Social Origins and Primal Law

DIFFICULTIES OF MR. MORGAN'S THEORY

Mr. Morgan's theory, it must be observed, landed him at once in the fallacy of supposing that prohibitions of marriage of kinsfolk were originally the result of 'a reformatory movement.'136 We have seen that, granting, for the sake of argument, Mr. Morgan's premise of an original 'undivided commune,' Mr. Fison is also deposited in the same difficulty, and was once even inclined to regard a theory of intervention 'by a higher power' (the Dieri myth) as not necessarily out of the question, if marriage was once communal. To reform such marriage relations, he says, 'would be a step in advance so difficult for men in that utter depth of savagery to take, that they would not be able to take it, unless they had help from without. This might be given by contact with a more advanced tribe; but if all the tribes started from the same level, that impulse would be impossible in the first instance, and must have been derived from a higher power.'137 Mr. Fison, as we saw, has since expressed the opinion that the origin of exogamy is probably indiscoverable, but I cite again his early remark to prove his sense of the insuperable difficulty of Mr. Morgan's theory.

How were men in his hypothetical condition to know that there was anything to reform? It needed a divine revelation!

Mr. Morgan was himself aware of this difficulty, and tried to get out of it, by using Darwinian phrases about 'natural selection' – 'blessed words,' but here unavailing. He was in the posture of Mr. Spencer, between direct legislation to introduce exogamy, and gradual evolution of exogamy, as the slow result of the felt need of 'some organisation,' – its nature and purpose unknown. Thus Mr. Morgan, speaking of communal marriage, and its results, says that 'emancipation from them was slowly accomplished through movements which resulted in unconscious reformation.' These movements were, first, the 'class' system, then the 'gens' (totem system), 'worked out unconsciously through natural selection.'138 This means, if it means anything, that, by a freak or sport, some people did not marry in and in, that they unconsciously evolved the totem system, that they therefore throve, while others who married in and in, and did not evolve the totem system, perished, and so we have the results of 'natural selection.' But why did some people avoid the habit of marriages of near kin which was so general? The position is that of Dr. Westermarck, who adds an 'instinct,' developed by natural selection,139 an idea which involves arguing in a circle.

Again, that peoples marrying in the communal way would die out has to be proved: science has no certainty in the matter.

In any case, Mr. Morgan presently deserts his opinion about slow unconscious reformation, and his natural selection. 'The organisation into classes seems to have been directed to the single object of breaking up the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, which affords a probable explanation of the origin of the system. But since it does not look beyond this particular abomination it retained a conjugal system nearly as objectionable…'140 The reader sees that Mr. Morgan cannot keep on the high Darwinian level. He relapses on a supposed moral reform with a single object of things 'abominable' – to us – and 'objectionable' – to us. But how did the pristine savages find out that such things were 'abominable'? Presently the totem prohibition ('the gens') 'originates probably in the ingenuity of a small band of savages,' for the purpose of modifying marriage law, and the daring novelty 'must soon have proved its utility in the production of superior men.'141 Here we have the legislation due to human 'ingenuity,' and natural selection comes in to aid and diffuse the system. Later 'the evils of the first form of marriage came to be perceived' (what were they?) and this led 'if not to its direct abolition, to a preference for wives beyond this degree. Among the Australians it was abolished by the organisation into classes, and more widely among the Turanian tribes by the organisation into gentes.' The Australians have 'gentes' (totem groups) quite as much as the 'Turanians' or 'Ganowanians,' and we have tried to show that totems are prior to 'classes.'142 But the Australians 'abolished' a form of marriage by an 'organisation,' which implies deliberate legislation. From this difficulty of legislation, so early and so moral, no advocate of the 'bisection' of an undivided commune and of its 'subdivision' into totem 'phratries' and kins, can escape, however he may make a push at 'natural selection,' and gradual evolution.

