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.