The horizon was narrow and small, life primitive. The different tribes separated themselves from one another, as best they could, and respected their mutual boundaries. Was, however, one tribe attacked by another, then the men were obliged to rush to its defence, and in this they were supported by the women in the most vigorous fashion. According to Herodotus, the women joined in battle among the Scythians: as he claims, the maid could not marry before she had slain an enemy. What _role_ women played in battle among the Germans, Iberians, Scots, etc., has already been stated. But in the gens also did they, under given circ.u.mstances, command a strong regiment:--woe to the man who was either too lazy or too unskilled to contribute his share to the common support.
He was shown the door, and, either he returned to his own gens, where it was with difficulty he was again received with friendliness, or he joined another gens that was more tolerant toward him.[7]
That conjugal life still bears this character in the interior of Africa, Livingstone learned to his great surprise, as he narrates in his "Missionary Travels and Researches in Southern Africa," London, 1857. On the Zambesi he ran across the Valonda--a handsome, vigorous negro tribe, devoted to agriculture--where he found confirmed the informations received from the Portuguese, and which at first seemed incredible to him, with regard to the privileged position enjoyed by women. They sit in council; the young man who marries must move from his own, to the village of his wife: he thereby pledges himself to furnish the mother of his wife for life with kindling wood: if he divorces, the children remain the property of the mother. On the other hand, the wife must see to the sustenance of the husband. Although, occasionally, slight disagreements break out between man and wife, Livingstone found that the men did not retaliate, but he discovered that the men, who offended their wives, were punished in the most sensitive manner--through their stomachs. The husband, he says, comes home to eat, but one woman sends him off to another, and he gets nothing. Tired and hungry he climbs a tree in the most populous part of the village, and announces in woeful tones: "Hear! Hear! I thought I had married women, but they are witches to me! I am a bachelor; I have not a single wife! Is that right towards a man like me?" If a woman gives physical expression to her anger at a man, she is sentenced to carry him on her back from the court of the chieftain to her own house. While she is carrying him home, the other men scoff at and jeer her; the women, on the contrary, encourage her with all their might, calling out to her: "Treat him as he deserves; do it again!"
Similar conditions still exist in the German colony of Cameroon in West Africa. A German ship"s doctor, who studied the country and its people by personal observation, writes us thus:
"With a large number of tribes, inheritance is based on maternity.
Paternity is immaterial. Brothers and sisters are only the children of one mother. A man does not bequeath his property to his children, but to the children of his sister, that is to say, to his nephews and nieces, as his nearest demonstrable blood relatives. A chief of the Way people explained to me in horrible English: "My sister and I are certainly blood relatives, consequently her son is my heir; when I die, he will be the king of my town." "And your father?" I inquired. "I don"t know what that means, "my father,"" answered he. Upon my putting to him the question whether he had no children, rolling on the ground with laughter, he answered that, with them, men have no children, only women.
"I can a.s.sure you," our informant goes on to write, "that even the heir of King Bell in Cameroon _is the King"s nephew, and not one of his sons_. The so-called children of King Bell, several of whom are now going through training in German cities, are merely children of his wives, _whose fathers are unknown_; one of them I might, possibly, claim for myself."
What say the adversaries of the theory of descent in the female line to this sketch drawn from the immediate present? Our informant is a man with eyes open, who probed things to the very bottom. How many of those who live among these semi-savage races, do as much? Hence the wild accounts about the "immorality" of the natives.
Furthermore, there come to our notice the memorials of the Imperial Government, submitted to the Reichstag on the German colonies (Session of 1894-95). In the memorial on the Southwestern territory of Africa there occurs this pa.s.sage, p. 239: "Without their advice--the oldest and wealthiest--he (chief of the tribe in princ.i.p.al village) can not render the slightest decision, and not the men only, _but quite often the women also_, even the servants, _express their opinion_."
In the report of the Marshall Islands, p. 254 of the memorial, it runs thus: "The ruling power over all the islands of the Marshall group never rested in the hands of a single chieftain.... _Seeing, however, that no female member of this cla.s.s (the Irody) is alive, and only the mother conveys n.o.bility and rank to the child, the Irodies dies out with their chieftain._" The expression used, and the descriptions made, by reporters betray what an utter blank are to them the conditions that they refer to: they can not find their bearings among them.
