CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MATERNAL FAMILY.
I. The Familial Clan and the Family properly so-called.—The probable evolution of the family—It cannot have been uniform—Why the uterine family has been common.
II. The Family in Africa.—The maternal family among the negroes of Africa, in Egypt, in Abyssinia, in Madagascar, among the Arabs and Kabyles.
III. The Family in Malaya.
IV. The Family among the Naïrs of Malabar.—The female progenitrix, the mother-bee—The uncle among the Naïrs.
V. The Family among the Aborigines of Bengal.—Co-existence of the maternal and paternal family; exogamy and endogamy.
VI. The Couvade.—It exists in very different countries—The couvade in antiquity—The couvade in contemporary Europe—Signification of the couvade.
VII. The Primitive Family.
I. The Familial Clan and the Family properly so-called.
At the conclusion of the preceding chapter I have ventured to sketch the probable evolution of the family, or at least that which must have been effected among the greater number of Melanesians, Polynesians, American Redskins, Tamils, and ancient Mongols. The small primitive societies founded by these races seem to have begun, not with the family, in the sense we give to this word, but by groups of consanguine individuals with still very confused filiation. The familial form which first emerged from this primitive clan was most often a matrimonial association between several sisters on the one hand and several brothers on the other. Then, from this household, at once polygamic and polyandric, sprang sometimes the polyandric family, when several brothers had a single wife in common, and sometimes the polygynic family, when a single man married or bought several women, who might, or might not, be sisters to each other.
But has the familial group evolved in the same manner all over the earth and among all races? Except for the countries previously enumerated, precise and detailed information is wanting, and we are reduced to conjectures which are more or less probable. With rare exceptions, the races which it remains for us to examine have definitely emerged from primitive familial confusion, and they have adopted either maternal or paternal filiation. Have they first passed through the familial clan with classes of fictitious or real relations? We cannot certainly affirm it. The existence of a totem and the custom of exogamy seem to bear witness in favour of this hypothesis; but these are insufficient proofs. The totem does not necessarily imply consanguinity; and exogamy may be dictated by very diverse reasons, for we often find exogamic tribes living side by side with endogamic tribes.
What is still more general than the clan, is the institution of the maternal family, or uterine filiation; but this familial type is not invariably deduced from a previous familial clan. Among many animal species the maternal family exists without there ever having been either clan or gens. As a matter of fact, in humanity as well as in animality, the uterine family establishes itself spontaneously, whenever the male abandons the female and her progeny. This familial type will therefore necessarily appear in every horde where there is no durable pairing of males and females, of men and women. In every ethnic group living in promiscuity, for example, uterine filiation shows itself, and it will be the same under a polyandric régime, unless fictitious paternity is established. In short, for the adoption of the paternal family, it is imperative that the wives should be appropriated by a particular man, though it is of no importance whether the marriage be monogamic or polygamic. But this possession of one or more women by one man to the exclusion of all others, presupposes already a complex social condition, which has necessarily been preceded by a period of gross savagery, when only uterine filiation was possible. Now, it is a rule that ancient customs endure for a long time, and survive the social condition which had given birth to them.
