e
answer. Here the anthropologist and physiologist come in with their
methods, and even those, we think, can throw but an uncertain light on
the very 'origin' of institutions, and on strictly primitive man.

For the purposes of this discussion, we shall here re-state the chief
points at issue between the adherents of Sir Henry Maine and of Mr.
M'Lennan, between historical and anthropological inquirers.

1. Did man _originally_ live in the patriarchal family, or did he live
in more or less modified promiscuity, with uncertainty of blood-ties,
and especially of male parentage?

2. Did circumstances and customs at some time compel or induce man
(whatever his _original_ condition) to resort to practices which made
paternity uncertain, and so caused kinship to be reckoned through
women?

3. Granting that some races have been thus reduced to matriarchal
forms of the family--that is, to forms in which the woman is the
permanent recognised centre--is there any reason to suppose that the
stronger peoples, like the Aryans and the Semites, ever passed through
a stage of culture in which female, not male, kinship was chiefly
recognised, probably as a result of polyandry, of many husbands to one
wife?

On this third question, it will be necessary to produce much evidence
of very different sorts: evidence which, at best, can perhaps only
warrant an inference, or presumption, in favour of one or the other
opinion. For the moment, the impartial examination of testimony is
more important and practicable than the establishment of any theory.

(1) Did man _originally_ live in the patriarchal family, the male
being master of his female mate or mates, and of his children? On this
first point Sir Henry Maine, in his new volume,[206] may be said to
come as near proving his case as the nature and matter of the question
will permit. Bachofen, M'Lennan, and Morgan, all started from a
hypothetical state of more or less modified sexual promiscuity.
Bachofen's evidence (which may be referred to later) was based on a
great mass of legends, myths, and travellers' tales, chiefly about
early Aryan practices. He discovered _Hetaerismus_, as he called it, or
promiscuity, among Lydians, Etruscans, Persians, Thracians, Cyrenian
nomads, Egyptians, Scythians, Troglodytes, Nasamones, and so forth.
Mr. M'Lennan's view is, perhaps, less absolutely stated than Sir Henry
Maine supposes. M'Lennan says[207] 'that there has been a stage in the
development of