[551] This is in effect conceded by Spencer. While rightly rejecting the theory of systematic foreign wife-capture, as a general phase in the development of marriage, he holds that the symbol of rape may sometimes result from struggles for women within the tribe, or from the resistance of the father and male relatives of the bride.
[552] "Der Raub begründet die Ehe nur insofern, als er zugleich jenes Zusammenleben herbeiführt; er ist Eheschliessungsform in demselben Sinne, wie er noch nach heutigem Recht als Besitzerwerbsform bezeichnet werden kann." It is only a matter of Kulturgeschichte and has no juridical significance.—Bernhöft, "Principien des eur. Familienrechts," ZVR., IX, 393.
[553] This is contrary to the common opinion, as expressed, for instance, by Dargun, op. cit., 84, but it appears to be sustained both by reason and the facts. For an example of the restraint of wife-capture through dread of the feud, see Curr, The Australian Race, I, 108. Rehme, "Das Recht der Amaxosa," ZVR., X, 40, shows that the harshness of the husband is mitigated by fear of the vengeance of the wife's relatives; and the same fact is noted by Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 206. Cf. Kohler, "Das Recht der Australneger," ZVR., VII, 349; Hellwald, Die mensch. Familie, 280 ff., 288, 289, 298; Lippert, Geschichte der Familie, 42; and his Kulturgeschichte, II, 86, 87, for the restraining effects of the blood-feud.
[554] This fact is overlooked by McLennan, who, though maintaining that exogamy originates in wife-capture, still believes that the reduction of capture to a system is due to the influence of exogamy. Westermarck, op. cit., 389, makes the same oversight; though, of course, the horror of close intermarriage, in case of inability to purchase, might lead to the occasional breach of custom in the form of wife-stealing.
[555] McLennan, Patriarchal Theory, 45, 234, 289, 315, 320, 327, 328, 291; cf. Wake, Marriage and Kinship, 388 ff.
[556] Post, Geschlechtsgenossenschaft, 63 ff.; Familienrecht, 175; Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, I, 329 ff.; Ursprung des Rechts, 56 ff.
[557] Post, Familienrecht, 92, 93, 96, 97. Such also is the opinion of Wake, op. cit., 390 ff.
[558] Heusler, Institutionen, II, 280; and Lippert, Geschichte der Familie, 42, 44 ff., 95-118, agree with McLennan in regarding purchase, at first as an alternative for capture, as a general form of marriage through which transition is made to the paternal system of kinship and the modern family; Kulischer, in ZFE., X, 193, 218, and Kohler, "Studien," ZVR., V, 336; "Die Ehe mit und ohne Mundium," ibid., VI, 333 ff., take a like position.
[559] Spencer, Principles of Sociology, I, 655. Hellwald, Die mensch. Familie, 287 ff., takes a similar position.
[560] Westermarck, Human Marriage, 400, 389, in opposition to Peschel, The Races of Man, 209 ff., who "contends that barter existed in those ages in which we find the earliest signs of our race."