the university of - r ticut lIllLi • • hbl,stx HQ 504.E6 1909 Origin of the family, private prop 3 T153 DD7E7D31 T Vn I NO THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE STATE KT FREDERICK ^ENGELS^ TRANSLATED BY ERNEST UNTERMANN CHICAGO CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 1909 HQ ft Copyright, 1902 Bt Charles H. Kbrb & Cohpani TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page. [ Translator's Preface 5 Author's Prefaces 9-12 I Prehistoric Stages 27 i The Family 35 /^fee Iroquois Gens 102 The Grecian Gens 120 Origin of the Attic State 131 Gens and State in Rome .' 145 The Gens Among Celts and Germans 158 The Rise of the State Among Germans o c . 176 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. "An eternal being created human society as it is to- day, and submission to 'superiors' and 'authority' is Imposed on the 'lower' classes by divine will." This suggestion, coming from pulpit, platform and press, has hypnotized the minds of men and proves to be one of the strongest pillars of exploitation. Scientific in- vestigation has revealed long ago that human society is not cast in a stereotyped mould. As organic life on earth assumes different shapes, the result of a suc- cession of chemical changes, so the group life of human beings develops different social institutions as a result of increasing control over environment, espe- cially of production of food, clothing and shelter. Such is the message which the works of men like Bachofen, Morgan, Marx, Darwin, and others, brought to the human race. But this message never reached the great mass of humanity. In the United States the names of these men are practically unknown. Their books are either out of print, as is the case with the fundamental works of Morgan, or they are not translated into English. Only a few of them are ac- cessible to a few individuals on the dusty shelves of some public libraries. Their message is dangerous to the existing order, and it will not do to give it pub- licity at a time when further intellectual progress of large bodies of men means the doom of the ruling class. The capitalist system has progressed so far, that all farther progress must bring danger to it and to those who are supreme through it. But the forces, which have brought about the pres- b THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY ent social order, continue their work regardless of the wishes of a few exploiters. A comprehensive work summarizing our present knowledge of the develop-, ment of social institutions is, therefore, a timely con tribution to socialist propaganda. In order to meet th' requirements of socialists, such a summary must b written by a socialist. All the scientists who devote< themselves to the study of primeval society belonged to the privileged classes, and even the most radical of! them, Lewis Morgan, was prevented by his environ- ment from pointing out the one fact, the recognition of which distinguishes the socialist position from all others— THE EXISTENCE OF A CLASS STRUG^ GLE. The strongest allusion to this fact is found in the following passage of "Ancient Society": "Property and office were the foundations upon which aristocracy planted itself. Whether this principle shall live or die has been one of the great problems with which modern society has been engaged. ... As a question be- tween equal rights and unequal rights, between equaS laws and unequal laws, between the rights of wealth, of rank and of official position, and the power ot justice and intelligence, there can be little doubt or the ultimate result" (page 551). Yet Morgan held that ''several thousand years have passed away without the overthrow of the privileged classes, excepting in the United States." But in tht^ days of the trusts, of government by injunction, of sets- of 400 with all the arrogance and exclusiveness ot European nobility, of aristocratic branches of thf Daughters of the Revolution, and other gifts of capi- talist development, the modern American working- man will hardly share Morgan's optimistic view that there are no privileged classes in the United States. It must be admitted, however, that to this day Mor- gan's work is the most fundamental and exhaustive of TRANSLATOR S PREFACE 7 any written on the subject of ancient social develop- ment. Westermarck's "History of Human Marriage" treats the question mainly from the standpoint of Ethnology and Natural History. As a scientific treat- ise it is entirely inadequate, being simply a compila- tion of data from all parts of the world, arranged with- out the understanding of gentile organizations or of the materialistic conception of history, and used for wild speculations. Kovalevsky's argument turns on the proposition that the patriarchal household is a typical stage of society, intermediate between the matriarchal and monogamic family. None of these men could discuss the matter from the proletarian point of view. For in order to do this, It is necessary to descend from the hills of class assumption into the valley of proletarian class-con- sciousness. This consciousness and the socialist mind are born together. The key to the philosophy of capi- talism is the philosophy of socialism. With the rays of this searchlight, Engels exposed the pious "deceiv- ers," property and the state, and their "lofty" ideal, covetousness. And the monogamic family, so far from being a divinely instituted "union of souls," is seen to be the product of a series of material and, in the last analysis, of the most sordid motives. But the ethics of property are worthy of a system of production that, In its final stage, shuts the overwhelming mass of longing humanity out from the happiness of home and family life, from all evolution to a higher individuality, and even drives progress back and forces millions of human beings into irrevocable degeneration. The desire for a higher life cannot awake in a man, until he is thoroughly convinced that his present life Is ugly, low, and capable of improvement by himself. The present little volume is especially adapted to assist the exploited of both sexes in recognizing the actual causes which brought about their present con- 8 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY dition. By opening the eyes of the deluded throng and reducing the vaporings of their ignorant or selfish would-be leaders in politics and education to sober reality, it will show the way out of the darkness and mazes of slavish traditions into the light and freedom of a fuller life on earth. These are the reasons for introducing this little volume to English speaking readers. Without any further apology, we leave them to its perusal and to their own conclusions. ERNEST UNTERMANN. Chicago, August, 1902. AUTHOR'S PREFAOE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1884. The following chapters are, in a certain sense, exe- cuting a bequest. I^ was no less_a man than Kar l Marx who had reser ved" to himself the_priyilege_of display ing the results of Morga n's investi gations_in conn ection with his own materialisti c conception of histor y— which I might call ours wi thin^ertain limits. . ,\ He ^shed thus to elucidate the juU meaning of this/ \ conce ption. F or in Amer ica^ Morgan^-had^in^^ajnannerA ^ discover ed anew the materialistic-^on€eption_o£-M«^ tory;__originated-hy Marx forty -years-ago. In_com- parinjg Jbarbarism an d civilization, he had arrived.l n the main, at the same resul t s as Marx . 4ud just as '•Capital" was zealously plagiarized and persistently passed over in. silence by the professional economists in Germany, so Morgan's "Ancient Society"* was treated by the spokesmen of "prehistoric" science in England. My work can offer only a meager substitute for that which my departed friend was not destined to accom- plish. But in his copious extracts from Morgan, I have critical notes which I herewith reproduce as fully as feasible. Recording to the n3ateriallstic_conception, the de- cisive elementjofjbist^^^ ti ^and re production^,of_life-and its materiaLr^qmre- r-y m^3' TMs^iiB^fiS,-onLlhfi_Qnfi_haM^thej)roductionV^ ot the mea ns of exist ence (food, clothing, shelter and •Ancient Society or Researches In the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization. By Lewis H. Morgan. Henry Holt & Co. 1877. The book, printed In America, was singularly difficult to obtain In London. The author died a few years ago. 10 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY the necessary tools) ; oEulhe other hand, the generation of children, t.he-prQpag^atLon oMhe species. The social institutions, under which the~people~of a certain his- torical period and of a certain country are living, are dependent on these two forms of production; partly on the development of labor, partly on that of the family. The less labor is developed, and the less abundant the quantity of Its production and, there- fore, the wealth of society, the more society is seen to be under the domination of sexual ties. However, under this formation based on sexual ties, the pro- ductivity of labor is developed more and more. At the ' same time, private property and exchange, distinc- j tions of wealth, exploitation of the labor power of f others and, by this agency, the foundation of class antagonism, are formed. Thes6 new elements of so- : ciety strive in the course of time to adapt the old state of society to the new conditions, until the impossl- .bllity of harmonizing these two at last leads to a com- Splete revolution. The old form of society founded on sexual relations is abolished in the clash with the recently developed social classes^ A new society steps Into being, crystallized into the state. The units ot the latter are no longer sexual, but local groups; a society in which family relations are entirely subordi- nated to property relations, thereby freely developing those class antagonisms and class struggles that make up the contents of all written history up to the present ime. Morg an deserves^great^credit for rediscovering^ ajid r^estaElIafia^inJtsmain^ouQi^^ ot our_written_^istor^^~and'^^ g anizati on s__oF^the3Nofr h~:S:mBri can ^dlans the^key th at opens_ an_.JjiSIji^agapiiratyte riddles-^^^ most ancient uree^^Joman and^jefmanJTs^^ Hi_s book l05tlhe::WofklofIS!iS5i:±j2ayr Forjnore^than_forty years he grappled with the subject ^ until he mas^ AUTHORS PREFACE H tered it fully. Therefore his work is one of the few epochal publications of our time. In the following demonstrations, the reader will, on the whole, easily distinguish what originated with Morgan and what was added by myself. In the his- torical sections on Greece and Rome, I have not lim- ited myself to Morgan's material, but have added as much as I could supply. The sections on Celts and Germans essentially belong to me. Morgan had only sources of minor quality at his disposal, and for Ger- man conditions— aside from Tacitus — only the worth- less, unbridled falsifications of Freeman. The eco- nomic deductions, sufficient for Morgan's purpose, but wholly inadequate for mine, were treated anew by myself. And lastly I am, of course, responsible for all final conclusions, unless Morgan is expressly quoted. Frederick Engels. 12 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDI- TION, 1891. The first large editions of this work have been out of print for nearly six months, and the publisher has for some time requested of me the arrangement of a new edition. Urgent duties have hitherto prevented me. Seven years have passed, since the first edition made its appearance; during this time, the study of primeval forms of the family has made considerable progress. Hence it became necessary to apply dili- gently the improving and supplementing hand, more especially, as the proposed stereotyping of the present text will make further changes impossible for some time. Consequently, I have subjected the whole text to a thorough revision and made a number of additions which, I hope, will give due recognition to the present stage of scientific progress. Furthermore, I give in the course of this preface a short synopsis of the history of the family as treated by various writers from Bachofen to Morgan. I am doing this mainly because the English prehistoric school, tinged with chauvinism, is continually doing its utmost to kill by its silence the revolution in primeval conceptions effected by Morgan's discoveries. At the same time this school is not at all backward in appropriating to its own use the results of Morgan's study. In certain other circles also this English example is imhappily followed rather extensively. My work has been translated into different languages. First into Italian; L'origine della famiglia, della pro- priety privata e dello stato, versione riveduta dair autore, di Pasquale Martignetti; Benevento, 1885. author's preface 13 Then into Roumanian: Origina familei, proprietatei private si a statului, traducere de Ivan Nadejde, in tbe Jassy periodical "Contemporanul," September, 1886, to May, 1886. Furttiermore into Danisli: Familjens, Privatejendommees og Statens Oprindelse, Dansk, af Forfatteren gennemgaaet Udgave, besorget af Gerson Trier, Kjoebenhavn, 1888. A French translation by Henri Rav6, founded on the present German edition, is under the press. Up to the beginning of the sixties, a history of the family cannot be spoken of. This branch of historical science was then entirely under the influence of the decalogue. The patriarchal form of the family, de- scribed more exhaustively by Moses than by anybody else, was not only, without further comment, consid- ered as the most ancient, but also as identical with the family of our times. No historical development of the family was even recognized. At best it was admitted that a period of sexual license might have existed in primeval times. To be sure, aside from monogamy, oriental polygamy and Indo-Tibethan polyandry were known; but these three forms could not be arranged in any historical order and stood side by side without any connection. That some nations of ancient history and some savage tribes of the present day did not trace their descent to the father, but to the mother, hence considered the female lineage as alone valid; that many nations of our time prohibit intermarrying inside of certain large groups, the extent of which was not yet ascertained and that this custom is found in all parts of the globe— these facts were known, indeed, and more examples were continually collected. But nobody knew how t* make use of them. Even in E. B. Tay- lor's "Researches into the Early History ©f Mankind," etc. (18G5), they are only mentioned as "queer cus- toms" together with the usage of some savage tribes 14 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY to prohibit the touching of burning wood with iron tools, and similar religious absurdities. This history of the family dates from 1861, the year of the publication of Bachofen's "Mutterrecht" (ma- ternal law). Here the author makes the following propositions: 1. That in the beginning people lived in unrestricted sexual intercourse, which he dubs, not Tery felicitous- ly, hetaerism. 2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely certain means of determining parentage; that conse- quently descent could only be traced by the female line in compliance with maternal law— and that this was universally practiced by all the nations of an- tiquity. 3. That consequently women as mothers, being the only well known parents of younger generations, re- ceived a high tribute of respect and deference, amount- ing to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy), accord- ing to Bachofen's idea. 4. That the transition to monogamy, reserving a certain woman exclusively to one man, implied the violation of a primeval religious law (i. e., practically a violation of the customary right of all other men to the same woman), which violation had to be atoned for or its permission purchased by the surrender of the women to the public for a limited time. Bachofen finds the proofs of these propositions in numerous quotations from ancient classics, collected with unusual diligence. The transition from *'hetaerism" to monogamy and from maternal to pa- ternal law is accomplished according to him— espe- cially by the Greeks— through the evolution of relig- ious ideas. New gods, the representatives of the new ideas, are added to the traditional group of gods, the representatives of old ideas; the latter are forced to the background more and more by the former. Ac- AUTHOR* S PREFACE 15 cording to Bachofen, therefore, it is not the develop- ment of the actual conditions of life that has effected the historical changes in the relative social positions of man and wife, but the religious reflection of these conditions in the minds of men. Hence Bachofen rep- resents the Oresteia of Aeschylos as the dramatic de- scription of the fight between the vanishing maternal and the paternal law, rising and victorious during the time of the heroes. Klytaemnestra has killed her husband Agamemnon on his return from the Trojan war for the sake of her lover Aegisthos; but Orestes, her son by Agamemnon, avenges the death of his father by killing his mother. Therefore he is persecuted by the Erinyes, the de- monic protectors of maternal law, according to which the murder of a mother is the most horrible, inex- piable crime. But Apollo, who has instigated Orestes to this act by his oracle, and Athene, who is invoked as arbitrator— the two deities representing the new pa- ternal order of things— protect him. Athene gives a hearing to both parties. The whole question is sum- marized in the ensuing debate between Orestes and the Erinyes. Orestes claims that Klytemnaestra has committed a twofold crime: by killing her husband she has killed his father. Why do the Erinyes perse- cute him and not her who is far more guilty? The reply is striking: "She was not related, by blood to the man whom she slew." The murder of a man not consanguineous, even though he be the husband of the murderess, is expia- ble, does not concern the Erinyes; it is only their duty to prosecute the murder of consanguineous relatives. According to maternal law, therefore, the murder of a mother is the most heinous and inexpiable crime. Now Apollo speaks in defense of Orestes. Athene then calls on the areopagites— the Jurors of Athens— to l6 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY vote; the votes are even for acquittal and for con- demnation. Thereupon Athene as president of the jury casts her vote in favor of Orestes and acquits him. Paternal law has gained a victory over maternal law, the deities of the "younger generation," as the Erinyes call them, vanquish the latter. These are finally persuaded to accept a new oflSce under the new order of things. This new, but decidedly accurate interpretation of the Oresteia is one of the most beautiful and best passages in the whole book, but it proves at the same time that Bachofen himself believes as much in the Erinyes, in Apollo and in Athene, as Aeschylos did in his day. He really believes, that they performed the miracle of securing the downfall of maternal law through paternal law during the time of the Greek heroes. That a similar conception, representing re- ligion as the main lever of the world's history, mus finally lead to sheer mysticism, is evident. Therefore it is a troublesome and not always profit- able task to work your way through the big volume of Bachofen. Still, all this does not curtail the value of his fundamental work. He was the first to replace the assumption of an unknown primeval condition of licentious sexual intercourse by the demonstration that ancient classical literature points out a multitude of traces proving the actual existence among Greeks and Asiatics of other sexual relations before mon- ogamy. These relations not only permitted a man to have intercourse with several women, but also left a woman free to have sexual intercourse with sev- eral men without violating good morals. This custom did not disappear without leaving as a survival the form of a general surrender for a limited time by which women had to purchase the right of monogamy. Hence descent could originally only be traced by the female line, from mother to mother. The sole legality i AUTHOR S PREFACE 17 of the female line was preserved far into the time of monogamy with assured, or at least acknowledged, paternity. Consequently, the original position of the mothers as the sole absolutely certain parents of their children secured for them and for all other women a higher social level than they have ever enjoyed since. Although Bachofen, biased by his mystic conceptions, did not formulate these propositions so clearly, still he proved their coiTectness. This was equivalent to a complete revolution in 1861. Bachofen's big volume was written in German, i. e., In the language of a nation that cared less than any other of its time for the history of the present family. Therefore he remained unknown. The man next succeeding him in the same field made his appearance in 1865 without having ever heard of B^i^oten. This successor was .T._F^^M cLennan . the direct op- posite of his predecessor, "instead of the talented mys- tic, we have here the dry jurist; In place of the rank growth of poetical imagination, we find the plausible combinations of the pleading lawyer. McLennan finds among many savage, barbarian and even civilized peo- ple of ancient and modern times a type of marriage forcing the bride-groom, alone or in co-operation with his friends, to go through the form of a mock forcible abduction of the bride. This must needs be a survival of an earlier custom when men of one tribe actually secured their wives by forcible abduction from an- other tribe. How did this "robber marriage" origin- ate? As long as the men could find women enough in their own tribe, there was no occasion for robbing. It so happens that we frequently find certain groups among undeveloped nations (which in 1865 were often considered identical with the tribes themselves), in- side of which intermarrying was prohibited. In con- sequence the men (or women) of a certain group were forced to choose their wives (or husbands) outside of l8 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY their group. Other tribes again observe the custom of forcing their men to choose their women inside of their own group only. McLennan calls the first exo- gamous, the second endogamous, and construes forth- with a rigid contrast between exogamojis and en- dogamous "tribes." And though his own investiga- tion of exogamy makes It painfully obvious that this contrast in many, if not in most or even in all cases, exists in his own imagination only, he nevertheless makes it the basis of his entire theory. According to the latter, exogamous tribes can choose their women only from other tribes. And as in conformity with their savage state a condition of continual warfare existed among such tribes, women could only be se- cured by abduction. McLennan further asks: Whence this custom of exogamy? The idea of consanguinity and rape could not have anything to do with it, since these concep- tions were developed much later. But it was a widely spread custom among savages to kill female children Immediately after their birth. This produced a sur- plus of males in such a tribe which naturally resulted in the condition where several men had one woman- polyandry. The next consequence was that the mother of a child could be ascertained, but not its father; hence: descent only traced by the female line and exclusion of male lineage— maternal law. And a second consequence of the scarcity of women in a cer- tain tribe— a scarcity that was somwhat mitigated, but not relieved by polyandry— was precisely the forcible abduction of women from other tribes. "As exogamy and polyandry are referable to one and the same cause —a want of balance between the sexes— we are forced to regard all the exogamous races as having originally been polyandrous. . . . Therefore we must hold it to be beyond dispute that among exogamous races the AUTHOR S PREFACE 19 first system of kinship was that which recognized blood-ties through mothers only."