tion for women, a higher development of the paternal feeling, better forethought for the children's welfare, and a more refined love-passion have gradually made it stronger, until it has become, in many cases, almost indissoluble. A husband in the most advanced societies is no longer permitted to repudiate his wife whenever he likes; a wife cannot, without more ado, divorce herself from her husband. Marriage has become a contract the keeping of which is superintended by the State, and which may be dissolved only uuder certain stipulated conditions.

Although there can be no doubt that the psychical causes which have strengthened the marriage tie tend to become more potent, we must not conclude that divorce will in future be less frequent and more restricted by the laws than it is now in European countries. It must be remembered that the laws of divorce in Christian Europe owe their origin to an idealistic religious commandment which, interpreted in its literal sense, gave rise to legal prescriptions far from harmonizing with the mental and social life of the mass of the people. The powerful authority of the Roman Church was necessary to enforce the dogma that marriage is indissoluble. The Reformation introduced somewhat greater liberty in this respect, and modern legislation has gone further in the same direction.

CHAPTER XXIV

SUMMARY

OUR investigation has now come to an end. The development of human marriage in all its aspects has been examined, according to the method suggested in the introductory chapter. Many of the conclusions are more or less hypothetical, but not a few, I think, are necessary deductions from trustworthy evidence. As they are based on a great accumulation of facts, it may be well to present a general view of the argument as a whole.

We defined marriage as a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. It is found among many of the lower animals, it occurs as a rule among the anthropomorphous apes, and it is universal among mankind. It is closely connected with parental duties: the immediate care of the children belongs chiefly to the mother, whilst the father is the protector and guardian of the family. Being a necessary requirement for the existence of certain species, it obviously owes its origin to an instinct developed through the powerful influence of natural selection. If, as seems probable, there was a human pairing season in early times, the continued excitement of the sexual instinct cannot have played a part in the origin of human marriage-assuming that the institution existed among primitive men. And it is highly probable that it did exist, as the marriage of the Primates seems to be due to the small number of young and the long period of infancy. Later on, when mankind became

chiefly carnivorous, the assistance of an adult male became still more necessary for the subsistence of the children, as the chase everywhere devolves on the man. The suggestion that, in olden times, the natural guardian of the children was not the father, but the maternal uncle, has no foundation in fact; neither has the hypothesis that all the males of the tribe indiscriminately were their guardians. All the evidence we possess tends to show that among our earliest human ancestors the family, not the tribe, formed the nucleus of every social group, and, in many cases, was itself perhaps the only social group. The man-like apes are not gregarious, and the solitary life they generally lead is almost certainly due chiefly to the difficulty they experience in getting sufficient quantities of food. We may infer that our fruiteating human or half-human ancestors were not more gregarious than they. Afterwards, when man passed beyond his frugivorous stage, he continued, as a rule, this solitary kind of life, as gregariousness is a disadvantage to all large animals who live chiefly on flesh. Even now there are savage peoples of the lowest type who live rather in separate families than in tribes, and facts indicate that the chief reason for this is want of sufficient food. The sociability of man, therefore, sprang in the main from progressive intellectual and material civilization, whilst the tie that kept together husband and wife, parents and children, was, if not the only, at least the principal factor in the earliest forms of man's social life. Human marriage, in all probability, is an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor.

Most anthropologists who have written on prehistoric customs believe, indeed, that man lived originally in a state of promiscuity or "communal marriage"; but we have found that this hypothesis is essentially unscientific. The evidence given for it consists of notices of some savage nations said to live promiscuously, and of some curious customs which are assumed to be survivals from a time when marriage did not exist. Many of the assertions made as to peoples living in promiscuous intercourse have, however, been shown to be erroneous, and the accuracy of the others is at least open to question. But even if some of the statements were true, it would

be a mistake to infer that these quite exceptional cases represent a stage of development through which all mankind have passed; and it is certainly not among the lowest peoples that sexual relations most nearly approach to promiscuity. Equally unwarranted is the inference of a primitive condition of "communal marriage" from the fact that in some parts of the world the sexes may cohabit freely before marriage. There are numerous savage and barbarous peoples among whom sexual intercourse out of wedlock is of rare occurrence, unchastity on the part of the woman being looked upon as a disgrace or a crime. Contact with a "higher culture" has proved pernicious to the morality of savage peoples; and we have some reason to believe that irregular connections between the sexes have, on the whole, exhibited a tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization. Moreover, free sexual intercourse previous to marriage is quite different from promiscuity, which involves a suppression of individual inclinations. The most general form of it is prostitution, which is rare among peoples living in a state of nature, untouched by foreign influence. Customs which have been interpreted as acts of expiation for individual marriage-a sort of religious prostitution found in the East; the jus primae noctis granted to the friends of the bridegroom, or to all the guests at a marriage, or to a particular person, a chief or a priest; and the practice of lending wives to visitors— may be far more satisfactorily explained otherwise. This is true also of the fact that, among certain peoples, courtesans are held in greater estimation than women married to a single husband. Mr. Morgan's view-that the former prevalence of "marriage in a group" and promiscuity are proved by the "classificatory system of relationship" in force among many peoples-presupposes that the nomenclature was founded on blood-relationship, as near as the parentage of individuals could be known. But it can scarcely be doubted that the terms for relationships were originally mere terms of address, given chiefly with reference to sex and age, as also to the external, or social, relationship in which the speaker stood to the person whom he or she addressed. It has been suggested that the system of "kinship through females only"

implying, chiefly, that children are named after their mothers, not after their fathers, and that property and rank succeed exclusively in the female line-is due to the uncertain paternity which resulted from early promiscuity. But the ties of blood have exercised a far less direct influence on this system than is generally assumed. We have seen that there may be several reasons for naming children after the mother rather than after the father, apart from any consideration of relationship. The custom in accordance with which, among many peoples, a man, on marrying, goes to live with his wife in the house of her father deserves special notice in this connection. It is probable that the causes which make children take their mother's name have also directly influenced the rules of succession, but the power of the name itself seems to have been of even higher importance. Moreover, so far as we know, there is no general coincidence of what we consider moral and immoral habits with the prevalence of the male and female line among existing savages; and among various peoples the male line prevails, although paternity is often actually uncertain on account of their polyandrous marriage customs. Avowed recognition of kinship in the female line only, by no means implies an unconsciousness of male kinship. Finally, there are many rude peoples who exhibit no traces at all of a system of "kinship through females only." Thus the facts put forward in support of the hypothesis of promiscuity do not entitle us to assume that promiscuity has ever been the prevailing form of sexual relations even among a single people, whilst the hypothesis is opposed to all the correct ideas we are able to form with regard to the early state of man. Promiscuous intercourse between the sexes tends to a pathological condition very unfavourable to fecundity; and the almost universal prevalence of jealousy among peoples unaffected by foreign influence, as well as among the lower mammals, makes it most unlikely that promiscuity ever prevailed at any stage of human development. As we have seen, the idea that a woman belongs exclusively to one man is so deeply rooted among various peoples that it has led to several revolting practices. In the chapter on Marriage and Celibacy' we noted that