ANCIENT SOCIETY.*

Tile greater part of Mr. Morgan's book is occupied with an attempt to make out the theory, first broached by Mr. M'Lennan, in Primitive Marriage, that the original social unit was not the family, but the body of kindred connected by blood- ties traced through women,—the tribe of descent, clan, or as Mr. Morgan prefers to call it, "gene." The attempt involved that it should be shown how tribes of what may be called the classical type, composed of clans resting upon male or agnatic kinship, could be developed out of the ruder tribes in which kinship is traced through women only. Mr. Morgan, though he has taken a vast deal of trouble, does not seem to us to have carried the proof of the theory further than his prede- cessor ; and indeed—owing to some peculiar views of his as to the formation of tribes—he has scarcely taken any account of the facts which chiefly lend it a colour of probability. He has lost his labour, in a great measure, through having adopted a faulty method. As- suming that all the races of men started in the world at a point low enough to suit Mr. Darwin, and that certain stages of progress which have been observed must all have been passed through by all ad- vanced races, he had only to set aside the facts or conjectures of historical inquirers, like Grote or Niebuhr, when inconvenient to him—as being misconceptions, formed under false impressions • Ancient Society: Researches in the Lines of llama,, Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to cisaisatton. By Lewis Lt. Meigan, LL.D. London: Macmillan and Co. 1877.

about primitive life—and to put a set of conjectures based on his knowledge of backward races in their place, and in appearance

his work was done. But of course he is open to the observation that he has really assumed what he professed to be proving ; and as against writers who do not admit that what is true of American Indians has been true also of Aryans, his argument is conse- quently nearly worthless. The theory with which he had to deal DJ certainly not an improbable one, and it must be owned that if

a high degree of probability were made out for it, the low origin of all human races would no longer be mere matter of assumption,

To give it the required degree of probability was, of course, Mr.

Morgan's object. But this was not to be done by any process so simple as supposing that Attica and Latium, because they had

the "gees," must anciently have had it of the Red-Indian pattern ; and that supposition underlies and vitiates the greater part of Mr. Morgan's reasonings.

Mr. Morgan's way of accounting for social changes, though once in common use, in our day looks not a little odd. He uses such words as " growth "and " development," and once or twice introduces very curiously the phrase " natural selection," but excepting as regards small matters, he believes in none of these things. He believes in the legislator, or (which is much the same) in clever persons who, by their influence, managed to impose upon their neighbours changes which they thought likely to be advantageous ; in changes having been brought about, not by processes of growth, but by mere agreement, or the fiat of a ruling party. The "gene," as he calls it—that is, the body of kindred connected through acknowledged blood-ties—is in his view not a natural growth, but an organisation devised for a purpose,—originating, " probably, in the ingenuity of a small band of savages," who had come to think it desirable that there should be no intermarriage between men and women who could trace relationship to each other through females. This is his -account of the origin of laws of incest,—a simple account, certainly. Mr. Morgan believes in it so firmly, that think- ing there can never have been two sets of human beings clever enough to devise the " gene "—that is, to " organise " kindred groups with a view to preventing intermarriage within them—he founds upon the prevalence of the "gens " a serious argument for the unity of the human race. In this view of the "gens" lies such justification as he has for what seem the un-

justifiable assumptions made by him in dealing with the gentes of

Greece and Italy. Regarding the " gene " as a unique device, -discerning the handiwork of his " ingenious savages " wherever he finds a body of kindred, he feels sure—and therefore at liberty to assume—that despite appearances, that must have been at some time true of every body of kindred which he knows or believes to have been true of the " gene " in its rudest form.

It must be granted to him that the devisers of the " gene " must have been exceptionally gifted persons if they perceived the -objectionableness of marriages between relatives at a time when they had, according to Mr. Morgan himself, experience of no other marriages. But this, on the other hand, makes a difficulty for his view, for it seems to attribute to the devisers of the "gene " powers above those of human nature.

