Chap. XX.] MANNER OF ACTION. 351 



marry young. Consequently they must be subjected to 

 occasional hard struggles for existence, and the favored 

 individuals will alone survive. 



Turning to primeval times when men had only doubt- 

 fully attained the rank of manhood, they would probably 

 have lived, as already stated, either as polygamists or 

 temporarily as monogamists. Their intercourse, judging 

 from analogy, would not then have been promiscuous. 

 They would, no doubt, have defended their females to the 

 best of their power from enemies of all kinds, and would 

 probably have hunted for their subsistence, as well as for 

 that of their oftspring. The most powerful and able 

 males would have succeeded best in the struggle for life 

 and in obtaining attractive females. At this early period 

 the progenitors of man, from having only feeble powers 

 of reason, would not have looked forward to distant con- 

 tingencies. They would have been governed more by 

 their instincts and even less by their reason than are 

 savages at the present day. They would not at that 

 period have partially lost one of the strongest of all in- 

 stincts, common to all the lower animals, namely, the love 

 of their young offspring; and consequently they would 

 not have practised infanticide. There would have been 

 no ai'tificial scarcity of women, and polyandry would not 

 have been followed ; there would have been no early be- 

 trothals ; women would not have been valued as mere 

 slaves ; both sexes, if the females as well as the males 

 were permitted to exert any choice, would have chosen 

 their partners, not for mental charms, or property, or 

 social position, but almost solely from external appear- 

 ance. All the adults would have married or paired, and 

 all the offspring, as far as that was possible, would have 

 been reared; so that the struggle for existence would 



Merid.' torn. ii. 1809, p. 21) makes precisely the same remark in regard 

 to the wild Indians of South America. 