The uterine family is far from being rare in negro Africa, but this does not in any way hinder the man from exercising a discretionary power over his wife or wives, and still more over his children. We have previously seen how lamentable the fate of woman is among the negro Africans, and how excessive are “the rights of the father of the family,” since he can traffic in his children without rebuke. This virile despotism may easily coexist with the adoption of uterine filiation. In one Kaffir tribe, the men used their own children to bait their traps for catching lions,[976] and yet maternal filiation prevails in Kaffraria; only it does not govern inheritance. This mode of filiation is adopted by other races as well as Kaffirs. “In Guinea,” says Bosman,[977] “if it pleases the daughter of a king to marry a slave, her children are free.” Among the Fantees, the chief slave has the rights of succession, to the exclusion of the son; but the latter is only deprived of paternal succession; the property of his mother, as distinct from that of his father, comes to him.[978] At Dahomey there seems to be, in the royal family, a symbolic survival of the maternal family. At the death of the king, his sister exercises a regency of several days, and her duty is to occupy the throne in reality, and to remain seated on it as long as a successor has not been appointed.[979] But this does not in any way hinder the populations of Dahomey from adopting as a general custom, not only masculine succession, but even the right of primogeniture.[980] Barbarous as Dahomey may be, it is already a society of too complex a structure to accommodate itself easily to the maternal family. Has this savage mode of filiation been formerly in use there? It is possible; but the short regency of the king’s sister is a very insufficient proof of it. In eastern Africa, among the Vouazegouras, and also among the Bangalas of Cassanga, the uncle has the indefeasible right to sell his nephews, and in so doing he has the strong approval of public opinion. “Why,” say they, “should a man remain in need while his brothers and sisters have children?” Yet this relates to tribes long under Arab influence. In the same region, the Vouamrimas generally consider the son of their sister as their heir, in preference to their own children.[981] Among the Bazes and the Bareas, succession is also in the maternal line, and the heirs are, in the first degree, the eldest son of the eldest sister; and in the second degree, the second son of the same sister,[982] etc. In southern Africa the children belong to the maternal uncle, who also has the right to sell them.[983] It is the same among the Basuto Kaffirs. With these last, as a Kaffir chief informed me, it is again the nephew who succeeds to the throne.[984] The Makololo Kaffirs, however, seem to be in process of adopting paternal filiation; or at least they combine it with maternal filiation, by compelling the husband, as Livingstone informs us, to redeem his children by the payment of a tax, without which they would belong to the maternal grandfather.
In short, there is no uniform rule among the Kaffirs, for Levaillant has seen a tribe with whom the inheritance was transmitted at a man’s death to his wife and male children, to the exclusion of the daughters,[985] which is again a transitional régime.
In some districts of central Africa, among populations that are half-civilised, and more or less converted to Mahometanism, matriarchal customs still persist. On the Niger, at Wowow and at Boussa, it is the grandmother who grants or refuses to her grand-daughter the permission to marry.[986] The curious privilege that, according to Laing, the Soulima have, to quit their husband when they please, is perhaps of matriarchal origin also.[987]
The exogamy of the clan, which frequently coexists with uterine filiation, is met with here and there in Africa. Burton has proved the existence of it among the Somals,[988] and Du Chaillu has found it at the Gaboon.[989] Traces of the maternal family still exist, or have existed, in African societies that are more or less barbarous, but which have, however, emerged from savagery; in Madagascar, Nubia, Abyssinia, and especially in ancient Egypt. Among the Hovas of Madagascar, not only wealth, but political dignities, and even sacerdotal functions, are transmitted to the nephew, the sister’s son. The Saccalavas do the same as the Hovas, and among them the women of high rank willingly take husbands of inferior rank, who simply become their servants. As for the children, they inherit the rank and rights of their mother.[990] The same customs prevail among the Nubians, or did formerly prevail; the Arab chroniclers tell us that among them the heritage belonged, not to the son of the deceased, but to the nephew, the sister’s son. The Nubians justified this custom pertinaciously, by saying that the consanguinity of the sister’s son had the advantage of being incontestable.[991] And lastly, Nicholas of Damascus says the same thing of the Ethiopians.[992]
