Jan l- art 



1S35. ] 



SCIENCE. 



17 



altogether the evidence to the correctness of 

 his views has steadily accumulated, until it is 

 now almost overwhelming. 



Mr. Wilken takes up this subject for the 

 purpose of showing that mother-right once 

 existed among the Semitic nations, especially 

 among the ancient Arabs. The evidence 

 adduced seems to fully warrant the conclusion. 

 In connection with the main purpose of his 

 paper, two subsidiary questions are discussed. 

 The first relates to communal marriage ; the 

 second, to exogamy and endogamy. 



With respect to communal marriage, the 

 author is not clear in his conception of the 

 nature of the institution. It is the marriage 

 of a group of men (brothers) to a group of 

 women (sisters) . Sometimes the group of men 

 is small ; and a man ma}' have no brothers, and 

 still be entitled to a group of women for his wife. 

 This is sometimes denominated 'hetarism,' 

 and must be distinguished from polygamy, 

 which is altogether a later institution. Some- 

 times the group of women may be small : in 

 fact, a woman may have no sisters ; in which 

 case a number of men would have but one 

 common wife. This is called ' polyandry.' 

 Our author endeavors to find evidence, among 

 the Arabs and other Semitic peoples, of com- 

 munal marriage ; but most of the evidence 

 which he brings forward is not pertinent to the 

 argument. The ; survival ' of institutions 

 analogous to ' atavism ' in biology is a principle 

 of great value to the student of early society, 

 but it must be used with great care. Wilken 

 describes the institution of mot' a, which is 

 marriage for a limited and prescribed time, 

 and other sexual practices among the nomadic 

 tribes, and cites them as survivals of communal 

 marriage from prehistoric times ; but such 

 practices, though they may be partially regu- 

 lated and ameliorated by law, give no evi- 

 dence of a more ancient institution, but rather 

 show that in all times men have disregarded 

 institutions, and broken laws, and have thus 

 lapsed into immorality. Robbery still exists 

 in the highest stages of civilized society, but 

 furnishes no evidence that stealing was origi- 

 nally established by law, so as to constitute a 

 prehistoric institution. Murder is still com- 

 mitted, but this does not permit us to infer 

 that primitive mankind practised murder as a 

 legalized institution. The various forms of 

 hetarisrn practised in historic times among 

 all peoples, like robbery, murder, and other 

 crimes, testify to the fact that the passions of 

 men are but imperfectly controlled by the reg- 

 ulations of society. 



The author brings forward many instances 



and divers reasons for believing that exogamy 

 formerly existed among the Arabs, and that it 

 was finally changed into endogamy. On this 

 subject the author seems to think that the evi- 

 dence is contradictory, and he tries to draw 

 an average conclusion therefrom. The con- 

 tradictions, however, are not in the facts them- 

 selves, but in the author's misconception of 

 the facts upon which theories of exogamy and 

 endogamy have been based. His first great 

 error is in using the term ' tribe ' in different 

 senses, as does McLennan and other writers 

 of that school. They seem to think that the 

 tribe is a group of people held together by the 

 authority of some one person, — by a chief. 

 Now, in fact, no tribe has yet been discovered 

 organized on a plan so simple. All tribes are 

 composed of two or more groups, each of which 

 has an organization, and constitutes an inte- 

 gral part of the tribe. In many cases there 

 are tribes with three, four, five, or even six 

 units of organization of different orders. 

 Sometimes the term ' tribe ' is used to desig- 

 nate the unit of the highest order, — the whole 

 body of the people ; sometimes it is used to 

 designate a clan or gens within the tribe ; and 

 again it is used to denote a sub-gens, or even 

 a smaller group. The use of the term 4 tribe,' 

 or its synonyrne in other languages, in this 

 manner, has led to man}' errors, and apparently 

 conflicting statements, in relation to the orga- 

 nization of early society. In all such tribes 

 throughout the world, there is invariably some 

 group of persons within which a man ma}' not 

 marry, and in respect to which he may be said 

 to be exogamous ; and yet he always has a 

 right to marry somewhere within the larger 

 group here denominated ' tribe : ' hence, in re- 

 lation to the tribe, he is endogamous. Every 

 man, in all stages of society, is exogamous in 

 relation to some group ; that is, it is incest to 

 marry within such group. In like manner, 

 he is endogamous to some other or all other 

 groups. Thus it is that every man, through- 

 out savagery, barbarism, and civilization, is 

 both exogamous and endogamous. 



The author has the unfortunate practice of 

 using the term ' matriarchy ' (matriarchat) for 

 the term ' uterine descent,' and ' patriarchy ' 

 (patriarchal) as a name for agnatic descent. 

 The term ' patriarchy ' has long been used for 

 another purpose ; that is, for the name of the 

 organization of the social unit in which the 

 father is the chief or ruler of his sons and sons' 

 families, — a group o*f descendants. — and is 

 in important particulars the owner of the 

 common property. This patriarchal society 

 is well described in the post-Noachian history 