* It js the merit of McLennan to have poi ntPfLmrt- thft ge neral extent and the great importaii^p of w hat he ca lls exogamy . Ho wever, h g^has by na means dis- covered t he fact of^x ogamous g roups; neither did he understand^ their~presence. Aside from earlier scat- tered notes of many observers— from which McLennan quoted— Latham had accurately and correctly de- scribed this institution among the Indian Magars* and stated that it was widespread and practiced in all parts of the globe. McLennan himself quotes this passage. Asearly as 1847, our friend Morgan had also pointed out_and/correcily described the same custom in hisj£tiers_on_the Iroquois (in the American Review) andJiLlSfi]^ 'lT^heJL^ague_ottM Ii-Oquois.'' We shall see, how the lawyer's instinct of McLennan has intro- duced more disorder Into this subject than the mystic imagination of Bachofen did into the field of maternal law. It must be said to Mc Lennan's credit t hatJie recog- nized the custo .ffljQf trncing decent by maternal Iflw b° p rimeva l, although JBa chof en has antici p a ted h im In t his resp ect. McLennan has admitted this later on. But here again he is not clear on the subject. He always speaks of "kinship through females only" and uses this expression, correctly applicable to former stages, in connection with later stages of development, when descent and heredity were still exclusively traced along female lines, but at the same time kinship on the male side began to be recognized and expressed. It is the narrow-mindedness of the jurist, establishing a fixed legal expression and employing it incessantly ♦McLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1886. Primitive Marriage, p. 124. *Latham, Descriptive Ettinology, 1859. 20 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY to denote conditions to which it should no longer be applied. In spite of its plausibility, McLennan's theory did not seem too well founded even in the eyes of its au- thor. At least he finds it remarkable himself "that the form of capture is now most distinctly marked and impressive Just among those races which have male kinship."* And again: *'It is a curious fact that nowhere now, that we are aware of, is infanticide a system where exogamy and the earliest form of kinship co-exists.** Both these facts directly disprove his method of ex- planation, and he can only meet them with new and still more complicated hypotheses. In spite of this, his theory found great approval and favor in England. Here McLennan was generally con- sidered as the founder of the history of the family and as the first authority on this subject. His contrast of exogamous and endogamous "tribes" remained the recognized foundation of the customary views, how- ever much single exceptions and modifications were admitted. This antithesis became the eye-flap that rendered impossible any free view of the field under Investigation and, therefore, any decided progress. It Is our duty to confront this overrating of McLennan, practised in England and copied elsewhere, with the fact that he has done more harm with his ill-conceived contrast of exogamous and endogamous tribes than he has done good by his investigations. Moreover, i n the c ourse _of time more_andjQQre iacts became_kno wn that_did not fit in to his neat frame. McLenn an knew only_ three_ joroi3__of_jaaiTiage: polygamy, golxandry and monogamy. But once^t ten- tlon had been dirPPfpdtnjfTiis pnint, fhfiTi mrvrA and •McLennan, Studies In Ancient History, 1886. Primitive Marriage, p. 140. ••Ibidena, p. 146. AUTHOR S PREFACE 21 more proofs were founfi fhf^t amnng nr>fiPVAiApQ«^ na- tions there_w^recounubia]_fQrmsJ^ of m en~possesse(i_ argrouB_^^ women. LjiMioc k in h is "Ori gin of Civilizatto n" (1870) re cognized this "c om- munal marriag e" as a historical fact. Immediately after him, in 1871, Morgan appeared with fresh and, in many respects, conclusive material. He had convinced himself that the peculiar system of kinship in vogue among the Iroquois was common to all the aborigines of the United States, and practised all over the continent, although it was in direct con- tradiction with all the degrees of relation arising from the connubial system in practice there. He prevailed on the federal government to collect information on the systems of kinship of other nations by the help of question blanks and tables drawn up by himself. The answers brought the following results: 1. The kinship system of the American Indians is also in vogue in Asia, and in a somewhat modified form among numerous tribes of Africa and Australia. 2. This system finds a complete explanation in a certain form of communal marriage now in process of decline in Hawaii and some Australian islands. 3. By the side of this marital form, there is in prac- tice on the same islands a system of kinship only explicable by a still more primeval and now extinct form of communal marriage. The collected data and the conclusions of Morgan were published in his "Systems of Con- sanguinity and Aflanity," 1871, and discussion transferred to a far more extensive field. Tak- ing his departure from the system of aflinity he reconstructed the corresponding forms of the family, thereby opening a new road to scientific investigation and extending the retrospective view into prehistoric periods of human life. Once this view gained recogni- 22 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY tion, then the frail structure of McLennan would vanish into thin air. McLennan defended his theory in the new edition of "Primitive Marriage" (Studies in Ancient History, 1875). While he himself most artificially combines into a history of the family a number of hypotheses, he not only demands proofs from Lubbock and Morgan for every one of their propositions, but insists on proofs of such indisputable validity as Is solely recog- nized in a Scotch court. And this is done by the same man who unhesitatingly concludes that the following people practiced polyandry: The Germans, on account of the intimate relation between uncle and nephew (mother's brother and sister's son); the Britons, be- cause Cesar reports that the Britons have ten to twelve women in common; barbarians, because all other reports of the old writers on community of women are misinterpreted by him! One is reminded of a prosecuting attorney who takes all possible liberty in making up his case, but who demands the most formal and legally valid proof for every word of the lawyer for the defense. He asserts that communal marriage Is purely the outgrowth of imagination, and in so doing falls far behind Bachof en. He represents Morgan's systems of aflanity as mere codes of conventional politeness, proven by the fact that Indians address also strangers, white people, as brother or father. This is like assert- ing that the terms father, mother, brother, sister are simply meaningless forms of address, because Catholic priests and abbesses are also addressed as father and mother, and monks and nuns, or even free-masons and members of English professional clubs in solemn ses- sion, as brother and sister. In short, McLennan's defense was extremely weak. One point still remained that had not been attacked. The contrast of exogamous and endogamous tribes, AUTHOR S PREFACE 23 on Which his whole system was founded, was not only left unchallenged, but was even generally regarded as the pivotal point of the entire history of the family. It was admitted that McLennan's attempt to explain this contrast was insuflScient and in contradiction with the facts enumerated by himself. But the contrast itself, the existence of two diametrically opposed forms of independent and absolute groups, one of them marrying the women of its own group, the other strictly forbidding this habit, was considered irrefuta- ble gospel. Compare e. g. Giraud-Teulon's "Origines de la famille" (1874) and even Lubbock's "Origin of Civilization" (4th edition, 1882). At this point Morgan's main work, "Ancient So- ciety" (1877), inserts its lever. It is this work on which the present volume is based. Here we find clearly demonstrated what was only dimly perceived by Morgan in 1871. There is no antithesis between endogamy and exogamy; no exogamous "tribes" have been found up to the present time. But at the time when communal marriage still existed— and in all probability it once existed everywhere— a tribe was subdivided into a number of groups— "gentes"— con- sanguineous on the mother's side, within which inter- marrying was strictly forbidden. The men of a certain "gens," therefore, could choose their wives within the tribe, and did so as a rule, but had to choose them outside of the "gens." And while thus the "gens" was strictly exogamous, the tribe comprising an aggregate of "gentes" was equally endogamous. Thi? fact gave the final blow to McLennan's artificial structure. But Morgan did not rest here. The "gens" of the American Indians furthermore assisted him in gain- ing another important step in the field under investi- gation. He found that this "gens," organized in con- formity with maternal law, was the original form out 24 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY of which later on the "gens" by paternal law devel- oped, such as we find it among the civilized nations of antiquity. The Greek and Roman "gens," an un- solved riddle to all historians up to our time, found Its explanation in the Indian "gens." A new foundation was discovered for the entire primeval history. The repeated discovery that the original maternal "gens" was a preliminary stage of the paternal "gens" of civilized nations has the same signification for primeval history that Darwin's theory of evolution had for biology and Marx's theory of surplus value for political economy. Morgan was thereby enabled to sketch the outline of a history of the family, showing In bold strokes at least the classic stages of develop- ment, so far as the available material will at present permit such a thing. It is clearly obvious that this marks a new epoch in the treatment of primeval his- tory. The maternal "gens" has become the pivot on which this whole science revolves. Since its discovery we know in what direction to continue our researches, what to investigate and how to arrange the results of our studies. In consequence, progress in this field is now much more rapid than before the publication of Morgan's book. The discoveries of Morgan are now universally rec- ognized, or rather appropriated, even by the archaeol- ogists of England. But hardly one of them openly admits that we owe this revolution of thought to Morgan. His book is ignored in England as much as possible, and he himself is dismissed with conde- scending praise for the excellence of his former works. The details of his discussion are diligently criticised, but his really great discoveries are covered up obstin- ately. The original edition of "Ancient Society" is out of print; there is no paying market for a work of this kind in America; in England, it appears, the book was systematically suppressed, and the only author's preface 25 edition of this epochal work still circulating in the market is— the German translation. Whence this reserve? We can hardly refrain from calling it a conspiracy to kill by silence, especially in view of the numerous meaningless and polite quota- tions and of other manifestations of fellowship in which the writings of our recognized archaeologists abound. Is it because Morgan is an American, and because it is rather hard on the English archaeologists to be dependent on two talented foreigners like Bachof en and Morgan for the outlines determining the arrangement and grouping of their material, in spite of all praiseworthy diligence in accumulating material. They could have borne with the German, but an American? In face of an American, every Englishman becomes patriotic. I have seen amusing illustrations of this fact in the United States. Moreover, it must be remembered that McLennan was, so to say, the official founder and leader of the English prehistoric school. It was almost a requirement of good prehistoric man- ners to refer in terms of highest admiration to his artificial construction of history leading from infanti- cide through polyandry and abduction to maternal law. The least doubt in the strictly independent exist- ence of exogamous and endogamous tribes was con- sidered a frivolous sacrilege. According to this view, Morgan, In reducing all these sacred dogmas to thin air, committed an act of wanton destruction. And worse still, his mere manner of reducing them suf- ficed to show their instability, so that the admirers of McLennan, who hitherto had been stumbling about helplessly between exogamy and endogamy, were almost forced to slap their foreheads and exclaim: "How silly of us, not to have found that out long ago!" Just as if Morgan had not committed crimes enough n gainst the official archaeologists to justify them in discarding all fair methods and assuming an attitude 26 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY of cool neglect, he persisted in filling their cup to overflowing. Not only does he criticise civilization, the society of production for profit, the fundamental form of human society, in a manner savoring of Fourier, but he also speaks of a future reorganization of society in language that Karl Marx might have used. Con- sequently, he receives his just deserts, when McLen- nan indignantly charges him with a profound anti- pathy against historical methods, and when Professor Giraud-Teulon of Geneva endorses the same view in 1884. For was not the same Professor Giraud-Teulon still wandering about aimlessly in the maze of Mc- Lennan's exogamy in 1S74 (Origines de la famille)? And was it not Morgan who finally had to set him free? It is not necessary to dwell in this preface on the other forms of progress which primeval history owes to Morgan. Reference to them will be found in the course of my work. During the fourteen years that have elapsed since the publication of his main work, the material contributing to the history of primeval society has been considerably enriched. Anthropol- ogists, travelers and professional historians were joined by comparative jurists who added new matter and opened up new points of view. Here and there, some special hypothesis of Morgan has been shaken or even become obsolete. But in no instance has the new material led to a weakening of his leading propositions. The order he established in primeval history still holds good in its main outlines to this day. We may even say that this order receives recognition in the exact degree, in which the authorship of this great progress is concealed. London, June 16th, 1891. Frederick Engels. THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY CHAPTER I. PREHISTORIC STAGES* Morgan was the first to make an attempt at intro- ducing a logical order into the history of primeval society. Until considerably more material is obtained, no further changes will be necessary and his arrange- ment will surely remain in force. Of the three main epochs— savag^cy, barbari sm and c ivilizatio n— naturally only the first two and the transi- tion to the third required his attention. He^ubdivided e ach of these int o a lower, middle and^ higher stage, according to the^rd]pesFlh the^^productipn of the me ans of ~ susten^ ce. nis reason for doing so is that the degree of human supremacy over nature is con- ditioned on the ability to produce the necessities of life. For of all living beings, man alone has acquired an almost unlimited control over food production. Ail_ ^XsaJLepochs of human progr ess, acco rding to Morgan, c oincide more or lessjlirectly_:nlth— times of greater abundance in the means that sust ain li fe. The evolu- tiQn^f_t he family proceeds in the same measure with- out, however, offering equally convenient marks for sub-division. I. SAVAGERY. 1. Lower Stage. Infancy of the human race. Hu- man beings still dwelt in their original habitation, in tropical or subtropical forests. They lived at least part of the time in trees, for only in this way they 20 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY could escape the attacks of large beasts of prey and survive. Fruit, nuts, and roots served as food. The formation of articulated speech is the principal result of this period. Not a single one of all the nations that have become known in historic times dates back to this primeval stage. Although the latter may extend over thousands of years, we have no means of proving its existence by direct evidence. But once the descent of man from the Animal Kingdom is acknowledged, the acceptance of this stage of transition becomes inevitable. 2. Middle Stage: Commencing with the utilization of fish (including crabs, mollusks and other aquatic animals) and the use of fire. Both these things belong together, because fish becomes thoroughly palatable by the help of fire only. With this new kind of food, human beings became completely independent of cli- mate and locality. Following the course of rivers and coast lines, they could spread over the greater part of the earth even in the savage state. The so-called palaeolithic implements of the early stone age, made of rough, unsharpened stones, belong almost entirely to this period. Their wide distribution over all the continents testifies to the extent of these wanderings. The unceasing bent for discovery, together with the possession of fire gained by friction, created new products in the lately occupied regions. Such were farinaceous roots and tubers, baked in hot ashes or in baking pits (ground ovens). When" the first weapons, club and spear, were invented, venison was occasion- ally added to the bill of fare. Nations subsisting exclusively by hunting, such as we sometimes find mentioned in books, have never existed; for the pro- ceeds of hunting are too uncertain. In consequence of continued precariousness of the sources of sustenance, cannibalism, seems to arise at this stage. It continues in force for a long while. Even in our day, Australians PREHISTORIC STAGES 29 and Polynesians still remain in this middle stage of savagery. 3. Higher Stage: Coming with the invention of bow and arrow, this stage makes venison a regular part of daily fare and hunting a normal occupation. Bow, arrow and cord represent a rather complicated instrument, the invention of which presupposes a long • and accumulated experience and increased mental ability; incidentally they are conditioned on the ac- quaintance with a number of other inventions. In comparing the nations that are familiar with the use of bow and arrow, but not yet with the art of pottery (from which Morgan dates the transition to barbarism), we find among them the beginnings of village settlements, a control of food production, wooden vessels and utensils, weaving of bast fibre by hand (without a loom), baskets made of bast or reeds, and sharpened (neolithic) stone implements. Gener- ally fire and the stone ax have also furnished the dugout and, here and there, timbers and boards for house-building; All these improvements are found, e. g., among the American Indians of the Northwest, who use bow and arrows, but know nothing as yet about pottery. Bow and arrows were for the stage of savagery what the iron sword was for barbarism and the fire-arm for civilization; the weapon of supremacy. II. BARBARISM. 1. Lower Stage. T^^ff^s from th e in troduction of t he art of potte ry. The latter is traceable in many «ase8, and ppobably attributable in all cases, to the custom of covering wooden or plaited vessels with clay In order to render them fire-proof. It did not take long to find out that moulded clay served the «ame purpose without a lining of other material. Hitherto we could consider the course of evolution as being equally characteristic, in a general way, for 30 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY all the nations of a certain period, without reference to locality. But with the beginning of barbarism, we reach a stage where the difference in the natural resources of the two great bodies of land makes itself felt. The salient features of this stage of barbarism is the taming and raising of animals and the cultiva- tion of plants. Now the eastern body of land, the so- called old world, contained nearly all the tamable ani- mals and all the cultivable species of grain but one; while the western continent, America, possessed only one tamable mammal, the llama (even this only in a certain part of the South), and only one, although the best, species of grain: the corn. From now on, these different conditions of nature lead the population of each hemisphere along divergent roads, and the land- marks on the boundaries of the various stages differ In both cases. 2. Middle Stage. Commencing in the East with the domestication of animals, in the West with the culti- vation and irrigation of foodplants; also with the use of adobes (bricks baked in the sun) and stones for buildings. We begin In the West, because there this stage was never outgrown up to the time of the conquest by Europeans. At the time of their discovery, the Indians in the lower stage of barbarism (all those living east of the Mississippi) carried on cultivation on a small scale in "gardens. Com, and perhaps also pumpkins, melons and other garden truck were raised. A very essential part of their sustenance was produced in this manner. They lived in wooden houses, in fortified villages. The tribes of the Northwest especially those of the region along the Columbia river, were still in the higher stage of savagery, ignorant of pottery and of any cultiva- tion of plants whatever. But the so-called Pueblo In- dians in New Mexico, the Mexicans, Central-Ameri- PREHISTORIC STAGES 31 cans and Peruvians, were in the middle-stage of bar- barism. They lived in fortlike houses of adobe or 3tone, cultivated corn and other plants suitable to various conditions of localities and climate in arti- ficially irrigated gardens that represented the main source of nourishment, and even kept a few tamed animals— the Mexicans the turkey and other birds, the Peruvians the llama. Furthermore they were familiar with the use of metals— iron excepted, and for this reason they could not get along yet wdthout stone weapons and stone implements. The conquest by the Spaniards cut short all further independent development. In the East, the middle stage of barbarism began with the taming of milk and meat producing animals, while the cultivation of plants seems to have remained unknown far into this period. It appears that the taming and raising of animals and the formation of large herds gave rise to the separation of Aryans and Semites from the rest of the barbarians. Names of animals are still common to the languages of Euro- pean and Asian Aryans, while this is almost never the case with the names of cultivated plants. In suitable localities, the formation of herds led to a nomadic life, as with the Semites in the grassy plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, the Aryans in the plains of India, of the Oxus, Jaxartes, Don and Dnieper. Along the borders of such pasture lands, the taming of animals must have been accomplished first. But later generations conceived the mistaken idea that the nomadic tribes had their origin in regions supposed to be the cradle of humanity, while in reality their sav- age ancestors and even people in the lower stage of barbarism would have found these regions almost unfit for habitation. On the other hand, once these barbarians of the middle stage were accustomed to nomadic life, nothing could have induced them to 32 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY return voluntarily from the grassy river plains to the forests that had been the home of their ancestors. Even vp-hen Semites and Aryans were forced further to the North and West, it was impossible for them to occupy the forest regions of Western Asia and Europe, until they were enabled by agriculture to feed their animals on this less favorable soil and especially to maintain them during the winter. It is more than probable that the cultivation of grain was due pri- marily to the demand for stock feed, and became an Important factor of human sustenance at a later period. Th^__superior_development_of Ar^ and Semites l6_;_j^rha^s ^ attributable to the copi ous meat and milk diet jQf. ^th j-aces, mor e espe cially t o the_favorable Infl uence of such food on th e growth of~chIIdren. As a paatter o f^f act. t Jie-PAieblQ"lndiflns of New Mexico who live on3n_almost^urely vegetarian diet, have a sm aller braln^han~the Indians ]H~the^lower stage of ba rbarism w ho^atjmore meaFand fish. At any rate, cannibalism gradually disappears aTthis stage and is maintained only as a religious observance or, what is here nearly identical, as a magic remedy.