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Such is the case with attempts to account for kinship in the female line. McLennan thinks it "inconceivable" that it can be due to any cause other than uncertainty of fatherhood; and he holds therefore that it must have preceded the paternal system.[334] Careful research, however, has shown that these assumptions are far from axiomatic. In the first place, the acute criticism of Friedrichs is deserving of special attention. Among a number of low races where relationship with the begetter is not recognized he finds that certainty of fatherhood through securing the fidelity of the wife nevertheless exists. The number is small, but a single certain example, he insists, is sufficient to refute McLennan's hypothesis. Such an example is provided by Semper[335] in the case of the people of the Palau Islands; and it is all the more convincing because here it is only the wife who is prohibited from general sexual intercourse, while young girls may give free play to their desires, and in a measure this is not merely suffered, but even enjoined by social custom.[336] Indeed, savages know well how to secure chastity on the part of their women by such "naïve arts" as infibulation, so realistically described by Ploss in his well-known book on woman.[337]

While not denying that uncertainty of fatherhood may have been influential in some cases, Spencer argues that without this assumption it is perfectly natural that the child should be named from the mother with whom it spends its early life; and where exogamy prevails the custom would become a convenient rule for determining who are marriageable women within the group; for the "requirement that a wife shall be taken from a foreign tribe readily becomes confounded with the requirement that a wife shall be of foreign blood."[338]

Westermarck seeks a simple explanation of female kinship in the necessary relations of a child with its mother. "Especially among savages, the tie between a mother and a child is much stronger than that which binds a child to the father. Not only has she given birth to it, but she has also for years been seen carrying it about at her breast. Moreover, in cases of separation, occurring frequently at lower stages of civilization, the infant children always follow the mother, and so, very often, do the children more advanced in years."[339] Polygyny has doubtless favored the choice of the female line of descent;[340] and the odd custom of the couvade, found here and there among rude peoples, instead of being a mark of transition to the paternal system, only implies some connection or "some idea of relationship" between father and child;[341] and accordingly simpler and more probable reasons for its origin have been assigned.[342] Thus it may take its rise in the notion of a mysterious physical connection between the father and the child. "The well-being of the child is its object." The father occupies the so-called lying-in bed, not as a bed of sickness "affording rest and strength after travail," but he abstains from certain foods lest they should injure the child, and he fasts in order that his powers of endurance may be assured to it.[343] This view is strongly supported by the fact that among many primitive peoples, in various stages of advancement, the belief is found that the child springs from the father alone, the mother merely performing the function of nourishment.[344] Finally Westermarck's generalization as to the real import of kinship through females only may be noted. The "facts adduced as examples" of this system, he declares, "imply chiefly that children are named after their mothers, not after their fathers, and that property and rank succeed exclusively in the female line."[345]

Starcke has devoted the first half of his book to a detailed investigation of the problem of female descent, and comes to the conclusion that it depends mainly on local and economic causes. He first shows that the clan is of later origin than the family; and holds that these are by nature very different institutions. The family is juridical, established by contract, and only "in a subsidiary sense" founded on the "tie of blood between parents and children;" but the clan is a natural and homogeneous group of kindred among whom degrees of relationship are not counted. It is an exclusive group into which the child is born; and "it is absolutely impossible for one person to belong to two distinct clans."[346] In the primitive stage, before the formation of clans, the family must always be a more or less isolated group. The man usually chooses the place of abode, and hence paternal kinship may be easily recognized. A considerable number of rude peoples exist who take kinship from the father;[347] and Starcke is inclined to believe, though he presents rather slender evidence, that as a general rule the paternal precedes the maternal system. With the rise of the clan organization, it became absolutely necessary for the local groups to take one system or the other. So the "definition of kinship results from the conflict between clans, and teaches us nothing further with respect to the child's relation to its parent. The choice between the two possible lines is decided by the economic organization of the community and by the local grouping of individuals, but there is not the slightest trace of the fact that considerations with respect to the sexual relations had any influence in the matter."[348]

Starcke's opinion that such rules of succession depend on local connections, those persons being each other's heirs "who dwell together in one place,"[349] seems to gain some support from the result of Dr. Tylor's examination of the so-called "beena"[350] marriage form, which requires the man to live in the family of his wife, usually serving for her as did Jacob for Laban's daughters. It is remarkable that this custom and the maternal system of kinship are commonly found together. "Thus the number of coincidences between peoples where the husband lives with the wife's family and where the maternal system prevails, is naturally large in proportion, while the full maternal system as naturally never appears among peoples whose exclusive custom is for the husband to take his wife to his own home."[351] Furthermore, adds Westermarck, "where both customs—the woman receiving her husband in her own hut, and the man taking his wife to his—occur side by side among the same people, descent in the former cases is traced through the mother, in the latter through the father."[352]

It seems certain that the whole truth regarding the problems of kinship, as well as regarding the rise and sequence of the forms of the family, can be reached only through a thorough historical investigation of the industrial habits of mankind. In fact, the position of Starcke, that the rise of rules of descent and kinship depends mainly on economic and local causes, is strengthened in a remarkable way by the researches of Grosse, which have already been presented in outline. Nowhere does promiscuity appear among the peoples known to history or ethnology; and everywhere, even among the "lower hunters," comprising the most backward members of the human kind, appears the single family in which the man holds the place of power, which is often despotic. There is no definite sequence between the maternal and the paternal systems. The existence of either depends upon favorable economic conditions; and they may both appear side by side. In fact, according to Cunow, among the lower hunters, with the single exception of the Australians, the custom of female descent has not yet been discovered; and even in Australia it is precisely the most advanced tribes among which the maternal system appears. It first arises when women are sought outside of the original horde, in order to prevent intermarriage of maternal kindred.[353]

In the light of present research, therefore, the most that can safely be admitted concerning the system of kinship through females only is that it has widely existed among the races of mankind;[354] although, as elsewhere shown, its prevalence has been greatly exaggerated. Partially under the influence of monogamy and the rise of modern forms of property, it has often been superseded by the parental and sometimes by the agnatic system, although this sequence is by no means invariable. It is very archaic, yet not necessarily primitive. There is no satisfactory evidence that it implies an original stage of promiscuity. It is not impossible, in view of the facts disclosed by Starcke, that sometimes it may be preceded by a custom in which the child is named from the father, and rank and property descend in the male line; while there is evidence that in the lower hunting stage, before rules of descent were yet subjects of reflection, a kind of patriarchate or androcracy generally prevailed.[355]