1871). This system prevails in the Polynesian groups, and in New Zealand. Next comes what Mr Morgan chooses to call the Turanian system. &quot; It was universal among the North American aborigines,&quot; whom Mr Morgan styles Ganowanians. &quot; Traces of it have been found in parts of Africa&quot; (Ancient Society, p. 386), and &quot;it still prevails in South India among the Hindus, who speak the Dravidian language,&quot; and also in North India, among other Hindus. The system, as Mr Morgan says, &quot; is simply stupendous.&quot; It is not exactly the same among all his miscellaneous &quot; Turanians,&quot; but, on the whole, assumes the following shapes. Suppose the speaker to be a male, he will style his nephew and niece in the male line, his brother s children, &quot; son &quot; and &quot; daughter,&quot; and his grand-nephews and grand-nieces in the male line, &quot; grandson &quot; and &quot; grand daughter.&quot; Here the Turanian and the Malayan systems agree. But change the sex ; let the male speaker address his nephews and nieces in the female line, the children of his sister, he salutes them as &quot; nephew &quot; and &quot; niece,&quot; and they hail him as &quot; uncle.&quot; Now, in the Malay system, nephews and nieces on both sides, brother s children or sisters, are alike named &quot; children&quot; of the uncle. If the speaker be a female, using the Turanian style, these terms are reversed. Her sister s sons and daughters are saluted by her as &quot; son &quot; and daughter,&quot; her brother s children she calls &quot;nephew&quot; and &quot;niece.&quot; Yet the children of the persons thus styled &quot; nephew &quot; and &quot; niece &quot; are not recog nized in conversation as &quot;grand-nephew&quot; and &quot;grand- niece,&quot; but as &quot; grandson &quot; and &quot; grand-daughter.&quot; It is impossible here to do more than indicate these features of the classificatory nomenclature, from which the others may be inferred. The reader is referred for particulars to Mr Morgan s great work, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Jiace (Washington, 1871). The existence of the classificatory system is not an entirely novel discovery. Nicolaus Damascenus, one of the inquirers into early society, who lived in the first century of our era, noticed this mode of address among the Galactophagi. Lafitau found it among the Iroquois. To Mi- Morgan s perception of the importance of the facts, and to his energetic collection of reports, we owe our knowledge of the wide prevalence of the system. From an examination of the degrees of kindred which seem to be indicated by the &quot; Malayan&quot; and &quot;Turanian&quot; modes of address, Mr Morgan has worked out a theory of the evolution of the modern family. A brief comparison of this with other modern theories will close our account of the family. The main points of the theory are shortly stated in Systems &amp;lt;f Con sanguinity, &c., pp. 487, 493, and in Ancient Society, p. 384. From the latter work we quote the following description of the five different and successive forms of the family : &quot;I. Tlir Consanguine Family. It was founded upon the inter marriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral, in a group. &quot;II. The Punaluan Family. It was founded upon the inter marriage of several sisters, own and collateral, with each others husbands, in a group, the joint husbands not being necessarily kinsmen of each other ; also, on the intermarriage of several brothers, own and collateral, with each others wives in a group, these wives not being necessarily of kin to each other, although