MR. MORGAN ON TERMS OF RELATIONSHIP

These perplexities do not predispose us in favour of Mr. Morgan's theory of the terms of 'Relationship,' which we have illustrated by the case of the Urabunna. He himself takes the Hawaiian terms, which are to the same effect. In brief, all the men and women of a generation are' brothers and sisters,' all those of the prior generation are 'fathers and mothers,' all those of the following generation are 'children.' Now, if ever all the men and women of a generation married 'all through other,' promiscuously, these terms of 'relationship' would be in place. First, we are told, brothers and sisters in a family intermarried, and the process 'gradually enfolded the collateral brothers and sisters, as the range of the conjugal system widened.' And then 'the evils came to be perceived,' what evils, how perceived, we do not know, and Reformation set in. It definitely began with the Australian 'Bisection,' 'the organisation into classes' (really into 'phratries'), and about the difficulties of that theory enough has been said.

The reader will naturally ask, What is the original meaning of the words now used by Hawaiians, and Urabunna, and others, for the relations in which our 'father,' 'son,' 'wife,' 'husband,' 'mother.' 'daughter,' 'brother,' 'sister,' are included? Do the words embracing our terms 'brother' and 'sister' in Hawaii, or elsewhere, imply procreation, and issue (as in Greek), 'from the same womb'? Among the Arunta they cannot mean procreation, if they do not even know (as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us), that there is any such thing as procreation. 'A spirit child enters a woman,' that is all. In the times of this primeval ignorance, words for relationships could not imply bearing and begetting; they must have meant something else. Say that they meant relationships in point of seniority: 'my male elder,' 'my female elder,' 'my male junior,' 'my female junior,' 'my male coeval or friend,' 'my female coeval or friend,' 'the man I may marry,' 'the woman I may marry,' 'the woman or man I may not marry.'

If low savage names for relationships meant that (no doubt they do not, or not often) then they would undeniably prove nothing as to a system of communal marriage. A baby points to any man or woman and says 'pa' or 'ma,' without any theory of communal marriage. Thus philologists must first interpret for us the original significance of these savage names of relationships. Once given, they would last, whatever they originally implied. Dr. Westermarck has urged this point.143 In the terms themselves there is, generally, nothing which indicates that they imply an idea of consanguinity.' 'Pa, papa' (father), ma, mama (mother), and scores of others, 'are formed from the earliest sounds a child can produce,' and 'have no intrinsic meaning whatever.' Dr. Westermarck gives a long list of such words, applied to 'fathers, and all the tribe brothers of fathers,' and the same for mothers, concluding 'that we must not, from these designations, infer anything as to early marriage customs.' He does not deny that other terms of relationship have roots of independent meaning, 'but the number of those that imply an idea of consanguinity does not seem to be very great.' In Lifu (Melanesia), the word for 'father' means 'root;' for 'mother,' 'foundation' or 'vessel;' for 'sister,' 'not to be touched;' for 'elder and younger brother,' 'ruler' and 'ruled.'144 The terms for father and mother denote consanguinity; the others, customary law, and status.

If we only knew the meanings, say, of the Urabunna words for relationships, we should learn much. But the truly amusing fact is that Mr. Fison, for example, did not know the language of the natives, and thought that probably not six white men in Australia had an adequate knowledge, and an adequate access to the notions, of the tribesmen. Of these one had been initiated, and, like a gentleman, declined to break the oath of secresy.145 This was in 1880. Things may have improved. But unless our authorities know the languages, where are we? We do know that seniority is indicated: Father's elder brothers are Gampatcha Kuka (Warramunga tribe).

Mr. McLennan thought that all these terms were 'terms of address,' used to avoid the employment of personal names, and Dr. Westermarck holds that 'there can scarcely be any doubt that the terms for relationship are, in their origin, terms of address.' Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, after impartial consideration, cannot accept this view, for Australia; where the terms are very numerous, and stand for relations very complicated, connected with the intermarrying groups, and with social duties. In addressing a person, his or her individual name (our Christian name) is freely used.146 They believe that the terms can only be explained 'on the theory of the former existence of group marriage, and further, that this has of necessity given rise to the terms of relationship used by the Australian natives.' These opinions are shared by Messrs. Fison and Howitt. The former says, 'It must, I think, be allowed that the classificatory terms point to group marriage,' and though Bastian denies this, Mr. Fison supports his theory by the Dieri custom of allotting paramours (pinauru) to men and women, out of the sets which may intermarry.147

To this problem we return; meanwhile it may seem impertinent in mere ethnologists of the study to hint a doubt as to the conclusions of observers on the spot. Mr. Crawley, however, has no hesitations. The use of the terms of relationship, he thinks, does not testify to a past of 'Group Marriage,' or to a remoter past of promiscuity, but is 'the regular result of the primitive theory of relationship; the system codifies a combination of relation and relationship, "address," and age.' The terms in use 'do not in themselves necessarily point to a previous promiscuity, or even to a present group marriage,' as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen believe.

