232 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



up the evidence of anthropology on the present 

 subject, the authority just quoted, whose con- 

 clusions no one can any longer seriously call into 

 doubt, thus disposes of the entire question: 



In the first place, marriage between single pairs is not ab- 

 sent, but common among the simplest tribes; and no ground 

 whatever exists for assuming a condition of ancient promis- 

 cuity. Indeed, on the very lowest cultural plane we frequently 

 encounter matrimonial relations that would be rated exem- 

 plary by a mid-Victorian moralist* 



Exit, therefore, the Morganic hypothesis which 

 for so many years was made the basis of Socialist 

 philosophy and sociological literature. May it 

 never again raise its ugly head! Yet it is a special 

 convention of materialistic evolutionists that many 

 of their number, to say the least, are not at all 

 concerned about facts and spurn all attempts to 

 prove their theories, since proofs, they admit, are 

 not to be had. Their contentions are simply 

 true, because they must be true. Materialistic 

 evolution requires them. "As everybody knows," 

 "As nobody doubts," are the favorite shibbo- 

 leths. And this has been the attitude of so-called 

 science for two generations of articulate-speaking 

 men! Surely there could not have been less 

 logic and a less sublime disregard for empirical 

 proof in the days of the mammoth and the cave 

 man, even when the latter did represent society 

 in its decline and not in its origin. It may be 



'Ibid., p. 167. 



