cing it into association; it was
the subordinate position of the husband under such a system which
finally made the women the rulers of the household. If we regard the
social conditions of the maternal system as the first stage of
development, they are as difficult to understand as they become
intelligible when we consider it as a later and beneficent phase in
the growth of society.

This, then, I claim as the chief good of the maternal system. As I see
it, each advance in progress rests on the conquest of sexual distrusts
and fierceness forcing into isolation. These jealous and odious
monopolist instincts have been the bane of humanity. Each race must
inevitably in the end outlive them; they are the surviving relics of
the ape and the tiger. They arise out of that self-concentration and
intensity of animalism that binds the hands of men and women from
taking their inheritance. The brute in us still resents association.
Am I wrong in connecting this individual monopolist idea of My power!
My right! with the paternal as opposed to the maternal family? At any
rate I find it absent in the communal clan grouped around the mothers,
where the enlarged family makes common cause and life is lived by all
for and with each other.

An instructive example of the joint maternal family is furnished by
the Nairs of Malabar, where we see a very late development of the
clan system. The family group includes many allied families, who live
together in large communal houses and possess everything in common.
There is common tenure of land, over which the eldest male member of
the community presides; while the mother, and after her death the
eldest daughter, is the ruler in the household. It is impossible to
give the details of their curious conjugal customs. The men do not
marry, but frequent other houses as lovers, without ceasing to live at
home, and without being in any way detached from the maternal family.
There is, however, a symbolic marriage for every girl, by a rite known
as tying the _tali_; but this marriage serves the purpose only of
initiation, and the couple separate after one day. When thus prepared
for marriage, a Nair girl chooses her lovers, and any number of unions
may be entered upon without any restrictions other than the strict
prohibitions relative to caste and tribe. These later marriages,
unlike the solemn initial rite, have no ceremony connected with them,
and are entered into freely at the will of the woman and