m had accurately and
correctly described this institution among the Indian Magars[3] and
stated that it was widespread and practiced in all parts of the globe.
McLennan himself quotes this passage. As early as 1847, our friend
Morgan had also pointed out and correctly described the same custom in
his letters on the Iroquois (in the American Review) and in 1851 in "The
League of the Iroquois." We shall see, how the lawyer's instinct of
McLennan has introduced more disorder into this subject than the mystic
imagination of Bachofen did into the field of maternal law.

It must be said to McLennan's credit that he recognized the custom of
tracing decent by maternal law as primeval, although Bachofen has
anticipated him in this respect. McLennan has admitted this later on.
But here again he is not clear on the subject. He always speaks of
"kinship through females only" and uses this expression, correctly
applicable to former stages, in connection with later stages of
development, when descent and heredity were still exclusively traced
along female lines, but at the same time kinship on the male side began
to be recognized and expressed. It is the narrow-mindedness of the
jurist, establishing a fixed legal expression and employing it
incessantly to denote conditions to which it should no longer be
applied.

In spite of its plausibility, McLennan's theory did not seem too well
founded even in the eyes of its author. At least he finds it remarkable
himself "that the form of capture is now most distinctly marked and
impressive just among those races which have male kinship."[4]

And again: "It is a curious fact that nowhere now, that we are aware of,
is infanticide a system where exogamy and the earliest form of kinship
co-exists."[5]

Both these facts directly disprove his method of explanation, and he can
only meet them with new and still more complicated hypotheses.

In spite of this, his theory found great approval and favor in England.
Here McLennan was generally considered as the founder of the history of
the family and as the first authority on this subject. His contrast of
exogamous and endogamous "tribes" remained the recognized foundation of
the customary views, however much single exceptions and modifications
were admitted. This antithesis became the eye-flap that rendered
impossible any free view of the field under investigation and,
therefore, any decided progress. It is our duty to confront this
overrating of