Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/56

50 others. It is also obvious that, as far as group marriage exists, descent can only be traced on the mother's side and, hence, only female lineage be acknowledged. This is actually the case among all savage tribes and those in the lower stage of barbarism. To have discovered this first is the second great merit of Bachofen. He designates this exclusive recognition of descent from the female line and the hereditary relations resulting therefrom in course of time as "maternal law." I retain this term for the sake of brevity, although it is distorted; for at this social stage there is no sign yet of any law in the juridic sense.

If we now take one of the two standard groups of a Punaluan family, namely that of a series of natural and remote sisters (i.e., first, second and more remote descendants of natural sisters), their children and their natural or remote brothers on the mother's side (who according to our supposition are not their husbands), we have exactly that circle of persons who later appear as members of a gens, in the original form of this institution. They all have a common ancestress, by virtue of the descent that makes the different female generations sisters. But the husbands of these sisters cannot be chosen among their brothers any more, can no longer come from the same ancestress, and do not therefore, belong to the consanguineous group of relatives, the gens of a later time. The children of these same sisters, however, do belong to this group, because descent from the female line alone is conclusive, alone is positive. As soon as the proscription of sexual intercourse between all relatives on the mother's side, even the most remote of them, is an accomplished fact, the above named group has become a gens, i.e., constitutes a definite circle of consanguineous relatives of female lineage who are not permitted to marry one another. Henceforth this circle is more and more fortified by other mutual