Evolution of Morality. 215 



be practised, in another, under more normal con 

 ditions, polygyny, or even monogamy, would be 

 the general rule. And it is surely a subject of 

 amazement in McLennan s theory that polygyny 

 does not appear as one of the earliest stages in 

 the evolution of the family. When the ances 

 tors of man had most of the animal in them, they 

 could scarcely have gone by an arrangement 

 which power and sexual jealousy make natural 

 for the lower animals. And of the primitiveness 

 of polygyny neither biology nor history leaves 

 us in doubt. But the coexistence of other forms, 

 under different conditions, need not be disputed. 

 Indeed, even in McLennan s argument there is 

 a tacit confession that endogamy, which with 

 polygyny and the family he would make the out 

 come of the long development, must have been 

 as archaic as exogamy ; for he observes that the 

 separate endogamous tribes are not only as nu 

 merous, but &quot; in some respects as rude, as the 

 separate exogamous tribes&quot; (p. 116). 



McLennan imagines primitive men to have 

 wandered about in hordes without any concep 

 tion of family relations. Their sexual condition 

 was one of unqualified promiscuity, in the restric 

 tion of which, through polyandry, he conceives 

 all advance to have been made. But although in 



