not of the father's blood. Therefore, the child belonged to the mother's
people and not to the father's people. If it be asked whether it is
possible that there could be any human beings so ignorant that they do
not know the physiological connection between father and child, the
reply is, that this is apparently the case among a number of very
primitive peoples, even down to recent times. It is not infrequent among
these peoples to find conception and childbirth attributed to the
influence of the spirits, rather than to relations between male and
female. While, therefore, a social connection between the father and the
children was recognized, leading the father to provide in all ways for
his children, as fathers do whether among civilized or uncivilized
peoples, yet the blood relationship between the father and the child
could not have been clear in the most primitive times.

Perhaps an even more efficient cause, however, of the maternal system
was the fact that the mother in primitive times was the stable element
in the family life, the constant center of the family. The husband was
frequently away from home, hunting or fighting, and oftentimes failed to
return. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that the child should
be reckoned as belonging to the mother, take her name and belong to her
kindred or clan. Moreover, after the custom of naming children from
mothers and reckoning them as belonging to the mother's clan was
established, it could not be displaced by the mere discovery of the
physiological connection between the father and the child. On the
contrary social habits, like habits in the individual, tend to persist
until they work badly. We find, therefore, the maternal system
persisting among peoples who for many generations had come fully to
recognize the physiological connection of father and child. Indeed, the
maternal system could never have been done away with if social evolution
had not brought about new and complex conditions which caused the system