THE .ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGISTS l6l 



inventions l and social institutions, racial differences 2 and early 

 migrations. 3 For example the historical investigations of Sir 

 Henry Maine left the question of the pre-historic family un- 

 touched save by inference. The anthropological researches of 

 Bachofen, McLennan, Morgan and Lubbock have come to be 

 considered as based on insufficient and misleading evidence, and 

 the most potent weapon of criticism of their conclusions, as used 

 by Spencer, Howard, Westermarck and others, is just this theory 

 of adaptation. Granted that primitive people were ignorant of 

 the relation between copulation and child-birth, we may still 

 argue for a more or less permanent relation between the sexes 

 from monogamic mating among birds and higher mammals, from 

 jealousy, and from economic need, also from the more recent 

 studies of sex mores among extant types of primitive culture. 

 Moreover, whatever the first form, promiscuity could not prevail 

 because of its dis-utility owing to its connection with venereal 

 diseases and low fecundity, and because of its effect on childhood. 

 Thus the earliest form and changes hi it were in accordance with 

 this principle of adaptation. 



1 Mason, Origin of Inventions, ch. I. 



2 Marett, Anthropology, pp. 93 f.; Keane, Ethnology, ch. X; also Man Past and 

 Present, p. 13; Boas, op. tit., ch. II. 



3 Chapin, Social Evolution, pp. 141 f. 



