and head, walked across the Nuchuk mountain pass mid snow and ice with perfect impunity.

These two cases cannot but be regarded as truly typical specimens of transmitted hereditary bodily capacity to endure hardships. For here we have the children of two entirely different races of men—one in the north of North America, the other at the extreme south of South America-enduring with impunity a temperature of the atmosphere so low, that if the children, similarly aged, of a highly civilised European were subjected to it, they would inevitably shiver, freeze, and die in the space of an hour or two.

These cases, Dr. George Harley thought, afforded additional evidence that a high standard of bodily recuperative power is naturally inherent in the human race, while the formerly cited examples of an opposite character, go far to show that the refining influences of civilisation have in reality not proved such an unalloyed boon to mankind as is usually imagined, and that all the present races of men, though they may be of the same flesh and blood, are not endowed with the same degree of bodily sensibility and recuperative vitality, and while they may be further said to account for the well known fact that the present race of delicately nurtured women are the victims of migraines, and neuralgias, which were as much unknown, even by name, to their great grandmothers, as they are to the present races of out-door labourers and uneducated savages.

The following paper was then read by the Author :-

On the EVIDENCE for MR. MCLENNAN'S THEORY of the
PRIMITIVE HUMAN HORDE.

By G. L. GOMME, Esq.

WHEN We come to look into Mr. McLennan's evidence, and to examine his theory on the origin and development of social forms, we are struck by the fact that he nowhere states the evidence for his first stage-the primitive human horde. He starts "from the conception of populations, the units of which were homogeneous groups or tribes," and which did not possess any system of blood kinship'; but beyond the fact that the assumption thus made fits in remarkably well with all the later stages of his theory, which are amply supported by evidence, he does not critically examine the evidence for the primitive horde. Even the title-the horde-which I have ventured to assume is

Studies in Ancient History," pp. 127, 153.

that which best expresses Mr. McLennan's meaning, is only used by Mr. McLennan himself incidentally; and occasionally, as in the quotation just used, it gives way to the less exact terminology of "populations," "groups," or "tribes."

It is singular that not only Mr. McLennan himself, but none of his able critics has definitely met the proposition which the theory of the primitive human horde clearly places before us. It is just possible that when Sir Henry Maine appeals so forcibly to biology and to savage society for examples of his own theory of parental groups against Mr. McLennan's theory of the horde, he may have in his mind exactly that large body of evidence which Mr. McLennan has left untouched. But then Sir Henry Maine does not proceed to examine this evidence.1 Nor does Mr. Lang, the greatest living authority who supports Mr. McLennan's theories. In fact, almost all the enquiries which have taken place since Mr. McLennan's researches directly opposed those of Sir Henry Maine, have been bounded and limited by the theory that the earliest social unit was necessarily the family. The family appears in history, in its most archaic form, as the unit of the genealogic tribe. But the tribe, made up of these family units, is just then entering upon its career in the formation of nations-is, in fact, just on the threshold of modern history. And at the back of this union of families is that large body of custom, whatever it may prove to be, from which kinship-formed tribes were developed. Under whatever form of society this body of custom existed, there is no part of it which entitles us to use such a term as "family" in connection with it. It was not a family unit in independence; it was not a group of family units bound by kinship ties. If, therefore, we may properly dismiss the term family as a scientific appellation for the earliest group of human beings, and if we may consistently call it the horde, borrowing the term from Mr. McLennan, we shall, at least, be clearing the way to prevent a misconception from a confusion in terminology. It may be as time goes on, and, as evidence increases, that some modifications in the conception of the horde will arise; but the point to be insisted upon now is that the term horde does not convey any special associations with modern history, and that it most probably will, therefore, gradually assume the meaning with which scientific research will in future endow it.

Mr. McLennan's conclusions, derived, be it observed, from

1 See "Early Law and Custom," p. 192.

24

Early History of the Family," in his "Custom and Myth."

3 See Mr. C. S. Wake's article on "The Primitive Human Family," in the "Journ. Anthrop. Inst.," vol. ix; and Mr. Lang concedes this point to Sir Henry Maine, in his "Custom and Myth."

phenomena found to exist in savage races inhabiting all parts of the world, may be shortly stated as follows:

1. That the earliest human mode of living recognised no
basis of blood relationship, the association between the
sexes being best described by the term promiscuity,
and the children at this stage belonging to the horde.
2. That there existed within the horde the conception of
stocks, such stocks being found to be always exogamous,
i.e., the members of any stock may not marry within
their own stock, but must obtain wives, or husbands,
from other stocks.

3. That the scarcity of women produced a rude system of
polyandry, i.e., one wife between several husbands.
4. That blood relationship to the mother first became
recognised, and hence arose a system of kinship
through females only.

5. That the constant state of war between group and group
necessitated the capture of wives from foreign groups.
6. That in course of time this system of kinship through
females and exogamous marriages would produce
heterogeneous groups, each group containing within
itself members of several other groups (the children of
the women of such other groups).

