SECONDARY SKXUAL CHARACTERS. 673 



unions for each birth, and in this case nearly as much con- 

 fusion would have arisen in the term of relationship as in 

 the case of promiscuous intercourse. As far as sexual 

 selection is concerned all that is required is that choice 

 should be exerted before the parents unite, and it signifies 

 little whether the unions last for life or only for a season. 



Besides the evidence derived from the terms of relation- 

 ship, other lines of reasoning indicate the former wide prev- 

 alence of communal marriage. Sir J. Lubbock accounts* 

 for the strange and widely extended habit of exogamy 

 that is, the men of one tribe taking wives from a distinct 

 tribe by communism having been the original form of 

 intercourse; so that a man never obtained a wife for him- 

 self unless he captured her from a neighboring and hostile 

 tribe, and then she would naturally have become his sole 

 and valuable property. Thus the practice of capturing 

 wives might have arisen; and from the honor so gained it 

 might ultimately have become the universal habit. Ac- 

 cording to Sir J. Lubbock,* we can also thus understand 

 ^'^the necessity of expiation for marriage as an infringe- 

 ment of tribal rites, since, according to old ideas, a man 

 had no right to appropriate to himself that which belonged 

 to the whole tribe." Sir J. Lubbock further gives a 

 curious body of facts showing that in old times high honor 

 was bestowed 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, f 



Although the manner of development of the marriage- 

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

 gent 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 fore- 

 going and several other lines of evidence it seems probable J; 



* '' Address to British Association on the Social and Religious Con- 

 dition of the Lower Races of Man," 1870, p. 20. 



f " Origin of Civilization," 1870, p. 86. In the several works above 

 quoted, there will be found copious evidence on relationship through 

 the females alone, or with the tribe alone. 



^Mr. C. Staniland Wake argues strongly ("Anthropologic," 

 March, 1874, p. 197) against the views held by these three writers 

 on the former prevalence of almost promiscuous intercourse; and he 

 thinks that the classificator^ system of relationship can be other- 

 wise explainecj. 