* 3. Higher Stage. Beginning with the melting of iron ore and merging into civilization by the inven- Translator's note. ♦Advocates of vegetarianism may, of course, challenge this statement and show that all the testimony of anthropol- ogy is not in favor of the meat-eaters. It must also be ad- mitted that diet is not the only essential factor in environ- ment which influences the development of races. And there Is no conclusive evidence to prove the absolute superiority of one diet over another. Neither have we any proofs that cannibalism ever was in general practice. It rather seems to have been confined to limited groups of people in especial- ly ill-favored localities or to times of great scarcity of food. Hence we can neither refer to cannibalism as a typical stage in human history, nor are we obliged to accept the vege- tarian hypothesis of a transition from a meat diet to a plant diet as a condition sine qua non of higher human develop- ment. PREHISTORIC STAGES 33 tioA of letter script and its utilization for •writing records. This stage which is passed independently only on the Eastern Hemisphere, is richer in improve- ments of production than all preceding stages to- gether. It is the stage of the Greek heroes, the Italian tribes shortly before the foundation of Rome, the Germans of Tacitus, the Norsemen of the Viking age. We are here confronted for the first time with the iron ploughshare drawn by animals, rendering possi- ble agriculture on a large scale, in fields, and hence a practically unlimited increase in the production of food for the time being. The next consequence is the clearing of forests and their ti*ansformation into arable land and meadows — which process, however, could not be continued on a larger §cale without the help of the iron ax and the iron spade. Naturally, these improvements brought a more rapid increase of population and a concentration of numbers into a small area. Before the time of field cultivation a com- bination of half a million of people under one central management could have been possible only under ex- ceptionably favorable conditions; most likely this was never the case. The greatest attainments of the higher stage of bar- barism are presented in Homer's poems, especially in the Iliad. Improved iron tools; the bellows; the hand- mill; the potter's wheel; the preparation of oil and vrine; a well developed fashioning of metals verging on artisanshlp; the wagon and chariot; ship-building with beams and boards; the beginning of artistic archi- tecture; towns surrounded by walls with turrets and battlements; the Homeric epos and the entire myth- ology—these are the principal bequests transmitted by the Greeks from barbarism to civilization. In com- paring these attainments with the description given by Cesar or even Tacitus of Germans, who were in 34 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY the beginning of the same stage of evolution which the Greeks were preparing to leave for a higher one. we perceive the wealth of productive development comprised in the higher stage of barbarism. The sketch which I have here produced after Morgan of the evolution of the human race through savagery and barbarism to the beginning of civilization is even now rich in new outlines. More still, these outlines are incontrovertible, because traced directly from produc- tion. Nevertheless, this sketch will appear faint and meagre in comparison to the panorama unrolled to our view at the end of our pilgrimage. Not until then will it be possible to show in their true light both the transition from barbarianism to civilization and the striking contrast between them. Fgr th e prpspTi± _£re ca n summar ize Morgnn's arrangement in theJoUpw- ing^ maimer: Savagery — time ofp redominat mg appro- priation_of^nished^atural products; human ingenuity liiyents~mainly tools _usef ul in assist ing th is appropria- tion. Barbarism— ti me of acquiring the kno wledge of cattle_raising,_^- a gn culture and of new methods forHncrea sing the productivity of nature bv hu man agency. Civilization: tiine-of-leaming-a^:wider_utiliza- tion^f„Dat]iral prod nets, _a£--jaamifacturiDg and of art. CHAPTER !!• THE FAMILY. Morgan, who spent the greater part of his life among the Iroquois in the State of New York and who had been adopted into one of their tribes, the Senecas, found among them a system of relationsliip that was in contradiction with their actual family relations. Among them existed what Morgan terms the syndyas- mian or pairing family, a monogamous state easily dissolved by either side. The offspring of such a couple was identified and acknowledged by all the world. There could be no doubt to whom to apply the terms father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister. But the actual use of these words was not in keeping with their fundamental meaning. F or the Ir oquois addresses as sons and daughters not only his owH children , but also-tfrogg of faiy brothers; and he is called father by all of themT "TBut the children of his sTsteTfg-tre-ealls nephews and nieces, and they call him uncle, ^icp vprsa, an Iroquois woman calls her own 'children- as-well as tiioseof her sisters spns,and daugh- ters aiid is. addressed_as_ mother by them. But the children of her brothers ^are caTTed nephews and nieces, and they call her aunt. In the same way, the children of brothers call one another brothers and sis- ters, and so do the children of sisters. But the chil- dren of a sister call those of her brother cousins, and vice versa. And these are not simply^meaningLess t erms . bjt_^xpiiea&iiiiis~Jj£--acluaIIy existing cqncep- tions of proximit y_and remoteness, equality or Inequal- ity._of_^nsanguinity. ~~ These conceptions serve as the fundament of a per- fectly elaborated system of relationship, capable of 36 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY expressing several hundred different relations of a single individual. More still, this system is not only fully accepted by ail American Indians— no exception has been found so far— but it is also in use Tvith hardly any modifications among the original inhabitants of India, among the Dravidian tribes of the Dekan and the Gaura tribes of Hindostan. The terms of relationship used by the Tamhs ot Southern India and by the Seneca-Iroquois of New York State are to this day identical for more thai? two hundred different family relations. Ana among these East Indian tribes also, as among all American Indians, the relations arising out of the prevailing form of the family are not in keeping with the system of kinship. How can this be explained? In view of the import- ant role played by kinship In the social order of all the savage and barbarian races, the significance of such a widespread system cannot be obliterated by phrases. A system that is generally accepted in America, that also exists in Asia among people of entirely different races, that is frequently found in a more or less modi- fied form all over Africa and Australia, such a system requires a historical explanation and cannot be talked down, as was attempted, e. g., by McLennan. The terms father, child, brother, sister are more than mere honorary titles; they carry in their wake certain well- defined and very serious obligations, the aggregate of which comprises a very essential part of the social constitution of those nations. And the explanation was found. In the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) there existed up to the first half of the nineteenth century a family form producing just such fathers and moth- ers, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, as the old Indo-American system of kin- ship. But how remarkable! The Hawaiian system of kinship again did not agree with the family form THE FAMILY 37 actually prevailing there. For there all the children of brothers and sisters, without any exception, are considered brothers and sisters, and regarded as the common children not only of their mother or her sis- ters, or their father and his brothers, but of all the brothers and sisters of their parents without distinc- tion. While thus the American system of kinship presupposes an obsolete primitive form of the family, which is still actually existing in Hawaii, the Ha- waiian system on the other hand points to a still more primitive form of the family, the actual existence of which cannot be proved any more, but which must have existed, because otherwise such a system of kinship could not have arisen. According to Morgan, the family is the active element; If is never stationary. but m progressron _from_a lower to a higher form In the ~same measure~in ^^hich~society'?evelops from a lowe r to a higher stage . But_tha_systems of liinship \ are pa ^ive! Only in long intervals they register the progress made by the family in course of time, and only then are they radically r€ rtriDe, within-which marital in ter- cou rse between both sexes was general. By the con- sanguine family is based on blood kinship, ttiey are right, unless we wish to assign an exceptional position to the Aus- tralian strata of generations. But if they go further and declare that the subsequent restrictions of inbreeding and the gentile order have arisen independently of relationships, they commit a far greater mistake than Morgan. They block their way to an understanding of subsequent organizations and force themselves to all sorts of queer assumptions that at once appear as the fruits of imagination, when compared with the actual institutions of primitive peoples This explanation of the phases of development of family institutions contradicts present day views on the matter. Since the scientific Investigations of the last decade have demonstrated beyond doubt that the so-called patriarchal family was preceded by the matriarchal family, it has become the custom to regard descent by females as a natural insti- tution belonging to the very first stages of development which is explained by the modes of existence and thought among savages. Paternity being a matter of speculation, maternity of actual observation, it is supposed to follow that descent by females was always recognized. But the development of the Australian systems of relationship shows that this is not true, at least not in regard to Australians. The fact can- not be disputed away, that we find female lineage among all those higher developed tribes that have progressed to the formation of gentile organizations, but male lineage among all those that have no gentile organizations or where these are only in process of formation. Not a single tribe has been discovered so far, where female lineage was not combined with gentile organization, and I doubt that any will ever be found. THE PAMILY 59 tinual exclusion, first of neaivthen of ever remoter relatives, including finally even those who were simply related legally, all group mamage becomes practically impossible.""" At lasFonly one couple, temporarily and loosely united, remains ; that molecule, the dissolution of which "absolutely puts an end. to marriage. Even from this we" may Tnfernbowlittle_toe sexual love of the individual in the modern sense ofjthe word had to do' 'With the"^figrn of monogamy. The practice of all nations oTthat stage still'more proves this. While in the previous form of the family the men were never embarrassed for women, but rather had more than enough of them, women now became scarce and were sought after. WUh the pairing^Jamily^^therefore, the abduction_ and bar ter of ^om en began— widespread symptoms, and nothing but that, of a new and much more prof ouncr"cHangeT~^Ee" pedantic Scot, McLen- na^TTiowever, Transmuted these symptoms, mere methods of obtaining women, into separate classes of the family under the head of "marriage by capture" and "marriage by barter." Moreover among Amer- ican Indians and other nations in the same stage, the marriage agreement is not the business of the parties most concerned, who often are not even aslied, but of their mothers. Frequently two persons entirely un- known to one another are thus engaged to be married and receive no information of the closing of the bar- gain, until the time for the marriage ceremony ap- proaches. Before the wedding, the bridegroom brings gifts to the maternal relatives of the bride (not to her father or his relatives) as an equivalent for ceding the girl to him. Either of the married parties may dis- solve the marriage at will. But among many tribes, as, e. g., the Iroquois, public opinion has gradually be- come averse to such separations. In case of domestic differences the gentile relatives of both parties en- deavor to bring about a reconciliation, and not until 6o THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY- they are unsuccessful a separation takes place. In this case the woman keeps the children, and both par- ties are free to marry again. The pairing family, being too weak and too un- stable to make an independent household necessary or even desirable, in no way dissolves the traditional communistic way of housekeeping. But household communism implies supremacy of women in the house as surely as exclusive recognition of a natural mother and the consequent impossibility of identifying the natural father signify high esteem for women, i. e., mothers. It is one of the most absurd notions derived from eighteenth century enlightenment, that in the beginning of society woman was the slave of man. Amo ng all savages and ba rbarians of the lower and middle stage s, so metimes even of^the higher stage, women°not~onTy have freedom, but are held in high e^gpTrrrrW^ar'Ehey^~w"ere even in the pairing family, let Arthur Wright, for many years a missionary among the Seneca Iroquois, testify: "As to their families, at a time when they still lived in their old long houses (communistic households of several fam- ilies) ... a certain clan (gens) always reigned, so that the women choose their husbands from other clans (gentes). . . . The female part generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too clumsy to contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many children or how niuchprixate property TTe^ad in the house, he was li able at any m oment to receive a hint to gather up hls_ belongings and~get out. And he could not dare to venture any resistance ; the house was made too hot for him and he had no other choice, but to return to his own clan (gens) or. as was mostly the case, to look for another wife in some other clan. The women were the dominating power in the clans (gentes) and THE FAMILY 6l everywhere else. Occasionally they did not hesitate to dethrone a chief and degrade him to a common warrior." The communistic household, in which most or all the women belong to one and the same gens, while the husband^^ome^ £rnm di^^reBt-gentes, is the cause and foundation of the general and widespread supremacy of women in primeval times. The discovery of this fact is the third merit of Bachofen. By way of supplement I wish to state that the re- ports of travelers and missionaries concerning the overburdening of women among savages and bar- barians do not in the least contradict the above state- ments. Xhe, di vision of labo r between both sexes is c^used-by -Other reasons than~tE£:ia3Ctali:c5Erdittonr~of women. Nations, where women have to work much harder than is proper for them in our opinion, often respect women more highly than Europeans do. The lady of civilized countries, surrounded with sham homage and a stranger to all real work stands on a far lower social level than a hard-working barbarian woman, regarded as a real lady (frowa-lady-mistress) and having the character of such. Whether or not the pairing family has in our time entirely supplanted group mari'iage in America, can be decided only by closer investigations among those nations of northwestern and especially of southern America that are still in the higher stage of savagery. About the latter so many reports of sexual license are current that the assumption of a complete cessation of the ancient group marriage is hardly warranted. Evidently all traces of it have not yet disappeared. In at least forty North American tribes the man marrying an elder sister has the right to make all her sisters his wives as soon as they are of age, a sur- vival of the community of men for the whole series of sisters. And Bancroft relates that the Indians of 62 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY the Californian peninsula celebrate certain festivities uniting several "tribes" for the purpose of unrestricted sexual intercourse. These are evidently gentes that have preserved in these festivities a vague recollec- tion of the time when the women of one gens had for their common husbands all the men of another gens, and vice versa. The same custom is still observed in Australia. Among certain nations it sometimes hap- pens that the older men, the chief and sorcerer-priests, exploit the community of women for their own bene- fits and monopolize all the women. But in their turn they must restore the old community during certain festivities and great assemblies, permitting their wives to enjoy themselves with the young men. A whole series of examples of such periodical saturnalia re- storing for a short time the ancient sexual freedom is quoted by Westermarck:* among the Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and*Kotars in India, among some African nations, etc. Curiously enough Westermarck con- cludes that this is a survival, not of group marriage, the existence of which he denies, but— of a rutting season which primitive man had in common with other animals. Here we touch Bachofen's fourth great discovery: the widespread form of transition from group mar- riage to pairing family. What Bachofen represents as a penance for violating the old divine laws— the penalty with which a woman redeems her right to chastity, is in fact only a mystical expression for the penalty paid by a woman for becoming exemfJt from the ancient community of men and acquiring the right of surrendering to one man only. This penalty con- sists in a limited surrender: Babylonian women had to surrender once a year in the temple of Mylitta; other nations of Western Asia sent their young women ♦The History of Human Marriage, p. 28-29. THE FAMILY 63 for years to the temple of Anaitis, where they had to practice free love with favorites of their own choice before they were allowed to marry. Similar customs in a religious disguise are common to nearly all Asi- atic nations between the Mediterranean and the Ganges. The penalty for exemption becomes gradu- ally lighter in course of time, as Bachofen remarks: "The annually repeated surrender gives place to a single sacrifice; the hetaerism of the matrons is fol- lowed by that of the maidens, the promiscuous inter- course during marriage to that before wedding, the indiscriminate intercourse with all to that with cer- tain individuals."* Among some nations the religious disguise is missing. Among others— Thracians, Celts, etc., in classic times, many primitive inhabitants of India, Malay nations, South Sea Islanders and many American Indians to this day— the girls enjoy absolute sexual freedom before marriage. This is especially true almost everywhere in South America, as every- body can confirm who penetrates a little into the in- terior. Agassiz, e. g., relates* an anecdote of a wealthy family of Indian descent. On being introduced to the daughter he asked something about her father, pre- suming him to be her mother's husband, who was in the war against Paraguay. But the mother replied, smiling: "Nao tem pai, he filha da fortuna"— she hasn't any father; she is the daughter of chance. **It isthe way the Indian or half-breed women here always speak of their illegitimate children; and though they say it without an intonation of sadness or of blame, apparently as unconscious of any wrong or shame as if they said the father was absent or dead, it has the most melancholy significance; it seems to speak of such aTJsofute desertion. So far is this from being an ♦Mutterrecht, p. xix. *A Journey in Brazil. Boston and New York, 18»6. Fage 64 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY unusual case, that among the common people the oppo- site seems the exception. Children are frequently quite ignorant of their parentage. They know about their mother, for all the care and responsibility falls upon her, but they have no knowledge of their father; nor does it seem to occur to the woman that she or her children have any claim upon him." What seems so strange to the civilized man, is simply the rule of maternal law and group marriage. Again, among other nations the friends and rela- tives of the bridegroom or the wedding guests claim their traditional right to the bride, and the bridegroom comes last. This custom prevailed in ancient times on the Baleares and among the African Augilers; it is observed to this day by the Bareas in Abyssinia, In still other cases, an official person— the chief of a tribe or a gens, the cazique, shamane, priest, prince or what- ever may be his title— represents the community and exercises the right of the first night. All modern ro- mantic whitewashing notwithstanding, this jus primae noctis, is still in force among most of the natives of Alaska,* among the Tahus of northern Mexico** and some other nations. And during the whole of the- middle ages it was practised at least in originally Celtic countries, where it was directly transmitted by group marriage, e. g. in Aragonia. While in Castilia the peasant was never a serf, the most disgraceful serfdom existed in Aragonia, until abolished by the decision of Ferdinand the Catholic in 1486. In this document we read: "We decide and declare that the aforesaid 'senyors' (barons) shall neither sleep the first night with the wife of a peasant nor shall they in the first night after the wedding, when the woman has gone to bed, step over said woman or ♦Bancroft. Native Races, I., 81. ♦•Ibidem, p. 584. THE FAMILY 65 bed as a sign of their authority. Neither shall the aforesaid senyors use the daughter or the son of any peasant, with or without pay, against their will." (Quoted in the Catalonlan original by Sugenheim, "Serfdom," Petersburg, 18G1, page 35.) Bachofen, furthermore, is perfectly right in con- tending that the transition from what he calls "hetaerism" or "incestuous generation" to monogamy was brought about mainly by women. The more in the course of economic development, undermining the old communism and increasing the density of popula- tion,- the traditional sexual relations lost their inno- cent character suited to the primitive forest, the more debasing and oppressive they naturally appeared to women; and the more they consequently longed for relief by the right of chastity, of temporary or perma- nent marriage with one man. "^^^^ p^'^g''*^^^ ^^u1djW____ be due to men for the simple reason that they never, ey^iuta4 hi 8 day, b a d the - least rntehtTon"oTTenouncing the-p leas uie s of ac tual ^^rgnpnma^iTmger;yo|juntilJh^ woirren"Bai3r'HCt!ompltshed tbe transition to the pairing famil y could the ^men introduce strict monogamy— true, only for womefl. , " TEe pairing Jam Uy^ arose on the boundary line be- ^/ tween savagery and barbarism, generally Th^ helirghei' atage^ of savagery, here ana mere in tbe lower siage^ of barbarism^.. 