PROXIMUS · FAMILIAM · HABETO, and SI · AGNATUS · NEC · ESCIT · GENTILIS · FAMILIAM · NANCITOR; that is, if a man die intestate, leaving no natural heir who had been under his potestas, the nearest agnate, or relative tracing his connexion with the deceased exclusively through males, is to inherit the familia, or family fortune of every sort. Failing an agnate, a member of the gens of the dead man is to inherit. In a third sense, familia was applied to all the persons who could prove themselves to be descended from the same ancestor, and thus the word almost corresponded to our own use of it in the widest meaning, as when we say that a person is “of a good family” (Ulpian, Dig. 50, 16, 195 fin.).
1. Leaving for awhile the Roman terms, to which it will be necessary to return, we may provisionally define Family, in the modern sense, as the small community formed by the union of one man with one woman, and by the increase of children born to them. These in modern Old theory. times, and in most European countries, constitute the household, and it has been almost universally supposed that little natural associations of this sort are the germ-cell of early society. The Bible presents the growth of the Jewish nation from the one household of Abraham. His patriarchal family differed from the modern family in being polygamous, but, as female chastity was one of the conditions of the patriarchal family, and as descent through males was therefore recognized as certain, the plurality of wives makes no real difference to the argument. In the same way the earliest formal records of Indian, Greek and Roman society present the family as firmly established, and generally regarded as the most primitive of human associations. Thus, Aristotle derives the first household (οἰκία πρώτη) from the combination of man’s possession of property—in the slave or in domesticated animals—with man’s relation to woman, and he quotes Hesiod: οἶκον μὲν πρώτιστα γυναῖκά τε βοῦν τ’ ἀροτῆρα (Politics, i. 2. 5). The village, again, with him is a colony or offshoot of the household, and monarchical government in states is derived from the monarchy of the eldest male member of the family. Now, though certain ancient terms, introduced by Aristotle in the chapters to which we refer, might have led him to imagine a very different origin of society, his theory is, on the face of it, natural and plausible, and it has been almost universally accepted. The beginning of society, it has been said a thousand times, is the family, a natural association of kindred by blood, composed of father, mother and their descendants. In this family, the father is absolute master of his wife, his children and the goods of the little community; at his death his eldest son succeeds him; and in course of time this association of kindred, by natural increase and by adoption, develops into the clan, gens, or γένος. As generations multiply, the more distant relations split off into other clans, and these clans, which have not lost the sense of primitive kinship, unite once more into tribes. The tribes again, as civilization advances, acknowledge themselves to be subjects of a king, in whose veins the blood of the original family runs purest. This, or something like this, is the common theory of the growth of society.
2. It was between 1866 and 1880 that the common opinion began to be seriously opposed. John Ferguson McLennan, in his Primitive Marriage and his essays on The Worship of Plants and Animals (see his Studies in Ancient History, second series), drew attention to the wide prevalence of Modern criticism. the custom of inheriting the kinship name through mothers, not fathers; and to the law of “Exogamy” (q.v.). The former usage he attributed to archaic uncertainty as to fatherhood; the natural result of absolute sexual promiscuity, or of Polyandry (q.v.). Either practice is inconsistent, prima facie, with the primitive existence of the Family, whether polygamous or monogamous, whether patriarchal or modern. The custom of Exogamy, again,—here taken to mean the unwritten law which makes it incest, and a capital offence, to marry within the real or supposed kin denoted by the common name of the kinship,—pointed to an archaic condition of family affairs all unlike our Table of prohibited degrees. This law of Exogamy was found, among many savage races, associated with Totems, that is plants, animals and other natural objects which give names to the various kinships, and are themselves, in various degrees, reverenced by members of the kinships. (See Totem and Totemism.) Traces of such kinships, and of Totemism, also of alleged promiscuity in ancient times, were detected by McLennan in the legends, folk-lore and institutions of Greece, Rome and India. Later, Prof. Robertson Smith found similar survivals, or possible survivals, among the Semitic races (Kinship in Early Arabia). Others have followed the same trail among the Celts (S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes et religions, 1904).
If arguments founded on these alleged survivals be valid, it may be that the most civilized races have passed through the stages of Exogamy, Totemism and reckoning descent in the female line. McLennan explained Exogamy as a result of scarcity of women, due to female infanticide. Women being scarce, the men of a group would steal them from other groups, and it would become shameful, and finally a deadly sin, for a man to marry within his own group-name, or name of kinship, say Wolf or Raven. Meanwhile, owing to scarcity of women, one woman would be the mate of many husbands (polyandry); hence, paternity being undetermined, descent would be reckoned through mothers.
Such are the outlines of McLennan’s theory, which, as a whole, has been attacked by many writers, and is now, perhaps, accepted by none. McLennan’s was the most brilliant pioneer work; but his supply of facts was relatively scanty, and his friend Charles Darwin stated objections McLennan’s value. which to many seem final, as regards the past existence of a stage of sexual promiscuity. C. N. Starcke (The Primitive Family, 1889), Edward Alexander Westermarck (History of Human Marriage, 1891), Ernest Crawley (The Mystic Rose), Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Lord Avebury and many others, have criticized McLennan, who, however, in coining the term Exogamy, and drawing scientific attention to Totemism, and reckoning of kin through mothers, founded the study of early society. Here it must be observed that “Matriarchate” (q.v.) is a misleading term, as is “Gynaecocracy,” for the custom of deducing descent on the spindle side. Women among totemistic and exogamous savages are in a degraded position, nor does the deriving and inheriting of the kinship name, or anything else, on the spindle side, imply any ignorance of paternal relations; even where, as among Central Australian tribes, the facts of reproduction are said to be unknown.
3. Simultaneous with McLennan’s researches and speculations were the works of Lewis H. Morgan. He was the discoverer of a custom very important in its bearing on the history of society. In about two-thirds of the globe, persons in addressing a kinsman do not discriminate between Lewis Morgan. grades of relationship. All these grades are merged in large categories. Thus, in what Morgan calls the “Malayan system,” “all consanguinei, near or far, fall within one of these relationships—grandparent, parent, brother, sister, child and grandchild.” No other blood-relationships are recognized (Ancient Society). This at once reminds us of the Platonic Republic. “We devised means that no one should ever be able to know his own child, but that all should imagine themselves to be of one family, and should regard as brothers and sisters those who were within a certain limit of age; and those who were of an elder generation they were to regard as parents and grandparents, and those who were of a younger generation as children and grandchildren” (Timaeus, 18, Jowett’s translation, first edition, vol. ii., 1871). This system prevails in the Polynesian groups and in New Zealand. Next comes what Morgan chooses to call the Turanian system. “It was universal among the North American aborigines,” whom he styles Ganowanians. “Traces of it have been found in parts of Africa” (Ancient Society), and “it still prevails in South India among the Hindus, who speak the Dravidian language,” and also in North India, among other Hindus. The system, Morgan says, “is simply stupendous.” It is not exactly the same among all his miscellaneous “Turanians,” but, on the whole, assumes the following shapes. Suppose the speaker to be a male, he will style his nephew and
