172 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



are the sources of kindness and comfort l (sibsam, win- 

 some, gemachlich, kind, higlich, giitlich, etc.), so the 

 root fri, in the early dawn of civilisation, gives us the 

 first conceptions of friheit, fridu, and frawi, the basis 

 of all further human achievements. It is only by grasp- 

 ing the original primitive sources pf these three ideas 

 that we can appreciate why it is that their cognates 

 so often return to their primitive sex-value, or under- 

 stand why so many equivalent terms appear from one 

 and another of these three words. From the notion of 

 sex-freedom among the kin springs the conception of 

 the kinsman as the freeman, as distinguished from the 

 bondsman ; and from the freeman, with his privileges, 

 the whole judicial system suggested by freiding, frei- 

 gericht, and freiherr. To make a man a freeman is to 

 make him of the vriunte, of the kin-wooers ; and thus 

 freien means either liberare or matrimonium inire. 

 Freiding is only another fuller development of the 

 Mrath and the mahal, and the freiherr a disguised 

 form of the kin-alderman, the mahlmann or zupan. 

 But the whole series of words for freedom carries us, 

 like libertas, up and down the scale, from the highest 

 to the lowest conceptions ; free has its good and bad 

 senses. 2 The freihart is the stroller, the vagabond ; 

 the freifrau is not only the freiherr' 's wife, in early 

 times she is the mulier vaga, and the word is used 

 like freiweib for a prostitute a double development 



1 Even from this root fri we note the first befriedigung and freude as the 

 sexual. Compare Sanskrit priti for befriedigung and prita, loved, pleased. 



a Curiously enough the notion of licentious infrei passes over at every turn 

 into the notion of joyous, beautiful, and commendable, as in vri und vrum, and 

 Lessing's Wiefrei, wie schon ist sie. 



