Note 370.1 — Chapter XIV · MARRIAGE RITES.

From these examples, and many more might be cited, it is obvious that the purchase was made by the clan, just as the capture was probably made by the clan. And we might well expect to find that the clan, and not merely the individual, acquired by the act rights over the bride, such as would be expressed in the rude Nasamonian custom, and in the Bride-dance and other survivals of modern Europe. I have only space for a few examples indicating community of wives or of husbands. But the subject has been so exhaustively treated by anthropologists of distinction that little more than a passing notice is needful. An observation or two must, however, be made first of all, in reference alike to the examples that follow, and to those I have cited in previous pages. When we read, whether in classical writers or in the works of modern travellers, of community of women, we must always beware of giving the words the meaning of absolute promiscuity. Very strong evidence, and not merely that of writers imperfectly acquainted with the language and customs of a savage people, is called for to establish absolute promiscuity. But limited promiscuity among the members of a clan is a different matter. As a savage practice it is beyond doubt; and I have already pointed out that it owes its origin to the solidarity of the kindred in the lower culture. We must fully grasp the meaning of this solidarity if we would avoid the twofold chance of error in descriptions of savage life and the inferences to be drawn from them. The chance of error too, it may be parenthetically observed, is not confined to marriage ceremonies, nor to the abiding customs of the conjugal relation; but we must guard against it on many other occasions, as for instance those described in the last chapter. Travellers having but a superficial knowledge of the peoples they describe—especially in the days before savage kinship had become the subject of scientific investigation—are not careful to define, because they do not understand, the relationship of members of a tribe to one another. Their vague expressions “relatives” and “friends” are therefore subject to interpretation by what has been ascertained of clan-organisation, if we would avoid one source of error. But there is a further consideration which ought not to be overlooked. The clan system has rarely been found complete and unimpaired. The evolution of civilisation is always modifying it, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. Consequently ceremonies limited in theory to the clan-brethren display a constant tendency on the one side to limitation to the smaller circle of the family, as the family is evolved from the clan; and on the other side to extension among the intimate friends and relatives of the person chiefly concerned, as blood-relationship begins to be recognised outside the clan, and as the ties of friendship are knit between man and man regardless of kinship. Herein lies our other difficulty. The criticism that the privileges we are discussing are not recorded as belonging to the members of one group only, though it applies with greater force to the instances mentioned by classical writers, who understood the gentile system, than to modern writers who do not understand it, is by no means enough to dispose of the evidence where such record is wanting. Unfortunately we cannot cross-examine the writers. We can, however, and we must, read their accounts by the light of more accurate investigations. We shall then be inclined to admit that most of the cases alleged are not referable to phallic worship, nor to an outbreak of indiscriminate licence occurring in the midst of long-established monogamy, to which they are sometimes ascribed.370.1