struggle for existence becomes more easy. Moreover, the human community takes account of sexes and not of individuals; modes of life are formed in accordance with general rules, and those only who conform to them come under the protection of the community. The unmarried, whether man or woman, are and must always remain the exception, and they must accept whatever is arranged. for them. It would be impossible for their sakes to imperil all which the experience of a thousand years has shown to be the best means of promoting the development of those aspects of human life which are most productive of happiness. The movement for the emancipation of women has not always been mindful of this general law.

The individual may justly claim such an education as will enable him to be independent of others, if necessary, but the demand does not hold good when he forgets this saving clause. The movement has sprung

from the moral sentiment that we are bound to make the lot of the unmarried as tolerable as possible, but it has also overstepped the sacred threshold of marriage, and has advocated the married woman's right to her independent earnings. This assumes a legal right to independent property-a rash assumption, which would be fatal to the bond of marriage. If it is thought that independence of character and the elevation of moral worth are only possible in association with material independence, the real factors of the civilized life of man are not duly estimated. Among primitive peoples, the independent ownership of property is the condition of an independent position. The service which a wife renders to her husband might be performed by any other woman, if her personality is not to be taken into account, and she can therefore only rely on the physical forces of possession. But as soon as the wife's personality comes into play, because her capacity to bring up her children depends upon it, the attempt to base her position upon her legal right to independent property again degrades her to the rudely material standpoint.

The lower classes are often in a position which is most in favour of the woman's material independence. But those of the upper classes who snatch at means which may perhaps effect a temporary improvement in the condition of the common people, act in a shortsighted way. It would be difficult to place a woman of the lower class in a different position from those of the higher, without checking the advance into higher grades, and creating a fatal distinction of classes. To give women a position which is only in harmony with rude conditions, while it threatens the cultured forms of society with destruction, would be irrational and even criminal. If it is supposed that the legal independence. of women with respect to property would remain a dead letter in the cultured classes, we may soon have reason to repent of such an error. Independence with respect to the possession of property must inevitably lead to independence with respect to its acquisition, and a woman's life must become the copy, and not the completion of that of man. It must not be forgotten that in the hard struggle for existence to which the woman is now drawn, man has lost the tender refinement of feeling which enables a mother to be the cherisher of childhood. A woman cannot take a man's burden on her shoulders without succumbing to a like fate.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FAMILY, THE CLAN, AND THE TRIBE. CONCLUSION.

Social and political meaning of the institution of the family-Patriarchal theory-Distinction between the family and the clan-The family dissolved into the clan-Conclusion.

WE have now ended our inquiries into the origin of the family, and will only make some brief observations on its bearing and importance with respect to the social and political forms of the State. The family has been shown to be an organization which was formed, not in order to make it easier to earn wealth, but for the better enjoyment of the wealth which was already earned; when once founded, it was maintained and carefully developed, because it offered external advantages to the man, inasmuch as his power was increased as his sons grew to manhood, and his daughters brought him into profitable relations with other families. It was an organization which was not self-contained, but depended on external world, through which its internal ramifications were in many ways defined and modified. We have seen that the development of the family was not merely advanced by the relations which existed between its members; it was rather the different family relations of the two parents which paved the way for this development. There was, therefore, a constitutional weakness in the family, owing to the difficulty of carrying on an

organization which is intended to include wider circles. We have also seen that the family may be enlarged into a family group, but that the structure derived from the family can only maintain its vitality within narrow limits, and that in the course of a few generations it falls again into a group of families.

The conception of the growth of the political community which until lately has been generally accepted, saw in the family the unit out of which the wider organization sprang. It was said that the State consisted either in an association of families, or in an expansion of one primitive family, and the two conceptions run into one. It was inevitable that the theories criticised above, which ignored the primitive existence of the family, sought to overthrow the so-called patriarchal theory, and to assign another origin to the State. This attempt has been very completely carried out by Morgan, and in many respects in a most able manner.

He asserts that the clan cannot have had its origin in the family, since the exogamy of the latter must have hindered its incorporation into a clan. The clan was homogeneous and of a permanent character, and as such, it was the natural basis of the social body. The monogamous family might assert its individuality and power in the clan, and especially in the community; but, nevertheless, the clan did not and could not admit it to be its elementary basis. The same may be said of the modern family and of the modern political community. While its individual character was established by its right of property, and its legal existence was recognized by the law, the family was in no sense the elementary unit of the State. The State was divided into districts, and these into villages, but these were not concerned with the family. The nation recognized its tribes, and the tribes their clans, but the clan, again, is not concerned with the family.1 Without accepting the erroneous Morgan, Anc. Soc., p. 227.

1

theory which Morgan advocates with respect to the family, we think that he is right on this point. The clan does not consist of families, but of individuals.

We must, however, observe, in opposition to Morgan, that the fact that the clan consists of individuals and not of families is not enough to show that it did not have its origin in the family. For if we assume that the clan was an enlarged family, there is no reason why it should not retain its character as a confederation of individuals, even in its enlarged form. There is nothing to show that the enlarged family must necessarily consist of separate families. We cannot, therefore, regard it as proved that the family and clan were of distinct origin, and if we ourselves nevertheless reject the patriarchal theories, we do so for other reasons.

The functions of the family are quite distinct from those of the clan; and the forms of government in both differ in so many respects that we cannot but regard them as fundamentally distinct. This assertion may be received with surprise, since the strongest support of the patriarchal theory has been sought in the assumption that the origin of the chiefship may be traced from the function of the paterfamilias. In this case, however, the indefinite character of primitive ideas has been misleading, and also the intermixture of ideas of descent in the conceptions of primitive clans, and in the strong resemblance in the mode of development or power which is involved in the nature of things. We must go back to the beginnings of paternal authority, and of that of the chief, in order to form a clear idea of the matter.

In some of the later modifications of the tribe, the chief possesses the authority of the father of the family, and in some of the later modifications of the family the paternal authority is degraded to that of a chief; but they were originally distinct, and the primitive

1 H. S. Maine, Early Law, p. 239; Anc. Law, p. 136; Early History,

p. 117.