WHATEVER may be thought of the conclusions which Mr. M'Lennan

propounded a dozen years ago in Primitive Marriage, that work unquestionably formed a new departure in specula- tion as to the history of society, and now that it is reprinted with additional essays, all more or less connected with, and nearly all corroborative of it, it seems worth while to restate its argument, and to indicate the nature of the evidence by which its reasonings stand supported. Criticism of such a work, within the space at our command, could do little more than indicate the personal leanings of the writer, and the function, humbler than criticism, to which we propose to restrict ourselves, may at present be the more useful of the two.

Of a,method which Mr. M'Lennan has employed for the estab- lishment of facts upon which his reasonings are founded, the only justification ever attempted, so far as we know, is contained in the introduction to Primitive Marriage ; but, like every other method by which it can be thought possible to get at truth, it had been used now and then by previous writers, conspicuously by the Abbe Goguet. It has been accepted by succeeding writers, ap- * Studies in Ancient History, comprising a Reprint of Primitive Marriage, an in- quiry into the Origin _of Me Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies. By J. F. ItLeonan, ILA., LL.D., Advocate. London: Bernard Qnaritch.

parently without much thought, as a legitimate instrument of in- quiry, and possibly—though we doubt this—its validity may up to a certain point be admitted without committing oneself to any general view of the history of mankind. It consists in in- ferring from the actual existence, among the ruder races, of practices which correspond with the symbols which ad- vanced nations have employed in the constitution or exer- cise of civil rights that the symbol, in the one case, is a relic of the same practice which is known to have prevailed in the other ; that the social state of the more advanced nation

was formerly, pro facto, the same as that of the less advanced ; and moreover, that of institutions or customs relating to the same matter (e.g., modes of contracting marriage) found together

among advanced nations, the more archaic—the earlier, regarded structurally—is that which has been employed by rude races which had not the other,—which, according to assumption, had not advanced sufficiently to devise the other. This method seems to assume the substantial identity of all the varieties of men ; and also that all the races of men have been moving up, as best they could, from the same starting-point of savagery. It is common enough in these days to assume savagery as the general starting- point of the race, and the facts contained in Primitive Marriage, by themselves, 'go a long way to make probable that view of human history. Nevertheless, it may be said (though here we verge upon criticism) that the method above described, in both the uses made of it, not only required justification, but seems to require even a more formal and careful justification than has in this work been offered for it.

The symbol of capture in marriage ceremonies with which Mr. M'Lennan's speculation begins "occurs whenever, after a con- tract of marriage, it is necessary for the constitution of the re- lation of husband and wife that the bridegroom or his friends should go through the form of feigning to steal the bride, or carry her off from her relations by superior force." As the work before us contains a mere reprint of a book published twelve years ago, the list of cases in which the symbol occurs given in it is very far from complete ; but it will now hardly be questioned that the symbol has been used by nearly all the historical nations, and that while still in use among a multitude of savage and semi- savage races, traces of it are also observable in marriage cere- monies in the more secluded parts of many European countries. The plebeians at Rome had it ; the Spartans had it ; the Hindus had it ; the Celts of Wales and Ireland had it ; and the Jews, too, seem to have had it. Races like the Kirghis of Central Asia have it still ; and in La Mare au Diable, Georges Sand, writing without any thought of theory or of describing a widely prevailing custom, has given a striking account of it as it is practised in an out-of-the-way part of France. On the other hand, there is no lack of evidence, not merely of the capture of women for wives-- for that, by itself, could scarcely be believed capable of originat-

ing a legal symbol so prevalent—but of the systematic capture of

women for wives, and also of the use of the symbol of capture, among races whose marriage law forbade them to marry their own women, that is, women of their own stock or blood. The men of rude tribes which had such a marriage law could only have got wives by capture or by purchase, and in the earliest times, so long as neighbouring tribes were usually at war with each other, by the former method only. Mr. M'Lennan infers that the mar- riage law above referred to—which he has called exogamy—has prevailed wherever the form of capture in married ceremonies can

be shown to have subsisted—and this at once (if the influence be admitted) gives a very extensive prevalence of this singular and

far-reaching law against incest. In course of his argument, he indi- cates several other classes of facts from which, in cases where neither the existence of this law nor that of the symbol of capture can be shown upon authority, the existence of both may be infer- red ; and it may be here said that though pointing out conditions which might have prevented the rise of exogamy, he does not conceal his disposition to think that it may be considered as be- longing to one of the normal phases through which human soceties, in growing, have passed.