The point is one on which I almost hesitate to venture a decided opinion. Much seems to depend on the original sense of the various terms, and on that point, in the case of Urabunna, and many other tribes, we have no light. But often the terms do not express consanguinity at all. There seems to be no word for 'daughter' as distinct from 'son,' 'nephew,' and 'niece.' The grandfather maternal is Thunthie, and Thunthunnie is Urabunna for totem, so that it is tempting to guess that Thunthie means 'a sire of the maternal totem.'148 Kadnini, again (I speaking), means grandfather paternal, grandmother maternal, and grandchildren.149 These relationships imply duties and services. 'One individual has to do certain things for another … and any breach of these customs is severely punished.' An Arunta of the Panunga class calls all Kumura men 'fathers-in-law.' He gashes his flesh if any one of his 'fathers-in-law' dies, and he drops his dead game if he meets any one of them. They all have that advantage over him.150 Thus these terms of relationship – communal in appearance – really involve certain duties, rather than relations of blood and affinity. But emphatically the terms are more than mere terms of address, as in Mr. McLennan's theory.

But these are usages of the system as it stands to-day. Is there behind it an 'undivided commune,' as Mr. Morgan held; is there actual 'group marriage'? I am not apt to believe that there is. Language shows, in the terms of relationship, a group of 'Mothers' for each child; but, as Mr. Darwin remarks, 'it seems almost incredible that the relationship of the child to its mother should ever have been completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time.' A man's mother is one, and must be known, though he calls many women by the same name as he gives to his mother. She is lumped, in the terms of relationship, in one term with all the women whom the father might legally have married, but did not. The son, in addressing or speaking of his mother, overlooks the 'one love which needs no winning,' and his term has reference only to the present marriage law of his tribe. That law 'codifies' the terms, they result from that law, and that law, again, is based, if I am right, on totem prohibitions, on the desire to keep marriage between people of the same generation, and on the rights and duties of the generations. These prohibitions, of phratry, 'class,' totem, and age, leave only a certain set of women marriageable to a certain set of men. The name of this set of women is Nupa to their coevals, Luka to the succeeding generation. There is no name for 'wife,' no name for 'mother;' there are only names expressive of customary legal status, itself the result of the existing rules. Whatever their original sense, they all now connote seniority and customary legal status, with its reciprocal duties, rights and avoidances. 'It is the system, and not group marriage, which has given rise to these terms of relationship,' says Mr. Crawley.151

But what gave rise to the system? Mr. Fison has told us. 1. 'The division of a tribe (community) into two exogamous intermarrying classes…' 2. 'The subdivision of these two classes into four,' or, he suggests, the amalgamation of two tribes. 3. 'Their subdivision into gentes distinguished by totems.'152

But all of this theory we have already declined to accept for reasons given, and mainly because it involves (as I try to show) deliberate primeval reformatory legislation – without any conceivable motive. Again, we cannot accept Mr. Fison's system because it involves the hypothesis that a tribe, or 'community,' large enough to feel the necessity of bisecting itself for social and moral purposes, existed at a period when the difficulties of commissariat, of food supply, and of hostility, could seldom, if ever, permit its existence. A tribe is, I repeat, a local aggregate of small groups become friendly: it is not a primeval horde which keeps on subdividing itself, legislatively, for reformatory purposes. What social cement kept such a primeval horde, such an 'undivided commune,' together; and how did the animal jealousy of men so near to the brutal stage fail to rend it into pieces? How was it fed? How can we imagine a human herd – how supplied with food, who knows? – wherein each male sees each other male approach what female he pleases, perhaps his own preferred girl, without internecine jealousy? I cannot imagine this indifference to love in such a primitive Agapemone; I cannot understand its economics; any more than I can guess why such a state of affairs ever seemed – to its members – 'abominable' and 'objectionable,' and a thing to be reformed; yet they 'bisected' it, and 'subdivided' the segments, all in the interests of morality – such is the theory.

