The river press., 1886-11-24

greater dDL1tauC dtll aCutCl0oS4 II
led to him through numerous generations
IF ancestors.
Language is more diverse among uncul-
Eured races, than among races possessed
Of literature. Writing crystalizes a :
language, by establishing a standard. The ,
more barbarous people are, the more apt :
is their language to disunite and form ;
other languages. Widely apart, in Ian
guage and disposition, as the Irishman
and the Brahman, the Russian and the
Italian have been since the dawn Of his
tory, there is no doubt, but what they as
well as the other Aryan nations, were at
Aryan tribe.
The Greeks had their Golden, and the
Jews their Patriarchal Age, an age, in
which the critical observer can notice the
blighting effects Of polygamy, but which
has long been held up as an example to a
degenerate posterity. This age has long
been supposed to be the origin of the fami-
" and the tribe Modern research flatly
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propositions. Science is no longer Of the
opinion, that tribes and lations have been
evolved from the family. The family, as
we now see it, is of comparatively recent
date. 1t had to be evolved like every
thing else. In the same manner, the be-
lief has prevailed in most minds, that
.nonagamy was the first law of marriage
and that polyandry and polygamy have
been vicious departures from a known
rule.
The development of the family may be
classed in the following order: lst, Promis-
cuity; Cd, polyandry; Sd, polygamy, and
lastly, monagamy.
Man is social animal and gathered into
hordes. These hordes, were probably not
only recruited from within by births, but
from without by capture of women and
children. The children Of this human
horde would no more know their fathers
than the colts among a band OF horses.
But they would know their mother, and
the family had its first origin IN the
grouping Of the children round the mother.
The children were first related to the
horde; secondly TO their mother: thirdly to
their father, and it is only in compara-
lively recent times that they have been
regarded as related to both. These facts
throw food of light on numerous state
rnenEs n classical literature, and on the
customs Of savages and partially civilized
people of our day.
| Travellers, of all ages, in their wander
ings have noticed with surprise among
uncivilized races, not the family, but
promiscuity and polyandry. They have
alleged that the woman, not the man, was
really the head of the household, and that
descent was traced through the female
line. The evidence gathered on the SUBJ
ject us overwhelming, but the want of
space forbids its introduction.
Caesar says Of the ancient Britains !:
s'Ten or twelve men have wives in COM
mon and chiefly brothers, The Hindus
i have a tradition when fswomen were un-
confined and roamed at their pleasure
X X y X X
this ancient custom is even now the rule
for brutes.' In Thibet among thirty mill
lions of respectable people, the custom is
for woman to have several brothers as
Joint husbands. Among our own Indians,
las other savages, the loan of a wife is a
common act of hospitality. Gould, in his
History of Germany, says: "Whoeyer has
attended a village wedding in the Black
Forest, and has seen the bride chased by
the bridegroom, and knows anything OF
early civilization, discerns a relic of the
bride capture of primitiye times. The
speared bride among the Tartars is proud
of her scars but Tenelli with the bitten
cheek, in the schWazWold, resented a
recurrence to barbarous practice and broke
with her lover for marking her for life"
Hundreds Of examples could be given OF
descent being traced to the mother, and
among the Basques, women inherited
property by the exclusion Of the males as
late as the eighteenth century.
Under the idea OF motherhood, proba-
bly, came mans first attempts at a religion,
having as q principle the worship OF
Mother Earth, the fountain Of his exis-
tence.
The progress of man has thus up to the
present time been steadily forward, and
Judging from the past, it will be as rapid
in the future. Tylor, III his ''Early Cul-
ture'' has expressed this in language that
must be subscribed to by every intelligent
man: We may fancy ourselves looking
on civilization as in personal figure she
traverses the world we see her lingering
| or resting by the way and often deviating
Into paths that bring her toiling back to
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