Without the proof of any absolutely precise text, we have an accumulation of facts which render it very probable that, in ancient Egypt, maternal filiation was in force. In a preceding chapter I have spoken of the exceptional position granted to the free woman in the kingdom of the Pharaohs. I will recall, in passing, that until the time of Philometor, who deprived women of the right to dispose of their property, the word husband never occurs in marriage deeds.[993] Besides this, public deeds often only mention the mother, up to the time of this same King Philometor, who, being evidently a determined partisan of the patriarchate, ordered the names of contractors to be registered according to the paternal name.[994] Also, in the valley of the Nile, the hieroglyphic funeral inscriptions frequently bear the name of the mother without indicating that of the father, and it is only in demotic inscriptions that paternal filiation is mentioned.[995] We must add that in Egypt women could reign, and that during the lifetime of the monarch who was their husband they divided with him the sovereign honours, and even, according to Diodorus,[996] received the larger share of them. All these facts seem to attest that in Egypt free women enjoyed an exceptionally favourable position, and they render probable the ancient existence of uterine filiation in the valley of the Nile. There are, however, some contradictory facts, especially the genealogy of the chief priests, of which Herodotus speaks, and also the incestuous endogamy customary in the royal families. According to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests showed him, at Thebes, three hundred and forty-one wooden statues representing high-priests, all born one of the other in the masculine line: “Each of these statues,” he says, “represents a Piromis born of a Piromis.”[997] From which it would result that in Egypt, at least in the sacerdotal caste, masculine filiation was established from the highest antiquity, for a hundred and forty-one generations represent something like ten or eleven thousand years. Maternal filiation is also generally connected with exogamy, while the Pharaohs habitually married their sisters. According to Diodorus, this was even obligatory.[998] In the ancient royal records the qualities of sister and wife of kings are often found united. Under the Ptolemies, all the queens have borne both these titles; and we may perhaps refer to an ancient tradition of Egyptian origin certain customs which recently existed in the Soudan, Abyssinia, and Madagascar. At Massegna, in the Soudan, Barth tells us that Othman Bougoman, Sultan of Massegna, had among his wives one of his sisters and one of his daughters. At the end of the seventeenth century, the sister of the king of Abyssinia displayed a sumptuous style of living peculiarly feminine: “The sister of the emperor appears in public mounted on a mule richly caparisoned, having by her side her women bearing a daïs over her. From four to five hundred women surround her, singing verses in her praise, and playing the tambour in a lively and graceful manner.”[999] And at the present time, among the Malagasy nobility, marriage between brother and sister is very common.[1000]
There is certainly nothing farther from exogamy than marriages between brothers and sisters; but, to say the truth, there is no logical and necessary connection between the form of filiation and exogamic or endogamic customs.
The Malagasy contract what we should call incestuous marriages, while preserving maternal filiation; the Arabs and Kabyles, on the contrary, in obedience to the prescriptions of the Koran, have a horror of incest. The sacred book prohibits a man from taking to wife his mother, daughter, sister, his paternal or maternal aunt, his grand-daughter, his mother-in-law, his daughter-in-law, or even his nurse and foster-sister. A man was not to marry two sisters at the same time.[1001] This is indeed a limited exogamy; and yet the Koran establishes the paternal and even patriarchal family very clearly. The study of the family in Malaya and among the aborigines of India will complete the proof that in the same country, and in the same race, various systems of marriage, family, and filiation, may coexist, and that consequently we must guard against formulating too strict sociological laws in regard to them.
At Sumatra there were three kinds of marriages—1st, the wife, or rather the family of the wife, bought the man, who henceforth became her property, worked for her, possessed nothing of his own, was liable to be dismissed, and could commit no fault without the proprietary family being responsible for it, exactly as the Roman master answered for his slaves; 2nd, the man and the woman could marry on a footing of equality; 3rd, the man bought his wife or wives.[1002] The first form of marriage, that of servitude of the man, who, instead of marrying, is married by the family of his wife, has fallen into desuetude in Malaya, but it has left behind it, in certain districts, the system of maternal filiation. It is the maternal uncle who is the head of the family, or, in default of him, the eldest son of the wife’s family. If there is neither uncle nor son old enough, it is the mother who becomes the head of the family, and the father only takes her place in case she has disappeared, and when all the children are minors. At the death of a man, his property does not go to his wife or children, but to his maternal family, and in the first place to his brothers and sisters. The married man also continues to live in his maternal family; it is the field of his own family that he cultivates, and he only accidentally assists his wife.[1003] In short, under this system the individual, whether man or woman, is not set free in the least from the family in which he is born; it is for this family that the woman bears children; filiation and inheritance must therefore follow the maternal line. But it is not at all the same throughout Malaya. Marsden tells us that a man sometimes buys his wife by giving a sister in exchange;[1004] he must therefore be the proprietor of his sister, and consequently of the wife whom he procures by means of this barter.
In the Arroo Isles the men buy their wives, by giving gongs, clothes, etc., to the parents of the women.[1005]
At Timor the son-in-law buys his wife thus from his father-in-law, and the latter can remain owner of the children if they are not included in the bargain;[1006] but these customs are not easily compatible with the system of the maternal family, and, taken altogether, they prove that in Malaya the family is not by any means constituted in a uniform manner. We shall see that it is the same with the primitive races of India.
