China of the Chinese (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Domestic Institutions Marital: Feudal Period The family is the earliest form of social organization, without which the life of the society could not continue, for the hypo- The Family thesis of general promiscuity is essentially and the unscientific. Even had a universally pro- Society. miscuous society been possible, it would soon have become extinct. Thus, the family preceding the nation, an account of the domestic institutions must precede that of the ceremonial and political institutions. In the early history of many countries we find it stated that marriage was " instituted" by some wise sovereign Alleged Origin or otrier; and so?in accordance with the of Marriage tendency of nations in an unscientific age in China. to account for their origin by myths which matured judgment repudiates?we find it in China. After an alleged period of promiscuity during which the people " knew their mothers but not their fathers," the Emperor Fu Hsi (a mythical sovereign said to have reigned from 2953 to 2838 B.c.) and his immediate successors, equally mythical, are stated to have introduced the rite of marriage. The " period of promiscuity," however, rests on the supposition that descent was traced through the mother, which in turn Matriarchal/sm is founded on tne fact that the character for " woman " is a component part of the character for " surname "; but even if this be admitted, we cannot infer from it that a state of promiscuity prevailed in early China. At most it would indicate the existence of the matriarchate, or tracing of descent through the mother. Marriage by capture may have been the y original form, but if u ever existed it had died out as the recognized form of marriage before authentic history begins; though ins...