Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin (ebook reader play store .txt) 📕

families, under the leadership of “a strong and jealous male.” I do not know how far that assertion is based upon conclusive observation. But the passage from Brehm’s Life of Animals, which is sometimes referred to, can hardly be taken as very conclusive. It occurs in his general description of monkeys; but his more detailed descriptions of separate species either contradict it or do not confirm it. Even as regards the cercopitheques, Brehm is affirmative in saying that they “nearly always live in bands, and very seldom in families” (French edition, p. 59). As to other species, the very numbers of their bands, always containing many males, render the “polygamous family” more than doubtful further observation is evidently wanted. ↩

Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, fifth edition, 1890. ↩

That extension of the icecap is admitted by most of the geologists who have specially studied the glacial age. The Russian Geological Survey already has taken this view as regards Russia, and most German specialists maintain it as regards Germany. The glaciation of most of the central plateau of France will not fail to be recognized by the French geologists, when they pay more attention to the glacial deposits altogether. ↩

Prehistoric Times, pp. 232 and 242. ↩

Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877; J. F. MacLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1st series, new edition, 1886; 2nd series, 1896; L. Fison and A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne. These four writers⁠—as has been very truly remarked by Giraud Teulon⁠—starting from different facts and different general ideas, and following different methods, have come to the same conclusion. To Bachofen we owe the notion of the maternal family and the maternal succession; to Morgan⁠—the system of kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and a highly gifted sketch of the main phases of human evolution; to MacLennan⁠—the law of exogeny; and to Fison and Howitt⁠—the cuadro, or scheme, of the conjugal societies in Australia. All four end in establishing the same fact of the tribal origin of the family. When Bachofen first drew attention to the maternal family, in his epoch-making work, and Morgan described the clan-organization⁠—both concurring to the almost general extension of these forms and maintaining that the marriage laws lie at the very basis of the consecutive steps of human evolution, they were accused of exaggeration. However, the most careful researches prosecuted since, by a phalanx of students of ancient law, have proved that all races of mankind bear traces of having passed through similar stages of development of marriage laws, such as we now see in force among certain savages. See the works of Post, Dargun, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and their numerous followers: Lippert, Mucke, etc. ↩

See Appendix VII. ↩

For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Maxim Kovalevsky’s Primitive Law (in Russian), Moscow, 1886 and 1887. Also his lectures delivered at Stockholm (Tableau des origines et de l’evolution de la famille et de la propriété, Stockholm, 1890), which represents an admirable review of the whole question. Cf. also A. Post, Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, Oldenburg, 1875. ↩

It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin of the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into groups, similar to Morgan’s Hawaian, exists among birds; the young broods live together separately from their parents. A like division might probably be traced among some mammals as well. As to the prohibition of relations between brothers and sisters, it is more likely to have arisen, not from speculations about the bad effects of consanguinity, which speculations really do not seem probable, but to avoid the too-easy precocity of like marriages. Under close cohabitation it must have become of imperious necessity. I must also remark that in discussing the origin of new customs altogether, we must keep in mind that the savages, like us, have their “thinkers” and savants-wizards, doctors, prophets, etc.⁠—whose knowledge and ideas are in advance upon those of the masses. United as they are in their secret unions (another almost universal feature) they are certainly capable of exercising a powerful influence, and of enforcing customs the utility of which may not yet be recognized by the majority of the tribe. ↩

Col. Collins, in Philips’ Researches in South Africa, London, 1828. Quoted by Waitz, ii, 334. ↩

Lichtenstein’s Reisen im südlichen Afrika, ii, pp. 92, 97. Berlin, 1811. ↩

Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii, pp. 335 seq. See also Fritsch’s Die Eingeboren Afrika’s, Breslau, 1872, pp. 386 seq.; and Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika. Also W. Bleck, A Brief Account of Bushmen Folklore, Capetown, 1875. ↩

Elisée Reclus, Géographie Universelle, xiii, 475. ↩

P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, translated from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i, pp. 59, 71, 333, 336, etc. ↩

Quoted in Waitz’s Anthropologie, ii, 335 seq. ↩

The natives living in the north of Sidney, and speaking the Kamilaroi language, are best known under this aspect, through the capital work of Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnaii, Melbourne, 1880. See also A. W. Howitt’s “Further Note on the Australian Class Systems,” in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1889, vol. xviii, p. 31, showing the wide extension of the same organization in Australia. ↩

The Folklore, Manners, etc., of Australian