IV. The Family among the Naïrs of Malabar.
In the first place, we have to inquire what the family is among the Naïrs of Malabar, whose curious polyandry I have previously described. The Naïrs of Malabar are not by any means savages; they form an aristocratic caste. We have seen how, from a very early age (ten to twelve years), the young Naïr girls, after having been solemnly deflowered by a stranger, who has been paid to perform this task, practised the widest polyandry, without any other restriction than the prohibitions relative to caste and tribe. As is usual and even natural, Naïr polyandry coexists with a system of maternal filiation. Precautions are taken in order that the free and numerous unions of the Naïr ladies should not destroy the family. The Naïr husbands are reduced to the modest rôle of progenitors; and it is to the wife that the fortune of the family belongs. It is not, however, the mother who governs the family, but her brother. To this brother belongs the duty of bringing up his nephews, of protecting them, and of mourning for them, if they happen to die; in reality, he is an avuncular father, and when he dies his nephews inherit his personal property. In the Naïr family the polyandrous mother is much respected, and the next in honour to her is her eldest daughter, who will replace her in her rôle of mother-bee, the producer of children. The Naïr husbands, the fathers, only enter the house of their common wife by turns and on certain days; they have not even the right to sit down by the side of their wife or their children; they are mere passing guests, almost strangers.[1007]
If we regard these facts on a certain side, it appears as if we may at last have found among the Naïrs, in a country where the matriarchate incontestably reigns, the legal pre-eminence of woman over man, or the materna potestas. It is, in fact, the Naïr woman who possesses; it is through her that wealth is transmitted, and, given the régime of free polyandry, it is difficult for Naïr children to know their own father. Moreover, in various polyandric countries of Malabar, the pre-eminence of the woman in the family has influenced the political organisation, and thus an entire female feudal system has arisen, the bonds of suzerainty and vassalage reposing on a fictitious polyandry. Thus, in February 1887, the English journals announced that the Sultan of the Laccadives, having become the vassal of England, had notified to his subjects his new position by means of a proclamation, in which he explained that he had ceased to be the husband and subject of his ancient suzerain, the Bibi of Cannanor; for by a special favour the government of Ceylon had consented to admit him to the number of the husbands, that is to say, of the direct vassals, of the Queen of England. We must note that for the Indians of this region the Queen of England is “the daughter” of the East India Company, and lives in a palace in London with many men. And now what is the real value of this polyandric matriarchate? It is surely more apparent than real. Among the Naïrs, as everywhere else, property assures to the man or woman who possesses it an importance in proportion to its value. The Naïr lady then, being a proprietor, is highly esteemed. But it does not follow that this esteem is equal to undisputed domination. Doubtless among the Naïrs the man, as husband, does not exist; nevertheless he is a warrior, and even a very fierce one. But military force has this in common with money, that it is nowhere despised. Therefore, in the family of his sister, the Naïr man is anything but a subordinate. We have just seen this. It is he who governs and brings up the children of his sister by her numerous husbands. He is, in reality, the chief of his sister’s family, and what he loses as husband he gains as uncle.
Reduced to their true value, the polyandry and the familial régime of the Naïrs still remain a sociological fact of the greatest interest. It is at once the most complete and the most logical of polyandric systems. In reality, the Naïr marriage does not only or specially include groups of brothers or sisters; full liberty is given to the woman, save only the restrictions of class. There is no attempt, as in Thibet, to create a masculine pseudo-filiation, by arbitrarily attributing such or such children to such or such husbands. Among the Naïrs, the maternal family is instituted in all its plenitude; and lastly, their polyandry is in no way thwarted by the proportion of the sexes, for if the woman may contract marriage with several men, each one of the latter in his turn has power to enter several conjugal associations. This matrimonial régime is therefore perfectly compatible with the maintenance of the population and the equilibrium of the sexes.
V. The Family among the Aborigines of Bengal.
If we proceed with our investigations by studying the familial and matrimonial régime of the aborigines of Bengal, we shall find, among populations having probably a common origin, systems of family and marriage which are very dissimilar.
Here and there we discover the maternal family, or customs proving that this familial fashion has formerly been in force.
