Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/124

 does not anywhere exist, but maternal kinship does, and we do not find that it involves a milder condition for the woman. This system of filiation necessarily indicates a gross state of society, in which paternity is still uncertain. Now, as a rule, the subjection of woman is in inverse ratio to the development of man. In primitive societies, where might is the only right, the woman, on account of her relative weakness, is always treated with extreme brutality. It would be difficult, without losing all human quality whatever, to be less intelligent than the Australian, and equally difficult to imagine a more cruel servitude than that of the Australian woman, always beaten, often wounded, sometimes killed and eaten, according to the convenience of her owner. The Fijians, much more intelligent than the Australians, amused themselves with beating their mother, and with binding their wives to trees in order to whip them. A Fijian named Loti, simply to make himself notorious, devoured his wife, after having cooked her on a fire that he had forced her to light herself. No kind of ferocious caprice was condemned by the morality of the country. But such manners are as far as possible from being consistent with the idea of a matriarchal society, in which a place of honour is accorded to the wife.

In primitive societies the condition of children is, if possible, still more subordinate than that of woman. Infanticide at the moment of birth is not even a venial fault. And later, the parents exercise the undisputed right of life and death over their progeny; and when slavery is instituted, the children become a veritable article of merchandise. In short, the rights of a father of a family are unlimited.

From this primitive right of property accorded to the parents over their children has resulted quite naturally all over the world the right of marrying them without consulting them at all. Moreover, as it had long been the custom to sell them, marriage was naturally considered as a commercial bargain, and by degrees marriage by purchase even took the place of marriage by capture, but after having long co-existed with it. Capture and purchase had each