298 THE HUMAN SPECIES 



Darwin l states that the indirect evidence in favour of the 

 belief of the former prevalence of communal marriages rests 

 chiefly on the terms of relationship which are employed 

 between members of the same tribe implying a connection 

 with the tribe and not with either parent. 



Mucke draws a totally different picture of the origin of 

 marriage in his book, Horde und Faniilie (Stuttgart, 1895): 

 according to him the tribe was the first to appear and immedi- 

 ately afterwards came the family. He thinks the grouping 

 of the sexes was very peculiar ; for just as on board ship the 

 various details of cargo are stowed on one or the other side, so 

 the women and girls had their dwelling-place on the one side 

 of the tribe, the men and boys on the other, while a special 

 place was set apart for the old men and women. Then at a 

 given season, probably in the spring, the union of the adults of 

 either sex took place and, no doubt, coram publico. That the 

 marriage was monogamous and that the family tie between 

 brothers and sisters followed naturally seems to him an obvious 

 conclusion, though he does not explain the reason why. Later 

 disturbances would arise in the tribe over women stolen prim- 

 arily that they might work, and secondarily be enjoyed sexually, 

 and so Mucke goes on to elaborate the fanciful scene. Through- 

 out he makes the mistake of concluding that because certain 

 anthropoids live monogamously, this must also have been the 

 rule with primitive man. 



The brothers Sarasin have fallen into the same error in 

 supposing that the Veddahs represent the original conditions of 

 mankind living a la Adam and Eve because these miserable 

 savages observe monogamy. Disregarding the fact that these 

 inhabitants of the Ceylon mountains intermarrying with their 

 own sisters and daughters cannot be looked upon as enjoying 

 the very highest ideal of matrimony, Kohler,- in his able 

 criticism of the Sarasins' book, shows that the wretched 

 economic conditions of the Veddahs do not represent the 

 circumstances of early mankind, but rather a stage of degenera- 

 tion from the original happier conditions : primitive humanity 

 must have lived a far more sociable life. 



Kohler takes communal promiscuous marriage to have 



1 Darwin, loc. cit., ii., p. 389. 2 Kohler, loc. cit., p. n. 



