[CHAPTER IV]
EARLIEST EVOLUTION OF LAW
Trace between semi-human sire and son.—Consequent distinction taken between female and female, as such—Consequent rise of habit of Brother and Sister Avoidance.—Result, son seeks female mate from without Note by the editor.
In what, then, we are willing to concede, must have been exceptional circumstances, may thus have been taken that first step in progress which was to lead to such vast advance. In a development of the social qualities depended the whole future of mankind, and here we seem to see their germ and birth.
When, however, we affirm that the triumph of maternal love in the continued companionship of a male child, constituted the solution of the social problem before us, we do not intend to convey the idea that it lay solely in the fact of a simple inclusion of male offspring within a group. Such a condition, however significant in the actual case, has nothing in itself but what is common to the family economy of many animals. It is the normal one, for instance, among many pithecoids, as baboons, &c., where we find the younger males still form an integral part of the horde, although denied all marital rights. But, however inexorable among such species the temporary separation from the females during the actual season of rut, there is at other times a propinquity in amity as members of the same herd, which lessened doubtless the fierceness of the strife during the periodic play of passion, a truce in fact admitting of peace and alliance in offence and defence during most of the year.
With our ancestors there could be no such healing pause, the unnatural sexual modification of the race had rendered it impossible. The non-periodicity of the sexual function in rut would have made the whole year, with two adult males in presence, an interval of trial insupportable to the mere brute. With this race the banishment of the youth would be for all time, and the loss would be not only that of an ally, each exile would become an active enemy. Now we have hinted that the importance, in a potential sense, of a movement towards union, in such creatures, arose precisely from the fact that, on account of the intensity of the relations between male and male, and especially between father and son, their amicable conjunction was only possible under such exceptional conditions as would probably conduce to its stability whenever it did take place.
Indeed such inchoate rule or habit, a corollary of the early idea, as reigns in regulation of marital rights among lower creatures, would not be fully adequate for this higher creation. With lower creatures, might alone confers rights, which feebler force ever seeks each chance to invade, all stratagems being legitimate as a means to that end. With inchoate man such imperfect rule of action had become utterly impossible. The greater endowment in memory and reason entailed a too fatally added hate on non-compliance. For inchoate men the requisite law required such further exactness in definition as should leave no doubt of a meaning, not only to be understood, but to be accepted and obeyed unconditionally.