5i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



types inhabiting barren or inclement localities. Civilized peoples are 

 unlikely to expel the Esquimaux. The Fuegians will probably sur- 

 vive, because their island cannot support a civilized population. It is 

 questionable whether the groups of wandering Semites who have for 

 these thousands of years occupied Eastern deserts will be extruded 

 by societies of higher kinds. And perhaps many steaming malarious 

 regions in the tropics will remain unavailable by races capable of 

 much culture. Hence the domestic, as well as the social, relations 

 proper to the lower varieties of man are not likely to become extinct. 

 Polyandry may survive in Thibet ; polygyny may prevail throughout 

 the future in parts of Africa ; and, among the remotest groups of hy- 

 perboreans, mixed and irregular relations of the sexes will probably 

 continue. 



It is possible, too, that in certain regions militancy may persist, 

 and that along with the political relations natural to it there may sur- 

 vive the domestic relations natural to it. Wide tracts, such as those 

 of Northeastern Asia, unable to support populations dense enough to 

 form industrial societies of advanced types, will perhaps remain the 

 habitats of societies having those imperfect forms of state and family 

 which go along with offensive and defensive activities. 



Omitting such surviving inferior types, we may here limit our- 

 selves to types carrying further the evolution which civilized nations 

 now show us. Assuming that among these industrialism will increase 

 and militancy decrease, Ave have to ask what are the domestic rela- 

 tions likely to coexist with complete industrialism. 



The monogamic form of the sexual relation is manifestly the ulti- 

 mate form ; and any changes to be anticipated must be in the direc- 

 tion of completion and extension of it. By observing what possibili- 

 ties there are of greater divergence from the arrangements and habits 

 of the past, we shall see what modifications are probable. 



Many acts that are normal with the uncivilized are, with the civ- 

 ilized, transgressions and crimes. Promiscuity, once unchecked, has 

 been more and more reprobated as societies have progressed ; abduc- 

 tion of women, originally honorable, is now criminal; the marrying 

 of two or more wives, allowable and creditable in inferior societies, has 

 become in superior societies felonious. Hence, future evolution, along 

 lines thus far followed, may be expected to extend the monogamic 

 relation by extinguishing promiscuity, and by suppressing such crimes 

 as bigamy and adultery. Dying out of the mercantile element in 

 marriage may also be inferred. After wife-stealing came w^ife-pur- 

 chase; and then followed the usages which made, and continue to 

 make, considerations of property predominate over considerations of 

 personal preference. Clearly, wife-purchase and husband-purchase 

 (which exists in some semi-civilized societies), though tliey have lost 

 their original gross forms, persist in disguised forms. Already some 



