AVOIDANCES
Results in strengthening the groups which admit several adult males.—Disappearance of hostile band of exiled young males.—Relations of sire and female mates of young males now within the group.—Father-in-law and daughter-in-law avoidance.—Rights as between two generations.—Elder brother and younger brother's wife avoidances.—Note on Hostile Capture.
If we can admit the argument as to the sequence of incidents which thus led to the primary amicable conjunction of two males within the same group, it is not necessary to enter very minutely into the exact manner in which it would grow into a habit and spread throughout the land. We may surmise that, in spite of the advantages presented, its progress would, from the isolation of the groups, and their mutual hostility, be very slow. This would specially be the case if, as with physical variations, this point of departure in social development was a purely individual one, and so had to spread from a single centre by natural selection acting through a beneficial variation. It is, in fact, difficult to conceive, in view of the series of the abnormal factors we have supposed necessary for the genesis of such evolution, that any coincident departure of the same nature would be likely to occur in any other centre. It is even certain that the full possible benefit of the innovation would not be able to make itself felt even in the group of its creators. It is easy to understand that, in spite of the shield-like love of the mother, there would be friction between father and son in such unfamiliar circumstances, not only novel to the individual, but unhabitual to the race. In fact, it may be taken for granted that on the part of the father there was at first only a sulky tolerance of the new arrangement, a tacit but very unwilling acquiescence in the presence of the son.
On the part of the son would exist a watchful reserve, with an ever-haunting sense of insecurity, born of a novel and precarious situation. Even on such terms, however, and with what little might be of conciliation between the two, it is evident that a momentous forward step has been taken: the powers of the group in offence and defence, as against outsiders, would be enormously increased;[1] the fire of youth and the wisdom of old age for the first time joined forces, and paternal experience comes to the aid of filial courage and ardour. On the death of the patriarch the family found a natural protector, and what potential germs of advance, material or spiritual, had been evolved, would remain intact.
The real significance of the circumstance of such conjunction will, however, be found to lie in the character of its consequences as entailing further progress. Thus we have suggested that the original innovation consisted in the toleration of the presence of a single male offspring. But the way was evidently thus paved for the acceptance, at least in later generations, of others of the young males, although at first only of those who, not too much rivalling the fathers in power, would offer least grounds for jealousy. Now if we may accept it as an axiom in the matter of social progress in this race, that everything depended on aggregation of numbers in peaceful union, then such renewed inclusion presents itself in an important light. When it grew into a habit, the vast increase in power with every succeeding generation to a group, which is implied in the fact of each male child counting as an unit of strength, becomes evident. The new superiority to the original Cyclopean form of family, with its solitary male head, is enormous. The extinction of the latter type would only be a matter of time, it would finally result from the easy capture, by better organised rivals, of their females. With the gradual disappearance of those who clung to the old order, the leaven of progress would spread in permanence through the whole mass. It would eventually become the rule that all the male offspring should remain within a group, to form henceforth an integral part of it.
This result would be very important from another point of view. Such retention of sons would lead to the elimination of one of the greatest past elements of disorder—that band of exiled young males, which we found as a constantly menacing adjunct of the Cyclopean family, would cease to exist. But, again, a very slight reflection will enable us to perceive that such a modification as the presence of these celibate young males in the family circle must soon have entailed consequences in social evolution of a new and strange complexion, thoroughly embarrassing, in such an era, to those interested. Primitive social economy was now, in fact, to enter on phases presenting such possibilities of complication and disruption as must forcibly have led to the continued evolution of law in regulation. Such complications will become at once apparent on an examination of the probable sequence of events in the family life of the race. Such law in regulation will be shown to have been evolved, and, as before, to be still existent as a rule of action in these latter days, and with all those weird characteristics of mutism and general anomalism which prove its archaic origin.
Granted a group consisting of a patriarch whose marital rights extend over all its females, and of young males whose attitude,[2] from a sexual point of view, is marked by the strict reserve ordained by the primal law, it by no means follows that such celibacy of the young males would extend beyond the feminine element of their own troop. On the contrary, the whole of the outside world remains free for them to choose from. In fact, it is evident that it is there, in the world outside of the group, that their future mates must be found. On the component females of the parent horde a ban has been for ever laid, but all else of womankind are free of the interdict; they are beyond the law, and 'Sin is not imputed where there is no law.' Here, then, in the outer world, would their wives be sought. The complication we have mentioned would arise when, after successful captures of females by the young males, captures which it is hardly necessary to state would have been 'hostile,' the introduction of their captives within the parental group took place. The presence of females not to be his own within a circle where all that was feminine had ever been his in undisputed right, would certainly stir to its depths the soul of the Cyclopean type of parent. Such a situation must in its inception have caused a friction full of menace to the new order of things.
