THE LOWER RACES OF MAN. 353 



sister: relationsliip, and, consequently, iulieritance, being held to descend 

 iu the female line, and not in the male, as among ourselves. 



This is the case among- the jSTegroes of Guinea, among- the Berbers iu 

 Xorth Africa, and the Arabs in the East. It occurs among- several of 

 the Hindostan tribes, among the Battas of Sumatra, the red Indians of 

 JSTorth America, the black islanders of the Pacific, and elsewhere. 



Obviously, however, as civilization progressed, and the moral feelings 

 became stronger, a feeling of opposition to these arrangements would 

 arise. As family life became more develo])ed, the affection between 

 father and child would become stronger; and as property became more 

 important, men would wish their goods to descend to their own children, 

 who would themselves obviously desire to inherit their father's property. 



And as man, like a pendulum, always passes from one extreme to 

 another, so, having long considered that children were related to their 

 mother, but not to their father, when they recognized the relation on 

 the paternal side, they went into the other extreme, and neglected that 

 to the mother. 



How completely the idea of relationship through the father, when 

 once recognized, superseded that through the mother, we may see in the 

 very curious trial of Orestes — the son of Agamemnon and Clytem- 

 nestra — as recorded by an ancient Greek poet. 



Clytemuestra murdered Agamemnon, whose death was avenged by 

 Orestes. For this act he was fabled to have been i^rosecuted before 

 the Greek gods by the Furies, vrhose duty it was to punish those, and 

 those only, who had slain their relatives. 



In his defense Orestes asked them, why they did not punish his 

 mother, Clytemnestra, for the murder of her husband, Agamemnon, 

 and when they answer that marriage does not constitute blood-relation- 

 ship, he i^leads that, by the same rule, they cannot touch him, because, 

 he says, a child is a relation to his father, but not to its mother. 



This view, which seems to us so unnatural, was nevertheless supported 

 by Apollo and Minerva, and being ado^rted by a majority of the judges, 

 led to the acquittal of Orestes. 



Hence we see that at first the feeling of clanship prevailed rather 

 than that of family, and that children were regarded as related to the 

 tribe rather than to their parents; that, secondh', they were considered 

 to be related to the mother, but not to the father; thirdly, to the father, 

 but not to the mother; lastly, and lastly only, as among ourselves, to 

 both father and mother. 



• We see, therefore, that the lowest savages are entirely deficient in the 

 idea of marriage and of famil}^, and that the position of women is 

 wretched in the extreme. The ideas of relationship, founded on mar- 

 riage, have only gradually been acquired, and thus civilization has 

 raised the position of woman, and making her a helpmeet instead of a 

 slave, has purified and softened all the conditions of social life. The 

 higher i)osition of woman is one of the points in which we see most 

 clearly the enormous advantage of civilization over barbarism. 



RELiaiON. 



The religious condition of the lower races of mankind is one of the 

 most difficult, although, at the same time, most interesting i^ortious of 

 my subject. 



It is most difficult, partly because it is far from easy to communicate 



with men of a different race on such an abstruse subject; partly because 



many are reluctant to discuss it; but mainly because, even among those 



nominally professing the same religion, there are always in reality great 



1'3 s 