It is the extent to which exogamy has prevailed which is im- portant to bis speculation, but the origin of a custom so remark- able, perhaps, could not have been passed over in silence. In looking for an explanation of it, he seems, at any rate, to have searched in the right level. He takes it as certain that systems of capture could only have had their source in a want of balance between the sexes, and he accordingly believes exogamy " to be connected with the practice in early times of female infanticide, which, rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry within the tribe and the capturing of women from without." Of the wide prevalence of systems of infanticide there can be no doubt. Mr. M‘Lennan's view is that the means of subsist-

ence being scanty, children being hard to rear, and sons being more useful than daughters, both for defence and in the quest for food, daughters were liable to be slain, chiefly perhaps in times of peculiar scarcity, but more or less habitually ; that where this happened, the men of a tribe must have relied for wives more or less upon capture from their neighbours, or have hoped to get them in this way ; and that at length usage, induced

primarily by necessity—possibly proceeding through a pre- ference gradually acquired for marrying foreign women—

established a prejudice against marrying women of the tribe.

This view, whatever may be thought of it, appears sufficiently intelligible, and it absolutely excludes the supposition that the author of it believes in the existence of an original instinct against intermarriage between kindred. We observe, however, that Mr. Herbert Spencer, who in his latest work has treated of exogamy and endogamy (the latter term denoting the tribal law which

restricts intermarriage to the kindred), has been gravely impressed with the notion that Mr. M'Lennan asserts the existence of such an instinct, and be does once use the phrase " primitive instinct." To ordinary eyes this seems to be with him only a short-cut in speech, but his having misled so eminent a thinker as Mr. Spencer should be a warning to him against ever using such short-cuts. Mr. Spencer, of course, has his own theory of the origin of exogamy, and he has also his own theory—for his view is based mainly on a priori considerations, which seem scarcely to be properly applied to such a matter—as to the extent to which exogamy prevailed in early times. To these we may recur on some future occasion. Meanwhile, there can be no harm in pointing out a singular confusion in the use of terms into which this distinguished author has fallen, in his dissertation above re- ferred to, since it is calculated to puzzle the simple reader who puts unquestioning faith in his reputation as a clear thinker and lucid writer. Exogamy, the law which forbids men to marry women of their own blood, and endogamy, the law which re- quires men to marry none but women of their own blood, are obviously exclusive of each other ; if a tribe or body of kindred has the one for its marriage law, it cannot have the other. But Mr. Herbert Spencer repeatedly speaks, with perplexing effect, of tribes which practise both exogamy and endogamy. He is really, on such occasions, speaking of tribes which practise neither, but in which, as in modern societies, men and women were free to marry either outside their own group or within it. A use he makes, of the phrase, " modified exogamy," also indicates— though the error is a strange one for him to make—that he has not been able to grasp the notion that exogamy is nothing more or leas than a law which forbids intermarriage between men and women of the same blood, so that " modified exogamy " is a meaningless expression. A body of kindred must either have the law of exogamy, or not have it. What Mr. Spencer does mean by " modified exogamy " is clear enough,—it is that when a local tribe included men or women of more than one stock or blood, those within it who were of different stocks were free to marry each other, notwithstanding that they were of the same tribe ; but this is not a modification of exogamy, but exogamy itself in normal operation.

