282 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ch. 



High Elms, Orpington, 

 Kent, 28</» June 1910. 



Dear Mr. Hartland — I have just finished the second 

 vol. of your Primitive Paternity, and must read the first, 

 which somehow I had overlooked. 



I am glad to see that you have arrived, apparently 

 quite independently (p. 95), at the conclusion which 

 I think I first suggested in my Origin of Civilisation 

 (1870, pp. 70-2) ; but does it not follow that some of 

 the customs, which we both refer to, are recognitions 

 of prior tribal rights ? 



I had also been struck, as you have, by the many 

 cases of deferred marriage, and visits by stealth which 

 it seemed, and seems, to me are to be accounted for in 

 the same way. 



The case of family groups as among apes does not 

 seem to me a case of " marriage," which you rightly 

 limit to relations " recognised by law or custom, and 

 entailing rights and duties." — I am, yours truly, 



AVEBUEY. 



To which Mr. Hartland replied : 



HioHGARTH, Gloucester, 

 1st July 1910. 



Dear Lord Avebury — I am much obliged for your 

 kind letter of the 28th June. I certainly think that 

 you long ago showed very strong reasons for holding 

 that the original condition of mankind was that of 

 promiscuity. Little value seems to me to be attached 

 to Westermarck's argument which so many anthropo- 

 logists have been inclined to accept. If man was 

 evolved from an anthropoid it must have been from one 

 that was gregarious. The higher apes of which he makes 

 so much have, owing to their solitary habits, got into 

 a side-track and so rendered further evolution impossible ; 

 and they have been surpassed in the race of life by man. 



The gradual limit of promiscuity led ultimately to 

 individual marriage, and it seems clear that some of 

 the customs referred to are vestiges of prior rights of 

 the group. More than that, may we not say that the 

 mental attitude disclosed in the practices which form the 

 subject of my chapter on Marital Jealousy is a relic of 

 the state of Promiscuity ? 



But I was anxious to avoid controversy which would 



