The Evolution of Morality. 221 



stealing till they had one or more for each man. 

 And Mr. Herbert Spencer is authority for the as 

 sertion that &quot; where wife-stealing is now practised, 

 it is commonly associated with polygyny ; while, 

 on the other hand, polyandry is a trait of certain 

 rude peoples who are habitually peaceful &quot; (&quot; Soci 

 ology,&quot; i., pp. 646, 647). Thus wife-stealing tribes 

 would soon cease to be polyandrous ; and McLen 

 nan is left without a basis for his imaginary 

 evolution of Nair and Tibetan polyandry, with 

 their ultimate outcome of monogamy and descent 

 and inheritance through males. Polyandry is a 

 permanent and universal stage in McLennan s 

 scheme of family development. Yet we have 

 only to remember that women captured by the 

 stronger tribe were lost to the weaker to see that 

 with the .growth of strong tribes, who must have 

 had women in excess, there was a concomitant 

 decay of weaker tribes, until none but the strong, 

 polygynist tribes remained. The polyandrous 

 condition was never general, and where it did ex 

 ist, was often so unstable as to pass almost at 

 once over into its opposite. 



Similarly, the opposition between exogamy and 

 endogamy resolves itself into a vanishing differ 

 ence. It was perhaps inevitable, in the first flush 

 of a new discovery, that McLennan should have 



