Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/288

274 exogamy carried out by marrying, from within the tribe, women bearing family names which implied that they were foreign in blood.

In tracing the development of higher forms of the domestic relations, Mr. McLennan postulates, as we have seen, that the scarcity of women "led at once to polyandry within the tribe, and the capturing of women from without." Describing and illustrating the different forms of polyandry, ending in that highest form in which the husbands are brothers, he points out that at this stage there arose recognition not only of descent in the female line, but also of descent in the male line; since the father's blood was known, if not the father.

Then through gradually-established priority of the elder brother, as being the first of the group to marry, and the first likely to have children, it became an accepted fiction that all the children were his: "the elder brother was a sort of paterfamilias;" and "the idea of fatherhood" thus caused was a step toward kinship through males, and "a step away from kinship through females" (pp. 243, 244).

Pointing out that among some polyandrous peoples, as the Kandians, the chiefs have become monogamists, Mr. McLennan argues (p. 245) that their example would be followed, and "thus would arise a practice of monogamy or of polygamy." And he thence traces the genesis of the patriarchal form, the system of agnation, the institution of caste.

Though this outline of Mr. McLennan's theory is expressed, whereever regard for brevity permits, in his own words, yet possibly he may take exception to it, for, as already hinted, there are incongruities in his statements, and the order in which they are placed is involved. That many of the phenomena he describes exist, is beyond question. It is undeniable that the stealing of women, still habitual with sundry low races, was practised in the past by races now higher; and that the form of capture in marriage ceremonies prevails in societies where no real capture occurs at present. It is undeniable that kinship through females is, among various primitive peoples, the only kinship avowedly recognized; and that it leads to the descent of name, rank, and property, in the female line. It is undeniable that in many places where wife-stealing is, or has been, the practice, marriage is forbidden between those of the same family name, who are assumed to be of the same stock. But while admitting much of the evidence, and while accepting some of the inferences, we shall find reason for doubting Mr. McLennan's theory taken as a whole. Let us consider, first, the minor objections.

Sundry facts inconsistent with his conclusion, though referred to by Mr. McLennan, he passes over as of no weight. He thinks there is warrant for the belief that exogamy and wife-capture have "been practised at a certain stage among every race of mankind" (p. 138): this stage being the one now exemplified by sundry low races.