Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his opinion as to their social condition.
He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy of all Male Quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b) he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the Gorilla—for all the natives agree that bat one adult male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the others, establishes himself as head of the community.
"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family."[1]
There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all compelled to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own daughters.
Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.
There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),[2] and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community would end in his second—given the jealousy and brutality and animal passions of early man, as postulated by him.
On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small "family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose harem contains all the young females in the group, would be necessarily exogamous in practice—for the younger male members. The sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could, similar communities.
With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now conscious, would become, "No marriage within this group of contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various "family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives, and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr. Atkinson, in his Primal Law.)[3]
If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., supra), would still keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can have no certainty.[4] Young males would thus be obliged to win mates, probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy," No marriage within the totem name and blood."
The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr. Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us) that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that, or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed the names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of totemism?"[5] The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for instance, need not have yet been developed.