382 



NATURE 



[September 23, 1909 



Coast, published in 1807, which came at the " psycho- 

 logical moment," and first attracted serious attention. At 

 the other extremity of India, also, analogous customs were 

 being recorded, about the same time, by Samuel Turner 

 in Uibet, which might have given pause at the outset to 

 the speculators who hoped to base general conclusions on 

 anything so special and peculiar as the customs of Aryan 

 India. 



Similar evidence came pouring in during the generation 

 which followed ; partly, it is true, as the result of 

 systematic search among older travellers, but mainly 

 through the intense exploitation of large parts of the 

 world by European traders and colonists. Conspicuous 

 instances are the Xegro societies of Western and Equa- 

 torial .■\frica, first popularised by the re-publication of 

 William Bosman's " Guinea " (1700), in Pinkerton's 

 " General Collection of \'oyages and Travels " (London, 

 1808, &c.), and by Proyart's " Histoire de Loango " (1776), 

 which also reached the English public in the same in- 

 valuable collection. But it was from the south that the 

 new African material came most copiously, in proportion 

 as the activity of e.\plorers, missionaries, and colonists 

 was greater. Thunberg's account of the Bechuanas ' takes 

 the lead here ; but for English thought the principal 

 authorities are, of course, John Mackenzie " and David 

 Livingstone.^ 



It was not to be expected that America, which had made 

 such remarkable contributions to the study of Man in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, should fall behind 

 in the nineteenth, when its vast resources of mankind, as 

 of Nature's gifts, were being realised at last. From 

 Hunter,' Gallatin,^ and Schoolcraft,' in the 'twenties, to 

 Lewis Morgan " in 1865, there was hardly a traveller " out 

 West " who did not bring back some fresh example of 

 society destructive of the Patriarchal Theory. 



.■\s often happens in such cases, more than one survey 

 of the evidence was in progress simultaneously. Bachofen 

 was the first to publish,* and it is curious that his great 

 book on " Mother-right " appeared in the very same year 

 as Maine's "Ancient Law." Lubbock's "Prehistoric 

 Times," in the next year, represents the same movement 

 of thought in England in a popular shape, but almost in- 

 dependently. In .America, Lewis Morgan, whom I have 

 noted already as an able interpreter of Iroquois custom, 

 followed up his detailed studies of Redskin law by a 

 Smithsonian monograph in 1871 on " Svstems of Con- 

 sanguinity and .Affinity of the Human Family," and, in 

 1877, by his book on ".Ancient Societv." Meanwhile Post 

 had published his great work on 'the " Evolution ol 

 Marriage"' in 1875, and J. F. McLennan his firsi 

 " Studies in Ancient History " in 1876. It was the 

 generation of Darwin and of the great philologists, as we 

 have seen, and " survivals " were in the air : Dargan '" 

 pointed out traces of the Matriarchate in the law and 

 custom of Germany, and Wilken " in those of earlv .Arabia. 

 The period of exploration, if I mav so term it, closed on 

 this aspect of the subject with Westermarck's " Historv 

 of Human Marriage," which was published in London in 

 1891. 



Aus\taVian Evidence: Totcmism and Classificatory 

 Kinship. 



I have now mentioned India, South Africa, and North 

 .America, _ three principal fields of English-speaking enter- 

 prise during the nineteenth century, and have indicated the 

 contribution of each to modern anthropology in its bearing 

 on political science. Only Australia remains; and, though 

 .Australia's task has been shared more particularly with 



^ Pinkerfon. vol. xvi, 



-John Mackenzie, " Ten Years Norlh of the Orange River " (1850-60). 

 Edinburgh. 1871. v 3V yy 



. ^-P.''^'"' Livingstone, " Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and 

 Its Tributaries (1858-64)." London, 1S65. 



■> Hunter, " Manners and Customs of several Indian Tribes located West 

 of the iMIssissippi." Philadelphia, 1S23, 



H Gallatin, " Archxologia Americana." Philadelphia (from 1S20 onwards). 



o Schoolcraft. "Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi 

 Valley (New York, 1825) ; " Notes on the Iroquois" (1846). 



• Lewis H. Morgan, Proc. .\m. Acad. Am and Sciences, vii., 1865-8. 



" Bachofen, " Das Muiter-recht " Stuttgart, iS6t. 



** Hermann Post, "Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit und die 

 Entstehung der Ehe." Oldenburg, 1875 



_ >>' Dargan. " Mutier-recht und Raub.ehe und ihre Reste im German- 

 ischen Recht und Leben." Breslau. 1883. 



