Part 13 (1/2)

and ”unregulated,” ”temporary[144],” ”permanent,” as in the case of promiscuity.

We have further two well-marked types of marriage and a mixed form in which (_a_) the husband goes to live with the wife; (_b_) he lives with the wife for a time and then removes to his own village or tribe; and (_c_) the wife removes to the husband. For the first of these Maclennan has proposed the name _beena_ marriage; Robertson Smith has proposed to call the third type _ba'al_ marriage, and to include both _beena_ and _mot'a_ marriages under the general name of _?adica_. This terminology is unnecessarily obscure and has the further disadvantage of connoting the domination or subjection of the husband, a feature not necessarily bound up with residence. I therefore propose to term the three types matrilocal, removal, and patrilocal marriages. I suggest compounds of _pater_ and _mater_, not as being specially appropriate, but as being parallel to matrilineal and patrilineal, denoting descent in the female and male lines respectively.

For the somewhat complicated relations.h.i.+ps of _potestas_ in the family I propose two main divisions, (_a_) patri-potestal, (_b_) matri-potestal; the latter may be further subdivided according as the authority is in the hands (1) of the actual mother, (2) of the maternal uncles, (3) of the mother's relatives in general, and so on.

FOOTNOTES:

[141] The _pirrauru_ union is preceded by a ceremony, but this is no proof that primitive group marriage, if it existed, was contracted in the same way.

[142] Dissimilar polygamy is, in respect of the inferior spouses, hardly to be distinguished from promiscuity, save that the number of them is limited. But in Australia the lending of _pirraurus_ sweeps away even this distinction.

[143] He says family, or Cyclopean family. Harem in fact is the idea.

[144] i.e. not life-long.

CHAPTER XI.

GROUP MARRIAGE AND MORGAN'S THEORIES.

Pa.s.sage from Promiscuity. Reformatory Movements. Incest. Relative harmfulness of such unions. Natural aversion. Australian facts.

The arguments for group marriage in Australia are of two kinds--(1) from the terms of relations.h.i.+p, that is to say of a mixed philological and sociological character, and (2) from the customs of the Australian tribes.

The argument from the terms of relations.h.i.+p is so intimately connected with the theories of Lewis Morgan that it may be well to give a brief critical survey of Morgan's hypotheses. I therefore begin the treatment of this part of the subject by a statement of Morgan's views on the general question of the origin and development of human marriage.

As a result of his enquiries into terms of relations.h.i.+ps, mainly in North America and Asia, Morgan drew up a scheme of fifteen stages, through which he believed the s.e.xual relations of human beings had pa.s.sed in the interval between utter savagery and the civilised family.

We are only concerned with the earlier portion of his scheme. It is not even necessary to discuss that in all its details. Morgan's first eight (properly five) stages are:

I. Promiscuous Intercourse.

II. Intermarriage or Cohabitation of Brothers and Sisters.

III. The Communal Family (First stage of the Family).

IV. The Hawaian Custom of Punalua[145], giving the Malayan Form of the Cla.s.sificatory System[146].

V. The Tribal Organisation, i.e. totemic exogamy plus promiscuity, giving the Turanian and Ganowanian System[147].

VI. Monogamy.

The objections to this theory or group of theories are numerous, and it will not be necessary to consider them all here. Were it not that no one has since Morgan's day attempted to trace in detail the course of evolution from promiscuity to monogamy, it would be almost superfluous to discuss the theories of a work on primitive sociology dating back nearly thirty years.

With some points Morgan has failed to deal in a way that commends itself to us in the light of knowledge acc.u.mulated since his day; with others he has not attempted to deal, apparently from a want of perception of their importance.

First and foremost among the points with which Morgan has failed to deal is that of the const.i.tution of the primitive group. Was it composed of parents and children only or were more than two generations represented?

If the former, why were the children expelled? if the latter, how are brother and sister marriages introduced, when _ex hypothesi_ the father of any given child was unknown and may have been any adult male? If Morgan and his supporters evade this difficulty by defining brother and sister as children of the same mother, they are met by the obvious objection that no revolution in a promiscuous group would result in the marriage of children of the same mother. _Ex hypothesi_ there were several child-bearing women in the group, and their children, if a reform were introduced prohibiting marriage outside one's own generation, would intermarry; but the children of these women are, on the definition adopted, not brothers and sisters.

If brother and sister does not mean children of the same mother, what does it mean?