As for the good-humoured laxity which enables all men and women to live together matrimonially at random, Mr. Morgan found an example, as he thought, in the Punalua of the Hawaiians. The word Punalua, when observed (1860) by Judge Andrews, meant 'dear friend,' or 'intimate companion.' A man called his sister's husband (our 'brother-in-law) his 'dear friend,' and a woman styled the wife of her husband's brother (her sister-in-law), her 'dear friend,' or Punalua. This shows that relations-in-law were not 'Foes-in-law,' or, at least, that this was not the official view of the case. It really does not follow that all the wives 'shared their remaining husbands in common.' Judge Andrews thought that this happy family 'were inclined to possess each other in common.' That was only the Judge's theory, also the theory of the Rev. Artemus Bishop. Probably there was a great deal of genial license and indifference among loose luxurious barbaric people, living in 'summer isles of Eden,' where food and necessaries were ready made by benignant Nature.153

Each shepherd clasped, with unconcealed delight,His yielding fair, within the Captain's sight;Each yielding fair, as chance or fancy led,Preferred new lovers to her sylvan bed.154

This is vastly well, and the poet adds, in a liberal spirit,

What Otaheite is, let England be!

It is very well, but it by no means represents, probably, the manners of primitive man.

'We may conclude,' says Mr. Darwin, 'from what we know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds… that promiscuous intercourse, in a state of nature, is extremely improbable… The most probable view is that primeval man aboriginally lived in small communities, each with as many wives as he could support and obtain, whom he would have jealously guarded against all other men. Or he may have lived with several wives by himself, like the Gorilla, for all the natives agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up a struggle takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community. The 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,' just as the other male did.155

This second view of Mr. Darwin's is much like the theory of Mr. Atkinson, and is very unlike Mr. Morgan's theory of a human horde, living in communal marriage, or group marriage. Mr. Darwin's idea, moreover, the primitive groups being small, does not encounter the economic difficulties raised by the hypothesis of the 'undivided commune.' The strongest male practically enforced exogamy, as far as he was able, and maybe conceived to have entertained no scruples as to connection with his daughters. Mr. Darwin admitted that 'the indirect evidence' for communal marriage, and fraternal incest, was 'extremely strong,' but then 'it rests chiefly on the terms of relationship which are employed between members of the same tribe, implying a connection with the tribe alone, and not with either parent.' If, however, we have successfully explained these terms of relationship as not usually meaning degrees of consanguinity, but of customary legal status, under the prevalent customary law, the evidence which these terms yield for promiscuity, or group marriage, is extremely weak, or is nil, above all if our theory of how the legal status arose is accepted. And, if it is not accepted, back we come to primeval 'reformatory movements.'

In Lifu, the word for 'sister' means 'not to be touched,' land this is a mere expression of customary law. A man 'must not touch' any one of the women of his generation whom the totem tabu and the rule of the exogamous 'phratry' (in origin, we suggest, totemic) forbid him to touch. All such women, in a particular grade, are his sisters. Many women, besides his actual sisters, stand to him in the degree thus prohibited. All bear the same name of status as a man's actual sisters bear, but the name does not mean 'sisters' at all, in our sense of that word: namely, daughters of the man's real father and mother. It means tabued women of a generation. If the 'classificatory' terms which include our 'fathers,' 'sisters,' 'wives,' and the rest meant what our 'fathers,' 'sisters,' 'wives,' and so on mean, then the evidence from the terms, for communal or group marriage, would really be 'extremely strong.' But, as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say, 'unless all ideas of terms of relationship as counted among ourselves be abandoned, it is useless to try and (sic) understand the native terms.'156 Yet the whole force of the argument for communal marriage derived from savage terms of relationship rests precisely on our not 'abandoning' (as we are warned to abandon) 'all ideas of terms of relationship as counted among ourselves.'

