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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 116. 



as over his slaves. The flocks and herds of 

 the children are the flocks and herds of the 

 father. These he holds in a representative 

 rather than in a proprietary character." 



Subsequently ' Village-communities in the 

 east and west,' ' Lectures on the early history 

 of institutions,' and ' Dissertations on early 

 law and custom,' were published, in which 

 Maine still advocated the patriarchal theor}\ 

 Arguments for this supposed origin of society 

 were derived from the history of the Romans, 

 Greeks, Hindoos, Cells, Teutons, Slavonians, 

 and Hebrews. 



In 1868 the Smithsonian institution published 

 Morgan's great work on ' Systems of consan- 

 guinity and affinit} T of the human family ; ' 

 and in 1877 his work on ' Ancient society ' 

 appeared. In these, and in miscellaneous 

 articles published in the reviews, Morgan 

 clearly and fully established the existence of 

 more primitive forms of social organization 

 than those exhibited in the Scriptures and early 

 Roman history. Thus the patriarchal theory 

 fell to the ground. Morgan's investigations 

 extended far and wide among the lower tribes 

 of mankind, and his work altogether constituted 

 a masterpiece of inductive research. 



But we now know that Morgan's work had 

 one blemish. Seeing that the growth of family 

 institutions, which constitute a large part of 

 primitive sociology, was in the main toward 

 a higher state of societ} r as measured by 

 the standard of civilized ethics, he accredited 

 savage peoples with modern opinions relating 

 to physiology, and with a high degree of moral 

 purity, and held that the growth of institutions 

 was due to a conscious effort at reform. While, 

 therefore, Morgan's theory of the structure of 

 primitive society was established on abundant 

 facts, his theory of the origin of this structure 

 and the cause of its development was unsound. 

 Thus it occurred that a theory of the structure 

 of societ}^ resting upon an inductive basis was 

 to some extent discredited because of a priori 

 theories of social and moral reform. Induc- 

 tive conclusions suffered by reason of their 

 association with deductive errors. For these 

 reasons certain scholars in Europe, and espe- 

 cially in England, have to some extent ignored 

 Morgan, and have gone on to re-affirm and 

 elaborate the patriarchal theory. Chief among 

 these is Sir Henry Maine. 



J. F. McLennan, the author of k Primitive 

 marriage,' and other works on tribal societ}', 

 collected a great body of facts relating to 

 marriage by capture, and the interesting for- 

 malities which supervene upon that institution, 

 and from them deduced the theor}* of exogamy 



and endogam3 T , by which he classified the tribes 

 of mankind into exogamous and endogamous, 

 and thus failed to discover that exogamy and 

 endogamy are correlative parts of the same in- 

 stitution. McLennan was evidently dealing 

 with facts more primitive than those with which 

 Maine was dealing, and, soon discovering the 

 errors into which Sir Henry had fallen in his 

 patriarchal theory, he finally commenced the 

 preparation of a critical treatise on that subject, 

 probably for the purpose of clearing the ground 

 for the more elaborate treatment of his theory 

 of marriage and concomitant theories of tribal 

 kinship. He died before his work was com- 

 pleted. His brother, Donald McLennan, has 

 taken up the subject, and edited the papers, 

 adding new material. The book which we now 

 have before us is the result, and is a very fine 

 piece of destructive criticism. The entire field 

 occupied by Sir Henry Maine is reviewed ; and 

 the facts from Aiyan and Semitic history are 

 carefully examined, and shown to be quite con- 

 tradictory of Maine's theor} T . He shows, 

 further, that the particular form of patriarchy 

 discovered among the Romans, and which 

 Maine claimed to have been the universal form, 

 was exceptional, and that the Roman tribes 

 presented the sole instance. To American 

 anthropologists this work ma} T seem one of 

 supererogation ; but it will serve a good purpose 

 b} 7 clearing the ground of false theories which 

 have had deep root, and have been continually 

 springing up to choke the growth of sounder 

 doctrines. 



In this new book by the McLennan brothers, 

 the destructive part is much more satisfactory 

 than the constructive : in fact, the critical 

 portion is somewhat marred by erroneous 

 theories relating to primitive marriage, and by 

 some strange blunders relating to kinship, — 

 blunders common to many writers on sociology. 



It seems probable that a form of social 

 organization based upon communal marriage 

 was primordial ; but, be that as it may, it 

 must here be neglected. It has been estab- 

 lished that a very early form of society was 

 based upon kinship, and that kinship was used 

 to organize peoples into groups of different 

 orders. In the very simplest form, there is 

 always a larger group including two or more 

 smaller groups. In this grouping, kinship of 

 one kind is used to combine the individuals of 

 a smaller group into a minor body politic, and 

 kinship of another kind to combine the groups 

 into the larger body politic. Thus the group 

 in its various orders depends upon the recog- 

 nition of different kinds of kinship. To make 

 this plain, it becomes necessary to define 



