But Mr. Fison and others have argued powerfully against this theory.[32] Moreover, we find male relationships, as we saw--‘descent counted in the male line’--among the Arunta of Central Australia, whom Mr. J. G. Frazer regarded, in 1899, as actually ‘primitive;’ while the neighbours of the Arunta, the Urabunna, reckon through the female line.[33] Mr. Crawley, for various reasons, says, ‘the famous Matriarchal theory’ (the prepotency and dominion of women) ‘was as exaggerated in its early forms as was the Patriarchal.... It is a method of tracing genealogy, more convenient in polygamous societies and more natural in primitive times when the close connection of mother and child during the early days of infancy emphasises the relation.’[34] Dr. Westermarck argues to a similar effect.[35] His motive is to discredit the theory of promiscuity, and consequent uncertainty of fatherhood, as the cause of reckoning on the spindle side. But the Arunta, who reckon on the sword side, actually do not even know that children are the result of sexual intercourse, according to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. How they can have any idea of blood-kinship at all is, therefore, the mystery. It may perhaps be argued that they have none. But these ignorant Arunta reckon descent through the male line--while the Royal Picts, in early Scotland, infinitely more civilised, reckoned by the female line. For myself, I still incline to the opinion[36] that the reckoning of descent through the woman is the more archaic method, and the method that, certainly, tends to dwindle and disappear, as at last it did among the Picts. This applies to human society, not to that of Mr. Atkinson’s hypothesis, in which the question is not of kin, but of property. ‘Every female in my crowd is my sole property,’ says--or feels--Mr. Atkinson’s patriarchal anthropoid, and the patriarch gives expression to his sentiment with teeth and claws, if he has not yet learned to double up his fist, with a stone in it. ‘These were early days.’ THEORIES OF EXOGAMY. MR. MCLENNAN’S THEORY In any case, Mr. McLennan’s hypothetical first groups, like Mr. Atkinson’s, were very low indeed. They developed exogamy, not (as in Mr. Atkinson’s theory) through sexual jealousy on the part of the sires, but, first, through regular female infanticide. This practice, being reasonable, could not prevail among Mr. Atkinson’s anthropoids.[37] Girl babies being mostly killed out, women became scarce. Neighbouring groups being hostile, brides could only be procured by hostile capture. Each group thus stole all its brides and became exogamous, and marriage inside the group became a sin, by dint of ‘a prejudice strong as a principle of religion.’