With an increasing population, there arise a number of sisters, which, in turn, produce daughter gentes. Over and against these, the mother gens appears as phratry. A number of phratries const.i.tute a tribe. This social organization is so firm that it still const.i.tuted the foundation for the military organization in the old States, after the old gentile const.i.tution had fallen to pieces. The tribe splits up into several tribes, all of which have the same const.i.tution, and in each of which the old gentes are reproduced. However, seeing that the gentile const.i.tution forbids the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, and of relatives on the mother"s side to the furthest degree, it undermines its own foundation. Due to the evermore complicated relations of the separate gentes with one another--a condition of things that the social and economic progress promotes--the inhibition of marriage between the several gentes, that descend from the mother"s side, becomes in the long run impracticable: it breaks down of itself, or is burst asunder.
So long as the production of the means of subsistence was still at the lowest stages, and satisfied only simple wants, the activity of man and woman was essentially the same. Along with an increasing division of labor, there came about, not merely a division of functions, but also a division of occupations. Fishing, the hunt, cattle-raising,--demanded separate knowledge; and, to a still higher degree, the construction of tools and utensils, which became mainly the property of the men. Field agriculture expanded materially the circle of activities, and it created a supply of subsistence that satisfied the highest demands of the time.
Man, whose activity stood in the foreground in the course of this development, became the real lord and owner of these sources of wealth, which, in turn, furnished the basis for commerce; and this created new relations, and social changes.
Not only did ever fresh causes of friction and conflicts arise for the possession of the best lands, due to the increase of population, and the need of wider domains for cattle-raising and agriculture, but, along with such increase of population, there arose the need of labor power to cultivate the ground. The more numerous these powers, all the greater was the wealth in products and herds. These struggles led, first, to the rape of women, later to the enslaving of conquered men. The women became laborers and objects of pleasure for the conqueror; their males became slaves. Two elements were thereby simultaneously introduced into the old gentile const.i.tution. The two and the gentile const.i.tution could not, in the long run, get along together.
Furthermore, hand in hand with the increasing differentiation of occupations, owing to the growing need of tools, utensils, weapons, etc., handicraft rises into existence. It follows its own course of development and separates itself from agriculture. As a consequence, a distinct population, one that plies the trades, is called into life; and it splits off from the agricultural population with entirely different interests.
According to the mother-right, i. e., so long as descent followed only in female line, the custom was that the gentile relatives inherited from the deceased gentile fellow-members on the mother"s side. The property remained in the gens. The children of the deceased father did not belong to his gens, but to that of the mother: accordingly, they did not inherit from the father; at his death his property fell back to his own gens. Under the new conditions, where the father was the property-holder, i. e., the owner of herds and slaves, of weapons and utensils, and where he had become a handicraftsman, or merchant, his property, so long as he was still considered of the gens of his mother, fell after his death, not to his own children, but to his brothers and sisters, and to the children of his sisters, or to the successors of his sisters. His own children went away empty-handed. The pressure to change such a state of things was, accordingly, powerful;--and it was changed. Thereupon a condition arose that was not yet monogamy, but that approximated it; there arose the "pairing family." A certain man lived with a certain woman, and the children, born of that relation, were that couple"s own children. These pairing families increased in the measure in which the marriage inhibitions, that flowed from the gentile const.i.tution, hampered marriage, and in which the above mentioned economic grounds rendered desirable this new form of family life.
Personal property accorded ill with the old condition of things, which rested upon the community of goods. Both _rank_ and _occupation_ now decidedly favored the necessity for the choice of a domicile. The production of merchandise begot commerce with neighboring and foreign nations; and that necessitated money. It was man who led and controlled this development. His private interests had, accordingly, no longer any real points of contact with the old gentile organization, whose interests often stood in opposition to his own. Accordingly, the importance of the gentile organization sank ever more. The gens finally became little more than the center of the religious functions for the family, its economic significance was gone. The complete dissolution of gentile organization became only a question of time.
With the dissolution of the old gentile organization, the influence and position of woman sank rapidly. The mother-right vanished; the father-right stepped into its shoes. Man now became a private property-holder: he had an interest in children, whom he could look upon as legitimate, and whom he made the heirs of his property: hence _he forced upon woman the command of abstinence from intercourse with other men_.
