[259] Mariner, op. cit. ii. 238.
[260] Cf. Nowack, in Jewish Encyclopedia, iii. 243 sq.
However, the facts which we have hitherto considered are hardly sufficient to account for the extraordinary development of the paternal authority in the archaic State. Great though it be, the influence which magic and religious beliefs exercise upon the paternal authority is, as we have just seen, largely of a reactive character. A father’s blessings would not be so eagerly sought for, nor would his curses be so greatly feared, if he were a less important personage in the family. So, too, as Sir Henry Maine aptly remarks, the father’s power is older than the practice of worshipping him. “Why should the dead father be worshipped more than any other member of the household unless he was the most prominent—it may be said, the most awful—figure in it during his life?”[261] We must assume that there exists some connection between the organisation of the family and the political constitution of the society. At the lower stages of civilisation—though hardly at the very lowest—we frequently find that the clan has attained such an overwhelming importance that only a very limited amount of authority could be claimed by the head of each separate family. But, as will be shown in a following chapter, this was changed when clans and tribes were united into a State. The new State tended to weaken and destroy the clan-system, whereas at the same time the family-tie grew in strength. In early society there seems to be an antagonism between the family and the clan. Where the clan-bond is very strong it encroaches upon the family feeling, and where it is loosened the family gains. Hence Dr. Grosse is probably right in his assumption that the father became a patriarch, in the true sense of the word, only as the inheritor of the authority which formerly belonged to the clan.[262]
[261] Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 76.
[262] Grosse, Die Formen der Familie, p. 219.
But whilst in its early days the State strengthened the family by weakening the clan, its later development had a different tendency. When national life grew more intense, when members of separate families drew nearer to one another in pursuit of a common goal, the family again lost in importance. It has been observed that in England and America, where political life is most highly developed, children’s respect for their parents is at a particularly low ebb.[263] Other factors also, inherent in progressive civilisation, contributed to the downfall of the paternal power—the extinction of ancestor-worship, the decay of certain superstitious beliefs, the declining influence of religion, and last, but not least, the spread of a keener mutual sympathy throughout the State, which could not tolerate that the liberty of children should be sacrificed to the despotic rule of their fathers.
[263] Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 440, n. 1.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE SUBJECTION OF WIVES
AMONG the lower races, as a rule, a woman is always more or less in a state of dependence. When she is emancipated by marriage from the power of her father, she generally passes into the power of her husband. But the authority which the latter possesses over his wife varies extremely among different peoples.