7. That these heterogeneous groups would therefore contain within themselves all the conditions of exogamous marriages, and that hence members of the same local group, being of different kinship, could marry.

8. That from these conditions of early society would arise a recognition of paternity, and hence a system of kinship through males as well as females.

Now it is clear that to make the various stages of this theory perfectly consistent one with another, we ought to know something about the conditions which formed the human horde from which was developed all the subsequent phenomena of early human society. Mr. McLennan has arrived at his first stage by the exhaustive examination of the evidence which proves his later stages, and he practically postulates that granting his general conclusions the human horde must have been the earliest stage of man's existence. To Mr. McLennan himself we may perhaps be inclined to admit his full right to so deal with the subject; but it is, at all events, a matter which deserves some degree of independent treatment, and it is in this light that I propose to deal with it. My question is, Is there any evidence, other than that based upon simple argument, of the earliest stage of human society, the primitive horde?

In the first place we will turn to the biological evidence. At the outset it is important to note that the great authority of Mr. Darwin cannot be claimed so completely on the side of the origin of society in the parental group as Sir Henry Maine would seem to imply. He quotes from Mr. Darwin ("Descent of Man," I, 362), a passage from which I will only re-quote one sentence, "in primeval times men . . . . would probably have lived as polygamists or temporarily as monogamists." But Mr. Darwin has another passage ("Descent of Man," I, 84) which directly opposes the theory of original parental groups. "Some authors," he says, "suppose that man primevally lived in single families; but at the present day though single families, or only two or three together, roam the solitude of some savage lands, they are always, as far as I can discover, friendly with other families inhabiting the same district." It is this complex group then, from which the history of man has to start. But there are other points insisted upon by Sir Henry Maine, and these are, rightly enough, those where Darwin, summarising his evidence as to man's primeval condition, asserts that "their intercourse, judging from analogy, would not then have been promiscuous," and they "would not at that period have partially lost one of the strongest of all instincts common to all the lower animals, namely, the love of their young offspring" (II, 367). These results from the biological evidence are brought to bear against Mr. McLennan's conception of the characteristics of the horde, and they must form the starting point for our researches.

Mr. McLennan has used certain expressions in his description of the condition of early man which have proved to be not only the centre point of attack by those who oppose his general theory, but which have entirely diverted attention from much more important conclusions resulting from the theory. The chief of these expressions is that of "utter promiscuity" as a description of the marital conditions of early man. Now of "utter promiscuity" there is no evidence from the types of savage society now extant. The nearest we get to it is "temporary monandry," as Mr. Darwin terms it, which consists of the choice by a woman of a husband, who is husband just so long as offspring is begotten and requires protection. That the period during which man, woman, and child kept together was in the earliest natural development of human life of much longer duration than modern civilisation allows to be necessary is asserted by Mr. Fiske and allowed by Mr. Herbert Spencer.1 "Children not so soon capable of providing for themselves had to be longer nurtured by female parents, to some extent aided

1 66 'Principles of Sociology," i, pp. 56, 630.

by male parents." But as soon as offspring were capable of taking care of themselves the parental tie was snapped. The children would certainly go their own ways-the male to become in his turn a hunter and fisher, more or less connected with his fellow man, the female to become the partner of her accepted lover. It is impossible to conceive parental affection extending beyond the period when such steps were taken, and the evidence of later marital relationships makes it impossible to conceive that the union of the parents would continue.1

But just as there is no excuse for calling this system of temporary monandry by such a historical term as family, so there is no excuse for using the term utter promiscuity." There is no reason again to suppose that "paternity" was uncertain and, was, therefore, incapable of being recognised. Both paternity and maternity were certain, and they were fully recognised. Where the break occurs between this primordial system and the later system is that the recognition was simply one caused by natural instincts, and that it was temporary in its duration and quickly became lost. In short, the relationship between the sexes was a natural and not a political relationship. Because primordial men did not, throughout life, recognise a bond of affection for offspring, and did not use the potent fact of kinship to constitute a social unit, it does not follow that they did not know of the paternal and maternal instincts, were not influenced by sexual jealousy, and did not know of the connection between parent and child. All that can be said of them is that they did not use these several natural facts to produce artificial, or, as it is best to say, political combinations. Biology therefore teaches us this: that our primordial ancestors roamed the earth, possessing all the natural instincts, but without the capacity of using these instincts for any political purpose. There is a vast difference between the absolute nonrecognition of the ties of parental kinship, and the non-use of them for the purpose of generating a new departure in the ways of man, and in this difference will be found all that is to be said against Mr. McLennan's terminology. If we can only thoroughly grasp the fact that the ties of kinship, whether male or female, are in every sense artificial conceptions, and that consequently their introduction must have been preceded by a long period of natural combinations of human beings, we gain the first important step in the history of the primitive human horde."

1 Many examples exist in savage society where the parents separate after the birth of a child.

2 Mr. McLennan says "the development of the idea of blood relationship into a system of kinship must have been a work of time."- "Studies in Ancient History," p. 84.