1 1^ is the f orm of the f amily character- istic for barbarism, as group marri age" is tor savage^^ and mon ogamy for civilizatTonl lETofdeFTo develop ~tL Into esLablisned monoganiyT other causes than those active hitherto were required. In the pairing family the group was already reduced to its last unit, its bi- atomic molecule: one man and one woman. .J^atural selection^ad acc omplish ed its purpose by a continu- ^llyincreasm^TesHISSgloT^^ Ing^e mained toj bejdone in_this direction^ UnlessSiew social forces became active, there was no reason why 66 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY a new form of the family should develop out of the pairing "familyT^But These^orces liid become active. WenovvTeave America, the classic soil of the pair- ing family. No sign permits the conclusion that a higher form of the family was developed here, that any established form of monogamy ever existed any- where in the New World before the discovery and conquest. Not so in the Old World. In the latter, the domestication of animals and .the y breeding of flocks had developed a hitherto unknowa^ source of7TvealtJi;ancl created entirely new social con- ditions. X ^P to th e lower stage of baxbarism, fixed ■vveaTfh was almost exclusively represented by .houses, cTothiiig, ru ugh "Tyrnameht s andTThe tools for obtaining aM~preparing toOd: bo atsyw eapons and household articles" of tiie simplest kind. Nourishment had to be~secured afresh day by day. But now, with their herds of horses, camels, donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats and hogs, the advancing nomadic nations— the Ary- ans in the Indian Punjab, in the region of the Ganges and the steppes of the Oxus and Jaxartes, then still more rich in water-veins than now; the Semites on the Euphrates azid Tigi'is— had acquired possessions demanding only the most crude attention and care in order to propagate themselves in ever increasing num- bers and yield the most abundant store of milk and m eat. All former means of obt nininp? food- were, now forced* to the background^__Huntiiig, nnce a Jiecessity, nuvv became a sport. """" — BuTwE g rmrTEe l^wner of this,new ,wealthl_. Doubt- lesjjt was originally the gens. However, private 6whergHTp"oTSbc^s must have had an early beginning. It is difficult to say whether to the author of the so- called first book of Moses Father Abraham appeared as the owner of his flocks by virtue of his privilege as head of a communistic family or of his capacity as gentile chief by actual descent. So much is certain: THE FAMILY (iTJ we must not regard him as a proprietor in the modern sense of the word. It is furthermore certain that everywhere on the threshold of documentary history we find the floclis in the separate possession of ctiiefs of families, exactly like the productions of barbarian art, such as metal ware, articles of luxury and, finally, the human cattle— the slaves. F or now sla very^ was als(Llli3^£nted; — ^ o the bar ba- ria n of the low er stage a sj_aye_was of no use. The American Indians, therefore, treated their vanquished enemies in quite a different w^ay from nations of a higher stage. The men were tortured or adopted as brothers into the tribe of the vict-ors. The women were married or likewise adopted with their surviving children. The human laborjpower at this stage does not yet produce a considerable amount over and above its^ cost o r^UMIstegce. But the introduction of cattle r^ising^_^etal industry, weaving and finally agricul- t ure^wroughT a change. Just as the once easily ob- taina ble wives "now Fad an exchange value and were bought, so labor power was now procured, especially since the flocks had definitely become private property. The family did not increase as rapidly as the cattle. More people were needed for superintending; for this purpose the captured enemy was available and, be- sides, he could be increased by breeding like the cattle. Such riches, once they had J becom e _the_ private p roperty of ^ certain families_ andaugmented rapidly, gave a -powerful impulse to society founded on the pairing fam jJxjaJld iJEmafernal gens. The pairing family had introduced a new element. By the side of the natural mother it had placed the authentic natural father who probably was better authenticated than many a "father" of our day. According to_ _the division of labor in those times, thp tnsk of o Mainmg looa and tne tools necessary for this purpose fell to 68 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY the share of the man;Jience he owned the latter and "Fept thOHTTh 'case' of a leparatioriy as the women did tne nousehold goods . Accordin£^o_the_so^mljcus^^ of that time,the_man_was_also the owner of_the_new source ^f~existence, the cattle^and^ater on of the new ^ut accor3lngToThe same )rope rty. e.. labT7r-pt)W^rrtEe7IIaves." custom, his~~cbildren could not inherit his f6F^lie~following^reasOTisl By^matefnaTlaw, i. whlIe~Hescent was traced only along the female line, and by the original custom of inheriting in the gens, the gentile relatives inherited the property of their deceased gentile relative. The wealth had to remain in the gens. In view of the insignificance of the ob- jects, the property may have gone in practice to the closest gentile relatives, i. e., the consanguine rela- tives on the mother's side. The children of the dead man,^oweverjjdid not belonglxr his gensTlbut to that of th eir mo ther. They m^erTt6q^'gfst~tggefber with t^ie"other consanguine relatives or^ttre-Tirottrer7"later on 7^ef Eaps~l ir^e ference to tKe^TTffieTs; But jthey coulJnoEInherltTrom^t^^i^^ ^^^ noTlb elong to his gens, ""where his properfy'had to re maim H enceT a tter t he_deatr2r_a„cattlel^5wner, the cat tle wo igd"~faTTTo~hls brothers, s[sters and the children of h is^sters. or to the offsprfng of'fhesisters o f his mother. "His own children were disinherited. ^Jhe^easure ortheTincreasing wealth man's posi- ' tioD^injthe family became superior to that oFwoman, and the desire aFdse'to'use thisTortified position for the p urpose of overthrowing Ihe traditional law of inheritance in faypr^rhis chMren. "pi^:,liii^jvas_m)t feasible as long as maternal law was valid. This law h^ d ''tQ^je~^Bott"5t[Bdr'-HTidI3f~was: This was~1by^o means a?~aifficult ^c§ it appears^tb us to-day. For this revolution— one of the most radical ever experienced by humanity— did not have to touch a single living member of the gens. All its members could remain r THE FAMILY 69 what they had always been. TJie simple ..rpsolution was_^fficieiit^ that ^i^'^ngf^rth t^'^ ^^gprirg of the male members jhouldjbelong.to the gens, while_the children of the femalejmfiinbers shnnlrlJia^xcluded^ trpngfprriTig thpm^ to thp gpns of their father. This abolished the tracing_o f descent by female lineag e aiiS'the matern arrig bt_o f inheritance, and institu ted de'scFnJTllma£^lm£a^e-aad-4he-^aternaLri_gh heritance. How and Tvhen this revolution was accom- plished by the nations of the earth, we do not know. It belongs entirely to prehistoric times. That it was accomplished is proven more than satisfactorily by the copious traces of maternal law collected especially by Bachofen. How easily it is accomplished we may observe in a whole series of Indian tribes, that recent- ly passed through or are still engaged in it, partly under the influence of increasing wealth and changed modes of living (transfer from forests to the prairie), partly through the moral pressure of civilization and missionaries. Six out of eight Missouri tribes have male descent and inheritance, while only two retain female descent and inheritance. The Shawnees, Miamis and Delawares follow the custom of placing their children into the male gens by giving them a gentile name belonging to the father's gens, so that they may be entitled to inherit. "Innate casuistry of man, to change the objects by changing their names, and to find loopholes for breaking tradition inside of tradition where a direct interest was a sufficient mo- tive." (Marx.) This made confusion worse con- founded, which could be and partially was remedied alone by paternal law. "This seems to be the most natural transition." (Marx.) As to the opinion of the comparative jurists, how this transition took place among the civilized nations of the old world— although only in hypotheses— compare M. Kovalevsky, Tableau 70 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY v des origines et de revolution de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890. / T he downfall of maternal la jwiwas the historic de- f eat of the female sex. The men seized the reins also in the house, the women were stripped of their dignity, enslaved, tools of men's lust and mere machines for the generation of children. This degrading position of women, especially conspicuous among the Greeks of heroic and still more of classic times, was gradually glossed over and disguised or even clad in a milder form. But it is by no means obliterated. The first effect of the established supremacy of men became now visible in the reappearance of the inter- mediate form of the patriarchal family. Its most significant feature is not polygamy, of which more anon, but "the organization of a certain number of free and unfree persons into one family under the paternal authority of the head of the family. In the Semitic form this head of the family lives in polyg- amy, the unfree members have wife and children, and the purpose of the whole organization is the tending of herds in a limited territory." The essential points are the assimilation of the unfree element and the paternal authority. Hence the ideal type of this form of the family is the Roman family. The word familia did not originally signify the composite ideal of sentimentality and domestic strife in the present day Philistine mind. Among the Romans it did not even apply in the beginning to the leading couple and its children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus means domestic slave, and familia is the aggregate number of slaves belonging to one man. At the time of Gajus, the familia, id est pati'imonium (i. e., paternal legacy), was still bequeathed by testament. The expression was invented by the Romans in order to designate a new social organism, the head of which had a wife, children and a number of slaves under his paternal THE FAMILY 71 authority and according to Roman law the right of life and death over all of them. "The word is, there- fore, not older than the ironclad family system of the Latin tribes, which arose after the introduction of agriculture and of lawful slavery, and after the sepa- ration of the Aryan Itali from the Greeks." Marx adds: "The modern family contains the germ not only of slavery (servitus), but also of serfdom, because it has from the start a relation to agricultural service. It comprises in miniature all those contrasts that later on develop more broadly in society and the istate." Such a form of the family shows the transition from the pairing family to monogamy. I n order to ^ppTrrp _thp fn ithfnlnpss of t| i p wifp , a nd hence th e rejiability of-palErnaULineage, th e wo men are delivered a bsolutely into the power of th e men: in killing his wife, th e husband sim pl y exe rcl&£s_M& right. With the patriarchal family we enter the domain of written history, a field in which comparative law can render considerable assistance. And here it has brought about considerable progress indeed. We owe to Maxim Kovalevsky (Tableau etc. de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890, p. 60-100) the proof, that the patriarchal household community, found to this day among Serbians and Bulgarians under the names of Zadruga (friendly bond) and Bratstvo (fra- ternity), and in a modified form among oriental na- tions, formed the stage of transition between the maternal family derived from group marriage and the monogamous family of the modern world. This seems at least established for the historic nations of the old world, for Aryans and Semites. The Z&druga of southern Slavonia offers the best still existing illustration of such a family communism. It comprises several generations of the father's de- scendants, tofe'&tHer wUb their wives, all living to- X 72 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY gether on the same farm, tilling their fields in common, living and clothing themselves from the same stock, and possessing collectively the surplus of their earn- ings. The community is managed by the master of the house (domacin), who acts as its representative, may sell inferior object^, has charge of the treasury and is responsible for it as well as for a proper busi- ness administration. He is chosen by vote and is not necessarily the oldest man. The women and their work are directed by the mistress of the house (domacica), who is generally the wife of the domacin. She also has an important, and often final, voice in choosing a husband for the girls. But the highest authority is vested in the family council, the assembly of all grown companions, male and female. The domacin is responsible to this council. It takes all important resolutions, sits in judgment on the mem- bers of the household, decides the question of impor- tant purchases and sales, especially of land, etc. It is only about ten years since the existence of such family communism in the Russia of to-day was proven. At present it is generally acknowledged to be rooted in popular Russian custom quite as much as the obscina or village community. It is found in the oldest Russian code, the Pravda of Jaroslav, under the same name (vervj) as in the Dalmatian code, and may also be traced in Polish and Czech historical records. Likewise among Germans, the economic unit accord- ing to Heussler (Institutions of German law) is not originally the single family, but the "collective house- hold," comprising several generations or single fami- lies and, besides, often enough unfree individuals. The Roman family is also traced to this type, and hence the absolute authority of the master of the house and the defenselessness of the other members in regard to him is strongly questioned of late. Siml- THE FAMILY 73 lar communities are furthermore said to have existed among the Celts of Ireland. In France they were pre- served up to the time of the Revolution in Nivernais under the name of "pargonneries," and in the Franche Comt6 they are not quite extinct yet. In the region of Louhans (Saone et Loire) v^e find large farmhouses with a high central hall for common use reaching up to the roof and surrounded by sleeping rooms acces- sible by the help of stairs with six to eight steps. Several generations of the same family live together in such a house. In India, the household community with collective agriculture is already mentioned by Nearchus at the time of Alexander the Great, and it exists to this day in the same region, in the Punjab and the whole Northwest of the country. In the Caucasus It was located by Kovalevski himself. In Algeria it is still found among the Kabyles. Even in America it is said to have existed. It is supposed to be identical with the "Calpullis" described by Zurita in ancient Mexico. In Peru, however, Cunow (Aus- land, 1890, No. 42-44) has demonstrated rather clearly that at the time of the conquest a sort of a constitu- tion in marks (called curiously enough marca), with a periodical allotment of arable soil, and consequently individual tillage, was in existence. At any rate, the patriarchal household community with collective tillage and ownership of land now assumes an entirely different meaning than heretofore. We can no longer doubt that it played an important role among the civilized and some other nations of the old world in the transition from the maternal to the single family. Later on we shall return to Kovales- ky's further conclusion that it was also the stage of transition from which developed the village or mark community with individual tillage and first periodical, then permanent allotment of arable and pasture lands. 74 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY In regard to the family life within these household communities it must be remarked that at least in Russia the master of the house has the reputation of strongly abusing his position against the younger women of the community, especially his daughters- in-law, and of transforming them into a harem for him- self. Russian popular songs are very eloquent on this point. Before taking up monogamy, which rapidly devel- oped after the downfall of maternal law, let me say a few words about polygamy and polyandry. Both forms of the family can only be exceptions, historical products of luxury so to speak, unless they could be found side by side in the same country, which is apparently not the case. As the men excluded from polygamy cannot find consolation in the women left over by polyandry, the number of men and women being hitherto approximately equal without regard to social institutions, it becomes of itself impossible to confer on any one of these two forms the distinction of general preference. Indeed, the polygamy of one man was evidently the product of slavery, confined to certain exceptional positions. In the Semitic patri- archal family, only the patriarch himself, or at best a few of his sons, practice polygamy, the others must be satisfied with one wife. This is the case to-day in the whole Orient. Polygamy is a privilege of the wealthy and distinguished, and is mainly realized by purchase of female slaves. The mass of the people live in monogamy. Polyandry in India and Thibet is likewise an exception. Its surely not uninteresting origin from group marriage requires still closer In- vestigation. In its practice it seems, by the way, much more tolerant than the jealous Harem establish- ment of the Mohammedans. At least among the Nairs of India, three, four or more men have indeed one woman in common; but every one of them may THE FAMILY 75 have a second woman in common with three or more other men; and in the same way a third, fourth, etc. It is strange that McLennan did not discover the new class of "club marriage" in these marital clubs, in several of which one may be a member and which he himself describes. This marriage club business is, however, by no means actual polyandry. It is on the contrary, as Giraud-Teulon already remarks, a spe- cialized form of group marriage. The men live in polygamy, the women in polyandry. 4. THE MONOGAMOUS FAMILY. It develops from the pairing family, as we have already shown, during the time of transition from the middle to the higher stage of barbarism. Its final victory is one of the signs of beginning civilization. ^U.9 f^""^<^- ^ ^Ti mnip snpr pmapy for fhp. prononppftfl p^ijpose.. of .breeding cMldEen of indisputable paternal liagage. TtLe^latter-i^^equired^because these children shall lat er on inherit the f ortune o f jtheir father. The monogamous family is distinguished from the pairing family by the far greater durability of wedlock, which can no longer be dissolved at the pleasure of either party. As a rule, it is only the man who can still dis- solve it and cast off his wife. The privilege of con- jugal faithlessness remains sanctioned for men at least by custom (the Code Napoleon concedes it directly to them, as long as they do not bring their concubines into the houses of their wives). This privi- lege is more and more enjoyed with the increasing development of society. If the woman remembers the ancient sexual practices and attempts to revive them, she is punished more severely than ever. The whole severity of this new form of the family confronts us among the Greeks. While, as Marx observes, the position of the female gods in mythology shows an earlier period, when women still occupied 76 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY a freer and more respected plane, we find woman already degraded by the supremacy of man and the competition of slaves during the time of the heroes. Read in the Odysseia how Telemachos reproves and silences his mother. The captured young women, according to Homer, are delivered to the sensual lust of the victors. The leaders in the order of their rank select the most beautiful captives. The whole lliaa notoriously revolves around the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon about such a captured woman. In mentioning any hero of importance, the captured girl sharing his tent and bed is never omit- ted. These girls are also taken into the hero's home country and his house, as Kassandra by Agamemnon in Aeschylos. Boys born by these female slaves re- ceive a small share of the paternal heirloom and are regarded as free men. Teukros is such an Illegitimate eon and may use his father's name. The wife is ex- pected to put up with everything, while herself re- maining chaste and faithful. Although the Greek woman of heroic times is more highly respected than she of the civilized period, still she is for her husband only the mother of his legal heirs, his first house- keeper and the superintendent of the female slaves, vv'hom he can and does make his concubines at will. It is this practice of slavery by the side of mo- nogamy, the existence of young and beautiful female slaves belonging without any restriction to their mas- ter, which from the very beginning gives to monogamy the specific character of being monogamy for women only, but not for men. And this character remains to this day. For the Greeks of later times we must make a dis- tinction between Dorians and lonians. The former, with Sparta as their classic example, have in many respects still more antiquated marriage customs than even Homer illustrates. In Sparta existed a form of THE FAMILY 11 the pairing family modified by the contemporaneous ideas of the state and still recalling group marriage in many ways. Sterile marriages were dissolved. King Anaxandridas (about 650 before Christ) took another wife besides his childless one and kept two house- holds. About the same time King Ariston added an- other wife to two childless ones, one of which he dismissed. Furthermore, several brothers could have one wife in common; a friend who liked his friend's wife better than his own could share her with him, and it was not considered indecent to place a wife at the disposal of a sturdy "stallion," as Bismarck would have said, even though he might not be a citizen. A certain passage in Plutarch, where a Spartan matron refers a lover, who persists in making offers to her, to her husband, seems to indicate— according to Schoe- mann— even, a still greater sexual freedom. Also adultery, faithlessness of a wife behind her husband's back, was unheard of. On the other hand, domestic slavery in Sparta, at least during the best time, was unknown, and the serf Helots lived on separate country seats. Hence there was less temptation for a Spartan to hold intercourse with other women. As was to be expected under such circumstances, the women of Sparta occupied a more highly respected place than those of other Greeks. Spartan women and the Athenian hetaerae were the only Greek women of whom the ancients speak respectfully and whose remarks they considered worthy of notice. Quite a different condition among lonians, whose representative is Athens. The girls learned only to spin, weave and sew, at the most a little reading and writing. Tbey were practically shut in and had only f.he company of other women. The women's room formed a separate part of the house, on the upper floor or in a rear building, where men, especially strangers, did not easily enter and 78 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY whither the women retreated when male visitors came. The women did not leave the house without being accompanied by a female slave. At home they were strictly guarded. Aristophanes speaks of Molos- eian dogs that were kept to frighten off adulterers. And at least in the Asiatic towns, eunuchs were kept for guarding women. Even at Herodotus' time these eunuchs were manufactured for the trade, and accord- ing to Wachsmuth not for barbarians alone. By Euri- pides woman is designated as "oikurema," a neuter signifying an object for housekeeping, and beside the business of breeding children she served to the Athenian for nothing but his chief house maid. The man had his gymnastic exercises, his public meet- ings, from which the women were excluded. Besides, the man very often had female slaves at his disposal, and during the most flourishing time of Athens an extensive prostitution which was at least patronized by the state. It was precisely on the basis of this prostitution that the unique type of Ionic women developed; the hetaerae. They rose by esprit and artistic taste as far above the general level of antique womanhood as the Spartan w^omen by their character. But that it was necessary to become a hetaera before one could be a woman, constitutes the severest denun- ciation of the Athenian family. The Athenian family became in the course of time the model after which not only the rest of the lonians, but gradually all the Greeks at home and abroad molded their domestic relations. Nevertheless, in spite of all seclusion and watching, the Grecian ladies found sufficient opportunity for deceiving their husbands. The latter who would have been ashamed of betraying any love for their wives, found recrea- tion in all kinds of love affairs with hetaerae. But the degradation of the women was avenged in the men and degraded them also, until they sank into THE FAMILY 79 the abomination of boy-love. They degraded their gods and themselves by the myth of Ganymedes. Such was the origin of monogamy, as far as we may trace it in the most civilized and most highly developed nation of antiquity. It^ was_Jby^o^^eans ^^ f^uit^of_jgdividdal sex-love and h ad not hing tQ_^do wit h the latter, for jthe marriages remainjed asjcon- ve ntional as ev er. Monogamy was the first form of t he fami ly not^ounded onrnaturajTlbut^on^con c onditions, viz.: the jrictory pf_priva±a ^XDii£rtx_oyer primitiv^_and^iatu^^^ c^llectivi^sm. S upre macy , _of th e man in th e family andjgeneration of children that co uld be his offsp r ing alone a ndT^ VTere^estlned to b e the heirs of his wealth— these were openly avowed by the Greeks to b e the sole object s of monogamy. For the rest it was a burden to them, a duty to the gods, the state and their own ancestors, a duty to be fulfilled and no more. In Athens the law enforced not only the marriage, but also the fulfillment of a minimum of the so-called matrimonial duties on the man's part. Monogamy, then, does by no means enter history as a reconciliation of man and wife and still less as the highest form of marriage. On the contrary, it enters as the subjugation of one sex by the other, as the proclamation of an antagonism between the sexes unknown in all preceding history. In an old unpublished manuscript written by Marx and myself in 1846, I find the following passage: "The first di- vision of labor is that of man and wife in breeding children." And to-day I may add: The first class antagonism appearing in history coincides with the development of the antagonism of man and wife in monogamy, and the first class oppression with that of the female by the male sex. Monogamy was a great historical progress. But by the side of slavery and private property it marks at the same time that 8o THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY epoch which, reaching down to our days, takes with all progress also a step backwards, relatively speak- ing, and develops the welfare and advancement of one by the woe and submission of the other. It is the cellular form of civilized society which enables us to study the nature of its now fully developed con- trasts and contradictions. The old relative freedom of sexual intercourse by no means disappeared with the victory of the pair- ing or even of the monogamous family. "The old conjugal system, now reduced to narrower limits by the gradual disappearance of the punaluan groups, still environed the advancing family, which it was to follow to the verge of civilization. ... It finally disappeared in the new form of hetaerism, which still follows mankind in civilization as a dark shadow upon the family."