divide to every man a damsel or two.

But far more effective than

violence in converting family rule to the father's side was the introduction of friendly and equitable means of compensation. The obvious practice of exchange is often remarked on among the natives of Australia, where women of different families are exchanged as wives by their brothers. From Australia to Greenland the custom prevails of betrothing children in infancy, and there are even made, as in the Malay Islands, speculative contracts before the children are born. This widespread practice shows us families already intermarrying voluntarily for the benefit of alliance, as clans do compulsorily on a larger scale in full exogamy. Again, few customs strike the civilised modern reader as more quaint than the pretence of wife-capture in wild countries, as where the Kalmuk bridegroom rides with his armed friends to tear the bride from her people, who meet the sham attack with a sham resistance, till she is carried off with shouts and firing of matchlocks; of course her price had been bargained for beforehand. That this fierce formality is a survival of real warlike capture is no doubt a true explanation so far as it goes, but it has a practical meaning besides. It does justice between weaker and stronger groups; for as soon as the rule is admitted that resistance is to be merely formal, the weaker gains the power of equitable retaliation. Next comes acquisition of the wife by service in her family. When this takes place, after the couple are man and wife it is, in fact, a reduction to moderate limits of the lifelong maternal service, as where in Darfur the husband stays a year or two in the wife's house, and they hardly let him go then. If the service comes before the marriage, as is common, for instance, in the Malay Islands, and familiar to us in the story of the patriarch Jacob, the transaction becomes simply one of payment in labour. If evidence is needed to show that we are here on the track of change from maternal to paternal, and not the contrary, it will be found in the fact that the man's residence in the woman's family may be for the rest of his life, or for any shorter period down to the morrow of the wedding. But he habitually begins in his wife's house and ends in his own, whereas for the couple to set up in the husband's house and remove to the wife's is almost unknown. Last comes actual purchase for goods or money-a custom as much above low savagery as below high civilisation, which improves on rougher methods by estimating the current value of personal attractions, and the pretensions of a rich and powerful family, for their daughter's hand. These different modes of matrimonial agreement, obviously concluded between the families rather than between individuals, do not, however, practically shut out personal inclination or aversion. It is found practically not easy to capture an unwilling damsel, whether it is a Tatar who gallops after her across the steppe, or a Kamchadal who has served his years faithfully, but failed to please after all.

It would be irrelevant to go further into the development of marriage laws, when they pass into new phases in advancing culture, though keeping up lingering survivals, which testify to their descent from the age-long transformation from maternal to paternal. Such are, it may seem, the ideas of close relationship with the mother's brother among the modern Arabs, the horse-race at a Breton wedding where in old times there would have been a sham capture, or the gift of medals as wedding souvenirs in France, which replace the mediæval treizaine or thirteen coins, which again seem to come down from the Frankish marriage by the shilling and the penny (per solidum et denarium).

Further than this I must not go in the history of society. It is enough if I have given some reason to think that the two great regulations of early civilisation, matriarchy and exogamy, have nothing about them fantastic, outrageous, absurd, but are the practical outcome of the practical purposes of people like-minded with ourselves. Moreover, in such enquiries as the present there come before us abundant illustrations of that regularity of human action which makes it possible to deal with it by scientific methods. It may be, for the present at least, too difficult to construct a philosophy of history; but the anthropologist has the easier task of classifying customary thoughts and acts, which recur in distant times and places with high definiteness. Thus the maternal family and the system of exogamy, of which the instances may be scheduled out from Asia, Africa, America, are formations whose regularity reminds us of crystallography and chemistry. In virtue of their compact order they belong to Natural History, and that to Natural Science. They belong, indeed, to a region of Natural Science in which knowledge penetrates more deeply than elsewhere into the meaning of nature. This is due to the happy combination that the anthropologist is himself also a man. All human beings are in body and mind so much of one pattern that each can judge others by reference to his own understanding, intention, and will, and by the consciousness conveyed by language. If a classic dryad could tell his experience, would not a botanist he grateful for knowledge, now out of his reach, of the true inwardness of a tree? Could we hear from the voice of a sun-god about the impulse and purpose of the solar system, we should learn what is dark to the astronomer. But what is mere fancy about botany and astronomy is commonplace everyday fact to the anthropologist, who works a whole stage nearer to ultimate truth than do students who have more doubtfully to translate symptoms into inferences. Directer evidence of personal consciousness stands open to those who have to reason on the thoughts and acts of men like themselves, which might have been their own.

EDWARD B. TYLOR.

1896

THE WOMAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY

'ASSOCIATIONS founded for political objects may not have women, scholars, or apprentices as members, nor may women, scholars, or apprentices be present at any meetings of such associations.' So runs. the Prussian Coalition Law, and the laws of Bavaria, Brunswick, and some of the smaller States impose the same limitations on women; while in Saxony, where the law allows women to be present at political meetings, they may not be members of political associations. These laws explain in a large measure why there is not in Germany, as in England and America, any strong and well-organised woman movement.

