Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/148

136 is doubtless a primary fact." Now, though among lower races, sons, while young, may be subordinate, from lack of ability to resist, yet that they remain subordinate when they become men cannot be asserted as a uniform, and therefore as a primary, fact. In a former paragraph it will be seen that obedience does not characterize all types of men. When we read that the Mantra "lives as if there were no other person in the world but himself;" that the Carib "is impatient under the least infringement" of his independence; that the Mapuché "brooks no command;" that the Brazilian Indian begins to display "impatience of all restraint at puberty"—we cannot conclude that filial submission is an original trait. When we find that, by many savages, parents, when they become burdensome in age, are killed or left to starve; that by some, as the Gullinomeros, "old people are treated with contumely, both men and women;" and that by other savages boys are not corrected for fear of destroying their spirit—we cannot suppose that subjection of adult sons to their fathers characterizes all types of men. When from Bancroft we learn that to the Navajos of North America, "born and bred with the idea of perfect personal freedom, all restraint is unendurable," and that among them "every father holds undisputed sway over his children until the age of puberty;" when we learn that, among some Californians, children after puberty "were subject only to the chief;" that among the Lower-Californians, "as soon as children are able to get food for themselves, they are left to their own devices;" and that among the Comanches male children "are even privileged to rebel against their parents, who are not entitled to chastise them but by consent of the tribe"—we are shown that in some races the parental and filial relation early comes to an end. So far from supposing that filial obedience is innate, and the patriarchal type a natural consequence, the evidence points rather to the inference that the two have evolved hand-in-hand under favoring conditions.

Again, referring to the way in which originally common ancestral origin was the only ground for united social action. Sir Henry Maine says:

Now, if by "ancient societies" are meant those only of which records have come down to us, and if the "history of political ideas" is to include only the ideas of such societies, this may be true; but if we are to take account of societies more archaic than these, and to include under political ideas those of other peoples than Aryans and