Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/287

 but the family is still, however, in a confused state; paternity, in the social sense of the word, does not exist; filiation is especially maternal, but the actual degrees of consanguinity are not well distinguished in detail; parenthood is not yet individual, but is constituted in groups.

In the present day we may still study this familial confusion in certain Australian tribes. We have seen that marriage, or what goes by that name, resulted in Tasmania, Australia, Bali, etc., from a violent and brutal rape, generally ratified by a compensation and a simulation of retaliation between the tribe of the woman and that of the ravisher.

Among the least savage tribes of Melanesia, this rape is often fictitious, in which case it is no more than a survival; but sometimes it is still real, and it surely must always have been so at the origin of the Australian societies. But however gross these societies may be, they are none the less the result of a long evolution. In the interior of Borneo there are still existing human beings compared with whom the Australians are civilised people. These absolutely primitive savages of Borneo are probably the remains of negroïd peoples, who must formerly have been the first inhabitants of Malaya. They roam the forests in little hordes, like monkeys; the man, or rather the male, carries off the female and couples with her in the thickets. The family passes the night under a large tree; the children are suspended from the branches in a sort of net, and a great fire is lighted at the foot of the tree to keep off the wild beasts. As soon as the children are capable of taking care of themselves, the parents turn them adrift as animals do.

It is doubtless thus, after the manner of the great monkeys, that primitive human societies have been formed. With the chimpanzees these hordes can never become very large, for the male progenitor will not endure rivals, and drives away the young males as long as he is the strongest. The first men were surely more sociable, because of their human nature. The young males of the human horde were able to remain, in greater or less number, within the association, but the jealousy of the progenitor-in-chief, the father of the family, must often have obliged them to