At the same time man a.s.sumed the right of taking unto himself, beside his own wife, or several of them, as many concubines as his condition allowed; and the children of these concubines were likewise treated as legitimate. On this head we find two valuable ill.u.s.trations in the Bible. In I Book of Moses, chapter 16, verses 1 and 2, we read: "Now Sarai, Abram"s wife, bare him no children: and she had a hand-maid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai." The second remarkable ill.u.s.tration is found in I Book of Moses 30, 1 and sequel: "And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob"s anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in G.o.d"s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? and she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her. And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her."
Jacob, accordingly, had not only the daughters of Laban, two sisters, simultaneously for wives, they also helped him to their maids, all of which, according to the usage of the times, was wholly free from taint of impropriety. The two princ.i.p.al wives he had bought, as is well known, by serving Laban seven years for each. The purchase of a wife was at the time common among the Jews, but, along with the purchase of wives, whom they were compelled to take from among their own people, they practiced on an extensive scale the rape of women from among the peoples that they conquered. The Benjaminites raped the daughters of Silos.[8] In such wars, it was originally customary that all the men who fell into the hands of the vanquisher were killed. The captured woman became a slave, a concubine. Nevertheless, she could be raised to the dignity of a legitimate wife so soon as she had fulfilled certain conditions of the Jews: she had to cut her hair and nails; to lay off the dress she was captured in, and exchange it for another that was given her; thereupon she had to mourn a whole month for her father and mother: she was, in a manner to be dead to her own people, become estranged from them: then could she climb into the conjugal bed. The largest number of wives had King Solomon, as is known. According to Kings 1, 11, not less than 700 wives and 300 concubines are ascribed to him.
With the rule of the father-right and descent in the male line in the Jewish gentile organization, the daughters were excluded from inheritance. Later this was, however, changed, at least when a father left no sons. This appears from IV Book of Moses 27, 2-8, where it is reported that, as Zelaphehad died without sons, and his daughter complained bitterly that she was to be excluded from her father"s inheritance, which was to fall back to the tribe of Joseph, Moses decided that, in that case, the daughters should inherit. But seeing that she contemplated marrying, according to custom, in another tribe, the tribe of Joseph complained that thereby the inheritance would be lost to it. Thereupon Moses decided further (4, 36) that heiresses, though free in the choice of a husband, were bound to marry in the tribe of their own father. For the sake of property, the old ordinance was overthrown. Similarly, in Athens, did Solon decree that an heiress had to marry her nearest male agnate, even though both belonged to the same gens, and, according to former law, such a marriage was forbidden. Solon ordered also that a property-holder was not compelled as thitherto, to leave his property to his own gens in case he died childless; but that he could by testament const.i.tute any one else his heir. From all this it is obvious:--man does not rule property, property rules him, and becomes his master.
With the rule of private property, the subjection of woman to man, her bondage was sealed. Then came the time of disregard, even of contempt for woman.
_The reign of the mother-right implied communism; equality for all; the rise of the father-right implied the reign of private property, and, with it, the oppression and enslavement of woman._
It is difficult to trace in detail the manner in which the change was achieved. A knowledge of the events is lacking. Neither did this _first great revolution_ in the lap of mankind come into force simultaneously among the ancient nations; nor yet is it probable that it was accomplished everywhere in the same manner. Among the peoples of old Greece, it was Athens where the new order of things first prevailed.
Frederick Engels is of the opinion that this great revolution was accomplished peacefully, and that, after all the conditions for the new rights were at hand, it only required a simple vote in the gens in order to rear the father in the place of the mother-right. Bachofen, on the contrary, grounding his opinion upon more or less reliable information from the old writers, holds that the women offered strong resistance to this social transformation. He, for instance, sees in the legends of the Amazonian Kingdoms, which re-appear under manifold variations in the old history of Asia and the Orient, and also have turned up in South America and in China, proofs for the struggle and resistance which the women offered to the new order. We leave that as it may be.
With the rule of man, women lost their position in the community; they were excluded from the councils and from all leading influence. Man exacts conjugal fidelity from her, but claims exemption for himself. If she violates that, she is guilty of the most serious deception that can afflict the new citizen; she thereby introduces into his house stranger"s children as heirs of his property. Hence, among all ancient nations, the breach of conjugal fidelity on the part of woman is punished with death or slavery.