The only solution would be, as we have said, in the further evolution of law in remedy. We shall, as before, expect to find the law ordaining restrictions on intercourse between certain individuals, and marked with the archaic characteristic of mere visual action being sufficient for its interpretation. Such, then, as it was, we still find it, in the habit still common with many races of avoidance between father-in-law and daughter-in-law. In mute avoidance between these two could peace alone endure in the new crisis. The new rule implied the development of the same respect by the father for the marital rights of the son, as we have seen the primal law to have had for effect as regards the paternal prerogatives. Natural selection would come into play in the consolidation of this new stage in legislative evolution. For the group which first adopted such a modus vivendi would gain so great an advantage with each generation, in point of numbers alone, as would quickly give it supremacy. On the other hand, the forcible infringement by the father on the rights of possession by the sons in their captives, would simply result in the withdrawal of the sons and their women. Hence disruption of the group, and a fatal retrogression to the archaic type with all the weakness implied in a sole male component.
Here then we find renewed, in act of custom, another bar to intercourse between certain individuals of different sexes. And not only as a peace-conferring covenant would the fresh step in progress be important. It marks another stride in advance from brute to man, in the further recognition of points of difference between one female and another from a sexual point of view, the genetic evolution of which sentiment, in the primal law, foreshadowed such latent potentiality as already distinctive of mankind alone. Social advance to this stage has entailed the genesis of law in definition of respective marital rights as between the two generations, viz. fathers and sons, but further evolution in regulation of the individual right, as within the generation itself, is evidently indicated. For all members of the latter, as is the case to-day with many lower people, would be considered, de facto, a class, in which all are regarded as brothers, own or tribal, whose interest in all things regarding their classificatory rights would be in common.[3]
Such would be more especially the case in respect to female captives, whose capture would be the act of all. Here sexual jealousy, if uncontrolled, would inevitably lead to repetitions of that violent segregation of the members which occurred under the same circumstances amidst their primitive prototypes—i.e. that band of isolated young males, contemporaries of and exiles from some Cyclopean family. We may, however, surmise that, now or soon, the general development of intelligence and advance in social feeling would permit the action of the necessary rule in remedy. That rule would doubtless take the form we still find existing to-day for regulation in parallel circumstances, a rule which simply accords priority of right in accordance with seniority in birth. Such right would in itself accrue naturally as with other animals, from the fact that superior strength is found with greater age. This prior possession is not incompatible with an amicable recognition of the privilege of later participation by others. If such recognition took place in favour of the rights of the juniors, whilst they again peacefully accepted the larger pretensions of the seniors within their class, then natural selection would again act in their favour by the elimination of groups unable to abide such conditions. The arrogation of sole possession could but lead to the disintegration of the troop.[4]
Another solution of the problem of rights as between brothers may here be noted: it is that which is common to such widely separated spots as New Caledonia and Orissa, viz. the law of avoidance between an elder brother and a younger brother's wife. It is one of the most strict and severe. It is, however, incompatible with group marriage, which we are now dealing with.[5] It marks the genetic stage of monandry.
So far, then, we have thus traced the evolutionary process of group formation—and we seem to find confirmed that affirmation as to the primordial order of succession in the genetic growth of custom which I ventured to submit in my first pages, viz. primo: the existence of an early idea of concupiscent lust, distinctive of the male head of a group, which led to his pretensions in marital right over all its component females in necessary incestuous union; secundo, the evolution of the primal law (with what little of originally ethical intention is now immaterial), in protection of such right when threatened by intruders; tertio, its acceptance by the latter, and, as an inevitable sequel, their indispensable capture of outside females as sole possible mates.[6]
But then this question of the absolute necessity of the rape of strange females as mates by the young males of a group, opens up to view another remarkable coincidence of effect in custom, still enduring to our day. As such it may furnish a clue to a feature in savage habits, to which we have already alluded as the cause of more discussion, concerning its origin, than any other. For habitual hostile capture of females outside a group by its male members, with a coincidental bar to sexual union with its component females, seems simply a definition of that habit among many actual peoples which has been called Exogamy by Mr. J. F. McLennan. Hence comes the evident corollary to the argument that the primal law and exogamy stand to each other in the mutual relation of cause and effect. We stated that if this was in reality the case, and if here we have the origin of marriage outside the group, then the novelty of the view, and the fact that it finds itself in opposition to other theories on the matter, weighty from the eminence of their propounders, would still require the production of a clear series of proofs in its favour if it was to be accepted. Such proofs, however, we predicted, would with research be found abundantly. We hope that already in our thesis, as far as it has gone, we may be considered to have advanced some such testimony in the seemingly necessary identity of custom, in form at least, in a hypothetic ancient and an actual modern era. There is surely here more than mere fortuitous coincidence in social evolution.