Again, he considers that the change from kinship through females only to kinship through males may have been made "at a given time and by preconcerted determination "—though he has himself noted (without appearing to see their value) some interesting facts indicative of a gradual transition from the one to the -other ; also that among the Romans, aristocracy was created -" at a stroke." And examples of this way of thinking in Mr. Morgan might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Even when compelled to admit the operation of some natural pro- cess, he seems to feel bound to ignore known causes that must have operated, and to prefer a mere mechanical process to any other. The marriage law which compelled men to go outside the blood kindred for their wives, with the system of kinship which counted children as of the stock of the mother, seems amply to account for the interfusion of the clans of a district in all the tribes of a district,—for the fact that while a tribe usually contains several distinct clans, neighbouring tribes, generally speaking, contain the same clans. But to the marriage law, in accounting for this, Mr. Morgan attributes no effect whatever. He prefers to think that his ingenious savages started their " gentes " in pairs, that there might be intermarriage within the tribe ; that each of a pair of " gentes," by " segmentation," be- came splintered into several, which, after a time, having adopted -different Totems, forgot their blood-relationship, and intermarried, while they remembered their common origin, and reunited in a " phratry ;" that tribe was also formed from tribe by " seg- mentation," and that this explains how the same clans occur in different tribes. As the formation of tribes is a subject of much interest, we shall shortly consider how far this theory squares with facts and probabilities.

And first, as to the "phratry." It is among the North- American Indians only of savage peoples that Mr. Morgan pro- fesses beyond doubt to find it. And it is, in general, quite clear that that which, among those Indians, has suggested the term to him is neither more nor less than a village population or local tribe—not of constant, but of constantly fluctuating composition —which, and one or more similar communities, form a single tribe. This fact really cuts away the basis of Mr. Morgan's speculation. Apart from this, Mr. Morgan's theory would lead us to expect to find the " phratry " among the American Indians almost as common as the tribe itself, and to find two " phratries " in each tribe. But be mentions a good many instances in which the "phratries" are three in number, and in most cases he is not aware that they exist at all. Where different tribes are made up of the same " gentes," too,

the composition of the " phratry " should be the same in all,— the same " gentes " should always come together in a "phratry," because, by supposition, the " gentes " in a "phratry " are those of common descent. But this is far from being the case. As regards the "phratry," then, Mr. Morgan's theory seems unsup- ported, and to have facts against it. And indeed, considering how often the " phratry " is missing, and still more, that there are cases of three " phratries " in a tribe, as well as cases of two, it is surprising that Mr. Morgan should have so confidently com- mitted himself to the view that at first a tribe consisted only of two " gentes," which by-and-by yielded two " phratries." This view of course involves that when the "gene" was devised there were nowhere more than two sets of blood-relations in any tribe, and a more wild assumption could not have been made. To pro. ceed, so far as we can judge, there are no facts which support the " segmentation " hypothesis. There are cases in which the "phratry " has a Totem name (in one or two of which marriage is said to be interdicted within the 4' phratry "), and a very few cases in which it and its subdivisions take their names from an animal and its varieties—a Turtle "phratry," for example, including Mud Turtle, Snapping Turtle, and Little Turtle clans— and on these, especially on the latter, Mr. Morgan relies as fur- nishing clear evidence in favour of his view. But even supposing it granted that in those cases " gentes" have been formed within a "phratry " which originally was a " gens," how does it appear that they were formed by segmentation ? There is nothing whatever to lead us to think that the clans included in these phratries have ever been separated from each other, any more than they are at present. Mr. Morgan quotes the case of the Delawares as supporting his speculation, but what he shows as operating among the Delawares is not "segmentation," but as, with unconscious accuracy, he himself puts it, a natural growth. They have within their clans, lineages (to use Mr. Morgan's word), consisting of persons who, it is believed, trace their descent from the same female ancestor, and acknowledge a closer relationship between themselves than between them and the clan at large. This sense of closer relationship is so clearly, what Mr. Morgan calls it, a natural growth, that it would be preposterous to attribute it to " segmentation." And why not natural growth in the other cases ? At any rate, should not natural growth, as a possible cause, be excluded, before we suppose a severance of clans (we do not now speak of tribes) which nothing suggests the occurrence of ? It should be said that cases like that of the Turtle clans mostly occur where kinship through males has been firmly established. Now as to some of the difficulties which beset the " segmentation " hypothesis. With kinship agnatic, it is perfectly intelligible how the " segmentation " of a clan might take place. But with Mr. Morgan's primeval "gentes," a " segmentation " of a "gene" would almost seem to involve a " segmentation " of the tribe,—which, at that stage, his theory does not admit of. From a Roman gens, consisting of entire families, as the family was understood at Rome, a swarming-off might easily take place ; but among savages the clan does not cover the family, husband and wife being necessarily of different stocks ; and the clans are so mixed together in the tribe that, as Mr. Morgan says, " to a stranger the tribe is visible, and not the gene." A swarming-off from a single clan of the savage tribe as it is commonly met with, would be all but an impossibility. Is it safe, then, to assume that a swarming-off from a tribe containing two clans would include women of only one of them? Here, at any rate, is a difficulty to which Mr. Morgan appears not to have given a thought. More serious still are the questions which his hypothesis raises in connection with the Totem. This is the mark of blood-connection, by which every person's rights and liabilities are determined ; and it is by it that, in times known to us, the " gene " has been held together. But the splinters of Mr. Morgan's pairs of " gentes " have each a different Totem. Did not, then, the ingenious devisers of the " gene" feel the need of such a symbol? If they did, and intro- duced it, it would seem that the " segmentation " hypothesis falls at once. If they omitted to introduce it, how came it to be intro- duced, and to become so potent among those who bore it? And is it not much more than probable that, like blood-relationship itself, it was older than the rule which forbade marriage between blood- relations? If it was, of course " segmentation " is excluded. Of such questions Mr. Morgan has taken no notice, and we venture to think that, in propounding a novel theory, it was essential that he should have confronted them. By the way, the application of a special term like " gene " to bodies of kindred in general (Mr. Morgan, we think, has not been the first to make it) is extremely inconvenient and misleading, and it is wholly un- necessary. His classical phraseology has, in one or two cases, we believe, misled Mr. Morgan himself ; besides that it has beguiled him into such bewildering expressions as " the agnatic kindred on the female side," and the forfeiture of a woman's "agnatic rights " by marriage.

