determines marital relations, food distribution, salutations, and
general conduct to an extraordinary degree. A kinship group was known as
"tribe" or "family" (English translation) among the Israelites; as
genos, phratria, and phyle among the Greeks, gens and curia among the
Romans; clan in Scotland; sept in Ireland; Sippe in Germany.
=2. The Family or Household Group.=--Two kinds of families may be noted
as significant for our purpose. In the _maternal family_ the woman
remains among her own kin, and the children are naturally reckoned as
belonging to the mother's kin. The husband and father is more or less a
guest or outsider. In a blood feud he would have to side with his own
clan and against that of his wife if his clan quarreled with hers. Clan
and family are thus seen to be distinct. In the _paternal_, which easily
becomes the _patriarchal_ family the wife leaves her relatives to live
in her husband's house and among his kin. She might then, as at Rome,
abjure her own kindred and be formally adopted into her husband's gens
or clan. The Greek myth of Orestes is an illustration of the clashing of
these two conceptions of father kin and mother kin, and Hamlet's sparing
of his mother under similar circumstances, shows a more modern point of
view.
It is evident that with the prevalence of the paternal type of family,
clan and household ties will mutually strengthen each other. This will
make an important difference in the father's relation to the children,
and gives a much firmer basis for ancestral religion. But in many
respects the environing atmosphere, the pressure and support, the group
sympathy and group tradition, are essentially similar. The important
thing is that every person is a member of a kindred, and likewise, of
some family group, and that he thinks, feels, and acts accordingly.[8]
§ 3. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS ARE ALSO ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL
UNITS
=1. The Land and the Group.=--In land, as a rule, no individual
ownership in the modern sense was recognized. Among hunting and pastoral
peoples there was, of course, no "ownership" by any group in the strict
sense of modern law. But none the less, the group, large or small, had
its fairly well-defined territory within which it hunted and fished; in
the pastoral life it had its pasture range and its wells of water. With
agriculture a more definite sense of possession arose. But possession
was by the tribe or gens or household, not by the individual:
"The land belonged to the clan, and the clan was settled upon the
land. A man was thus not a member of the clan, because he lived
upon, or even owned, the land; but he lived upon the land, and had
interests in it, because he was a member of the clan."[9]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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