ather belongs and get
political status from that. By birth each one is a member of a blood-kin
group (clan) on which depend blood revenge and other duties and by which
marriage is regulated. All this grows up as a part of the folkways,
instinctively, without plan or guidance of intelligent control. Yet it
has been wrought out, along the same logical lines of custom and rule,
all over the world by savage peoples. We meet with many variations of it
in transitional forms, or in combination with later institutions, but
they belong to the time when this arrangement is breaking down, and
passing into the father family. The mother family system is definite
and complete when flourishing and normal. By the totem device the mother
family is made capable of indefinite extension, and a verification is
provided for its essential facts. The status of women, in the mother
family, was strong and independent. Often important societal functions
were entrusted to them, and their influence was so high that it produced
great results, like the conferring of glory on braves, and the election
of war chiefs. In cases, as for instance the ancient Lycians, the men
were treated with harshness and abuse. The distribution of social power
between the sexes gave opportunity for this, and the opportunity was
seized.[1161]

+369. Change from mother family to father family.+ It may well be
believed that the change from the mother family to the father family is
the greatest and most revolutionary in the history of civilization. By
changes in the life conditions it becomes possible for the man to get
his wife to himself away from her kin, and to become the owner of his
children. In the mother family those arrangements could only be
suggested to him as modifications of his experience which would be
eagerly to be desired, i.e. as objects of idealization. When the life
conditions so changed that it became possible, the father family
displaced the mother family. All the folkways followed the change.
Family arrangements, kin, industry, war, political organization,
property, rights, must all conform to the change. The wife is obtained
by capture, purchase, or later by contract. By capture or purchase she
passes under her husband's dominion, and she may not be a consenting
party. She loses status by the change. In the earlier period the man
might get a wife by capture. She would be either a work-wife or a
love-wife. Now a real status-wife would be obtained by rea