256 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



against inclement skies unfruitful earth or tempestuous 

 seas. Many of them, therefore, are dormant, like a bud 

 before it has unfolded. His attention, not habitually 

 directed to the problems of the universe, is easily tired. 

 His knowledge is severely limited; his range of ideas 

 is small. Credulous as a child, he is put off from the 

 solution of a merely speculative question by a tale that 

 chimes with his previous ideas, though it may transcend 

 his actual experience. Hence many a deduction, 

 many an induction, to us plain and obvious has been 

 retarded, or never reached at all : he is still a 

 savage. 



During many ages the social organisation of man- 

 kind would not have necessitated the concentration of 

 thought on the problem of paternity. Descent is still 

 reckoned exclusively through the mother by a number 

 of savage and barbarous peoples. This mode of 

 reckoning descent is called by a useful term of 

 German origin Motherright. It would be im- 

 possible to undertake an exhaustive enumeration 

 of the peoples among which motherright prevails. 

 The civilised nations of Europe and European origin 

 reckon descent and consequently kinship through both 

 parents. A few others, chiefly more civilised nations 

 like the Chinese and the Arabs, agree with them. 

 Apart from these it may be roughly said that 

 motherright is found in every quarter of the globe. 

 Not that every people is in the stage of motherright : 

 on the contrary many reckon through the father. But 

 even where the latter is the case vestiges of the former 

 are commonly to be traced. And the result of anthro- 

 pological investigations during the past half-century 

 has been to show that motherright everywhere pre- 