The friends of group and communal marriage, it seems to me, keep forgetting that our ideas of sister, brother, father, mother, and so on, have nothing to do (as they tell us at certain points of their argument) with the native terms which include, indeed, but do not denote these relationships, as understood by us. An Urabunna calls a crowd of men of his father's status by the same term as he calls his father. This need not point to an age when, by reason of promiscuity, no man knew his father. Were this so, a man of the generation prior to his father might be the actual parent of the speaker, and all men under eighty ought to be called 'father' by him – which they are not. The facts may merely mean that the Urabunna styles his father by the name denoting a status which his father shares with many other men; a status in seniority, 'phratry,' and totem. We really cannot first argue that our ideas have no relation to the terms employed by savages, and then, when we want to prove a past of communal marriage, turn round and reason as if our terms and the savage terms were practically identical. We cannot say 'our word "son" must not be thought of when we try to understand the native term of relationship which includes sons in our sense,' and next aver that 'sons in our sense, are regarded as real sons of the group, not of the individual – because of a past stage of promiscuity making paternity indiscoverable.'

As Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say, we must 'lay aside all preconceived ideas of relationship,' when we study the Urabunna or other classificatory terms of relationships.157 Let us do so, and the evidence borne by these terms to a past of communal marriage vanishes at once. That the terms often denote status in customary law is demonstrated. 'There are certain customs which are enforced by long usage and according to which men and women of particular degrees of relationship may alone have marital relations, or may not speak to one another, or according to which one individual has to do certain things for another, such as providing the latter with food, or with hair, as the case may be, and any breach of these customs is severely punished. The elder men of each group very carefully keep alive these customs, many of which are of considerable value to themselves…'158

Thus, you have speared a fish, or an opossum, but if you meet any man of your father-in-law's set, you must drop your spoil and make off. Consequently, I venture to take it, the terms of relationship in no way answer to our ideas of kin, but merely denote legal status.

HOW THE TERMS OF RELATIONSHIP ORIGINALLY AROSE

We cannot, as a rule, recover (or Australian students have not recovered) the original sense and etymology of terms like Biaka, Nia, Nupa, and so forth. We are thus left to choose between two competing theories of their nature and diffusion. If we advocate the hypothesis of consanguine marriage and group marriage, we must suppose that the members of the 'undivided commune' of the theory, had once names absolutely identical in sense with our 'father,' 'mother,' 'sister,' 'brother,' 'son,' 'daughter,' and so forth. But the speakers, in each case, were obliged to apply these words with the utmost laxity, because who knew who A's father might be, and whether C's sister were really his sister or not, while every girl was the wife of every male of her generation, not barred by other laws, and so on? The promiscuity of living, then, made this lax use of words for relationships inevitable.

This is the usual hypothesis, and the sweeping scope of savage words for human relationships is accepted as proof that consanguine and group marriage once existed and left their marks in language. On the other hand, if communal marriage prevailed, the people who lived in that condition could not possibly have had ideas equivalent to our father, son, daughter, brother, wife, and so on. Our ideas of these relationships could not enter the human mind, at the hypothetical stage of culture when nobody knew 'who is who' and the hypothesis is wrecked on that fact.

Therefore either the names now used under the 'class system' are of unknown original sense; or, human marriage was, from the, first, so far 'individual' that our ideas of father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, could arise and could find expression in terms that still survive, say, among the Urabunna or other Australians. But while tribal customary laws as to classes, totems, generations, marriage rules, and many other social duties were being evolved; some of the ancient names for father, son, brother, sister, were perhaps taken up and applied to each of the large sets of persons whose customary legal status was now (as groups coalesced into large tribes) on the level of actual fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, and the rest. Obviously, in a primitive group of a male senior, his female mates and children, there could not exist (other groups being, on my theory, strange or hostile) large sets of persons occupying a common legal status, as in modern tribes. The existence of such sets of persons is the result of the later and tribal society, of society in which many groups are reconciled and united in a local tribe. Only in such a tribe, which cannot be primitive, is the classificatory system of naming sets of people necessary. It is only in tribal law that the grades of customary status answering to all the many terms can exist, and tribes with their laws cannot be primitive. Most names for the various grades, therefore, are later than Mr. Darwin's hypothetical stage of small and perhaps hostile groups; they were, in a few cases, perhaps originally names for such relationships as our own father, mother, son, brother, &c., but in the evolution of tribal customary law, such names have been extended out of their family, or fire-circle, into their tribal significance, out of recognised kinship, or close contiguity, into terms including all who have the same status, rights, and duties.