CHAPTER IV 



MOTHERRIGHT 



Ignorance in the lower culture on the physiology of birth. 

 Such ignorance was once greater and more widespread 

 than now. For many ages the social organisation of man- 

 kind would not have necessitated the concentration of 

 thought on the problem of paternity. Descent was and 

 by many peoples still is reckoned exclusively through the 

 mother. The social organisation implied by motherright. 

 Kinship is founded on a community of blood actual or 

 imputed. The Blood-Covenant. The father not recog- 

 nised in motherright as belonging to the kin. His alien 

 position and its consequences. The Nayars. Combat 

 between father and son. The Blood-feud. Children the 

 property of the kin. The potestas in motherright. Evo- 

 lution of the family. The mutual rights and duties of 

 the children and their mother's brother. Father a wholly 

 subordinate person. The origin of motherright not to be 

 found in uncertainty of paternity. Paternity in patrilineal 

 societies. 



Ir^has been shown in previous chapters that : 



1 . Stories of birth from other than what we now know 

 as the only natural cause are told and believed 

 all over the world. 



2. The means to which in these stones birth is 

 attributed are or have been actually adopted for 

 the production of children. 



3. It is also widely believed that birth is merely 

 a new manifestation of a previously existing 

 creature, either human or one of the lower animals 



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