* By hetaerism Morgan designates sexual intercourse of men with unmarried women outside of the mon- ogamous family, flourishing, as is well known, dur- ing the whole period of civilization in many different forms and tending more and more to open prostitu- tion. This hetaerism is directly derived from group marriage, from the sacrificial surrender of women for the purpose of obtaining the right to chastity. The surrender for money was at first a religious act; It took place in the temple of the goddess of love and the money flowed originally into the treasury of the temple. The hierodulae of Anaitis in Armenia, of Aphrodite in Corinth and the religious dancing girls of India attached to the temples, the so-called baja- deres (derived from the Portuguese "bailadera," dancing girl), were the flrst prostitutes. The sur- render, originally the duty of every woman, was later on practiced by these priestesses alone in rep- •Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 504. THE FAMILY 8l rcBentation of all others. Among other nations, hetaerlsm is derived from the sexual freedom per- mitted to girls before marriage— also a survival of the group marriage, only transmitted by another route. With the rise of different property relations, in the higher stage of barbarism, wage labor appears sporadically by the side of slavery, and at the same time its unavoidable companion, professional prosti- tution of free women by the side of the forced sur- render of female slaves. It is the heirloom be- queathed by group marriage to civilization, a gift as ambiguous as everything else produced by ambigu- ous, double-faced, schismatic and contradictory civili- zation. Here monogamy, there hetaerism and its most extreme form, prostitution. Hetaerism is as much a social institution as all others. It continues the old sexual freedom— for the benefit of the men. In reality not only permitted, but also assiduously practised by the ruling class, it is denounced only nominally. Still in practice this denunciation strikes by no means the men who indulge in it, but only the women. These are ostracised and cast out by society, in order to proclaim once more the fundamental law of unconditional male supremacy over the female sex. However, a second contradiction is thereby de- veloped within menogamy itself. By the side of the husband, who is making his life pleasant by hetaer- ism, stands the neglected wife. And you cannot have one side of the contradiction without the other, just as you cannot have the whole apple after eating half of it. Nevertheless this seems to have been the idea of the men, until their wives taught them a lesson. Monogamy introduces two permanent social charac- ters that were formerly unknown: the standing lover of the wife and the cuckold. The men had gained the victory over the women, but the vanquished mag- 82 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY nanimously provided the coronation. In addition to monogamy and hetaerism, adultery became an un- avoidable social institution— denounced, severely punished, but irrepressible. The certainty of paternal parentage rested as of old on moral conviction at best, and in order to solve the unreconcilable contra- diction, the code Napoleon decreed in its article 312: "L' enfant congu pendant le mariage a pour p6re le mari;" the child conceived during marriage has for its father— the husband. This is the last result of three thousand years of monogamy. Thus we have in the monogamous family, at least in those cases that remain true to historical develop- ment and clearly express the conflict between man and wife created by the exclusive supremacy of men, a miniature picture of the contrasts and contradic- tions of society at large. Split by class-differences since the beginning of civilization, society has been unable to reconcile and overcome these antitheses. Of course, I am referring here only to those cases of monogamy, where matrimonial life actually remains in accord with the original character of the whole institution, but where the wife revolts against the rule of the man. Nobody knows better than your German philistine that not all marriages follow such a course. He does not understand how to maintain the control of his own home any better than that of the State, and his wife is, therefore, fully entitled to wearing the trousers, which he does not deserve. But he thinks himself far superior to his French companion in misery, who more frequently fares far worse. The monogamous family, by the way, did not every- where and always appear in the classic severe form it had among the Greeks. Among the Romans, who as future conquerors of the world had a sharper although less refined eye than the Greeks, the women THE FAMILY 83 were freer and more respected. A Roman believed that the conjugal faith of his wife was suflaciently safeguarded by his power over her life and death. Moreover, the women could voluntarily dissolve the marriage as well as the men. But the highest prog- ress in the development of monogamy was doubtless due to the entrance of the Germans into history, probably because on account of their poverty their monogamy had not yet fully outgrown the pairing family. Three facts mentioned by Tacitus favor this conclusion: In the first place, although marriage was held very sacred— "they are satisfied with one wife, the women are protected by chastity"— still polyg- amy was in use among the distinguished and the leaders of the tribes, as was the case in the pairing families of the American Indians. Secondly, the transition from maternal to paternal law could have taken place only a short while before, because the mother's brother— the next male relative in the gens by maternal law— was still considered almost a closer relative than the natural father, also in accordance with the standpoint of the American Indians. The latter furnished to Marx, according to his own testi- mony, the key to the comprehension of German primeval history. And thirdly, the German women were highly respected and also influenced public affairs, a fact directly opposed to monogamic male supremacy. In all these things the Germans almost harmonize with the Spartans, who, as we saw, also had not fully overcome the pairing family. Hence in this respect an entirely new element succeeded to the world's supremacy with the Germans. The new monogamy now developing the ruins of the Ro- man world from the mixture of nations endowed male rule with a milder form and accorded to women a position that was at least outwardly far more re- spected and free than classical antiquity ever knew. 84 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY Not until now was there a possibility of developing from monogamy— in it, by the side of it or against it, as the case might be — the highest ethical progress we owe to it: the modem individual sexlove, un- known to all previous ages. This progress doubtless arose from the fact that the Germans still lived in the pairing family and inoculated monogamy as far as possible with the position of women corresponding to the former. It was in no way due to the legendary and wonderfully pure natural qualities of the Germans. These quali- ties were limited to the simple fact that the pairing family indeed does not create the marked moral con- trasts of monogamy. On the contrary, the Germans, especially those who wandered southeast among the nomadic nations of the Black Sea, had greatly de- generated morally. Beside the equestrian tricks of the inhabitants of the steppe they had also acquired some very unnatural vices. This is expressly con- firmed of the Thaifali by Ammianus and of the Heruli by Prokop. Although monogamy was the only one of all known forms of the family in which modern sexlove could develop, this does not imply that it developed exclu- sively or even principally as mutual love of man and wife. The very nature of strict monogamy under man's rule excluded this. Among all historically active, i. e., ruling, classes matrimony remained what it had been since the days of the pairing family— a conventional matter arranged by the parents. And the first historical form of sexlove as a passion, as an attribute of every human being (at least of the ruling classes), the specific character of the highest form of the sexual impulse, this first form, the love of the knights in the middle ages, was by no means matri- monial love, but quite the contrai*y. In its classic form, among the Provencals, it heads with full sails THE FAMILY 8$ for adultery and their poets extol the latter. The flower of ProvenQal love poetry, the Albas, de- scribe in glowing colors how the knight sleeps with his adored— the wife of another— while the watchman outside calls him at the first faint glow of the morn- ing (alba) and enables him to escape unnoticed. The poems culminate in the parting scene. Likewise the Frenchmen of the north and also the honest Ger- mans adopted this style of poetry and the manner of knightly love corresponding to it. Old Wolfram von Escheubach has left us three wonderful "day songs" treating this same questionable subject, and I like them better than Lis three heroic epics. Civil matrimony in our day is of two kinds. In Catholic countries, the parents provide a fitting spouse for their son as of old, and the natural con- sequence is the full development of the contradictions inherent to monogamy: voluptuous hetaerism on the man's part, voluptuous adultery of the woman. Probably the Catholic church has abolished divorce for the simple reason that it had come to the con- clusion, there was as little help for adultery as for death. In Protestant countries, again, it is the cus- tom to give the bourgeois son more or less liberty in chosing his mate. Hence a certain degree of love may be at the bottom of such a marriage and for the sake of propriety this is always assumed, quite in keeping with Protestant hypocrisy. In this case hetaerism is carried on less strenuously and adultery on the part of the woman is not so frequent. But as human beings remain under any form of marriage what they were before marrying, and as the citizens of Protestant countries are mostly philistines, this Protestant monogamy on the average of the best cases confines itself to the community of a leaden ennui, labeled wedded bliss. The best mirror of these two species of marriage is the novel, the French 00 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY novel for the Catholic, the German novel for the Protestant brand. In both of these novels they "get one another:" in the German novel the man gets the girl, in the French novel the husband gets the horns. It does not always go without saying which of the two deserves the most pity. For this reason the tediousness of the German novels is abhorred as much by the French bourgeois as the "immorality" of the French novels by the German philistine. Of late, since Berlin became cosmopolitan, the German novel begins to treat somewhat timidly of the hetaerism and adultery that a long time ago became familiar features of that city. In both cases the marriage is influenced by the class environment of the participants, and in this re- spect it always remains conventional. This con- ventionalism often enough results in the most pro- nounced prostitution— sometimes of both parties, more commonly of the women. She is distinguished from a courtisane only in that she does not offer her body for money by the hour like a commodity, but sells it into slavery for once and all. Fourier's words hold good with respect to all conventional mar- riages: "As in grammar two negatives make one affirmative, so in matrimonial ethics, two prostitu- tions are considered as one virtue." Sexual love in man's relation to woman becomes and can become the rule among the oppressed classes alone, among the proletarians of our day— no matter whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not. Here all the fundamental conditions of classic mo- nogamy have been abolished. Here all property is missing and it was precisely for the protection and inheritance of this that monogamy and man rule were established. Hence all incentive to make this rule felt is wanting here. More still, the funds are miss- ing. Civil law protecting male rule applies only to THE FAMILY 87 the possessing classes and their intercourse with proletarians. Law is expensive and therefore the poverty of the laborer makes it meaningless for his relation to his wife. Entirely different personal and social conditions decide in this case. And finally, since the great industries have removed women from the home to the labor market and to the factory, the last remnant of man rule in the proletarian home has lost its ground— except, perhaps, a part of the bru- tality against women that has become general since the advent of monogamy. Thus the family of the proletarian is no longer strictly monogamous, even with all the most passionate love and the most unal- terable loyalty of both parties, and in spite of any possible clerical or secular sanction. Consequently the eternal companions of monogamy, hetaerism and adultery, play an almost insignificant role here. The woman has practically regained the right of separa- tion, and if a couple cannot agree, they rather sep- arate. In short, the proletarian marriage is monog- amous in the etymological sense of the word, but by no means in a historical sense. True, our jurists hold that the progress of legisla- tion continually lessens all cause of complaint for women. The modern systems of civil law recognize, first that marriage, in order to be legal, must be a contract based on voluntary consent of both parties, and secondly that during marriage the relations of both parties shall be founded on equal rights and duties. These two demands logically enforced will, so they claim, give to women everything they could possibly ask. This genuinely juridical argumentation is exactly the same as that used by the radical republican bur- geois to cut short and dismiss the proletarian. The labor contract is said to be voluntarily made by both parties. But it is considered as voluntary when the 60 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY law places both parties on equal terms on paper. The power conferred on one party by the division of classes, the pressure thereby exerted on the other party, the actual economic relation of the two— all this does not concern the law. Again, during the term of the contract both parties are held to have equal rights, unless one has expressly renounced his right. That the economic situation forces the laborer to give up even the last semblance of equality, that is not the fault of the law. In regard to marriage, even the most advanced law is completely satisfied after both parties have formally declared their willingness. What passes behind the juridical scenes where the actual process of living is going on, and how this willingness is brought about, that cannot be the business of the law and the jurist. Yet the simplest legal compari- son should show to the jurist what this willingness really means. In those countries where a legitimate portion of the parental wealth is assured to children and where these cannot be disinherited— in Germany, in countries with French law, etc.— the children are bound to secure the consent of their parents for mar- rying. In countries with English law, where the consent of the parents is by no means a legal quali- fication of marriage, the parents have full liberty to bequeath their wealth to anyone and may disinherit their children at will. Hence it is clear that among classes having any property to bequeath the freedom to marry is not a particle greater in England and America than in France and Germany. The legal equality of man and woman in marriage is by no means better founded. Their legal inequali- Ity inherited from earlier stages of society is not the cause, but the effect of the economic oppression of women. In the ancient communistic household com- prising many married couples and their children, the THE FAMILY 89 administration of the household entrusted to women was just as much a public function^ a socially neces- sary industry, as the procuring of food by men. In the patriarchal and still more in the monogamous family this was changed. The administration of the household lost its public character. It was no longer a concern of society. It became a private service. The woman became the first servant of the house, excluded from participation in social production. Only by the great industries of our time the access to social production was again opened for women— for proletarian women alone, however. This is done in such a manner that they remain excluded from public production and cannot earn anything, if they fulfill their duties in the private service of the family; or that they are unable to attend to their family duties, if they wish to participate in public indus- tries and earn a living independently. As in the factory, so women are situated in all business depart- ments up to the medical and legal professions. The modern monogamous family is founded on the open or disguised domestic slavery of women, and modern society is a mass composed of molecules in the form of monogamous families. In the great majority of cases the man has to earn a living and to support his family, at least among the possessing classes. He thereby obtains a superior position that has no need of any legal special privilege. In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, however, the specific charac- ter of the economic oppression weighing on the pro- letariat appears in its sharpest outlines only after all special privileges of the capitalist class are abol- ished and the full legal equality of both classes is established. A democratic republic does not abolish the distinction between the two classes. On the con- trary, it offers the battleground on which this dis- 90 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY tinction can be fought out. Likewise the peculiar character of man's rule over woman in the modem family, the necessity and the manner of accomplish- ing the real social equality of the two, will appear in broad daylight only then, when both of them will enjoy complete legal equality. It will then be seen that the emancipation of women is primarily depen- dent on the re-introduction of the whole female sex into the public industries. To accomplish this, the monogamous family must cease to be the industrial unit of society. We have, then, three main forms of the family, corresponding in general to the three main stages of human development. For savagery group mar- riage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civiliza-j tion monogamy supplemented by adultery and prosti/ tution. Between the pairing family and monogamy in the higher stage of barbarism, the rule of men over female slaves and polygamy is inserted. As we proved by our whole argument, the progress visible in this chain of phenomena is connected with the peculiarity of more and more curtailing the sexual freedom of the group marriage for women, but not for men. And group marriage is actually practised by men to this day. What is considered a crime for women and entails grave legal and social consequences for them, is considered honorable for men or in the worst case a slight moral blemish born with pleasure. But the more traditional hetaerism is changed in our day by capitalistic production and conforms to it, the more hetaerism is transformed into undisguised prostitution, the more demoralizing are its effects. And it demoralizes men far more than women. Prostitution does not degrade the whole female sex, but only the lucliless women that become Its victims, and even those not THE FAMILY 9^ to tbe extent generally assumed. But it degrades the character of the entire male world. Especially a long engagement is in nine cases out of ten a perfect training school of adultery. We are now approaching a social revolution, In which the old economic foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose through the concen- tration of considerable wealth in one hand— a man's hand— and from the endeavor to bequeath this wealth to the children of this man to the exclusion of all others. This necessitated monogamy on the woman's, but not on the man's part. Hence this monogamy of women in no way hindered open or secret polygamy of men. Now, the impending social revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and inheritable wealth— the means of production— into social property. Since monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it disappear when these causes are abolished? One might reply, not without reason: not only will it not disappear, but it will rather be perfectly real- ized. For with the transformation of the means of production into collective property, wagelabor will also disappear, and with it the proletariat and the necessity for a certain, ctatistically ascertainable number of women to surrender for money. Prostitu- tion disappears and monogamy, instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a reality— for men also. At all events, the situation will be very much changed for men. But also that of women, and of all women, will be considerably altered. With the transformation of the means of production into col- lective property the monogamous family ceases to be the economic unit of society. The private household changes to a social industry. The care and educa- 9^ THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY tion of children becomes