ionships, by which certain women and
certain men became sacred to each other, would become more strongly
fixed by custom; and afterwards the law would follow that a group of
kindred, distinguished by its totem mark, might not marry within the
hereditary name. The religious superstitions that came to be connected
with these totem names would make binding the new order in the
marriage law. When this stage was reached exogamy would be strictly
practised; and in all cases under the complete maternal system, the
woman on marriage would remain in her family home, where the husband
would come to live with her as a kind of privileged guest.

There is one other matter that must be noted. The totem name was
inherited from the mother, and not the father. This was the natural
arrangement. When the group was small, there may have been a communal
ownership of the group-children by the mothers, under the authority of
the father. But this would not continue for long; when the group
increased in numbers, the mother and her children would keep together
as a little sub-family in the larger circle. This would be especially
the case with captured wives, who would bring with them the totem
marks of their groups, and this would be the name of the children. The
naming of the children after the mother would also be the simplest way
of distinguishing between the offspring of different wives, a
distinction that would often be necessary, during the earlier
conditions, among the polygamous fathers.

It is, however, an entirely mistaken view that the father's relation
to the child was ever unrecognised. The taking of the name of the
mother arose as a matter of course, and was adopted simply as being
the most convenient custom. It is manifest that mother-descent has no
connection with a period of promiscuity. Quite the reverse. All the
conditions of mother-right arose out of the earliest movements towards
order and regulation in the relationships of the sexes, and were not
the result of licence. Nor was the naming of the child after the
mother so much a question of relationship as of what may be called
"social kinship." The causes which led to the maternal system are
closely connected with the collective motive, which, if I am right,
was in its origin, at least, the result of the union of the women
against the selfish inclinations of the patriarch. When property
rights came to be recognised, consisting at first of stores of food
and the household g