According to Buchanan, among the Buntar, who are neighbours to the Naïrs, a father is free during his lifetime to make presents to his children, but at his death all that he possesses goes to his sisters and their children. The Kochh, also, have no kinship or succession except through the women. The mothers arrange the marriages; the fathers never interfere, and the husband goes to live with his wife and his mother-in-law, whom he obeys. As for widows, they choose themselves young husbands when they are rich. Among the Yerkalas of Southern India, the maternal uncle has the right to claim for his sons the two eldest daughters of his sister.[1008] Among the Khasias, it is to the son of the sister that the power of the Rajah is transmitted; but this princess (Kunwari) has not the right to marry herself; she is subject to reasons of state, and her husband is chosen by the assembled people.[1009] The Garos have established the rule, that in marriages the right of initiative belongs to the woman; it is the young girl who distinguishes the man of her choice, tells him so, and invites him to follow her. Any advance made by a man is considered as an insult to all the clan (mahari) of the girl, and in order to expiate it, libations of beer and sacrifices of pigs are required, all of them at the expense of the mahari of the man. The marriage of the Garos answers exactly to the ceremony of capture, only the actors change parts; it is here the bridegroom who pretends to refuse the bride, runs away and is conducted by force to his future wife amidst the lamentations of his relations.[1010] At the death of a man, among the Garos, the widow remains mistress of the house, but the other property passes to a collateral heir, who marries the widow and sometimes her daughter also.
If we were to confine ourselves to the consideration and interpretation of these facts only, we might naturally conclude that the familial régime of the aborigines of Bengal is maternal; but contradictory facts are not wanting. Among the Bhuiyas, although the demand in marriage is made by the girls, as with the Garos, the sons receive the names of their male ascendants; the eldest son takes the name of the grandfather; the second son takes that of the great-grandfather, and the names of collaterals are given to the other sons.[1011] Among the Muasis, it is the father who negotiates the marriage of his daughter, or who sells her, rather, for a certain number of measures of rice solemnly measured and delivered.[1012]
Among the Malers of Rajmahal, it is again the father who places his daughter’s hand in that of her future husband and exhorts him to love his wife.[1013] The Kandhs have adopted succession in the masculine line, with a division of property amongst the sons.[1014] The servitude of the women amongst the Korwas is very great; they are oppressed with work, and till the fields and gain the daily bread, whilst the men hunt or repose.[1015] The Mishmis buy their wives, have as many as they can procure, and own them like chattels, since at a man’s death all his wives, except the mother of the heir, pass to the nearest male relation.[1016] Among the Mundas, after the decease of the father of a family, the sons live together until the majority of the youngest of them; they then proceed to divide the property, including their sisters, who are exactly assimilated to cattle.[1017] The Oraons share the widows amongst the brothers and cousins in the same way as the Mundas share their sisters.[1018]
We find, therefore, no uniformity in the familial organisation of the Bengalese aborigines; and it is the same in regard to their exogamy or endogamy. Exogamy is common. Thus the Juangas are divided into exogamous tribes.[1019] The Khonds think it humiliating to marry the women of their own tribe. It is more manly, in their opinion, to go and take a wife from a distant neighbourhood.[1020] The Munniporees are divided into four clans, who do not intermarry.[1021] Among the Santals, it is forbidden to men to marry in their own clan; but their children belong to the paternal clan.[1022] The Limboos (near Darjeeling) are also exogamous, but evidently oscillate between the maternal and paternal family; for the daughters remain in the tribe or rather in the clan of their mother, whilst the sons belong to the paternal clan, but only after the father has paid a certain sum to the mother.[1023] The Garos are divided into several clans or maharis, and, amongst them, a man must not marry in his own clan, but in another appointed clan, in which from time immemorial his family has been accustomed to take wives.
Other aborigines of Bengal are endogamous. Thus it is imperative for the daughters of the Abors to marry in their own clan, or the sun and moon would cease to shine.[1024] According to Heber, the Karens of Tenasserim are more than endogamous, for among them marriages between brother and sister, father and daughter, are frequent enough in the present day.[1025]
What may we deduce from these contradictory facts? A general conclusion, which I have expressed several times over: namely, that in what concerns the evolution of marriage and of the family, there is no absolute law. Nevertheless, by reason of the familial and matrimonial confusion usual in the greater number of primitive societies, maternal filiation has been adopted more often than paternal, and has frequently preceded it.
