[Footnote 61: A general view of the subject may be obtained from the following works: Bachofen, _Das Mutterrecht_, Stuttgart, 1871, and _Die Sage von Tanaquil_, Heidelberg, 1870; McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History_, London, 1876, and _The Patriarchal Theory_, London, 1884; Morgan's _Systems of Consanguinity_ (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. xvii.), Washington, 1871, and _Ancient Society_, New York, 1877; Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, 5th ed., London, 1889; Giraud-Teulon, _La Mere chez certains peuples de l'antiquite_, Paris, 1867, and _Les Origines de la Famille_, Geneva, 1874; Starcke (of Copenhagen), _The Primitive Family_, London, 1889. Some criticisms upon McLennan and Morgan may be found in Maine's later works, _Early History of Institutions_, London, 1875, and _Early Law and Custom_, London, 1883. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole field is that in Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. pp. 621-797.] [Sidenote: Original reason for the system.] [Sidenote: The primeval human horde.] [Sidenote: Earliest family-group: the clan.] [Sidenote: "Exogamy."] If now we ask the reason for such a system of reckoning kinship and inheritance, so strange according to all our modern notions, the true answer doubtless is that which was given by prudent ([Greek: Pepnymenos]) Telemachus to the goddess Athene when she asked him to tell her truly if he was the son of Odysseus:--"My mother says I am his son, for my part, I don't know; one never knows of one's self who one's father is."[62] Already, no doubt, in Homer's time there was a gleam of satire about this answer, such as it would show on a modern page; but in more primitive times it was a very serious affair. From what we know of the ideas and practices of uncivilized tribes all over the world, it is evident that the sacredness of the family based upon indissoluble marriage is a thing of comparatively modern growth. If the sexual relations of the Australians, as observed to-day,[63] are an improvement upon an antecedent state of things, that antecedent state must have been sheer promiscuity. There is ample warrant for supposing, with Mr. McLennan, that at the beginning of the lower status of savagery, long since everywhere extinct, the family had not made itself distinctly visible, but men lived in a horde very much like gregarious brutes.[64] I have shown that the essential difference between this primeval human horde and a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact that the gradual but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two effects: the lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate the horde into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of youthful mental