cruel custom which, leaving the primitive human hordes with
very few young women of their own, occasionally with none,
and in any case seriously disturbing the balance of the sexes
within the hordes, forces them to prey upon one another for
wives. Usage, induced by necessity, would in time establish a
prejudice among the tribes observing it, a prejudice strong
as a principle of religion--as every prejudice relating to
marriage is apt to be--against marrying women of their own
stock.

Mr. M'Lennan describes his own hypothesis as 'a suggestion thrown out
at what it was worth.'[217] In his later years, as we have said, he
developed a very subtle and ingenious theory of the origin of exogamy,
still connecting it with scarcity of women, but making use of various
supposed stages and processes in the development of the law. That
speculation remains unpublished. To myself, the suggestion given in
_Studies in Ancient History_ seems inadequate. I find it difficult to
conceive that the frequent habit of stealing women should indispose
men to marry the native women they had at hand. That this
indisposition should grow into a positive law, and the infringement of
the law be regarded as a capital offence, seems more inconceivable. My
own impression is, that exogamy may be connected with some early
superstition or idea of which we have lost the touch, and which we can
no longer explain.[218] Possibly it may be only one form of the Totem
taboo. You may not marry a woman of your totem, as you may not eat an
animal of the species.

Thus far, the consideration of exogamy has thrown no clear light on
the main question--the question whether the customs of civilised races
contain relics of female kinship. On Mr. Lewis Morgan's theory of
exogamy, that Aryan custom is unconnected with female kinship,
polyandry, and scarcity of women. On Mr. M'Lennan's theory, exogamy is
the result of scarcity of women, and implies polyandry and female
kinship. But neither theory has seemed satisfactory. Yet we need not
despair of extracting some evidence from exogamy, and that evidence,
on the whole, is in favour of Mr. M'Lennan's general hypothesis. (1)
The exogamous prohibition must have first come into force _when
kinship was only reckoned on one side of the family_. This is obvious,
whether we suppose it to have arisen in a society which reckoned by
male or by female kinship. In the former case, the law only prohibits