a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the "consequences'* which now forms the essential social factor— moral and economic— hindering a girl to surrender uncon- ditionally to the beloved man. Will not this be suf- ficient cause for a gradual rise of a more uncon- ventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame? And finally, did we not see that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution, though antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the same social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at the same time monogamy? Here a new element becomes active, an element which at best existed only in the germ at the time when monogamy developed: individual sexlove. Before the middle ages we cannot speak of indi- vidual sexlove. It goes without saying that personal beauty, intimate intercourse, harmony of Inclina- tions, etc., awakened a longing for sexual intercourse in persons of different sex, and that it was not ab- solutely immaterial to men and women, with whom they entered into such most intimate intercourse. But from such a relation to our sexlove there is a long way yet. All through antiquity marriages were arranged for the participants by the parents, and the former quietly submitted. What little matri- monial love was known to antiquity was not subjec- tive inclination, but objective duty; not cause, but corollary of marriage. Love affairs in a modem sense occurred in classical times only outside of official society. The shepherds whose happiness and woe in love is sung by Theocritos and Moschus, such as Daphnis and Chloe of Longos, all these were slaves who had no share in the state and in the daily sphere of the free citizen. Outside of slave circles we find THE FAMILY 93 love affairs only as products of disintegration of the sinking old world. Their objects are women who also are standing outside of official society, hetaerae that are either foreigners or liberated slaves: in Athens since the beginning of its decline, in Rome at the time of the emperors. If love affairs really oc- curred between free male and female citizens, it was only in the form of adultery. And to the classical love poet of antiquity, the old Anakreon, sexlove in our sense was so immaterial, that he did not even care a fig for the sex of the beloved being. Our sexlove is essentially different from the simple sexual craving, the Eros, of the ancients. In the first place it presupposes mutual love. In this respect woman is the equal of man, while in the antique Eros her permission is by no means always asked. In the second place our sexlove has such a degree of in- tensity and duration that in the eyes of both parties lack of possession and separation appear as a great, if not the greatest, calamity. In order to possess one another they play for high stakes, even to the point of risking their lives, a thing heard of only in adultery during the classical age. And finally a new moral standard is introduced for judging sexual intercourse. We not only ask: "Was it legal or illegal?" but also: "Was it caused by mutual love or not?" Of course, this new standard meets with no better fate in feudal or bourgeois practice than all other moral stan- dards—it is simply ignored. But neither does it fare worse. It is recognized just as much as the others— In theory, on paper. And that is all we can expect at present. W^here antiquity left off with its attempts at sexual love, there the middle ages resumed the thread: with adultery. We have already described the love of the knights that invented the day songs. From this love endeavoring to break through the bonds of marriage 94 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY to the love destined to found marriage, there is a long distance which was never fully traversed by the knights. Even in passing on from the frivolous Ro- manic race to the virtuous Germans, we find in the Nibelungen song Kriemhild, who secretly is no less in love with Siegfried than he with her, meekly reply- ing to Gunther's announcement that he has pledged her in troth to a certain knight whom he does not name: "You need not beg for my consent; as you will demand, so I shall ever be; whomever you, sir, will select for my husband, I shall willingly take in troth." It does not enter her head at all that her love could find any consideration. Gunther asks for Brunhild, Etzel for Kriemhild without ever having seen one another. The same is true of the suit of Guti'un Sigebant of Ireland for the Norwegian Ute and of Hetel of Hegelingen for Hilda of Ireland. When Siegfried of Morland, Hartmut of Oranien and Herwig of Sealand court Gutrun, then it happens for the first time that the lady voluntarily decides, favor- ing the last named knight. As a rule the bride of the young prince is selected by his parents. Only when the latter are no longer alive, he chooses his own bride with the advice of the great feudal lords who in all cases of this kind have a decisive voice. Nor could it be otherwise. For the knight and the baron as well as for the ruler of the realm himself, marriage is a political act, an opportunity for increasing their power by new federations. The interest of the house must decide, not the arbitrary inclination of the individual. How could love have a chance to decide the question of marriage in the last instance under such conditions? The same held good for the bourgeois of the me- dieval towns, the members of the guilds. Precisely the privileges protcting them, the clauses and restric- tions of the guild charters, the artificial lines of di- THE FAMILY 95 vision separating them legally, here from the other guilds, there from their journeymen and apprentices, drew a sufficiently narrow circle for the selection of a fitting bourgeois spouse. Under such a complicated system, the question of fitness was unconditionally decided, not by individual inclination, but by family interests. In the overwhelming majority of cases the mar-' riage contract thus remained to the end of the middle ages what it had been from the outset: a matter that was not decided by the parties most interested. In the beginning one was already married from his birth— married to a whole group of the other sex. In the later forms of group marriage, a similar rela- tion was probably maintained, only under a continual narrowing of the group. In the pairing family it is the rule for mothers to exchange mutual pledges for the marriage of their children. Here also the main consideration is given to new ties of relationship that will strengthen the position of the young couple in the gens and the tribe. And when with the prepon- derance of private property over collective property and with the interest for inheritance paternal law and monogamy assumed the supremacy, then marriage became still more dependent on economic considera- tions. The form of purchase marriage disappears, but the essence of the transaction is more and more intensified, so that not only the woman, but also the man have a fixed price— not according to his quali- ties, but to his wealth. That mutual fondness of the marrying parties should be the one factor dominating all others had always been unheard of in the practice of the ruling classes. Such a thing occurred at best in romances or— among the oppressed classes that were not counted. This was the situation encountered by capitalist production when it began to prepare, since the epoch 96 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY of geographical discoveries, for the conquest of the world by international trade and manufacture. One would think that this mode of making the marriage contract would have been extremely acceptable to capitalism, and it was. And yet— the irony of fate is inexplicable— capitalist production had to make the decisive breach through this mode. By changing all things into commodities, it dissolved all inherited and traditional relations and replaced time hallowed cus- tom and historical right by purchase and sale, by the "free contract." And the English jurist, H. S. Maine, thought he had made a stupendous discovery by say- ing that our whole progress over former epochs con- sisted in arriving from status to contract, from in- herited to voluntarily contracted conditions. So far as this is correct, it had already been mentioned in the Communist Manifesto. But in order to make contracts, people must have full freedom over their persons, actions and posses- sions. They must furthermore be on terms of mutual equality. The creation of these "free" and "equal" people was precisely one of the main functions of capitalistic production. What though this was done at first in a half-conscious way and, moreover, in a religious disguise? Since the Lutheran and Calvinist reformation the thesis was accepted that a human being is fully responsible for his actions only then, when these actions were due to full freedom of will. And it was held to be a moral duty to resist any com- pulsion for an immoral action. How did this agree with the prevailing practice of match-making? Mar- riage according to bourgeois conception was a con- tract, a legal business affair, and the most important one at that, because it decided the weal and woe of body and spirit of two beings for life. At that time the agreement was formally voluntary: without the consent of the contracting parties nothing could be THE FAMILY 97 done. But it was only too well known how this con- sent was obtained and who were really the contract- ing parties. If, however, perfect freedom of decision is demanded for all other contracts, why not for this one? Did not the two young people who were to be coupled together have the right freely to dispose of themselves, of their bodies and the organs of these? Had not sexual love become the custom through the knights and was not, in opposition to knightly adul- tery, the love of married couples its proper bourgeois form? And if it was the duty of married couples to love one -another, was it not just as much the duty of lovers to marry each other and nobody else? Stood not the right of lovers higher than the right of parents, relatives and other customary marriage brokers and matrimonial agents? If the right of free personal investigation made its way unchecked into the church and religion, how could it bear with the insupportable claims of the older generation on the body, soul, property, happiness and misfortune of the younger generation? These questions had to be raised at a time when all the old ties of society were loosened and all tra- ditional conceptions tottering. The size of the world had increased tenfold at a bound. Instead of one quadrant of one hemisphere, the whole globe now spread before the eyes of West Europeans who has- tened to take possession of the other seven quadrants. And the thousand-year-old barriers of conventional medieval thought fell like the old narrow obstacles to marriage. An infinitely wider horizon opened out before the outer and inner eyes of humanity. What mattered the well-meaning propriety, what the hon- orable privilege of the guild overcome through gen- erations to the young man tempted by the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Potosi? It was the knight errant time of the bourgeoisie. 98 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY It had its own romances and love dreams, but on a bourgeois footing and, in the last instance, with bourgeois aims. Thus it came about that the rising bourgeoisie more and more recognized the freedom of contracting in marriage and carried it through in the manner de- scribed above, especially in Protestant countries, where existing institutions were most strongly shaken. Marriage remained class marriage, but within the class a certain freedom of choice was ac- corded to the contracting parties. And on paper, In moral theory as in poetical description, nothing was more unalterably established than the idea that every marriage was immoral unless founded on mutual Hex- love and perfectly free agreement of husband and wife. In short, the love match was proclaimed as a human right, not only as droit de Thomme— map's right— but also for once as droit de femme— woman's right. However, this human right differed from all other BO-called human rights in one respect. While in practice other rights remained the privileges of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and were directly or indirectly curtailed for proletarians, the irony of history once more asserted itself in this case. The ruling class remains subject to well-known economic influences and, therefore, shows marriage by free selection only in exceptional cases. But among the oppressed class, love matches are the rule, as we have seen. Hence the full freedom of marriage can become general only after all minor economic considerations, that still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a mate for life, have been removed by the aboli- tion of capitalistic production and of the property relations created by it. Then no other motive will remain but mutual fondness. THE FAMILY 99 Since sexlove is exclusive by its very nature— although this exclusiveness is at present realized for women alone— marriage founded on sexlove must be monogamous. We have seen that Bachofen vras perfectly right in regarding the progress from group marriage to monogamy mainly as the work of women. Only the advance from the pairing family to mo- nogamy must be charged to the account of men. This advance implied, historically, a deterioration in the position of women and a greater opportunity for men to be faithless. Remove the economic consider- ations that now force women to submit to the cus- tomary disloyalty of men, and you will place women on a equal footing with men. All present experi- ences prove that this will tend much more strongly to make men truly monogamous, than to make women polyandrous. However, those peculiarities that were stamped upon the face of monogamy by its rise through prop- erty relations, will decidedly vanish, namely the supremacy of men and the indissolubility of mar- riage. The supremacy of man in marriage is simply the consequence of his economic superiority and will fall with the abolition of the latter. The indissolubility of marriage is partly the conse- quence of economic conditions, under which monog- amy arose, partly tradition from the time where the connection between this economic situation and monogamy, not yet clearly understood, was carried to extremes by religion. To-day, it has been per- forated a thousand times. If marriage founded on love is alone moral, then it follows that marriage is moral only as long as love lasts. The duration of an attack of individual sexlove varies considerably ac- cording to individual disposition, especially in men. A positive cessation of fondness or its replacement by a new passionate love makes a separation a bless- 100 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY Ing for both parties and for society. But humanity will be spared the useless wading through the mire of a divorce case. What we may anticipate about the adjustment of sexual relations after the impending downfall of capi- talist production is mainly of a negative nature and mostly confined to elements that will disappear. But what will be added V That will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity: a race of men who never in their lives have had any occasion for buying with money or other economic means of power the surrender of a woman; a race of women who have never had any occasion for surrendering to any man for any other reason but love, or for refus- ing to surrender to their lover from fear of economic consequences. Once such people are in the world, they will not give a moment's thought to what we to- day believe should be their course. They will follow their own practice and fashion their own public opin- ion about the Individual practice of every person- only this and nothing more. But let us return to Morgan from whom we moved away a considerable distance. The his-torical investi- gation of social institutions developed during the pe- riod of civilization exceeds the limits of his book. Hence the vicissitudes of monogamy during this epoch occupy him very briefly. He also sees in the further development of the monogamous family a progress, an approach to perfect equality of the sexes, without considering this aim fully realized. But he says: "When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it must advance as society advances, and and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the THE FAMILY lOI social system, and will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved greatly since the commencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still farther improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the mo- nogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the requirements of society, assuming the continuous progress of civilization, it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor." CHAPTER III. THE IROQUOIS GEN«. We now come to another discovery of Morgan that is at least as important as the reconstruction of the primeval form of the family from the systems of kinship. It is the proof that the sex organizations within the tribe of North American Indians, desig- nated by animal names, are essentially identical with the genea of the Greeks and the gentes of the Ro- mans; that the American form is the original from which the Greek and Roman forms were later de- rived; that the whole organization of Greek and Roman society during primeval times in gens, phratry and tribe finds its faithful parallel in that of the American Indians; that the gens is an institution common to all barbarians up to the time of civiliza- tion—at least so far as our present sources of in- formation reach. This demonstration has cleared at a single stroke the most difficult passages of re- motest ancient Greek and Roman history. At the same time it has given us unexpected information concerning the fundamental outlines of the constitu- tion of society in primeval times— before the intro- duction of the state. Simple as the matter is after we have once found it out, still it was only lately discovered by Morgan. In his work of 1871 he had not yet unearthed this mystery. Its revelation has completely silenced for the time being those generally so overconfident English authorities on primeval his- tory. The Latin word gens, used by :Morgan generally for the designation of this sex organization, is derived, THE IROQUOIS GENS 103 like the equivalent Greek word genos, from the com- mon Aryan root gan, signifying to beget. Gens, genos, Sanskrit dschanas, Gothic kuni, ancient Norse and Anglesaxon kyn, English kin, Middle High German kiinne, all signify lineage, descent. Gens in Latin, genos in Greek, specially designate that sex organiza- tion which boasted of common descent (from a com- mon sire) and was united into a separate community by certain social and religious institutions, but the origin and nature of which nevertheless remained obscure to all our historians. Elsewhere, in speaking Oji the Punaluan family, we saw how the gens was constituted in its original form. It consisted of all individuals who by means Qf the Punaluan marriage and in conformity with the conceptions necessarily arising in It made up the recognized offspring of a certain ancestral mother, the founder of that gens. Since fatherhood is un- certain in this form of the family, female lineage is alone valid. And as brothers must not marry their sisters, but only women of foreign descent, the chil- dred bred from these foreign women do not belong to the gens, according to maternal law. Hence only the offspring of the daughters of every generation remain in the same sex organization. The descen- dants of the sons are transferred to the gentes of the new mothers. What becomes of this group of kinship when it constitutes itself a separate group, distinct from similar groups in the same tribe? As the classical form of this original gens Morgan selects that of the Iroquois, more especially that of the Seneca tribe. This tribe has eight gentes named after animals: 1. Wolf. 2. Bear. 3. Turtle. 4. Beaver. 5. Deer. 6, Snipe. 7. Heron. 8. Hawk. Every gens observes the following customs: 1. The gens elects its sachem (official head during peace) and its chief (leader in war). The sachem 104 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY must be selected within the gens and his office was in a sense hereditary. It had to be filled immedi- ately after a vacancy occurred. The chief could be selected outside of the gens, and his office could even be temporarily vacant. The son never followed his father in the office of sachem, because the Iroquois observed maternal law, in consequence of which the son belonged to another gens. But the brother or the son of a sister was often elected as a successor. Men and women both voted in elections. The election, however, had to be confirmed by the other seven gentes, and then only the sachem-elect was solemnly invested, by the common council of the whole Iro- quois federation. The significance of this will be seen later. The power of the sachem within the tribe was of a paternal, purely moral nature. He had no means of coercion at his command. He was besides by virtue of his office a member of the tribal council of the Senecas and of the federal council of the whole Iroquois nation. The Chief had the right to command only in times of war. 2. The gens can retire the sachem and the chief at will. This again is done by men and women jointly. The retired men are considered simple warriors and private persons like all others. The tribal council, by the way, can also retire the sachems, even against the will of the tribe. 3. No member is permitted to marry within the gens. This is the fundamental rule of the gens, the tie that holds it together. It is the negative expres- sion of the very positive blood relationship, by vir- tue of which the individuals belonging to it become a gens. By the discovery of this simple fact Morgan for the first time revealed the nature of the gens. How little the gens had been understood before him is proven by former reports on savages and bar- barians, in which the different organizations of which THE IROQUOIS GENS IO5 the gentile order is composed are jumbled together without understanding and distinction as tribe, clan, thum, etc. Sometimes it is stated that intermarry- ing within these organizations is forbidden. This gave rise to the hopeless confusion, in which Mc- Lennan could pose as Napoleon and establish order by the decree: All tribes are divided into those that forbid intermarrying (exogamous) and those that per- mit it (endogamous). And after he had thus made confusion worse confounded, he could indulge in deep meditations which of his two preposterous classes was the older: exogamy or endogamy. By the dis- covery of the gens founded on affinity of blood and the resulting impossibility of its members to inter- marry, this nonsense found a natural end. It is self understood that the marriage interdict within the gens was strictly observed at the stage in which we find the Iroquois. 4. The property of deceased members fell to the share of the other gentiles; it had to remain in the gens. In view of the insignificance of the objects an Iroquois could leave behind, the nearest gentile rela- tions divided the heritage. Was the deceased a man, then his natural brothers, sisters and the brothers of the mother shared in his property. , Was it a woman, then her children and natural sisters shared, but not her brothers. For this reason husband and wife could not inherit from one another, nor the children from the father. 5. The gentile members owed to each other help, protection and especially assistance in revenging in- jury inflicted by strangers. The individual relied for his protection on the gens and could be assured of it. Whoever injured the individual, injured the whole gens. From this blood kinship arose the obli- gation to blood revenge that was unconditionally rec- ognized by the Iroquois. If a stranger killed a gentile 106 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY member, the whole gens of the slain man was pledged to .revenge his death. First mediation was tried. The gens of the slayer deliberated and offered to the gentile council of the slain propositions for atonement, consisting generally in expressions of regret and presents of considerable value. If these were accepted, the matter was settled. In the oppo- site case the injured gens appointed one or more aven- gers who were obliged to pursue the slayer and to kill him. If they succeeded, the gens of the slayer had no right to complain. The account was squared. 