Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/220

208 is a very grave—the very gravest—consideration. The dead are dependent upon their male descendants for offerings, without which their shadowy existence would be to the last degree wretched; and therefore, as every man knows he also must die, he is anxious during life to see a good provision made for his future wants—in other words, he is eager to have sons to succeed him. But neither is this motive to be found among the lower savages, for with them descent, and therefore inheritance, is through females. Hence we find in some such tribes the practice of "male infanticide"—that is to say, the practice of killing male children rather than female. Thus the Rev. R. H. Codrington, M. A., of the Church of England Melanesian mission, informed me, with regard to the people of Mota (Banks Island), that infanticide was common among them, and that "male children were killed rather than female, because of the family passing by the female side."

We have seen that the first of the two postulates on which Mr. McLennan's theory depends is not to be readily granted. We have now to examine the second, which is—

That exogamous tribes existed "under circumstances in which men could get wives only by capturing them."

A tribe to satisfy these conditions must be exogamous qua tribe—that is to say, marriage must be forbidden everywhere within its limits. No man of the tribe must be able to take any one of its women to wife; for, if the tribe be so constituted that its men can get their wives anywhere within its boundaries, it is manifest that it is not a tribe such as Mr. McLennan's theory requires.

His list of what he calls "exogamous tribes" is contained in Chapter V. of "Studies in Ancient History," and of all those tribes there is not one which satisfies his own conditions. Without exception, they are all divided into exogamous intermarrying clans; and therefore they can get wives without capturing them from other tribes.

Each one of them is an endogamous tribe or community, made up of exogamous intermarrying clans—that is, it marries within its own boundaries, but it prohibits marriage within any one of its clans. Once more we have to note that a confusion arises from Mr. McLennan's want of precision in using the term "tribe," and his own terms "endogamy" and "exogamy," all of which are equally misleading, unless the area to which they are applied be clearly defined. But, whatever be the meaning which he gives to tribe, the cases cited by him in his fifth chapter are of no avail. For it is evident that in these cases the word "tribe" must mean one of two things: either—