2 2O Wife-stealing and Polyandry. 



course of its development. On the contrary, it 

 would be seen to have originated, under excep 

 tional circumstances, with the strays and waifs 

 of humanity. As the only steady cause of ine 

 quality between the sexes was war, which would 

 tend to leave the women in excess, it would seem, 

 in the absence of other evidence, that polygyny 

 was in all probability more primitive and more 

 universal than polyandry. 



It is also a fair assumption that female infan 

 ticide should lead to wife- stealing, which might 

 ultimately crystallize into the system of exogamy. 

 Certainly wife-stealing, like infanticide and poly 

 andry, actually exists ; and, as McLennan was the 

 first to point out, the form of capture attests its 

 decay among tribes who once practised it. &quot;We 

 do not, therefore, dispute the facts ; but we do 

 question the significance with which McLennan 

 endows them. There is no evidence that wife- 

 stealing and exogamy were universal stages in the 

 evolution of humanity. In fact, the connection 

 between infanticide, polyandry, and the capture 

 of women is arbitrarily assumed by McLennan. 

 Infanticide may coexist with polygyny or mo 

 nogamy. Polyandry and wife-stealing we should 

 not expect to find conjoined ; for if tribes are 

 brave enough to steal wives, they would not cease 