Notwithstanding women were thus removed from their position as leaders, the customs connected with the old system of morals continued for centuries to sway the public mind, although the meaning of the surviving customs was gradually lost to the people. It is only in modern times that pains are being taken to inquire into the original meaning of these old customs. In Greece, for instance, it remained a religious practice that Greek women prayed only to G.o.ddesses for advice, help and favors.
Likewise, the yearly recurring celebration of the Thesmophoria owed its origin to the days of mother-right. Even in later days, the women of Greece celebrated this festival for five days in honor of Demeter; and no man was allowed to be present. It was similarly in old Rome with a festival in honor of Ceres. Both Demeter and Ceres were considered G.o.ddesses of fertility. In Germany also such festivals, once customary in the heathen days of Frigga, were held, deep into the Middle Ages, Frigga being considered the G.o.ddess of fertility among the old Germans.
According to the narratives, women gave a free reign to their frolicsomeness on the occasions of these festivals. Also here men were excluded from partic.i.p.ation in the festival.
In Athens, where, as already stated, the mother-right made earliest room for the father-right, but, as it seems, under strong opposition from the women, the transition is portrayed touchingly and in all the fullness of its tragic import, in the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The story is this: Agamemnon, King of Mycene, and husband of Clytemnestra, sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, upon the command of the oracle on his expedition against Troy. The mother, indignant at the sacrifice of her daughter, takes, during her husband"s absence, Aegysthos for her consort. Upon Agamemnon"s return to Mycene, after an absence of many years, he is murdered by Aegysthos with the connivance of Clytemnestra. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges the murder of his father, at the instigation of Apollo and Athene, by slaying his mother and Aegysthos. The Erinnyes, as representatives of the old law, pursue Orestes on account of the murder of his mother. Apollo and Athene, the latter of whom, according to mythology, is motherless--she leaped full-armed out of the head of Jupiter--represent the new law, and defend Orestes. The issue is carried to the Areopagus, before which the following dialogue ensues. The two hostile principles come here into dramatic vividness of expression:
Erinnyes--The prophet bade thee be a matricide?
Orestes--And to this hour I am well content withal.
Erinnyes--Thoul"t change that tune, when judgment seizes thee.
Orestes--My father from his tomb will take my part; I fear not.
Erinnyes--Ay, rely on dead men"s aid, When guilty of matricide!
Orestes--She, that is slain, Was doubly tainted.
Erinnyes--How? Inform the court.
Orestes--She slew her wedded lord, and slew my sire.
Erinnyes--Death gave her quittance, then. But thou yet livest.
Orestes--And while she lived, why did you not pursue her?
Erinnyes--No tie of blood bound her to whom she slew.
Orestes--But I was tied by blood-affinity To her who bare me?
Erinnyes--Else, thou accursed one, How nourished she thy life within her womb?
Wouldst thou renounce the holiest bond of all?
The Erinnyes, it will be noticed, recognize no rights on the part of the father and the husband; to them there exists only the right of the mother. That Clytemnestra slew her husband is indifferent to them; on the other hand, they demand punishment for the matricide, committed by Orestes: in killing his mother he had committed the worst crime imaginable under the old gentile order. Apollo, on the contrary, stands on the opposite principle. Commissioned by Zeus to avenge the murder of his father, he had led Orestes to the murder of his own mother. Apollo now defends Orestes" action before the judges, saying:
That scruple likewise I can satisfy.
She who is called the mother of the child Is not its parent, but the nurse of seed Implanted in begetting. He that sows Is author of the shoot, which she, if Heaven Prevent not, keeps as in a garden-ground.
In proof whereof, to show that fatherhood May be without the mother, I appeal To Pallas, daughter of Olympian Zeus, In present witness here. Behold a plant, Not moulded in the darkness of the womb, Yet n.o.bler than all scions of Heaven"s stock.
According to Apollo, the act of begetting confers the superior right; whereas, according to the views in force until then, the mother, who gives to the child her blood and its life, was esteemed the sole possessor of the child, while the man, the father of her child, was regarded a stranger. Hence the Erinnyes reply to the strange notions of Apollo:
Thou didst lead astray Those primal G.o.ddesses with draughts of wine, O"erturning ordinance.
Young, thou wouldst override our ancient right.
The judges, thereupon, make ready for the sentence. One half stand by the old, one half by the new right; a tie is threatened; thereupon Athene seizes the ballot from the altar and dropping it in the urn, says: