e, this rule fails to effect the very
purpose for which ex hypothesi it was instituted. Where the family name
goes by the male side, marriages between cousins are permitted, as in
India and China. These are the very marriages which some theorists now
denounce as pernicious. But, if the family name goes by the female side,
marriages between half-brothers and half-sisters are permitted, as in
ancient Athens and among the Hebrews of Abraham's time. Once more, the
exogamous prohibition excludes, in China, America, Africa, Australia,
persons who are in no way akin (according to our ideas) from
intermarriage. Thus Mr. Doolittle writes: {256} 'Males and females of
the same surname will never intermarry in China. Cousins who have not
the same ancestral surname may intermarry. Though the ancestors of
persons of the same surname have not known each other for thousands of
years, they may not intermarry.' The Hindoo gotra rule produces the same
effects.

For all these reasons, and because of the improbability of the
physiological discovery, and of the moral 'reform' which enforced it; and
again, because the law is not of the sort which people acquainted with
near degrees of kinship would make; and once more, because the law fails
to effect its presumed purpose, while it does attain ends at which it
does not aim--we cannot accept Mr. Morgan's suggestion as to the origin
of exogamy. Mr. M'Lennan did not live to publish a subtle theory of the
origin of exogamy, which he had elaborated. In 'Studies in Ancient
History,' he hazarded a conjecture based on female infanticide:--

'We believe the restrictions on marriage to be connected with the
practice in early times of female infanticide, which, rendering women
scarce, led at once to polyandry within the tribe, and the capturing
of women from without. . . . Hence the cruel custom which, leaving
the primitive human hordes with very few young women of their own,
occasionally with none, and in any case seriously disturbing the
balance of the sexes within the hordes, forces them to prey upon one
another for wives. Usage, induced by necessity, would in time
establish a prejudice among the tribes observing it, a prejudice
strong as a principle of religion--as every prejudice relating to
marriage is apt to be--against marrying women of their own stock.'

Mr. M'Lennan describes his own hypothesis as 'a suggestion thrown out at
what it was worth.' {25