But besides the political there is also a social cause. While the legal restrictions effectually hinder women from carrying on any political agitation, they do not sufficiently explain the lack of a more powerful movement among women of the middle class to obtain equality of opportunity, a movement which has been so very strong in England, and which is only now passing into a new phase more social and less individualistic in its character. This is explained by the very limited income of the ordinary middle-class household, which is also responsible for the German social ideal of woman as Hausfrau. Germany is not a rich country, and only a very little observation is needed to see that the incomes of the professional and mercantile classes are much smaller than in England, and that German women are therefore obliged to devote a great part of their time and thought to household work. And just for this very reason, that the women's minds are absorbed in details, German housekeeping is both unscientific and inartistic, and, although it entirely occupies the Hausfrau, it seldom attains even its own uncomfortable standard. In this vicious circle, where want of system takes up the time which should be devoted to developing system, it is very hard for a German woman to leave her narrow household interests and to educate and develop her own individuality. All the more honour is due, therefore, to those few thoughtful women who have conceived and led a movement that, though lacking the great and powerful inspiration of a new conception of life, has undoubtedly done a great deal to overcome German prejudices, and to widen German ideas about women. These women

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have not been aristocrats, for aristocratic women in Germany have never, like the brilliant leaders of French and English society, taken any interest in politics, or influenced leading politicians. The present Empress is entirely absorbed in her children, her dress, the formal etiquette of German Court society, and the work of endowing and building churches. The Empress Frederick undoubtedly takes an interest in the women's movement, but her time of power was too short for her to do much more than help to establish elementary technical schools for girls. The women of the nobility have charitable interests which chiefly take the form of extravagantly arranged bazaars or concerts; and, though they have some societies for helping the poor and the sick, the hard-working committee of the English aristocratic woman is unknown to them. Their daughters have less freedom than girls of the upper classes in England, and are not expected to take any interest in public affairs; and it is very difficult for them to get time and opportunity to carry on thorough studies at home. The 'revolted daughter' who leaves home to work is almost unknown, as the Universities are practically closed to women, and nursing is not, as in England, a common occupation for ladies. Sometimes in later life, when a girl has not succeeded in marrying, and if she does not wish to lead the 'drone and dressing-gown life,' as one of them has described it, she becomes a deaconess, but she has even less independence under the strictly organised guardianship of the Church than in her own home.

If unmarried girls of the middle class, on the other hand, have revolted to some extent, the cause has been mainly economic. Just as the married women, absorbed in their assured, though not what we should consider comfortable position, have been economically bound down to their little narrow world, so the unmarried women, whose growing numbers now amount to one-fourth of the German adult female population, have been economically forced to think about an extension of the ways of earning a living. Forced more and more into competition with men, the saying 'Let each one have the work and the calling to which he is suited' has had for them an economic rather than a social meaning. Self-support rather than self-development was their aim, and though it was a narrow aim, for it applied only to a comparatively small class of women, the intellectual proletariat, it had in it the germ of a larger movement. Their first and most important question was that of higher education, and in this respect Germany was found to offer fewer opportunities to women than any other country in Europe except Turkey. German women could not attend the Universities, though, absurdly enough, foreign women were admitted, and they could not study or practise law or medicine. For years the Reichstag and Landtage of the different States were besieged with petitions from women's associations, and only now at last are women permitted to practise medicine, though

the training and degree for it must still be obtained abroad. There are about ten women doctors practising in different parts of Germany. German women may also now attend lectures in most of the German Universities, but only as Hospitirende' or 'guest students,' without being allowed to matriculate, and generally on the sufferance of the professors. In Berlin, for instance, where Dr. Adolf Wagner, the present Rector of the University, has this year for the first time made it possible for women to hear lectures, all sorts of difficulties are thrown in their way. When permission to attend has been obtained from the Kultusminister, the individual professor will not always grant it. One professor is said to have given his servant strict orders to. tell all young ladies who might call on him that he was not at home,. and that, were he to see them, he never gave permission to ladies to attend his lectures. According to the papers, the famous historian, Professor von Treitschke, on seeing a lady among his audience, suddenly interrupted his lecture and went up to her and led her out. He is said to have remarked to one of his colleagues afterwards, I can't bear women folk at my lectures, and I shall put the Great Beadle at the door to keep them out.' But even were women allowed to matriculate, it has been impossible hitherto for them to get the necessary preparation, except privately. The ordinary education of German girls is not very good. Literature is excellently taught, but in other subjects too many facts are insisted upon, and thinking is not encouraged. In religion, which forms a large part of the instruction, the girls are not allowed to express doubts, or to ask questions as to dogmas. But even this sort of teaching is better than that of governesses, and it is a fortunate thing for girls of the upper classes that, for economy's sake, their parents generally send them to school. Within the last few years, however, three Gymnasiums or High Schools have been established in Berlin, Leipsic, and Carlsruhe, exactly similar to those which prepare young men for the universities. Several girls in Berlin will be ready this year to finish the Gymnasium course, and the friends of women's higher education are anxiously watching to see whether the passing of these examinations will be allowed to constitute matriculation, as it does with men, and give women the right, instead of the mere privilege, of attending the universities.

In the course of all this agitation, for even these few concessions have not been won without very great efforts, the women of the middle classes began to realise that their work was not so purely and immediately a personal question as they had imagined. They found that the existing laws stood opposed to their wishes, and that no real improvement could be effected in their position without some change of the laws. German law hardly recognises the separate individuality of a woman, especially if she be a wife or mother. There is nothing corresponding to the Married Women's Property Act, so that a