vidence from this vast archaic world of America began to be
gathered in and interpreted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to the
ground, and as to the point chiefly in contention, Mr. McLennan was
proved to be right. Throughout aboriginal America, with one or two
exceptions, kinship was reckoned through females only, and in the
exceptional instances the vestiges of that system were so prominent as
to make it clear that the change had been but recently effected. During
the past fifteen years, evidence has accumulated from various parts of
the world, until it is beginning to appear as if it were the patriarchal
system that is exceptional, having been reached only by the highest
races.[61] Sir Henry Maine's work has lost none of its value, only,
like all human work, it is not final; it needs to be supplemented by the
further study of savagery as best exemplified in Australia and some
parts of Polynesia, and of barbarism as best exemplified in America. The
subject is, moreover, one of great and complicated difficulty, and leads
incidentally to many questions for solving which the data at our command
are still inadequate. It is enough for us now to observe in general that
while there are plenty of instances of change from the system of
reckoning kinship only through females, to the system of reckoning
through males, there do not appear to have been any instances of change
in the reverse direction; and that in ancient America the earlier system
was prevalent.

[Footnote 58: Until lately our acquaintance with human history
was derived almost exclusively from literary memorials, among
which the Bible, the Homeric poems, and the Vedas, carried us
back about as far as literature could take us. It was natural,
therefore, to suppose that the society of the times of Abraham
or Agamemnon was "primitive," and the wisest scholars reasoned
upon such an assumption. With vision thus restricted to
civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to
speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together
indiscriminately as "savages") according to any _a priori_ whim
that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries
of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of
the past that the age of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The
state of society described in the book of Genesis had