TRACES OF PERIOD OF TRANSITION—AVOIDANCES
Survivals in custom testify to a long period of transition from group to tribe.—Stealthy meetings of husband and wife.—Examples.—Evidence to a past of jealousy of incestuous group sire.—Evidence from Teknonymy.—Husband named as father of his child.—Formal capture as a symbol of legal marriage.—Avoidance between father-in-law and son-in-law.—Arose in stage of transition.—Causes of mother-in-law and son-in-law avoidance.—Influence of jealousy.—Examples.—Mr. Tylor's statistics.—Resentment of capture not primal cause of this avoidance. —Note on avoidance.
With a custom so deeply ingrained as incest would be in the nature of man's ancestor, still doubtless vastly animal, we may indeed surmise that the process of its decay was long and tedious. The temptation, as we have said, to such easy procuration of a mate in comparison with the danger and comparatively scanty results of capture, was very great, whilst the continual propinquity of father and daughter would tend to constant recrudescence, especially in default of any trace of law against it. There must, then, evidently have been a transition era of vast durance, between the type of the isolated consanguine group whose only resource in matrimony was exogamic hostile capture, as the outcome of the incestuous lust of its solitary male head, and the all-embracing tribe composed of an aggregation of several groups, and possessing thus ipso facto all the necessary elements of an endogamic connubium quite incompatible with such incest. In such a tribe, a group of women in many cases formed the pivotal centre, and capture was often found only as a form in survival. Is it possible to retrace the main features of an epoch of such evident importance in social evolution? In view of the fact that, in the past course of our argument, such law as would seemingly have been necessarily evolved in regulation of each step in primitive progress has been found identical in form with some actual savage custom, may not a deeper investigation of savage custom disclose further co-ordination, and prove equally fertile in interpretation of the past? Whilst, again, many obscure observances in actual lower life, in consonance with such archaic genesis, may take a rational form, though the origin seems apparently lost for ever.
Such research will, I think, clearly show that many social features in modern savage habit afford internal evidence that, as a fact, they could only have arisen in such a transition era. They also bear marks of a very lengthened evolutionary process, and thus confirm the natural idea of a halt of portentous length at the threshold of the present haven of comparative social rest. We shall doubtless find that the door left ajar by the entrance of the outside suitor was not to yield further with ease to the pressure of new needs, half-hearted as men would be, from the conservative force of old ideas, of incest and entire masculine dominance.
There is, for instance, one curious trait in actual savage custom which evidently dates from a very early stage of this epoch. It is that of the strange forms of 'stealthy' intercourse, being the indispensable preliminary symbols of the legality of an after marriage between the resident female of a group and an outside male. These forms are well known to anthropologists as occurring among many lower peoples. Here we find that the visits of the male suitor are supposed to be distinctly clandestine, taking place only by night, although in reality the fact is perfectly in the cognisance of the whole group. Now such fugitive and secret meetings are exactly what would have taken place when a group had arrived at a stage in which, although filial incest was decaying as a custom, there were still recognised certain marital rights over his daughter by the living father; when, in fact, tolerance of the presence of the outsider was yet in a tentative stage—and he was still regarded with suspicion, if not disfavour.[1]
In consonance with the view we have advanced of the circumstances attending the entry of an immigrant suitor, it has seemed to ensue that his position would have been quite dependent, and himself considered as a foreign element. That such was actually the case seems again proved by another trait in modern custom, whose genesis, however, was of very much later date, and when speech had made some progress. In our own day clandestine intercourse, as above described, may continue to pregnancy. On the birth of the child alone does the father become recognised as part of the group. But even so his nomenclatory power as regards his offspring is absolutely nil. Far from giving a name to the child, his own is taken from his offspring. Till now, in fact, he has been nameless; in future he will be known as the father of so-and-so, of Telemachus, in the case of Odysseus. To this point we will, however, have to return when we arrive at the question of the evolution of personal descent from that of descent recognised by locality, which we consider to have been the most primitive form. [Mr. Atkinson probably means descent from a local group, say Crow, not descent denoted by a place name, as 'de Rutherford.']
There is another trait in actual custom which also could only have acquired its most remarkable features in this era of change, and that is hostile capture itself, in its legacy of those 'forms' of capture which we find connected with more peaceful connubium all over the world. Such 'forms' have rightly been considered as mere survivals, and thus in agreement with our own theory capture is generally accepted as the earliest form of outside marriage.[2] But in some minds the brutality necessarily attending real capture, and its occurrence solely among very low races with whom any idea of sexual restraint is expected to be quite unfamiliar, has simply connected the process with the general lawlessness which, amongst such peoples, is supposed to characterise the relations between the sexes. Its occurrence in form of survival among higher races has been considered a meaningless ceremony, and its evident symbolism in legality dismissed as incredible. Students are, however, aware how much in error is the idea of utter lawlessness in connection with the marriage relationships of any savage race. On the contrary, as is well known, the list of prohibited kindred is not only much wider than our own, but no stage in the marital arrangements is without irksome and minute legislative restraints, strictly limiting and defining the rights of each individual, male and female.
To other minds the fact that a 'hostile capture,' presenting as its most characteristic feature an utter violence, should ever have been constituted into a symbol of legality in marriage, has given rise to much perplexity. Mr. McLennan in fact remarks—'It is impossible to believe that the mere lawlessness of savages should be consecrated into a legal symbol'—an assertion which we may accept, however little we are prepared to accept his general views on early society. It is evident that the whole difficulty has arisen from the apparent complete incompatibility of a seeming method in violence with a virtual act in law. The hypothesis we have presented of the 'primal law,' and its exogamous sequel, would seem however to throw a new light on the matter. All unions within the group being by the action of primal law, as we have shown, considered incestuous and illicit, marriage could only take place with an outside mate. The presence of a captured female within the camp would thus, as we see, actually constitute in itself a proof, and the only one possible at the epoch, of the legal consummation of marriage as ordained by the primal law. It is thus easy to see how a form of capture should be retained as a symbol of legality in later connubium. Its continued vitality results from the intense conservatism of lower peoples, and from the fact of the halo of prowess that surrounds it.
Its evolution as a symbol only arose, however, when, during the transition era, by the conjunction of groups into a tribe, friendly unions were possible. It would not have occurred with the earliest forms of horde, for these were isolated and hostile, and real capture itself was the sole form of marriage; nor would it have occurred with that later type, in which, with matriarchal descent, the relative positions of males and females were reversed, as far at least as suit in union is concerned.[3] It took its rise with that other great type of group characterised by patriarchal descent, which in all the after history of the world (for, as we shall see, their evolution was coincident and had for cause the same factor) was to dispute supremacy with that which accepted uterine descent. Here, as in the original type, the male continued to preserve his predominance and continued its traditions of capture.[4]