THE CANNIBAL IN EVOLUTION 151 



something of the nature and origin of the primal family, 

 its laws and customs. He pictures the savage ape-like 

 ancestor of man as the father and husband of all his 

 female children, as well as of the stolen women who bore 

 them. An immense and overpowering sex jealousy 

 led to the extrusion of the male offspring when they 

 reached the age of puberty. Such sons broke into the 

 sanctity of the family circle dominated by some other 

 ancestor of man, and set up for themselves. Incest at 

 that time was not intercourse between father and 

 daughter, but between brother and sister, son and aunt, 

 or mother, and the penalty assigned and exacted for 

 ages was death. According to Atkinson, and here I 

 by no means follow him, such a system was probably 

 broken down when the patriarch grew old by the ex- 

 ceptional influence of some " wife " who retained great 

 maternal love for her latest grown-up male child. It 

 seems that other more widely operating and less 

 abstract motives can be shown, which must have exerted 

 their influence on the husband and father of the camp 

 and all its members. 



It is now some fifteen years ago since I deduced from 

 certain social phenomena, which I propose to indicate, 

 a particular theory of the family and the two-class 

 tribe. This I submitted to the late Sir Laurence Gomme 

 and Dr. Haddon. After some consideration they re- 

 ferred me to Atkinson's paper, reprinted in Lang's Social 

 Origins, as they were of opinion that my views had been 

 largely anticipated by him. I discovered this to be a 

 fact, and for a short time experienced those feelings of 

 indignation natural in one who believes himself a 

 pioneer, and finds a camp pitched on what he thought 

 an unknown territory. Such feelings did not last long. 



