Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory to explain the universal system of kinship traced through woman involves the same idea of woman’s subserviency to man, especially in the sexual relation, and is an illustration of the reasoning usually employed in dealing with this subject. Although “the very lowest races now existing, Fuegians, Australians, and Andamanese, show us that, however informally they have originated, sexual relations of a more or less enduring kind exist,” he is certain that among the earliest races a state of “lawlessness” must have prevailed and that “promiscuity” must have been the rule among them; and this too notwithstanding the fact that among the lower orders of life from which man has descended, and among the earliest races of mankind the female chooses her mate and refuses to pair with any individual except the one of her choice. To account for the universal system of reckoning descent through the female, Mr. Spencer says that as the connection between mother and child is more “obvious” than that existing between the father and his offspring the custom arose of reckoning descent through females.[88] The fact is observed that maternal affection without which organized society would have been impossible, and which alone can explain the system of kinship traced through women, is entirely ignored by Mr. Spencer. [88] _Sociology_ vol. i., p. 665. Noting the reasoning employed by many writers to prove that in the earliest ages of human existence, the maternal bond was ignored, and that the child was accounted as being related only to the group, Mr. Darwin remarks: But it seems almost incredible that the relationship of the child to its mother should ever be completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time, and as the lines of descent are traced through the mother alone, to the exclusion of the father.[89] [89] _Descent of Man_, p. 588. We must bear in mind that under archaic usages not only did mothers nurse their infants two, three, and even four years, but that maternity was the bond which held together related groups and the source whence proceeded all property rights and tribal honours; also, that under the system of female kinship, male parentage was known but habitually disregarded. Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Spencer can see no reason for concluding that in the most primitive groups there were no “individual possessions of women by men.”[90] [90] _Sociology_, vol. i., p. 665. The late Sir A. Smith, who had travelled widely in South Africa and was acquainted with the habits of savages there and elsewhere, expressed the strongest opinion that “no race exists in which woman is considered as the property of the community.”[91] The reasoning employed by Mr. Spencer to disprove the early supremacy of women seems scarcely to justify his lofty pretensions to intellectual greatness. [91] Quoted by Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 588.