272 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



most casual, the sexes remaining absolutely free. The group 

 form of marriage, previously noted, would approach promis- 

 cuity, provided every woman in the community was 

 married to every man; but group marriages as found do not 

 include the whole tribe, instead a small number of men and 

 women constitute a family. So, as previously stated, no 

 where in the world do we fmd a community living in absolute 

 promiscuity. Yet, there was a time when the view prevailed 

 that a state of promiscuity preceded marriage; that one of 

 the important steps in the evolution of society was taken 

 when marriage appeared. Everyone assumes that marriage, 

 like other social institutions, had a beginning, or that 

 marriage was preceded by a state of no-marriage. But 

 we have seen that marriage as a social institution may have 

 been preceded by restricted mating similar to what is 

 observed among many other mammals. The weakness of the 

 promiscuity theory lies in the assumption that promiscuity 

 is the only possible antecedent to marriage as a social institu- 

 tion. There is every reason to believe that the biological 

 family functioned a long time before the form of society 

 we now know came into existence. However, one of the 

 strongest supporters of original promiscuity was Lewis H. 

 Morgan, who arrived at this interpretation, not by free 

 speculation, but by empirical observation. Discovering 

 that primitive peoples had peculiar methods of reckoning 

 relationship which took the mother into account, but did 

 not distinguish between the father and other men of 

 similar age, Morgan believed this to be a survival of an 

 earlier form of human society in which the father was 

 unknown and so indicated an antecedent stage of promis- 

 cuity. It is now believed that there are other interpretations 

 to this phenomenon more consistent with the observed 

 facts. However, Morgan seems to have been the only 

 student of marriage offering a theory of promiscuity based upon 

 objective observations, and since this theory has not stood 

 the test of time, we may consider the case as not proved. 



MARRIAGE AS A REGULATOR OF SEX LIFE 



[Our own social viewpoint encourages the inference that 

 the primary function of marriage is to regulate sex life. 