There is a custom, at first sight extraordinary but still common enough, which must have arisen during transitional epochs, when, polygamic or monogamic marriage having become established, the husbands have exerted themselves to affirm their parental rights, and to substitute masculine filiation for the ancient uterine filiation. In the same way as in certain countries, Abyssinia,[1026] for example, in order to proclaim an adoption, the adoptive father simulates some maternal practice, sometimes goes so far as to offer his breast solemnly to his adoptive son, so, in very different countries, the husband has found no better way to prove his paternity than to simulate childbirth; and hence the very singular custom of the couvade.
At first sight, it seems very foolish for the husband to take to his bed immediately after the delivery of his wife, and for a certain number of days to be nursed and tended by the mother herself.
The existence of the custom has often been questioned. It will not be out of place, therefore, to quote authentic facts which put all doubt to silence. These facts are numerous enough, and have been observed in various parts of the globe; in America, Asia, and Europe.
In New Mexico, among the Lagunero and the Ahomana, when a woman is delivered of a child, the father goes to bed for six or seven days, and scrupulously abstains from eating fish or meat.[1027] As soon as a Carib became a father, he at once went to bed and simulated childbirth by suitable cries and contortions; the women of the hamlet hastened to his side and congratulated him on his happy delivery.[1028] The Choctaw Redskins formerly had an analogous custom. Brett and Im Thurn have observed this “lying-in” among the Indians of Guiana. The father, Brett says, goes to his hammock quite naked, taking the most indecent posture, and he remains there some days as if he were ill, receiving the congratulations of his friends and tended by the women of the neighbourhood, whilst the mother of the new-born infant goes about her cooking without receiving any attention.[1029]
The testimony of the Jesuit Dobritzhoffer, in regard to the Abipones, is not less explicit: “Among the Abipones of South America,” he says, “as soon as the wife has given birth to a child, the husband is put to bed, and carefully tended; he fasts for a certain time. You would swear that it is he who has just been delivered. I had formerly read of this and smiled at it, not being able to credit such folly, and supposing that this barbarous custom was related more as a joke than seriously, but at last I have seen it with my own eyes amongst them.”[1030] More recent testimony confirms what I have just quoted. In 1842 M. Mazé, Commissioner-General in French Guiana, himself proved the custom of couvade among the Indian tribes on the river Oyapok. In 1852 M. Voisin, justice of the peace in a commune of French Guiana, ascending in a canoe the river Mana, received hospitality one night in the hut of some Galibi Indians. On awaking he learned that during the night, and behind a partition of foliage which separated his hammock from the household of his hosts, a child had been born. The mother had uttered no sound, and at daybreak M. Voisin saw her go to the river-side and make her toilet, then take her new-born child and throw it several times into the water, catching it as it rose to the surface, and then wiping it with her hands. The husband, on the contrary, remained all the while in his hammock, acting the invalid, and receiving with the greatest seriousness the attention lavished on him by his wife.[1031]
The couvade comedy is not always so complete. In certain tribes it is attenuated, and becomes more symbolic.
