London, 8 December 1882 

Dear Moor, 

What happened about the Prolétaire was this: when I recently sent 
you a parcel of Egalités and Kélnische Zeitungs, | also meant to send you 
the Traves Union Prolétaire and supposed I had included it. 
Somebody was in the room while I was packing up the parcel and 
I did this rather hurriedly. Finding next day that the Trapes Union 
Prolétaire was still here, but not the other containing the Saint- 
Etienne skulduggery, *?> I thought I must have sent it you twice 
over. Now, looking around by the light of day, I have found it — still 
in the original wrapper in which you returned it, this being undoubt- 
edly the reason why I couldn’t find the same. 

From your postcard to Tussy,?°* I see that you are still confined to 
the house — which is all to the good considering the snow we’re get- 
ting and the wet slush on the ground; but no doubt we shall soon 
have better weather (not the very best, but better than at present). 
During your first winter in the north since your attack of pleurisy you 
will have to resign yourself to tracheal affections of a milder kind; 
only next summer’s cure will be able to scotch those. 

In order to get the parallel between Tacitus’ Germans? and the 
American Redskins sorted out at last, [ have gently been making ex- 
cerpts from the first volume of your Bancroft. The similarity is, 

 Tacitus, Germania.-” H.H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States of North 
America, Vol. 1, New York, 1875. 

I must say, all the more surprising in that the modes of production 
are so utterly different — on the one hand fishermen and hunters and 
no stock-breeding or crop farming, on the other migratory stock- 
breeding overlapping with crop farming. It just goes to show how, at 
this stage, the method of production is less crucial than is the degree 
to which old blood ties and the ancient mutual community of the 
sexes within the tribe are being dissolved. Otherwise the Tlingits in 
what was once Russian America could not be the exact counterpart 
of the Germans— probably even to a greater extent than your Iro- 
quois. Another puzzle which is solved here is how placing the 
main burden of work on women is perfectly compatible with great re- 
spect for those women. In addition, I have found confirmation of my 
assumption that the jus primae noctis,» originally found in Europe 
among the Celts and Slavs, is a survival of the ancient sexual commu- 
nity: 1n two tribes, widely separated and not of the same race, it is still 
exercised by the shamans as representatives of the tribe. I have 
learned a great deal from the book— enough for the present as 
regards the Germans. [ shall have to save up Mexico and Peru until 
later. For I have returned the Bancroft and, in exchange, taken the 
remaining things by Maurer, ail of which are therefore now at my 
house. I had to look through them because of my concluding note on 
the Mark, which is growing rather long and is still not to my liking 
although I have rewritten it 2 or 3 times. But to sum up in 8 to 10 
pages what happened after rise, flowering and decline is no joke. 
If I have the time, I shall send it you so that you can give me your 
opinion. As for myself, I should be glad to be quit of the stuff and to 
have another go at the natural sciences. 

It’s odd, the way one can see how the concept of holiness arose 
among the so-called aboriginal peoples. What was holy, originally, is 
what we took over from the animal kingdom — the destzal; as com- 
pared with that, ‘human institutions’ were as much of an abomina- 
tion as they are in the gospels by comparison with divine law. 

Hartmann’s installation of his battery for lighting 6 Swan lamps 
(incandescent bulbs @ 6 candle-power) was supposed to have been 
ready yesterday, but I don’t know whether it succeeded or 
not.? 

T shall draw Bernstein’s attention to Saarbrücken, as I have al- 
ready done before. But the Anti-Socialist Law will make material 

? the right of the first night.-> See this volume, pp. 381-82, 391. 

hard to come by there. Even prior to that, every effort was made to 
keep this area undefiled. 

Egalité by the second post. Lafargue is still at liberty since it was 
he who addressed it to me. 

Apropos Trapes Union veputation: When, at the meeting of the 
Possibilists, the French had sung the Marseillatse in their honour, 
the virtuous Shipton and his mates thought fit to retort by singing in 
unison ‘Gop Save THE Queen!’ This according to the Kélnische Zeitung 
which I sent to Laura. 

Well, I wish your throat, no less than the weather, a good recovery. 

Your 
F.E.