THE "nation "as AN ELEMENT IN ANTHROPOLOGY. 591 



and perfection, are the motives which have ever nrged man to establish 

 those relations with his fellows which result in what we call social ties 

 or bonds. 



Although to the superficial observer these seem to have been most 

 heterogeneous and fortuit-ous, a comprehensive analysis reduces them 

 to a very few so far as their guiding principles are concerned. Here as 

 elsewhere in ethnology we are impressed with the paucity, yes, I may 

 even say the poverty, of the resources Avhich have been utilized by man 

 in his upward marcli to conscious culture. 



Wherever we find men united together under some form of social 

 compact, we shall find also that this compact will fall under one of 

 three categories. It is based upon community, either real or theoretical, 

 of blood, of territorial area, or of purpose. These three forms are 

 mutually incompatible; they are exclusive of and in sharp contrast 

 with one another; they react very differently upon the individual and 

 the race; and they belong markedly to different periods in the history 

 of a people, to different stages of its advancement in culture. 



It may be laid down as a rule with few or no exceptions that the 

 earliest form of the social bond is one of blood, of kinship, of con- 

 sanguinity and affinity. The unit of the primitive horde is the family; 

 the one cohesive princii:)le which it recognizes as socially binding is 

 purity of descent, the maintenance of the integrity of the stock, as its 

 members understand it. Here then we see a mighty influence at 

 work to preserve in primitive times and conditions the unity of the 

 l^hysical type. The visible aim of communities in the lower stages of 

 culture is to preserve at all costs the characteristics of the race to 

 which they belong, and the particular traits of the variety of that race 

 as inherited from their ancestors. This is the guiding principle of 

 what is known as matriarchy and the custom of tracing the genealogical 

 line through the maternal and not through the ])aternal ancestry. 

 Positive certainty as to parentage nuist in every case be limited to the 

 mother, and for that reason the female line always insures a higher 

 probability of purity of descent. 



Of course the degree with which the conservation of the type was 

 really maintained under this system depended on the local laws or 

 customs regarding marriage and the fidelity required of married women. 

 It is true that in both these respects there is considerable divergence 

 in early conditions. In some places exogamous marriages prevailed; 

 that is, the wife must not be an acknowledged relation of the husband; 

 more frequently, marriages must be endogamous, that is, she must be 

 of his recognized kin ; though often this again is limited, as that she 

 must not be an offspring of the same mother, or not be within certain 

 degrees of kinship. Reminiscences of these restrictions still prevail 

 in civilized communities, in the laws prohibiting the marriage of near 

 relations, or, as in England, prohibiting marriage with a deceased 

 wife's sister. 



