A History of Politics

characterized by certain well- marked features, which distinguish it from earlier as well as from later types of society. These features are : i. Male kinship.?We saw that, in the savage type of community, while something that might be called kinship prevailed, it was so arbitrary and artificial that it might be regarded as a superstition rather than a fact. So far as there was any recognition of blood relationship at all, it was relationship through women, not through men. But, in the patriarchal stage, paternity is the leading fact. Men are counted of kin because they are descended from the same male ancestor. Sometimes, no doubt, the relationship is fictitious rather than real; as when deficiencies in a family are made up by adoption or fosterage. But the very existence of such devices shows the importance attached to descent through males. Leaving for the present the question of how this important change came about, we notice another feature of patriarchal society closely connected with it. a. Permanent marriage.?Without such an addition, the first feature could hardly develop. In a state of society such as that of the Australians (ante, p. 10), no one could be certain who his father was. It is not until a woman becomes the wife of one man only that anything like certainty of fatherhood appears. But it must not be assumed that marriage, as we understand it, i. e., permanent union of one man with one woman, is a feature of all patriarchal society. ...