Though the origin of exogamy is a matter of curious interest rather than of importance, and is important only in so far as a true account-of it may assist us in forming a conception of the prevalence of exogamy, it has become—no doubt because it pre- sents a problem of almost- unsurpassable difficulty—the butt of speculation, and Sir John Lubbock, like Mr. Spencer, has pro- pounded a solution of it different from Mr. M'Lennan's. That solution is commented upon in this volume in an essay entitled, " Communal Marriage." With Sir John Lubbock, " com- munal marriage " is the starting-point of the race as regards the connection of the sexes, and he uses it to denote a social state in which at once marriage was unknown, and every man of a group was the husband of every woman of a group, and had over her " communal rights." That marriage should be unknown, and that, at the same time, men and women should be more married than men and women have ever been since, are conditions which seem not the same, but quite incon- sistent with each other ; but Sir John Lubbock does not hesitate to assume that any evidence which tends to prove the existence of the one condition also proves the existence of the other. Passing by this, however, his view of the history of marriage is that "communal marriage " was gradually abridged and finally destroyed by individual. marriages between men and their war- captives. A captive woman, he thinks, would have become the exclusive possession of her captor. She would have been his, and not the possession of the tribe ; and inasmuch as a man could have got a wife of his own only by capture, Sir John ascribes to appropriation allowed upon capture, first, the origin of monandry, and then the origin of exogamy. Men wished to get wives of their own, and could only succeed—since they could have no exclusive right in their own women—by capturing women from their neighbours. The validity of this scheme depends upon that of the assumption that if—among savages who had all things, including their women, in common—a man captures a foreign woman, she would be conceded to him as his property. This seems in itself a proposition too doubtful to be the founda- tion of a theory, and unfortunately for Sir John, in proving his "communal marriage" he has had to assume the very opposite of it. Mr. M'Lennan points out that what is perhaps the most striking part of the evidence adduced of that assumed starting- point of society--evidence mostly taken, however, from practices of rather advanced peoples—depends upon the assumption that individual marriage had to be expiated, because it infringed the right of the tribe to the wife,—that is, the captured woman. Assumptions of this kind may not be worth much, whichever you happen to prefer of them, but plainly, it will not do to play fast and loose with them in this way. Moreover, as against the view that monandry first and exogamy afterwards originated in the fact that a man could get a wife of his own by capture, and in no other way, Mr. M'Lennan shows that the symbol of capture in nearly all cases represents not a capture by an individual—which is what Sir John Lubbock's History of Marriage seems to require —but a capture by a group, and also that in the known cases of actual capture, a body of men are usually engaged. That he should give up his own theory of exogamy and of the growth of marriage for Sir John's, is more perhaps than could in any circumstances have been expected of him ; but after what has been said, it is not surprising to find that he declares Sir John's " com- munal marriage," in the sense which alone is of importance to his argument—viz., that every man of a tribe was equally married to every woman of the tribe—altogether unproved and altogether improbable, and the reasoning on which the progress from that curious condition is made to depend, unsupported by facts, incon- sistent with facts, and therefore improbable also. What Sir J. Lubbock seems to have overlooked—had he been a lawyer, he could not have overlooked it—is that the idea of marriage implies regulation, by law or custom, of the relations between the sexes ; that without this there is nothing that can be called marriage, let the practices which prevail be what they may,—that in short, the entire absence of regulation is the entire absence of marriage.

It has been said that while pointing out conditions which might have averted the rise of exogamy—so that, with those conditions existing, the law of endogamy might have been arrived at inde- pendently of the other law—Mr. M'Lennan sees reason to believe that there was a general prevalence of exogamy among the early tribes of men. If this were so, endogamy must in a multitude of cases have supervened upon or succeeded exogamy ; and he holds, that, at any rate, this must have been the case among the endoga- mous races which have the form of capture. It became necessary for him, then, to attempt to show how the one law could have paved the way for the other ; and to this attempt are owing the most novel and important (if, also, perhaps the most debateable) portions of his books—those in which he undertakes to trace the growth of systems of kinship, and the history of marriage and the family. His first proposition as to kinship is that the earliest recognised system of kinship was one which acknowledged blood-ties through females only, ignoring the blood-relation- ship between father and child, and all blood-ties arising through the father. In 1865, when he published Primi- tive Marriage, he believed that he was enunciating this pro- position for the first time, but it had been put forward in 1861, in the treatise Das Mutter-Recht, now well known, of the Swiss jurist, Backofen, and to him, in the present volume, the priority of discovery is handed over without reserve. The two writers arrived at the same conclusion by totally different roads, and the suggestions they received from it were almost as far apart as they could possibly be. To the Swiss author—who reached it through an elaborate study of the traditions and myths of antiquity—it appeared as closely connected with a religious reformation, the nature of which is very obscurely shadowed forth, and as imply- ing the supremacy of women over men—a supremacy obtained by victory gained by the women over the men in armed conflict— in other words, by the superior organisation or military prowess

fated to raise the gravest doubt as to the soundness of the pro- position to be explained. Mr. M'Lennan, on the other hand, while pointing out that the blood-connection between mother and child is more obvious than that between father and child, holds that there is only one thing capable of accounting for the non-recognition of blood-relationship in the latter case. This is uncertainty as to fatherhood. Given certainty of fatherhood, and he maintains that the blood-ties through the father must have been recognised almost as soon as the blood-ties through the mother. But can there ever have been uncertainty as to father- hood, and if so, what can have produced it? The answer given to these questions, and the further exposition of Mr. M'Lennan's views as to kinship and the family, must be reserved for another article.