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Show i9ool INDIAN SOCIETY 197 The classical deduction is that descent through the mother ai- gues a previous condition of sexual promiscuity in which the paternity of a child would be uncertain and he must necessarily be assigned to his mother alone; with increasing stability in the marriage relation paternity would come to be reasonably certain, and the child would tend to be assigned to the father, as the head of the family, and to the father's clan where there was a clan organization. Under this theory maternal inheritance is therefore regarded as preceding;, in the evolution of the family and society, the paternal recognition. The fundamental error in this plausible line of argument, as applied to the world in general, lies in the disturbing fact that society is so complex in the factors which have contributed to its growth that it is by no means certain that what may be true of the development of an institution in one region will hold good for the entire human race. In the present chaotic condition of sociological and ethnological data it is unsafe to assert that a given tribe on a paternal basis represents a higher stage of social evolution than one on a maternal system, even though it may ultimately prove that in general the reasoning outlined above holds good. For example, as has been stated, 1 the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island are in a transition stage from paternal to maternal institutions instead of the reverse, which should be the case according to rule. 1 See above, chap. vii. |
