The Sexes in Science and History / An inquiry into the dogma of woman's inferiority to man

by Eliza Burt Gamble

By an investigation of the fundamental principles of the gens, we shall be enabled to observe the similarity existing between the instincts which governed early human action and those which controlled the highest orders of life below mankind. All facts bearing on the primitive conditions of the human race, which in these later times have been brought to light through the investigations directed toward peoples in the various stages of development, only serve to emphasize the importance of the altruistic principle in the formation of organized society and in the establishment of human institutions. Although the gens is the earliest form of organized society of which we have any accurate knowledge, still as within it were encysted the germs of all the principles of justice and equality which our better human nature is beginning again to recognize, and which must characterize a higher stage of progress, a knowledge of its underlying principles is necessary to a correct understanding, not only of the past development of the race and all the existing human institutions, but of the course to be pursued toward the future advancement of mankind. Of the gens, Mr. Morgan says:

The gentile organization opens to us one of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind. It furnished the nearly universal plan of government of ancient society, Asiatic, European, African, American, and Australian. It was the instrumentality by means of which society was organized and held together. Commencing in savagery, and continuing through the three sub-periods of barbarism, it remained until the establishment of political society, which did not occur until after civilization had commenced. The Grecian gens, phratry, and tribe, the Roman gens, curia, and tribe find their analogues in the gens, phratry, and tribe of the American aborigines. In like manner, the Irish sept, the Scottish clan, the phrara of the Albanians, and the Sanskrit ganas, without extending the comparison further are the same as the American-Indian gens, which has usually been called a clan. As far as our knowledge extends, this organization runs through the entire ancient world upon all the continents, and it was brought down to the historical period by such tribes as attained to civilization.... Gentile society wherever found is the same in structural organization and in principles of action; but changing from lower to higher forms with the progressive advancement of the people. These changes give the history of the development of the same original conceptions.[81]

Early society, as observed under gentile institutions, was established on purely personal and social relations, or, on the basis of the relations of the individual to the rest of the community, a community in which each member could trace her or his origin back to the head of the gens who was a woman. Under gentile institutions, or until the latter stage of barbarism was reached, each individual, female and male, constituted a unit in an aggregation or community whose interests were identical, and as such, to a certain extent, was held responsible for the safety and general welfare of every member composing the group.

Extreme egoism, as it is the outgrowth of a later age, was unknown; and sympathy, the chief promoter of the well-being of mankind, a sprout from the well-established root, maternal affection, was the predominant characteristic of these primitive groups and the bond which held society together. Although the manner of reckoning descent had been changed from the female to the male line, the purely social organization of the gens, on the basis of kin, was, as has been observed, in operation at the beginning of our present civilization, at which time political society supervened, and individuals were no longer recognized through their relations to a gens or tribe, but through their relations to the state, county, township, or deme, to which institutions they must henceforward look for protection and for the redress of injuries done either to person or property.

Although, until a comparatively recent time, the writers who have dealt with the subject of primitive society have been of the opinion that the tribe constituted the earliest organization of society, and that the gens and the family followed, later investigations show conclusively that the gens, next to the remote and obscure division into classes, represents the oldest and most widely spread form of organized society, and that it was through segmentation or division of this archaic group that the tribe was formed.

The natural way in which a tribe is formed is from a family or group, which in time increases and divides into many households, still recognizing one another as kindred, and this kinship is so thoroughly felt to be the tie of the whole tribe, that even when there has been a mixture of tribes, a common ancestor is often invented to make an imaginary bond of union.[82]

The gens, until a comparatively recent time in the history of the human race, was composed of a female ancestor, all her children and all the children of her daughters, but not of her sons. The sons’ children and their descendants belonged to the gens of their respective mothers. The family, as it appears at the present time, was unknown. The gens was founded on thoroughly democratic principles, each individual composing the group, both female and male, having a voice in the regulation and management of all matters pertaining to the general government of the community. Any injury done to a gentilis was a wrong committed against the entire gens of which she or he was a member, hence to her or his kinsmen each individual looked for protection and for redress of personal wrongs.

The fundamental doctrine of tribal life is unity of blood. Although the early groups, under the system of female descent, were united by the actual bond of kinship as traced through mothers, later, when descent came to be traced through fathers, kinship was to a considerable extent feigned. Kinship, under the system of male descent, meant not that the blood of the great father actually flowed in the veins of all the members of the group, but that under a pretence of unity of blood, they were bound together by common duties and responsibilities from which no one of them could escape. By the terms of the compact, every member must stand by her or his own clan. In fact, in all their movements, they must act as one individual; their interests were identical and the quarrel of any member of the group became the quarrel of all counted within the bond of kinship. If homicide were committed, they judged and punished the culprit, but if one of their number was slain by an outsider, the law of blood-feud, which demanded blood in return, was immediately put into execution. Of the gens Mr. Morgan says:

Within its membership the bond of kin was a powerful element for mutual support. To wrong a person was to wrong his gens; and to support a person was to stand behind him with the entire array of this gentile kindred.[83]

Although in the later ages of gentile government, all the members of a group were not necessarily bound by blood, from the nature of the rights conferred, and the obligations imposed, the bond uniting them was doubtless stronger than that which now unites mere kindred. Of this tie uniting early groups J. G. Frazer says: