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was a Dog clan among the Mohicans; but we have no evidence to show that the dog was sacred to the Cynadæ. . . . On the other hand, storks were revered by the Thessalians, but there is nothing to show that there was a stork clan in Thessaly.'1 Wolves were buried solemnly in Attica, where there was a wolf hero, and lobsters were buried in Seriphos, like the gazelle in Arabia. But we have no evidence of a wolf kin in Attica, though we have in Italy (the Hirpi) nor of a lobster kin in Seriphos. (For other traces, fairly numerous, I may refer to my Custom and Myth, and Myth, Ritual, and Religion, while deprecating the idea that all worship or reverence of animals is of totemistic origin.)

It will probably be admitted that, if Greeks (or ancient dwellers on Greek soil) were at some remote period totemistic, and next, by reckoning descent in the male line, became attached to localities, then something like demes, phratries, and yévŋ might very naturally be evolved. And many traces in ritual, myth, and custom do point to Totemism in the remote past. Indeed, it is remarkable that we should still be able to point to so many apparent relics of institutions already almost obliterated among the Melanesians.

On the whole, I regard it as more probable than not, that, in the education of mankind, Totemism has played a part everywhere; a beneficent part. But this is only a private opinion: one believes in it as one believes in telepathy, without asserting that the evidence is of constraining value.

1 Introduction to the History of Religion, pp. 125–126,

PRIMAL LAW

CHAPTER I

MAN IN THE BRUTAL STAGE

Mr. Darwin on the primitive relations of the sexes.-Primitive man monogamous or polygamous.-His jealousy.-Expulsion of young males.-The author's inferences as to the evolution of Primal Law.-A customary Rule of Conduct evolved.-Traces surviving in savage life.-The customs of Avoidance.-Custom of Exogamy arose in the animal stage. -Brother and Sister Avoidance.-The author's own observation of this custom in New Caledonia.-Strangeness of such a custom among houseless nomads in Australia.-Rapid decay under European influences.

'MAN, as I have attempted to show, is certainly descended from some Apelike Creature. We may, indeed, conclude, from what we know of the jealousy of all Male Quadrupeds, armed as many of them are with special weapons for battling with their rivals, that promiscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far enough back in the Stream of Time, and judging from the Social habits of Man as he now exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other Men. Or he may not have been a social animal1 and yet have lived with several wives like the Gorilla-for all the natives agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or

1 Mr. Atkinson's theory is based on the idea that our supposed anthropoid ancestor was eminently unsocial.-A. L.

P

driving out the others, establishes himself as head of the Community.

"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family.'1

Mr. Darwin, in the foregoing sentences, affirms the improbability of Promiscuity in the Sexual Relations of Man during the Animal Stage, and, incidentally, the Unity of the Human Race in its origin. Both theories are contested. The following thesis, however, on the Genesis of Primal Law in Human Marriage, treats of a conjectural series of events in the Ascent of Man, events which involve a state of the intersexual relationships amidst our primitive ancestors identical with that portrayed in the Descent of Man. My essay includes further, as regards the continued evolution of society, the development of a theory, based on my Primal Law,' which, if correct, would seem also to confirm Mr. Darwin's ideas as to Unity of Origin.

I am content, for my part, to hope that my hypothesis, however novel some of its conclusions, is in its general tenor in accord with the views of so great a naturalist as Mr. Darwin. His exposition of the probable relations, within the family group, of the male and female prototypes of mankind, and more especially of the antagonistic attitude, inter se, of the older and younger males, is indeed literally prophetic of the Primal Law, whose existence I surmise. This law is the inevitable corollary of Mr. Darwin's statement, if Man was ever to emerge from the Brute. My theory, in fact, viewed as to its genesis, is simply evolved from a consideration of the potential results of the attitude of such creatures as our ancestors then were, when subjected to the effects of those changes of environment, which alone, to my deeming, could have fixed modifications towards the human type. Mr. Darwin's premises, indeed, as to the Early Social economy of our Race in the animal stage, inevitably 1 Darwin, Descent of Man, ii. 361–363 (1871).

entail, if progress was to be made, the evolution of law in regulation of Marriage relationship, having regard to the fierce sexual jealousy of the males, on the one hand, and on the other to the patent truth that in the peaceful aggregation of our ancestors alone lay the germ of Society.

This would above all be the case if, reasoning by analogy, we provisionally accept, as the probable nearest approach to man's direct ancestors, the actual Anthropoids. These, such as the Gorilla, are undoubtedly amongst the most unsocial of animals as regards the attitude of the adult males inter se. From the very difficulty of the problem of the congregation of such creatures in friendly unison within the group, we may infer that, in its solution, there will be found the key to the whole question of the Ascent from Brute to Man. In that ascent, Habit, the parent of Law, must have been conquered, and modified into the direction of novel Custom, a shock to the older economy of life. Again, the new rule of conduct, necessarily inchoate (considering the presumed feeble intellectuality of the creatures concerned, animals more or less brutish) must yet be of facile interpretation to its subjects, though, as befits Homo alalus, it must have been quite mute in operation. The new Rule of Conduct would not be expressed in terms of speech, a function, ex hypothesi, not yet evolved. The rule, as it was to my mind, I here propose to attempt to unfold as the Primal Law;' hoping to show that therein lay the beginning of law and order, and that, whilst itself arising in a natural manner, in its incidental creation of a first standard of a possible right and wrong, it laid, so to speak, one of the foundations of that moral sense, which has seemed to place so wide a space between man and other creatures.

The prior existence of this law, in the semi-brutish stage of our physical and ethical evolution, might have been deductively evolved, even if no traces of it had remained to our day. It will be, however, my endeavour to point out that evidence of its existence (abundant as it appears to me) is to be found in certain obscure customs which are common to