Cjiap. XX. INTERFERING CAUSES. 361 



" riage as an infringement of tribal rites, since, aecord- 

 " ing to old ideas, a man had no right to appropriate 

 " to himself that which belonfred to the whole tribe." 

 Sir J. Lubbock further gives a most curious body of 

 facts shewing that in old times high honour was be- 

 stowed on women who were utterly licentious ; and this, 

 as he explains, is intelligible, if we admit that pro- 

 miscuous intercourse was the aboriginal and therefore 

 long revered custom of the tribe.^ 



Although the manner of development of the mar- 

 riage-tie is an obscure subject, as we may infer from 

 the divergent opinions on several points between the 

 three authors who have studied it most closely, namely, 

 Mr. Morgan, Mr. M'Lennan, and Sir J. Lubbock, yet 

 from the foregoing and several other lines of evidence it 

 seems certain that the habit of marriage has been gradu- 

 ally developed, and that almost promiscuous intercourse 

 was once extremely common throughout the world. 

 Nevertheless from the analogy of the lower animals, 

 more particularly of those which come nearest to man 

 in the series, I cannot believe that this habit prevailed 

 at an extremely remote period, when man had hardly 

 attained to his present rank in the zoological scale. 

 Man, as I have attempted to shew, is certainly descended 

 from some ape-like creature. With the existing Quad- 

 rumana, as far as their habits are known, the males of 

 some species are monogamous, but live during only a 

 part of the year with the females, as seems to be the 

 case with the Orang. Several kinds, as some of the 

 Indian and American monkeys, are strictly monogam- 

 ous, and associate all the year round with their wives. 

 Others are polygamous, as the Grorilla and several 



^ ' Origin of Civilisation,' 1870, p. 86. In the several works above 

 quoted there will be found copious evidence on relationship throjjgflr^ ^^ ^ 

 the females alone, or with the tribe alone. /C^ r>S 