't Wilken, " Das Matriarchal bei den alten .^rabern." Leipzig, 1884. 



NO. 2082, VOL. 81] 



North .America, I shall be doing no injustice to Lewis 

 Morgan or to McLennan if I couple with their names 

 those of Fison and Howitt,' as the discoverers of classical 

 instances of societies which observe neither paternal nor 

 maternal obligations of kinship as we understand them, 

 but have adopted those purely artificial systems of relation- 

 ships which in moinents of elation we explain as 

 " Totemic," or, in despair, describe as " classificatory." 



Hermann Post : Comparative Jurisprudence. 



Our retrospect, therefore, of the last fifty years shows 

 clearly once again how intimately European colonisation 

 and anthropological discoveries have gone hand in hand : 

 first to establish a " Matriarchal Theory " of society as a 

 rival of the Patriarchal ; and then to confront both views 

 alike with the practices and with the theories of 

 " Totemism." 



From the point of view of political science, all this mass 

 of inquiries finds applications already in more departments- 

 than one ; though it is probably still too early to appraise* 

 its influence adequately. The new Montesquieu has not 

 yet arisen to interpret to us the " Spirit of the Laws." 

 Most directly, perhaps, we can trace such influence in the 

 " Comparative Jurisprudence " of Hermann Post, whose 

 first work on the " Evolution of Marriage " appeared, as 

 we have seen, in 1875. Post's general attitude is best seen 

 in his " Introduction to the Study of Ethnological Juris- 

 prudence," which was published in 1886, and in his 

 " -African Jurisprudence " of 1887.- .As the result of a 

 survey of social organisations, considered as machinery in 

 motion, Post points out very justly that it is useless to 

 attempt to explain social phenomena on the basis of the 

 psychological activities of individuals, as is too commonly 

 assumed, because all individuals whose conduct we can 

 possibly observe have themselves been educated in some 

 society or other, and presume in all their social acts the 

 assumptions on which that society itself proceeds. " I 

 take the legal customs of all peoples of the earth," so he 

 wrote in 1884,' " the residual outcome of the living legal 

 consciousness of humanity, for the starting-point of my 

 inquiry into the science of law; and then, on this basis, 

 I propound the question. What is law? If by this road 

 I arrive eventually at an abstract conception of law, or at 

 an idea of law, then the whole fabric so created consists, 

 from base to summit, of flesh and blood." It is the same 

 method, of course, which had already yielded such remark- 

 able results to Montesquieu, and even to Locke. The point 

 of view is no longer that of a Maine or a McLennan, 

 students of patriarchal or of matriarchal institutions by 

 themselves. It is that of a spectator of human society as 

 a whole ; and such a point of view only became possible 

 at all when it was already certain that no great section 

 of humanity remained altogether unexplored, however frag- 

 mentary our knowledge inight still be. of much that we 

 ought to have recorded. .And its immediate outcome has 

 been to throw into the strongest possible relief the depend- 

 ence of the form and still more of the actual content of 

 all human societies on something which is not in the 

 human mind at all, but is the infinite variety of that 

 external Nature which Society exists to fend off from Man, 

 and also to let Man dominate if he can. 



This w-as, of course, already the standpoint of Comte, 

 with his emohasis on the monde ambiant. But Comte. 

 the citizen of a State which except in Canada had failed 

 to colonise, and therefore had little direct contact with 

 non-European tvpes of society, confined himself far too 

 exclusively to European data. His strength is precisely 

 where the science of France was so magnificently strong 

 in his day, in the domain of pure physics ; it is his analogies 

 between politics and phvsics which are so illuminating in 

 his work, as in that of his English compeer, Herbert 

 Spencer ; * and it is the w^eakness of both in the direction 



1 Fison and Howitt, " Kamilaroi and Kurnai." Melbourne and Sydney, 

 iSRo. 



- Hermann Post, " Einleitung in das Studium der ethnnlogischen Juris- 

 prudenz " (Oldenburg, 1S86) ; " Afrikanische Turisprudenz" (18S7). His 

 position is, however, already clear in his first synthetic work. "Dr. 

 Hrsprung des Rechts," iSyf^-. as well as in his earlier hook on Marriage 

 For a good summary of Posts views see Th. Achelis, " Die Entwickelung 

 der modernen Ethnologie " (Perlin, i88g), pp. 113-2S, and the same writers 

 " Mnderne Ethnologie " (i8g6). 



■* Post. "Die Grundlagen des Rechts "(188 



^ Compare Quetelet's *' Es^ai de Phys-que sociale ' (1841), as a symptom 

 of the trend of French thought at this stage. 