6. The gens had certain distinct names or series of names, which no other gens in the whole tribe could use, so that the name of the individual indicated to what gens he belonged. A gentile name at the same time bestowed gentile rights. 7. The gens may adopt strangers who thereby are adopted into the whole tribe. The prisoners of war who were not killed became by adoption into a gens tribal members of the Senecas and thus received full gentile and tribal rights. The adoption took place on the motion of some gentile members, of men who accepted the stranger as a brother or sister, of women who accepted him as a child. The solemn introduc- tion into the gens was necessary to confirm the adop- tion. Frequently certain gentes that had shrunk ex- ceptionally were thus strengthened by mass adop- tions from another gens with the consent of the lat- ter. Among the Iroquois the solemn introduction into the gens took place in a public meeting of the tribal council, whereby it actually became a religious cere- mony. The existence of special religious celebrations among Indian gentes can hardly be demonstrated. But the religious rites of the Indians are more or less connected with the gens. At the six annual religious festivals of the Iroquois the sachems and chiefs of THE IROQUOIS GENS 10? the different gentes were added to the "Keepers of the Faith" and had the functions of priests. 9. The gens had a common burial place. Among the Iroquois of the State of New York, who are crowded by white men all around them, the burial place has disappeared, but it existed formerly. Among other Indians it is still in existence, e. g., among the Tuscaroras, near relatives of the Iroquois, where every gens has a row by itself in the burial place, although they are Christians. The mother is buried in the same row as her children, but not the father. And among the Iroquois the whole gens of the deceased attends the funeral, prepares the grave and provides the addresses, etc. 10. The gens had a council, the democratic assem- bly of all male and female gentiles of adult age, all with equal suffrage. This council elected and de- posed its sachems and chiefs; likewise the other "Keepers of the Faith." It deliberated on gifts of atonement or blood revenge for murdered gentiles and it adopted strangers into the gens. In short, it was the sovereign power in the gens. The following are the rights and privileges of the typical Indian gens, according to Morgan: "All the members of an Iro(iuois gens were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other's freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachems and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by ties of kin. Liberty, equality and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material, because the gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the founda- tion upon which Indian society was organized. A structure composed of such units would of necessity bear the impress of their character, for as the unit, 80 the compound, It serves to explain that sense I08 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY Of Independence and personal dignity universally aif attribute of Indian cbaracter." At the time of the discovery the Indians of entire North America were organized in gentes by ma- ternal law. Only "in some tribes, as among the Da- kotas, the gentes had fallen out; in others as among the Ojibwas, the Omahas and the Mayas of Yucatan, descent had been changed from the female to the male line." Among many Indian tribes with more than five or six gentes we find three, four or more gentes united Into a separate group, called phratry by Morgan in accurate translation of the Indian name by its Greek equivalent. Thus the Senecas have two phratries, the first comprising gentes one to four, the second gentes five to eight. Closer investigation shows that these phratries generally represent the original gentes that formed the tribe in the beginning. For the mar- riage interdict necessitated the existence of at least two gentes in a tribe in order to realize its separate existence. As the iribe increased, every gens seg- mented into two or more new gentes, while the orig- inal gens comprising all the daughter gentes, lived on In the phratry. Among the Senecas and most of the other Indians "the gentes in the same phratry are brother gentes to each other, and cousin gentes to those of the other phratry"— terms that have a very real and expressive meaning in the American system of kinship, as we have seen. Originally no Seneca was allowed to marry within his phratry, but this custom has long become obsolete and Is now confined to the gens. According to the tradition among the Senecas, the bear and the deer were the two original gentes, from which the others were formed by seg- mentation. After this new institutioji had become well established it was modified according to cir- cumstances. If certain gentes became extinct, it THE IROQUOIS GENS IO9 sometimes happened that by mutual consent the members of one gens were transferred in a body from other phratries. Hence we find the gentes of the same name differently grouped in the phratries of the different tribes. "The phratry, among the Iroquois, was partly for social and partly for religious objects." 1. In the ball game one phratry plays against another. Each one sends its best players, the other mem- bers, upon different sides of the field, watch the game and bet against one another on the result. 2. In the tribal coimcil the sachems and chiefs of each phratry are seated opposite one another, every speaker addressing the representatives of each phratry as separate bodies. 3. When a mur- der had been committed in the tribe, the slayer and the slain belonging to different phratries, the injured gens often appealed to its brother gentes. These held a phratry council which in a body addressed itself to the other phratry, in order to prevail on the latter to assemble in council and effect a condona- tion of the matter. In this case the phratry re-ap- pears in its original gentile capacity, and with a bet- ter prospect of success than the weaker gens, its daughter. 4. At the funeral of prominent persons the opposite phratry prepared the interment and the burial rites, while the phratry of the deceased attend- ed the funeral as mourners. If a sachem died, the opposite phratry notified the central council of the Iroquois that the office of the deceased had become vacant. 5. In electing a sachem the phratry council also came into action. Endorsement by the brother gentes was generally considered a matter of fact, but the gentes of the other phratry might oppose. In such a case the council of this phratry met, and if it maintained its opposition, the election was null and void. 6. Formerly the Iroquois had special relig- 110 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY ions mysteries, called medicine lodges by the white men. These mysteries were celebrated among the Senecas by two religious societies that had a special form of initiation for new members; each phratry was represented by one of these societies. 7. If, as is almost certain, the four lineages occupying the four quarters of Tlascaia at the time of the conquest were four phratries, then it is proved that the phratries were at the same time military units, as were the Greek phratries and similar sex organizations of the Germans. Each of these four lineages went into bat- tle as a separate group with its special uniform and flag and its own leader. Just as several gentes form a phratry so in the classical form several phratries form a tribe. In some cases the middle group, the phratry, is missing in strongly decimated tribes. What constitutes an Indian tribe in America? 1. A distinct territory and a distinct name. Every tribe had a considerable hunting and fishing ground beside the place of its actual settlement. Beyond this ter- ritory there was a wide neutral strip of land reaching over to the boundaries of the next tribe; a smaller strip between tribes of related languages^ a larger between tribes of foreign languages. This corre- sponds to the boundary forest of the Germans, the desert created by Caesar's Suevi around their terri- tory, the isarnlaolt (Danish jarnved, Latin limei Danicus) between Danes and Germans, the sachsen wald (Saxon forest) and the Slavish branibor between Slavs and Germans giving the province of Branden- burg its name. The territory thus surrounded by neutral ground was the collective property of a cer- tain tribe, recognized as such by other tribes and defended against the invasion of others. The dis- advantage of undefined boundaries became of prac- THE IROQUOIS GENS HI tical importance only after the population had in- creased considerably. The tribal names generally seem to be more the result of chance than of intentional selection. In course of time it frequently happened that a tribe designated a neighboring tribe by another name than that chosen by itself. In this manner the Germans received their first historical name from the Celts. 2. A distinct dialect peculiar to this tribe. As a matter of fact the tribe and the dialect are co-exten- sive. In America, the formation of new tribes and dialects by segmentation was in progress until quite recently, and doubtless it is still going on. Where two weak tribes amalgamated into one, there it ex- ceptionally happened that two closely related dialects were simultaneously spoken in the same tribe. The average strength of American tribes is less than 2,000 members. The Cherokees, however, number about 26,000, the greatest number of Indians in the United States speaking the same dialect. 3. The right to solemnly invest the sachems and chiefs elected by the gentes, and 4. The right to depose them, even against the will of the gens. As these sachems and chiefs are mem- bers of the tribal council, these rights of the tribe explain themselves. Where a league of tribes had been formed and all the tribes were represented in a feudal council, the latter exercised these rights. 5. The possession of common religious conceptions (mythology) and rites. "After the fashion of bar- barians the American Indians were a religious peo- ple." Their mythology has not yet been critically investigated. They materialized their religious con- ceptions—spirits of all sorts— in human shapes, but the lower stagfe of barbarism in which they lived, knows nothing as yet of so-called idols. It is a cult of nature and of the elements, in process of evolution 112 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY to pantheism. The different tribes had regular fes- tivals with prescribed forms of worship, mainly dances and games. Especially dancing was an essential part of all religious celebrations. Every tribe celebrated by itself. 6. A tribal council for public affairs. It was com- posed of all the sachems and chiefs of the different, gentes, real representatives because they could be deposed at any moment. It deliberated in public, surrounded by the rest of the tribal members, who had a right to take part in the discussions and claim attention. The council decided. As a rule any one present gained a hearing on his demand. The women could also present their views by a speaker of their choice. Among the Iroquois the final resolution had to be passed unanimously, as was also the case in some resolutions of German mark (border) communi- ties. It was the special duty of the tribal council to regulate the relations with foreign tribes. The council received and despatched legations, declared war and made peace. War was carried on principally by volunteers. "Theoretically, each tribe was at war with every other tribe with which it had not formed a treaty of peace." Expeditions against such enemies were generally organized by certain prominent warriors. They started a war dance, and whoever took part in it thereby declared his intention to join the expedition. Ranks were formed and the march began immedi- ately. The defense of the attacked tribal territory was also generally carried on by volunteers. The exodus and the return of such columns was always the occasion of public festivities. The consent of the tribal council for such expeditions was not re- quired, and was neither asked nor given. This cor- responds to the private war expeditions of German followers described by Tacitus. Only these German THE IROQUOIS GENS 113 groups of followers had already assumed a more per- manent character, forming a standing center organ- ized during peace, around which the other volunteers gathered in case of war. Such war columns w^ere rarely strong in numbers. The most important ex- peditions of the Indians, even for long distances, were undertaken by insignificant forces. If more than one group joined for a great expedition, every group obeyed its own leader. The uniformity of the cam- paign plan was secured as well as possible by a coun- cil of these leaders. This is the mode of warfare among the Allemani in the fourth century on the Upper Rhine, as described by Ammianus Marcellinus. 7. In some tribes we find a head chief, whose power, however, is limited. He is one of the sachems who has to take provisional measures in cases re- quiring immediate action, until the council can as- semble and decide. He represents a feeble, but gen- erally undeveloped prototype of an official with execu- tive power. The latter, as we shall see, developed in most cases out of the highest war chief. The great majority of American Indians did not go beyond the league of tribes. With a few tribes of small membership, separated by wide boundary tracts, weakened by unceasing warfare, they occu- pied an immense territory. Leagues were now and then formed by kindred tribes as the result of mo- mentary necessity and dissolved again under more favorable conditions. But in certain districts, tribes of the same kin had again found their way out of dis- bandment into permanent federations, making the first step towards the formation of nations. In the United States we find the highest form of such a league among the Iroquois. Emigrating from their settlements west of the Mississippi, where they prob- ably formed a branch of the great Dakota family, they settled at last after long wanderings in the 114 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY present State of New York. They had five tribes: Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks. They lived on fish, venison, and the products of rough gardening, inhabiting villages protected by stockades. Their number never exceeded 20,000, and certain gentes were common to all five tribes. They spoke closely related dialects of the same language and occupied territories contiguous to one another. As this land was won by conquest, it was natural for these tribes to stand together against the expelled former inhabitants. This led, not later, than the be- ginning of the fifteenth century, to a regular "eternal league," a sworn alliance that immediately assumed an aggressive character, relying on its newly won strength. About 1675, at the summit of its power, it had conquered large districts round about and partly expelled the inhabitants, partly made them tributary. The Iroquois League represented the most advanced social organization attained by Indians that had not passed the lower stage of barbarism. Thi<3 excludes only the Mexicans, New Mexicans and Pe- ruvians. The fundamental provisions of the league were: 1. Eternal federation of the five consanguineous tribes on the basis of perfect equality and indepen- dence in all internal tribal matters. This consan- guinity formed the true fundament of the league. Three of these tribes, called father tribes, were brothers to one another; the other two, also mutual brothers, were called son tribes. The three oldest gentes were represented by living members in all five tribes, and these members were all regarded as brothers. Three other gentes were still alive in three tribes, and all of their members called one another fcit>thers. The common language, only modified by variations of dialect, was the expression and proof of their common descent. THE IROQUOIS GENS 115 2. The oflScial organ of the league was a federal council of fifty sachems, all equal in rank and prom- inence. This council had the supreme decision in all federal matters. 3. On founding this league the fifty sachems had been assigned to the different tribes and gentes as holders of new oflSces created especially for federal purposes. Vacancies were filled by new elections in the gens, and the holders of these offices could be de- posed at will. But the right of installation belonged to the federal council. 4. These federal sachems were at the same time sachems of their tribe and had a seat and a vote in the tribal council. 5. All decisions of the federal council had to be unanimous. 6. The votes were cast by tribes, so that every tribe and the council members of each tribe had to vote together in order to adopt a final resolution. 7. Any one of the five tribes could convoke the federal council, but the council could not convene itself. 8. Federal meetings were held publicly in the pres- ence of the assembled people. Every Iroquois could have the word, but the final decision rested with the council. 9. The league had no official head, no executive chief. 10. It had, however, two high chiefs of war, both with equal functions and power (the two "kings" of Sparta, the two consuls of Rome). This was the whole constitution, under which the Iroquois lived over four hundred years and still live. I have described it more fully after Morgan, because we have here an opportunity for studying the organi- zation of a society that does not yet know a state. The state presupposes a public power of coercion Il6 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY separated from the aggregate body of its members. Maurer, with correct intuitlcn, recognized the con- stitution of the German Mark as a purely social in- stitution, essentially different from that of a state, though furnishing the fundament on which a state constitution could be erected later on. Hence in all of his writings, he traced the gradual rise of the pub- lic power of coercion from and by the side of primordial constitutions of marks, villages, farms and towns. The North American Indians show how an originally united tribe gradually spreads over an Immense continent; how tribes by segmentatio^n be- come nations, whole groups of tribes; how languages change so that they not only become unintelligible to one another, but also lose every trace of former unity; how at the same time one gens splits up into several gentes, how the old mother gentes are preserved in the phratries and how the names of these oldest gentes still remain the same in widely distant and long separated tribes. Wolf and bear still are gentile names in a majority of all Indian tribes. And the above named constitution is essentially applicable to all of them, except that many did not reach the point of forming leagues of related tribes. But once the gens was given as a social unit, we also see how the whole constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes developed with almost unavoid- able necessity— because naturally— from the gens. All three of them are groups of differentiated consan- guine relations. Each is complete in itself, arranges its own local affairs and supplements the other groups. And the cycle of functions performed by them includes the aggregate of the public affairs of men in the lower stage of barbarism. Wherever we find the gens as the social unit of a nation, we are justified in searching for a tribal or- ganization similar to the one described above. And THE IROQUOIS GENS 117 whenever sufficient material is at hand, as in Greek and Roman history, there we shall not only find such an organization, but we may also be assured that the comparison with the American sex organizations will assist us in solving the most perplexing doubts and riddles in places where the material forsalies us. How wonderful this gentile constitution is in all its natural simplicity! No soldiers, gensdarmes and policemen, no nobility, kings, regents, prefects or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits, and still affairs run smoothly. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the entire community involved in them, either the gens or the tribe or the various gentes among them- selves. Only in very rare cases the blood revenge is threatened as an extreme measure. Our capital pun- ishment is simply a civilized form of it, afflicted with all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization. Not a vestige of our cumbersome and intricate sys- tem of administration is needed, although there are more public affairs to be settled than nowadays: the communistic household is shared by a number of families, the land belongs to the tribe, only the gar- dens are temporarily assigned to the households. The parties involved in a question settle it and in most cases the hundred-year-old traditions have settled everything beforehand. There cannot be any poor and destitute— the communistic households and the gentes know their duties toward the aged, sick and disabled. All are free and equal— the women in- cluded. There is no room yet for slaves, nor for the subjugation of foreign tribes. When about 1651 the Iroquois had vanquished the Eries and the "Neutral Nation," they offered to adopt them into the league on equal terms. Only when the vanquished declined this offer they were driven out of their territory. What splendid men and women were produced by such a society! All the white men who came into Il8 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY contact with unspoiled Indians admired the personal dignity, straightforwardness, strength of character and bravery of these barbarians. We lately received proofs of such bravery in Africa. A few years ago the Zulus, and some months ago the Nubians, both of which tribes still retain the gen- tile organization, did what no European army can do. Armed only with lances and spears, without any fire- arms, they advanced under a hail of bullets from breechloaders up 1o the bayonets of the English in- fantry—the best of the w^orld for fighting in closed ranks— and threw them into confusion more than once, yea, even forced them to retreat in spite of the immense disparity of weapons, and in spite of the fact that they have no military service and don't know anything about drill. How enduring and able they are, is proved by the complaints of the English who admit that a Kaffir can cover a longer distance In twenty-four hours than a horse. The smallest muscle springs forth, hard and tough like a whip- lash, says an English painter. Such was human society and its members, before the division into classes had taken place. And a com- parison of that social condition with the condition of the overwhelming majority of present day society shows the enormous chasm that separates our prole- tarian and small farmer from the free gentile of old. That is one side of the question. We must not over- look, however, that this organization was doomed. It did not pass beyond the tribe. The league of tribes marked the beginning of its downfall, as we shall see, and as the attempts of the Iroquois at subjugating others showed. Whatever went beyond the tribe, went outside of gentilism. Where no direct peace treaty existed, there war reigned from tribe to tribe. And this war was carried on with the particular cruelty THE IROQUOIS GENS Up that distinguishes man from other animals, and that was modified later on simply by self-interest. The gentile constitution in its most flourishing time, such as we saw it in America, presupposed a very undeveloped state of production, hence a population thinly scattered over a wide area. Man was almost completely dominated by nature, a strange and incom- prehensible riddle to him. His simple religious con- ceptions clearly reflect this. The tribe remained the boundary line for man, as well in regard to himself as to strangers outside. The gens, the tribe and their Institutions were holy and inviolate. They were a superior power instituted by nature, and the feelings, thoughts and actions of the individual remained un- conditionally subject to them. Commanding as the people of this epoch appear to us, nothing distinguishes one from another. They are still attached, as Marx has it, to the navel string of the primordial com- munity. The power of these natural and spontaneous com- munities had to be broken, and It was. But it was done by influences that from the very beginning bear the mark of degradation, of a downfall from the simple moral grandeur of the old gentile society. The new system of classes is inaugurated by the meanest impulses: vulgar covetousness, brutal lust, sordid ava- rice, selfish robbery of common wealth. The old gen- tile society without classes is undermined and brought to fall by the most contemptible means: theft, vio- lence, cunning, treason. And during all the thousands of years of its existence, the new society has never been anything else but the development of the small minority at the expense of the exploited and oppressed majority. More than ever this is true at present. CHAPTER IV. THE GRECIAN GENS. Greeks, Pelasgians and other nations of the same tribal origin were constituted since prehistoric times on the same systematic plan as the Americans: gens, phratry, tribe, league of tribes. The phratry might be missing, as e. g. among the Dorians; the league of tribes might not be fully developed in every case; but the gens was everywhere the unit. At the time of their entrance into history, the Greeks were on the threshold of civilization. Two full periods of evolution are stretching between the Greeks and the above named American tribes. The Greeks of the heroic age are by so much ahead of the Iroquois. For this reason the Grecian gens no longer retains the archaic char- acter of the Iroquois gens. The stamp of group mar- riage is becoming rather blurred. Maternal law had given way to paternal lineage. Rising private property had thus made its first opening in the gentile constitu- tion. A second opening naturally followed the first: Paternal law being now in force, the fortune of a wealthy heiress would have fallen to her husband in the case of her marriage. That would have meant the transfer of her wealth from her own gens to that of her husband. In order to avoid this, the fundament of gentile law was shattered. In such a case, the girl was not only permitted, but obliged to intermarry within the gens, in order to retain the wealth in the latter. According to Grote's History of Greece, the gens of Attica was held together by the following bonds: 1. Common religious rites and priests installed ex- THE GRECIAN GENS 121 clusively in honor of a certain divinity, the alleged gentile ancestor, who was designated by a special by- name in this capacity. 