It seems, indeed, a legitimate inference that the divers habits of avoidance which we have cited, intelligible only by their congruency with such phases of genetic growth of custom as we have surmised, whilst presenting features utterly anomalous as latter-day creations, are in reality of the archaic origin we would assign to them. Their extraordinary vitality, which becomes almost bewildering to contemplate, may be explained by the fact that, as the first steps in progress, they would be necessarily woven into the whole social fabric.
It remains to be seen if, in further unravelling its tangled web, other threads of actual custom may not be found as apparently eloquent of a far distant, unfamiliar past, in their present abnormal features; other usages in every-day lower (savage) life, which in the light of a primal law shall furnish an unexpected solution of many perplexing problems in social evolution. If it can be shown that their inception would have been in happy accordance with the resolution of necessary incidents in evolutionary progress, may we not legitimately infer both that such customs thus had their origin, and again that these incidents really occurred? Our further research into the development of social institutions will point out indisputably, that primitive society was now on the eve of a succession of events in social order, presenting quite a series of menacing complications—their resolution will seemingly entail inevitably the continuous evolution of law in remedy, which law would have presented features identical with the actual laws of avoidance and others.
[NOTE TO CHAPTER V]
Marriage by Hostile Capture
Mr. Atkinson accepts, for the excessively early stage of semi-human society with which his hypothesis deals, the necessity of procuring mates for the young bucks by capture from a hostile group. Now Dr. Westermarck writes, 'Mr. McLennan thinks that marriage by capture arose from the rule of exogamy;' and Mr. Atkinson holds that it arose from the necessity of the case. The old patriarch allowed no female born within his group to be united to his sons. Dr. Westermarck says, 'It seems to me extremely probable that the practice of capturing women for wives is due chiefly to the aversion to close intermarrying ... together with the difficulty a savage man has in procuring a wife in a friendly manner, without giving compensation for the loss he inflicts on her father' (Westermarck, 368-369). He admits a period when 'the idea of barter had hardly occurred to man's mind,' But Mr. Atkinson is thinking of a state of affairs in which the idea of barter had not occurred at all. Even at Dr. Westermarck's stage of the dawn of barter, 'marriage by capture must have been very common.' But Mr. Crawley argues that because, in his opinion, 'types of formal and connubial capture' are not survivals from actual capture, therefore 'the theory that mankind ... ever, in normal circumstances, were accustomed to obtain their wives by capture from other tribes, may be regarded as exploded' (Mystic Rose, p. 367). This dictum does not affect Mr. Atkinson's theory. Semi-human beings, in the conditions imagined by him, might be obliged to get their wives by capture, whether existing types of so-called formal capture are survivals of actual hostile capture or not. If Mr. Atkinson accepts the formal abductions as survivals of real captures and so as proofs of his argument, and if such formal abductions are not survivals of real capture—still, as Dr. Westermarck says, even after the supposed stage of semi-human life, 'marriages by capture must have been very common'—in Mr. Atkinson's hypothetical still earlier stage, they must have been universal.
[1] It is clear that, for this reason, natural selection would favour the new kind of group. The arrangement would be imitated.—A. L.
[2] With portentous endurance of custom towards these.
[3] Herr Cunow, as we showed, regards the 'classes' (not the 'phratries') of Australian tribes as based on a rough and ready calculation of non-intermarrying generations.—A. L.
[4] See also Westermarck, pp. 458, 459, on the Khyoungtha, a Chittagong hill tribe. After marriage a younger brother is allowed to touch the hand, to speak and laugh with his elder brother's wife, but it is thought improper for the elder brother even to look at the wife of his younger brother. This is a custom more or less among all hill tribes, it is found carried to even a preposterous extent among the Santals.
[5] As a fact the 'classes' (probably distinctions, originally, of generations) do not, I think, indicate 'group marriage.'—A. L.
[6] Westermarck, ut supra, pp. 387-389, 546, agrees. For the opposite view, cf. Crawley, p. 367. Westermarck does not seem very sure of his own mind.—A. L.