s 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, {247a} 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 Hetarismus, 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
{247b} 'that there has been a stage in the development of the human
races, when there was no such appropriation of women to particular men;
when, in short, marriage, _as it exists among civilised nations_, was not
practised. Marriage, _in this sense_, was yet undreamt of.' Mr.
M'Lennan adds (pp. 130, 131), 'as among other gregarious animals, the
unions of the sexes were probably, in the earliest times, loose,
transitory, and, _in some degree_, promiscuous.'

Sir Henry Maine opposes to Mr. M'Lennan's theory the statement of Mr.
Darwin: 'From all we know of the passions of all male quadrupeds,
promiscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is highly improbable