Thus in California, when the mother is delivered, the father is content to keep to the house and abstain from eating fish and meat.[1032]
Among various tribes of South America the husband of the woman limits the practice to a few hygienic precautions; this is the couvade reduced to its simplest expression.[1033]
This custom was found in Asia, among the Tartars, by Marco Polo. It still exists in Bengal, among the Larkas, although attenuated; on the occasion of a birth the parents quit the house, the wife and husband are both declared unclean for eight days, and during that time the husband cooks the food. After which the masculine filiation of the child is proclaimed by solemnly giving him the name of his grandfather.[1034] We shall be mistaken if we imagine that the couvade is special to very inferior races. The Greco-Roman writers have quoted a certain number of examples observed among the barbarians of the ancient world. Strabo relates that the Iberian women, after the example of those of the Celts, Thracians, and Scythians, quit their beds as soon as they are delivered, and give them up to their husbands, whom they tend.[1035] Diodorus tells us that in Corsica, after a woman has given birth to a child, the husband goes to bed as if he were ill, and he remains there an appointed number of days like a lying-in woman.[1036]
In his Argonautica Apollonius of Rhodes speaks of a people of Tibarenedes, on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, who had the custom of the couvade: “As soon as the married women are delivered, their husbands groan, lie on beds, and cover their heads. All this time their wives give them strengthening food, and prepare baths for them suitable for lying-in women.”[1037] It is probable that more than one trace of this “lying-in” still exists in Europe, in superstitious and popular practices. Quite recently a Russian has informed me that it is still in use in the Baltic provinces, but naturally in a form of survival in which the meaning is lost. It is, however, complete enough; the husband goes to bed, utters groans and cries, and his neighbours hasten to his side. And lastly, M. Léon Donnat told me lately that he had discovered the couvade still practised in the little island of Marken, in the Zuydersee.
However strange it may be, a custom that is thus widely spread in countries, races, and epochs extremely diverse must have had a serious raison d’être. It cannot be attributed to mere caprice.
Now the only plausible explanation is that which gives to the couvade the value of our registry of birth. Not, perhaps, all over the world, but here and there, at the moment when the effort was being made to found the paternal family, or at least to determine masculine filiation, some very simple-minded tribes conceived the idea of symbolising the share of the man in procreation by the gross mimicry of childbirth. By this practice, so well calculated to strike the attention, the father openly affirmed his paternity, and doubtless acquired certain rights over the new-born child. Let us note that the custom has been especially preserved among the American Indians, that is to say, in a country where the system of the maternal family has been, and still is, widely spread. The couvade probably represents an effort to emerge from it. It shows that the man will no longer share his wife or wives, that he claims to have children which are certainly his own, and who will doubtless inherit his possessions. It is, in short, a revolt of individualism against primitive communism. The mimicry is gross and strange, but in a social condition where there exists neither lawyer, nor mayor, nor register of civil acts, testimonial proof is the great resource, and, in order to make it sure and durable, men have willingly had recourse to striking and complicated practices which are calculated to engrave the remembrance of a fact on the memory of those present.
The procedure of primitive Rome offers us many examples of the same kind; and notably in the formalities of emancipation, when the Roman father made, three times in succession, a simulation of selling his son.
In the preceding pages I have collected together, with as much exactitude as I could, all that we know of the familial clan and the maternal family. It would be bold to assert that such have been the primitive and always necessary forms of the family. It is indisputable, however, that they are or have been very common in all countries and in all races. But these are types of familial association already regulated and complicated. Anterior to them there must have existed, in the little human hordes, a complete anarchy, most often characterised by the despotism of the strongest male, dominating a small flock of women and children, who were meekly submissive to his caprices—in fact, a sort of bestial patriarchate. Among thinly-scattered races, without intelligence or industry, practical monogamy was established at the very outset. We know that this was the case with the stupid Veddahs of Ceylon, when they wandered in simple families in the virgin forests of their island, incapable of constituting even the smallest horde. As soon as men have grouped themselves in small societies, regulated even in a slight degree, the familial clan with its confused kinship must frequently have been constituted, but on plans which were necessarily variable according to the conditions and exigencies of the social life. All that was possible has surely been attempted; sometimes regulated promiscuity, for each man claimed his rights, sometimes the mixed polyandric and polygynic household, elsewhere simple polyandry, when the women were scarce, and at other times monogamy.
I repeat, all that was compatible with the maintenance of the little social group must have been tried at first; and then selection assured the permanent adoption of such or such a system. As soon as men began to take note of descent, it was always uterine filiation that they held in account; paternal descent was less evident, and less easy to prove; it has been nearly everywhere the latest, and the widely-spread custom of the couvade proves that it was not established without difficulty. It has ended, however, by triumphing, all over the world, in the states that are still barbarous, but which have a complex social and political structure, where the primitive tribal régime has more or less disappeared, and where a line of demarcation sufficiently strong separates the interests of the individual from those of the group to which he belongs. In short, the social transformation from which the paternal family has arisen has nearly always coincided with a radical change in the régime of property, which has simultaneously become individual or, at least, familial.