The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Friedrich Engels
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unrestricted sexual intercourse, which he dubs, not very felicitously, hetaerism.
2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely certain means of determining parentage; that consequently descent could only be traced by the female line in compliance with maternal law—and that this was universally practiced by all the nations of antiquity.
3. That consequently women as mothers, being the only well known parents of younger generations, received a high tribute of respect and deference, amounting to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy), according to Bachofen's idea.
4. That the transition to monogamy, reserving a certain woman exclusively to one man, implied the violation of a primeval religious law (i.e., practically a violation of the customary right of all other men to the same woman), which violation had to be atoned for or its permission purchased by the surrender of the women to the public for a limited time.
Bachofen finds the proofs of these propositions in numerous quotations from ancient classics, collected with unusual diligence. The transition from "hetaerism" to monogamy and from maternal to paternal law is accomplished according to him—especially by the Greeks—through the evolution of religious ideas. New gods, the representatives of the new ideas, are added to the traditional group of gods, the representatives of old ideas; the latter are forced to the background more and more by the former. According to Bachofen, therefore, it is not the development of the actual conditions of life that has effected the historical changes in the relative social positions of man and wife, but the religious reflection of these conditions in the minds of men. Hence Bachofen represents the Oresteia of Aeschylos as the dramatic description of the fight between the vanishing maternal and the paternal law, rising and victorious during the time of the heroes.
Klytaemnestra has killed her husband Agamemnon on his return from the Trojan war for the sake of her lover Aegisthos; but Orestes, her son by Agamemnon, avenges the death of his father by killing his mother. Therefore he is persecuted by the Erinyes, the demonic protectors of maternal law, according to which the murder of a mother is the most horrible, inexpiable crime. But Apollo, who has instigated Orestes to this act by his oracle, and Athene, who is invoked as arbitrator—the two deities representing the new paternal order of things—protect him. Athene gives a hearing to both parties. The whole question is summarized in the ensuing debate between Orestes and the Erinyes. Orestes claims that Klytemnaestra has committed a twofold crime: by killing her husband she has killed his father. Why do the Erinyes persecute him and not her who is far more guilty?
The reply is striking:
"She was not related by blood to the man whom she slew."
The murder of a man not consanguineous, even though he be the husband of the murderess, is expiable, does not concern the Erinyes; it is only their duty to prosecute the murder of consanguineous relatives. According to maternal law, therefore, the murder of a mother is the most heinous and inexpiable crime. Now Apollo speaks in defense of Orestes. Athene then calls on the areopagites—the jurors of Athens—to vote; the votes are even for acquittal and for condemnation. Thereupon Athene as president of the jury casts her vote in favor of Orestes and acquits him. Paternal law has gained a victory over maternal law, the deities of the "younger generation," as the Erinyes call them, vanquish the latter. These are finally persuaded to accept a new office under the new order of things.
This new, but decidedly accurate interpretation of the Oresteia is one of the most beautiful and best passages in the whole book, but it proves at the same time that Bachofen himself believes as much in the Erinyes, in Apollo and in Athene, as Aeschylos did in his day. He really believes, that they performed the miracle of securing the downfall of maternal law through paternal law during the time of the Greek heroes. That a similar conception, representing religion as the main lever of the world's history, must finally lead to sheer mysticism, is evident.
Therefore it is a troublesome and not always profitable task to work your way through the big volume of Bachofen. Still, all this does not curtail 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 undeveloped nations (which in 1865 were often considered identical with the tribes themselves), inside of which intermarrying was prohibited. In consequence the men (or women) of a certain group were forced to choose their wives (or husbands) outside of their group. Other tribes again observe the custom of forcing their men to choose their women inside of their own group only. McLennan calls the first exogamous, the second endogamous, and construes forthwith a rigid contrast between exogamous and endogamous "tribes." And though his own investigation of exogamy makes it painfully obvious that this contrast in many, if not in most or even in all cases, exists in his own imagination only, he nevertheless makes it the basis of his entire theory. According to the latter, exogamous tribes can choose their women only from other tribes. And as in conformity with their savage state a condition of continual warfare existed among such tribes, women could only be secured by abduction.
McLennan further asks: Whence this custom of exogamy? The idea of consanguinity and rape could not have anything to do with it, since these conceptions were developed much later. But it was a widely spread custom among savages to kill female children immediately after their birth. This produced a surplus of males in such a tribe which naturally resulted in the condition where several men had one woman—polyandry. The next consequence was that the mother of a child could be ascertained, but not its father; hence: descent only traced by the female line and exclusion of male lineage—maternal law. And a second consequence of the scarcity of women in a certain tribe—a scarcity that was somewhat mitigated, but not relieved by polyandry—was precisely the forcible abduction of women from other tribes. "As exogamy and polyandry are referable to one and the same cause—a want of balance between the sexes—we are forced to regard all the exogamous races as having originally been polyandrous. … Therefore we must hold it to be beyond dispute that among exogamous races the first system of kinship was that which recognized blood-ties through mothers only."[2]
It is the merit of McLennan to have pointed out the general extent and the great importance of what he calls exogamy. However, he has by no means discovered the fact of exogamous groups; neither did he understand their presence.