2. A common burial ground. (See Demosthenes' Eubulides.) 3. Right of mutual inheritance. 4. Obligation to mutually help, protect and assist one another in case of violence. 5. Mutual right and duty to intermarry in the gens in certain cases, especially for orphaned girls or heir- esses. 6. Possession of common property, at least in some cases, and an archon (supervisor) and treasurer elected for this special case. The phratry united several gentes, but rather loosely. Still we find in it similar rights and duties, especially common religious rites and the right of avenging the death of a phrator. Again, all the phratries of a tribe had certain religious festivals in common that re- curred at regular intervals and were celebrated under the guidance of a phylobasileus (tribal head) selected from the ranks of the nobles (eupatrides). So far Grote. And Marx adds: "The savage (e. g. the Iroquois) is still plainly visible in the Grecian gens." On further investigation we find additional proofs of this. For the Grecian gens has also the following attributes: 7. Paternal Lineage. 8. Prohibition of intermarrying in the gens except in the case of heiresses. This exception formulated as a law clearly proves the validity of the old rule. This is further substantiated by the universally ac- cepted custom that a woman in marrying renounced the religious rites of her gens and accepted those of her husband's gens. She was also registered in his phratry. According to this custom and to a famous quotation in Dikaearchos, marriage outside of the gens 122 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY was the rule. Becker in "Charikles" directly assumes that nobody was permitted to intermarry in the gens. 9. The right to adopt strangers in the gens. It was exercised by adoption into the family under public formalities; but it was used sparingly. 10. The right to elect and depose the archons. We know that every gens had its archon. As to the hered- ity of the office, there is no reliable information. Until the end of barbarism, the probability is always against strict heredity. For it is absolutely incompatible with conditions where rich and poor had perfectly equal rights in the gens. Not alone Grote, but also Niebuhr, Mommsen and all other historians of classical antiquity were foiled by the gens. Though they chronicled many of its dis- tinguishing marks correctly, still they always regarded it as a group of families and thus prevented their understanding the nature and origin of gentes. Under the gentile constitution, the family never was a unit of organization, nor could it be so, because man and wife necessarily belonged to two different gentes. The gens was wholly comprised in the phratry, the phratry in the tribe. But the family belonged half to the gens of the man, and half to that of the woman. Nor does the state recognize the family in public law. To this day, the family has only a place in private law. Yet all historical records take their departure from the absurd supposition, which was considered almost in- violate during the eighteenth century, that the monog- amous family, an institution scarcely older than civili- zation, is the nucleus around which society and state gradually crystallized. "Mr. Grote will also please note," throws in Marx, "that the gentes. which the Greeks traced to their mythologies, are older than the mythologies. The lat- ter together with their gods and deml-gods were cre- ated by the gentes." THE GRECIAN GENS 123 Grote is quoted with preference by Morgan as a prominent and quite trustworthy witness. He relates that every Attic gens had a name derived from its alleged ancestor; that before Solon's time, and even after, it was customary for the gentiles (genn§tes) to inherit the fortunes of their intestate deceased; and that in case of murder first the relatives of the victim had the duty and the right to prosecute the criminal, after them the gentiles and finally the phrators. "Whatever we may learn about the oldest Attic laws is founded on the organization in gentes and phrat- ries." The descent of the gentes from common ancestors has caused the "schoolbred philistines," as Marx has it, much worry. Representing this descent as purely mythical, they are at a loss to explain how the gentes developed out of independent and wholly unrelated families. But this explanation must be given, if they wish to explain the existence of the gentes. They then turn around in a circle of meaningless gibberish and do not get beyond the phrase: the pedigree is indeed a fable, but the gens is a reality. Grote finally winds up— the parenthetical remarks are by Marx: "We rarely hear about this pedigree, because it is used in public only on certain very festive occasions. But the less prominent gentes had their common religious rites (very peculiar, Mr. Grote!) and their common super- human ancestor and pedigree just like the more promi- nent gentes (how very peculiar this, Mr. Grote, in less prominent gentes!); and the ground plan and the ideai fundament (my dear sir! Not ideal, but carnal, anglice "fleshly") was the same in all of them." Marx sums up Morgan's reply to this as follows: "The system of consanguinity corresponding to the archaic form of the gens— which the Greeks once pos- sessed like other mortals— preserved the knowledge of the mutual relation of all members of the gens. 124 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY They learned this important fact by practice from early childhood. With the advent of the monogamous family this was gradually forgotten. The gentile name created a pedigree by the side of which that of the monogamous family seemed insignificant. This name had now the function of preserving the memory of the common descent of its bearers. But the pedigree of the gens went so far back that the gentiles could no longer actually ascertain their mutual kinship, ex- cept in a limited number of more recent common an- cestors. The name itself was the proof of a common descent and sufficed always except in cases of adop- tion. To actually dispute all kinship between gentiles after the manner of Grote and Niebuhr, who thus transform the gens into a purely hypothetical and fictitious creation of the brain, is indeed worthy of "ideal" scientists, that is book worms. Because the relation of the generations, especially on the advent of monogamy, is removed to the far distance, and the reality of the past seems reflected in phantastic im- aginations, therefore the brave old Philistines con- cluded and conclude that the imaginary pedigree cre- ated real gentes!" The phratry was, as among the Americans, a mother- gens comprising several daughter gentes, and often traced them all to the same ancestor. According to Grote "all contemporaneous members of the phratry of Hekataeos were descendants in the sixteenth de- gree of one and the same divine ancestor. All the gentes of this phratry were therefore literally brother gentes. The phratry is mentioned by Homer as a military unit in that famous passage where Nestor advises Agamemnon: "Arrange the men by phratries and tribes so that phratry may assist phratry, and tribe the tribe." The phratry has the right and the duty to prosecute the death of a phrator, hence in former times the duty of blood revenge. It has, THE GRECIAN GENS 125 firrtliermore, common religious rites and festivals. As a matter of fact, the development of the entire Grecian mythology from the traditional old Aryan cult of nature w^as essentially due to the gentes and phratries and took place within them. The phratry had an official head (phratriarchos) and also, according to De Coulanges, meetings and binding resolutions, a juris- diction and administration. Even the state of a later period, while ignoring the gens, left certain public functions to the phratry. The tribe consisted of several kindred phratries. In Attica there were fom* tribes of three phratries each; the number of gentes in each phratry was thirty. Such an accurate division of groups reveals the fact of a conscious and well-planned interference with the natural order. How, when and why this was done is not disclosed by Grecian history. The historical mem- ory of the Greeks themselves does not reach beyond the heroic age. Closely packed in a comparatively small territory as the Greeks were, their dialectic differences were less conspicuous than those developed in the wide American forests. Yet even here we find only tribes of the same main dialect united in a larger organization. Little Attica had its own dialect which later on became the prevailing language in Grecian prose. In the epics of Homer we generally find the Greek tribes combined into small nations, but so that their gentes, phratries and tribes retained their full inde- pendence. They already lived in towns fortified by walls. The population increased with the growth of the herds, with agriculture and the beginnings of the handicrafts. At the same time the differences in wealth became more marked and gave rise to an aris- tocratic element within the old primordial democracy. The individual little nations carried on an unceasing warfare for the possession of the best land and also 126 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY for the sake of looting. Slavery of the prisoners «f war was already well established. The constitution of these tribes and nations was as follows: 1. A permanent authority was the council (bule), originally composed of the gentile archons, but later on, when their number became too great, recruited by selection in such a way that the aristocratic element was developed and strengthened. Dionysios openly speaks of the council at the time of the heroes as being composed of nobles (kratlstoi). The council had the final decision in all important matters. In Aeschylos, e. g. the council of Thebes decides that the body of Eteokles be buried with full honors, the body of Poly- nikes, however, thrown out to be devoured by the dogs. With the rise of the state this council was trans- formed into the senate. 2. The public meeting (agora). We saw how the Iroquois, men and women, attended the council meet- ings, taking an orderly part in the discussions and Influencing them. Among the Homeric Greeks, this attendance had developed to a complete public meet- ing. This was also the case with the Germans of the archaic period. The meeting was called by the council. Every man could demand the word. The final vote was taken by hand raising (Aeschylos in "The Suppli- ants," 607), or by acclamation. The decision of the meeting was supreme and final. "Whenever a matter is discussed," says Schoemann in "Antiquities of Greece, "which requires the participation of the people for its execution. Homer does not indicate any means by which the people could be forced to it against their will." It is evident that at a time when every able- bodied member of the tribe was a warrior, there ex- isted as yet no public power apart from the people that might have been used against them. The primor- dial democracy was still in full force, and by this THE GRECIAN GENS 127 standard the influence and position of the council and of the basileus must be judged. 3. The military chief (basileus). Marx makes the following comment: "The European scientists, most- ly born servants of princes, represent the basileus as a monarch in the modem sense. The Yankee repub- lican Morgan objects to this. Very ironically but truth- fully he says of the oily Gladstone and his "Juventua Mundi' : 'Mr. Gladstone, who presents to his readers the Grecian chiefs of the heroic age as kings and princes, with the superadded qualities of gentlemen, is forced to admit that, on the whole we seem to have the custom or law of primogeniture sufficiently, but not oversharply defined.' As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone himself must have perceived that a primo- geniture resting on a clause of 'sufficient but not over- sharp' definition is as bad as none at all." We «aw how the law of heredity was applied to the offices of sachems and chiefs among the Iroquois and other Indians. All offices were subject to the vote of the gentiles and for this reason hereditary in the gens. A vacancy was filled preferably by the next gentile relative— the brother or the sister's son— unless good reasons existed for passing him. That in Greece, under paternal law, the office of basileus was gener- ally transmitted to the son or one of the sons, indicates only that the probability of succession by public elec- tion was in favor of the sons. It implies by no means a legal succession without a vote of the people. We here perceive simply the first rudiments of segregated families of aristocrats among Iroquois and Greeks, which led to a hereditary leadership or monarchy in Greece. Hence the facts are in favor of the opinion that among Greeks the basileus was either elected by the people or at last was subject to the indorsement of their appointed organs, the council or agora, aa was the case with the Roman king (rex). 128 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY In the Iliad the ruler of men, Agamemnon, does not appear as the supreme king of the Greeks, but as general in chief of a federal army besieging a city. And when dissensions had broken out among the Greeks, it is this quality which Odysseus points out In a famous passage: "Evil is the rule of the many; let one be the ruler, one the chief" (to which the popu- lar verse about the scepter was added later on). Odys- seus does not lecture on the form of government, but demands obedience to the general in chief. Considering that the Greeks before Troy appear only In the character of an army, the proceedings of the agora are sufficiently democratic. In referring to presents, that is the division of the spoils, Achilles always leaves the division, not to Agamemnon or some other basileus, but to the "sons of the Achaeans," the people. The attributes, descendant of Zeus, bred by Zeus, do not prove anything, because every gens is descended from some god— the gens of the leader of the tribe from a "prominent" god, in this case Zeus. Even those who are without personal freedom, as the swineherd Eumaeos and others, are "divine" (dioi or theioi), even in the Odyssey, which belongs to a much later period than the Iliad. In the same Odyssey, the name of "heros" is given to the herald Mulios as well as to the blind bard Demodokos. In short, the word "basileia," with which the Greek writers designate the so-called monarchy of Homer (because the mili- tary leadership is its distinguishing mark, by the side of which the council and the agora are existing), means simply— military democracy (Marx). The basileus had also sacerdotal and judiciary func- tions beside those of a military leader. The judiciary- functions are not clearly defined, but the functions of priesthood are due to his position of chief representa- tive of the tribe or of the league of tribes. There is never any mention of civil, administrative functions. THE GRECIAN GENS 129 But it seems that he was ex-oflacio a member of the council. The translation of basileus by king is etymologically quite correct, because king (Kuning) is derived from Kuni, Kunne, and signifies chief of a gens. But the modern meaning of the word king in no way designates the functions of the Grecian basileus. Thucydides expressly refers to the old basileia as patrike, that is "derived from the gens," and states that it had well defined functions. And Aristotle says that the basileia of heroic times was a leadership of free men and that the basileus was a military chief, a judge and a high priest. Hence the basileus had no governmental power in a modern sense.* In the Grecian constitution of heroic times, then, we still find the old gentilism fully alive, but we also perceive the beginnings of the elements that under- mine it; paternal law and inheritance of property by the father's children, favoring accumulation of wealth in the family and giving to the latter a power apart from the gens; influence of the difference of wealth on the constitution by the formation of the first rudi- ments of hereditary nobility and monarchy; slavery, first limited to prisoners of war, but already paving the way to the enslavement of tribal and gentile asso- ciates; degeneration of the old feuds between tribes a regular mode of existing by systematic plundering on Author's note. *Just as the Grecian basileus, so the Aztec military chief was misrepresented as a modern prince. Morgan was the first to submit to historical criticism the reports of the Spaniards who first misapprehended and exaggerated, and later on consciously misrepresented the functions of this office. He showed that the Mexicans were in the middle stage of barbarism, but on a higher plane than the New Mexican Pueblo Indians, and that their constitution, so far as the garbled accounts show, corresponded to this stage: a league of three tribes which had made a number of others tribu- tary and was administered by a federal council and a federal chief of war, whom the Spaniards construed into an "emperor." 130 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY land and sea for the purpose of acquiring cattle, slaves, and treasures. In ^hort, wealth is praised and respected as the highest treasure, and the old gen- tile institutions are abused in order to justify the forcible robbery of wealth. Only one thing was miss- ing: an institution that not only secured the newly acquired property of private individuals against the communistic traditions of the gens, that not only declared as sacred the formerly so despised private property and represented the protection of this sacred property as the highest purpose of human society, but that also stamped the gradually developing new forms of acquiring property, of constantly increasing wealth, with the universal sanction of society. An institution that lent the character of perpetuity not only to the newly rising division into classes, but also to the right of the possessing classes to exploit and rule the non- possessing classes. And this institution was found. The state arose. CHAPTER V. ORIGIN OF THE ATTIC STATE. How the state gradually developed by partly trans- forming the organs of the gentile constitution, partly replacing them by new organs and finally installing real state authorities; how the place of the nation in arms defending itself through its gentes, phratries and tribes, was taken by an armed public power of coercion in the hands of these authorities and avail- able against the mass of the people; nowhere can we observe the first act of this drama so well as In ancient Athens. The essential stages of the various transformations are outlined by Morgan, but the analysis of the economic causes producing them is largely added by myself. In the heroic period, the four tribes of the Athenians were still installed in separate parts of Attica. Even the twelve phratries composing them seem to have had separate seats in the twelve different towns of Cecrops. The constitution was in harmony with the period: a public meeting (agora), a council (bGle) and a basileus. As far back as we can trace written history we find the land divided up and in the possession of pri- vate individuals. For during the last period of the higher stage of barbarism the production of commodi- ties and the resulting trade had well advanced. Grain, wine and oil were staple articles. The sea trade on the Aegean Sea drifted more and more out of the hands of the Phoenicians into those of the Athenians. By the purchase and sale of land, by continued divis- ion of labor between agriculture and industry, trade 132 THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY and navigation, the members of gentes, phratries and tribes very soon intermingled. The districts of the phratry and the tribe received inhabitants who did not belong to these bodies and, therefore, were strangers in their own homes, although they were countrymen. For during times of peace, every phratry and every tribe administered its own affairs without consulting the council of Athens or the basileus. But Inhabitants not belonging to the phratry or the tribe could not take part in the administration of these bodies. Thus the well-regulated functions of the gentile organs became so disarranged that relief was already needed during the heroic period. A constitution attrib- uted to Theseus was introduced. The main feature of this change was the institution of a central admin- istration in Athens. A part of the affairs that had so long been conducted autonomously by the tribes was declared collective business and transferred to a gen- eral council in Athens. This step of the Athenians went farther than any ever taken by the nations of America. For the simple federation of autonomous tribes was now replaced by the conglomeration of all tribes into one single body. The next result was a common Athenian law, standing above the legal tradi- tions of the tribes and gentes. It bestowed on the citizens of Athens certain privileges and legal protec- tion, even in a territory that did not belong to their tribe. This meant another blow to the gentile consti- tution; for it opened the way to the admission of citizens who were not members of any Attic tribe and stood entirely outside of the Athenian gentile con- stitution. A second institution attributed to Theseus was the division of the entire nation into three classes regard- less of the gentes, phratries and f^ibes: eupatrides or nobles, geomoroi or farmers. ap