His discussion of the formation of tribes, whatever may be thought of it, is much the most valuable and interesting portion of Mr. Morgan's book ; but there are in it other things far more wonderful. While regarding the " gene " as the primary social unit, he believes he has discovered something still older, which he has designated an "organisation of society on the basis of sex,"—an odd description, seeing that sex will intrude itself into every social organisation, and yet scarcely in- applicable to that which Mr. Morgan thinks he has de- scried. He holds that every early society was divided into classes of men and classes of women—the men in a class being of common descent, and calling themselves brothers, the women in a class of common descent, and calling themselves sisters— that one class of men and one class of women were free to inter- marry and excluded from all intercourse with the other classes, and that the classes of men and women married each other " in a group " and lived in conjunct marriage. The facts and conjec- tures on which this extraordinary belief is founded are derived from or suggested by some of the statements made about the Kamilaroi-speaking tribes of Australia ; and all that can here be said of them is that our information about those tribes is so im- perfect and so contradictory that it may fairly be hoped that the " organisation on the basis of sex " is nothing but a bad dream. Mr. Morgan, however, has also discovered a family system —the Punalfian family—which is scarcely to be distinguished from it. This family group consisted of a number of men of common descent, calling themselves brothers, and their wives, or of a number of women of common descent, calling themselves sisters, and their husbands, who lived promiscuously together. The suggestion of it came to Mr. Morgan from the Sandwich Islands, but he is not able to show that it ever existed anywhere. He admits that there is nothing in the known facts of savage life even to suggest the existence of a still ruder family system in which he believes—the Consanguine family system—formed by a group of men and women of common descent, brothers and sisters and cousins more or less remote, who considered, or at least called each other, brothers and sisters, and lived together in conjunct marriage.

The real foundation of Mr. Morgan's belief in the two strange family systems which have just been mentioned, and in the "organisation of society on the basis of sex," is his interpretation of the " Tables of Consanguinity and Affinity" which he published a few years ago,—which unquestionably were a most valuable addition to the raw material of historical science. It is almost mathematically certain, however, that the Consanguine family, had it existed, could not have yielded the nomenclature with which he seeks to connect it,—which is his sole reason for believing in it. The flunalfian family was excogitated by him to assist the Consanguine in accounting for the same nomenclature,—the Malayan ; and in 1870, its supposed usefulness in doing this was his reason for believing that it had existed. Now, however, he employe it in accounting for a widely different nomenclature— that which he has called the "Turanian "—and its success in doing this very different thing is now his reason for believing in it. That it should seem to him now to serve a purpose so different from that on account of which he devised it ought, perhaps, to have destroyed even his own faith in this curious creation of his brain. But even as now used, he is obliged to admit that the " Punalfian family" fails him at a vital point,—that it does not, that is, account for the nomenclature upon which his belief in it now depends. Generally, it is enough to say of Mr. Morgan's view of the meaning of his tables that it involves that people had at the same time two completely different systems of blood- relationship. If anything can be fatal to a method of interpreta- tion, this should. No doubt, however, in the transition from kinship only through females to kinship through males, the feelings of relationship must have come to exist between many persons who were not relatives according to the customary law ; and his observation of this among the American Indians has helped, we should say, to lead Mr. Morgan into the portentous speculations he has reared upon the solid body of facts which it has been his happiness to contribute to science.