rtail the value of his fundamental work. He was the first to replace
the assumption of an unknown primeval condition of licentious sexual
intercourse by the demonstration that ancient classical literature
points out a multitude of traces proving the actual existence among
Greeks and Asiatics of other sexual relations before monogamy. These
relations not only permitted a man to have intercourse with several
women, but also left a woman free to have sexual intercourse with
several men without violating good morals. This custom did not disappear
without leaving as a survival the form of a general surrender for a
limited time by which women had to purchase the right of monogamy. Hence
descent could originally only be traced by the female line, from mother
to mother. The sole legality of the female line was preserved far into
the time of monogamy with assured, or at least acknowledged, paternity.
Consequently, the original position of the mothers as the sole
absolutely certain parents of their children secured for them and for
all other women a higher social level than they have ever enjoyed since.
Although Bachofen, biased by his mystic conceptions, did not formulate
these propositions so clearly, still he proved their correctness. This
was equivalent to a complete revolution in 1861.

Bachofen's big volume was written In German, i. e., in the language of a
nation that cared less than any other of its time for the history of the
present family. Therefore he remained unknown. The man next succeeding
him in the same field made his appearance in 1865 without having ever
heard of Bachofen.

This successor was J. F. McLennan, the direct opposite of his
predecessor. Instead of the talented mystic, we have here the dry
jurist; in place of the rank growth of poetical imagination, we find the
plausible combinations of the pleading lawyer. McLennan finds among many
savage, barbarian and even civilized people of ancient and modern times
a type of marriage forcing the bride-groom, alone or in co-operation
with his friends, to go through the form of a mock forcible abduction of
the bride. This must needs be a survival of an earlier custom when men
of one tribe actually secured their wives by forcible abduction from
another tribe. How did this "robber marriage" originate? As long as the
men could find women enough in their own tribe, there was no occasion
for robbing. It so happens that we frequently find certain groups among
undevelope