female line ignore the force of this passion and sentiment, and in this he shares Bachofen's point of view. In the old legends it was not legal but spiritual bonds which constituted the relation between mother and child; it is the patriarchal family which is actuated by passion and sentiment. The child may be more dependent on the mother than on the father, and the wife may be more dependent on the brothers and sisters than on her husband; yet, however deeply rooted the sentiment which attracts the child to its mother's family, it is still the family of the mother's father. It is easy to understand Tacitus's narrative: Sister's sons are held in as much esteem by their uncles as by their fathers; indeed, some regard the relation as even more sacred and binding, and prefer it in receiving hostages, thinking thus to secure a stronger hold on the affections and a wider bond for the family." "

66

Before bringing these researches to an end, we must mention the Orestes myth, to which some writers have ascribed great importance, as a proof of a primitive female line.3 The well-known mythical story is as

1 Dargun, p. 50. Bachofen, Mutterrecht; Antiq., vol. i. The bond between brothers and sisters is adduced as being especially noteworthy and primitive. For the brother's sake the sister sacrifices not only the husband, but the children which belong to her husband. This, again, cannot be explained by the female line. Gudrun slays her husband Atli because he had slain her brother. Signy helps her brother Sigmund to avenge himself on her husband Siggeir, who had slain her father and her other brothers; but when the vengeance was accomplished she ascends the funeral pile as a faithful wife, and is burnt with her husband. Kriemhild, after long conflict, sacrifices her brother in order to avenge her husband Seigfried. In this Bachofen traces the growing development of marriage, which was primitively of no account. We, however, see nothing in it but tales of the various and conflicting passions of the human heart, and their different issue in different characters. The more the mother is affected by the passions she had cherished in her patriarchal home, the less we should feel disposed to connect this fact with decadent customs. It is rather the growing life of a community which is always becoming more firmly organized, and which bursts the bonds formerly imposed upon the heart by the conditions of patriarchal life.

2 Tacitus, Germany and its Tribes, p. 15. See Schrader, p. 389.

3 Bachofen, Mutterrecht, p. 45. McLennan, Studies; Kinship in Ancient Greece. Fison and Howitt, p. 122.

follows: Clytemnestra slew her husband Agamemnon; Orestes avenged his father by putting his mother to death. The furies, on whom it was incumbent to avenge blood-guiltiness, appear to have ignored Clytemnestra's act, but wish to wreak vengeance on Orestes for his mother's murder. Orestes spurns them from him, and the complaint is brought before a tribunal, over which Pallas Athene presides. Orestes affirms that there is no tie of blood between him and his mother, but only with his father, and that he ought not, therefore, to be punished for the murder of Clytemnestra. Apollo defends him, and Athene gives her sentence in favour of Orestes, adducing her own birth without the aid of a mother. Here, undoubtedly, Eschylus treats of the same problem as that put forward by Plato, in accordance with which the mother contributes nothing to the child's being. The mother is to the child what the soil is to the plant; it owes its nourishment to her, but the essence and structure of its nature are derived from the father. We do not, however, believe that this justifies the assertion that a growing agnatism was thus prevailing over the waning female line. We have already repeatedly opposed the idea that it is the power of begetting which defines the ties of kinship; we trace a different world of thoughts and conceptions in the poet's description. In the Homeric community, woman played a more active part than was accorded to her in that of the later Greeks. The Orestes myth shows that she was so little esteemed as to be degraded into the mere nourisher of the child. But there is a difference which must not be overlooked between a respect for woman and the observance of the female line of descent.

It is hardly worth while to consider the other proofs which have been adduced of a female line. Polybius states that among the western Locri all the fame and glory of descent were derived from the women, not from the men. Bachofen confidently interprets this statement

as a proof that the Locri observed the female line.1 But if we look more closely into the matter, we find much reason to question this assumption. In their native country there were a hundred families of distinction among the Locri, from among whom the maidens desired for sacrifice at Ilium were selected. Some of these women accompanied the colony in its migration westward, and their posterity were held to be of noble descent up to a late period. This statement does not, therefore, afford any proof of a female line of descent; that is, we cannot infer from it that descent was at any time usually made to depend upon the mother. These women were the most distinguished among the colonists; and we have already seen that when the parents were of unequal birth, the child's descent was usually reckoned from the nobler of the two.

In order to appease the wrath of Poseidon, it was decided at Athens, under Kekrop's rule, that women should no longer have the right of voting in the assembly, that children should no longer bear their mothers' names, and that the women themselves should cease to be called Athenians. Bachofen infers from this a prior existence of the female line.2 We are only concerned with the second decree, that children should no longer bear their mothers' names. But this decree does not imply that children had up to that time been called after their mothers only; it only justifies us in inferring that they might also bear their mothers' names. The existence of the female line of descent would only be manifested by this decree if the mother's name had been used exclusively.3

1 Bachofen, Mutterrecht, pp. vi., 309.

66

2 Ibid., p. 41.

It has even been attempted to make use of the contrast between patricians and plebeians. The patricians, some say, were so called because they were the fathers of lawful children; others, because they could give a good account who their own fathers were, which not every one of the rabble that poured into the city at first could do" (Plutarch's Lives, Romulus, p. 53). The traces of a female line have also been discovered in the fact that at the plebeian feast of Ceres neither the father nor the son might be named.

We shall presently consider many questions which affect the problem of the line of descent, but they extend far beyond our present limits, and we cannot treat of them yet. The great simplicity with which our explanation of the definition of kinship may be applied to all races throughout the world, and the uniformity with which, as we have seen, the same forces exert the same influence, are a pledge, at any rate for the moment, of the justice of our conception. The definition of kinship results from the conflict between clans, and teaches us nothing further with respect to the child's relation to its parents. The choice between the two possible lines is decided by the economic organization of the community and by the local grouping of individuals; but there is not the slightest trace of the fact that considerations with respect to the sexual relations had any influence in the matter.

SECTION II.

THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY.

THE conclusions to which we have come in the foregoing section are so completely opposed to those which have generally been accepted as correct, that we are bound to take the utmost care in establishing our premisses. The insignificant part assigned to ideas of blood-kinship and of the conditions of propagation appears, indeed, to contradict all previous theories. It has been supposed that the tie of blood, still so powerful in modern society, and a common descent, must have had an irresistible force in primitive times; and that these alone would have been sufficiently powerful to control the conflicting elements, and to effect a social development. It has been assumed that the blood-feud, the tenacious cohesion of the family group, the sacrifice to the dead, the inheritance of the property of parents by their children, are simple facts which teach us that the tie of blood served as the central point for the ideas of primitive consciousness. Round this fixed point all the other ideas which bind one man to another gradually clustered, and taught him to adapt his own desires to those of others. It cannot, however, be overlooked that in some cases the relations of fathers to their children were rather of a legal character than such as are due to the tie of blood. This has been taken as a proof that the sense of fatherhood was of later development, and that in primitive times the child was held to be allied by blood with the mother,