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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 158 



ions, and endeavored to prove that the former's 

 views were based upon incorrect information. 

 The argument was continued by his publication 

 last year of a supplementary volume, based upon 

 his late brother's papers, entitled ' The patriarchal 

 theory,' written in opposition to the views upon 

 this subject of Sir Henry Maine. In the preface 

 he states that his brother had intended to present 

 in greater detail the proofs of his theory of the 

 origin of exogamy. He believed that it grew out 

 of the system called ' totemism,' which had been 

 outlined by him in three essays on ' The worship 

 of animals and plants,' published in the Fort- 

 nightly review in 1869-70. From totemism came 

 exogamy, arising from the scarcity of women ; 

 and this must have originated in societies ac- 

 knowledging no kinship except through women. 

 From this condition there has been a gradual prog- 

 ress by evolution, with varying degrees of rapidity 

 among different people, but involving the recogni- 

 tion of kinship through males. As bearing upon 

 the question of the scarcity of women, the late Mr. 

 McLennan had already made a large collection of 

 instances of the prevalence of infanticide and 

 kindred practices. 



Such being the present state of the controversy, 

 as we said at the outset, the volume now before 

 us, upon ' Kinship and marriage in early Arabia,' 

 must be regarded as the last contribution to it. It 

 upholds in the most uncompromising fashion the 

 McLennan side. The learned author of the celebrated 

 lectures upon ' The Old Testament and the Jewish 

 Church ' and upon ' The prophets of Israel,' in the 

 discharge of his duties as lord-almoner's professor 

 of Arabic in the University of Cambridge, had 

 occasion to study thoroughly the laws of marriage 

 and of tribal organization which prevailed in 

 Arabia at the time of Mohammed. He became 

 fully satisfied that the system of male kinship 

 there had been preceded by one of kinship 

 through women only, and that changes in the 

 tribal system went hand in hand with the change 

 in the system of kinship. He is also convinced 

 that the correspondence of the Arabian facts with 

 this general theory proves that the system of 

 totemism and the law of exogamy once prevailed 

 among t lie Arabs, and that the general principles of 

 the hypothesis laid down by McLennan in 'Primi- 

 tive marriage' cannot be shaken. The results 

 thus derived he believes have "a very important 

 bearing on the most fundamental problems of 

 Arabian history, and on the genesis of Islam itself." 

 All who are interested in the history of the 

 early institutions of mankind must welcome such 

 a learned and novel explanation of the primitive 

 type of Semitic religion, and of the consequences 

 that have flowed from it. 



The opinion has generally prevailed that the 

 deities of the primitive tribes must be identified 

 with the heavenly bodies ; but our author proves 

 that this was not the earliest form of tribal 

 religion. The Arabs retained a tribal constitution 

 longer than the other Semites, and we know much 

 more about it than about that of any other tribe. 

 In its primitive form it was a totem tribe ; that is, 

 one in which the belief that all its members are of 

 one blood was associated with the religious con- 

 viction that the life of the tribe was in some 

 mysterious w r ay derived from some animal or 

 plant. "There is reason to think," he remarks, 

 "that in early times totem tribesmen generally 

 bore on their bodies a mark of their totem, and 

 that this is the true explanation not only of tattoo- 

 ing, but of the many strange deformations of the 

 teeth, skull, and the like, which savages inflict on 

 themselves and their children" (p. 187). So he 

 would explain the ' mark ' set on Cain by Jehovah 

 as "the tribal mark, which every man bore on his 

 person, and without which the ancient form of 

 blood-feud, as the affair of the whole stock, how- 

 ever scattered, and not of near relatives alone, 

 could hardly have been worked " (p. 216). The most 

 important evidence of the feeling, involved in the 

 totem religion, that a man's totem animal is of 

 one race with himself, is derived from the doctrine 

 of forbidden foods. ' ' A prohibition to eat the flesh 

 of an animal of a certain species, that has its 

 ground, not in natural loathing, but in religious 

 horror and reverence, implies that something 

 divine is ascribed to every animal of the species. 

 And what seems to us to be natural loathing often 

 turns out, in the case of primitive peoples, to 

 be based on a religious taboo, and to have its 

 origin, not in feelings of contemptuous disgust, but 

 of reverential dread. . . . Unclean animals, whom 

 it was pollution to eat, were simply holy animals" 

 (p. 807). Many of their most ancient tribal names 

 are taken from animals, of which our author gives 

 an explanatory list of more than thirty. Such 

 names the genealogists usually seek to explain as 

 derived from an eponymous ancestor. But the 

 history of paternity among the Arabs makes it 

 clear that ancient stock-names were not de- 

 rived from fathers; for the system of stocks was 

 in existence, and they must have had names, long 

 before the idea of fatherhood had been developed. 



Three forms of marriage were known among 

 the Arabs in antiquity : MoVa marriage, which 

 was a temporary arrangement for a fixed time; 

 Beena marriage, a development of the system of 

 Nair polyandry, where the husband settled among 

 the wif e's kindred ; and Baal marriage, which was 

 probably unknown before the Semitic dispersion, in 

 which the husband took the wife to his own home, 



