298 PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART II. 



cultured nations in comparison with that of the civilized 

 European. 



The woman belongs to the man who has purchased her from 

 her parents ; he can therefore discard, lend, exchange, or sell 

 her. The power of the husband over his wife seems to be 

 greatest on the Fiji Islands, where the women among the 

 common people are not merely articles of commerce, but are 

 frequently killed and eaten by their husbands without their 

 being punished for it. 1 The wives of the father sometimes 

 pass to the son as an inheritance. The wife only, not the 

 husband, can commit adultery. Polyandry, though, as Wuttke 

 observes, 2 opposed to the notions of uncultured peoples about 

 marriage, is not only cogitable as a matter of necessity, but is 

 also practised from political or religious motives. 3 Polygamy, 

 on the other hand, proceeds from the estimation of the female sex 

 among uncultured peoples, and can scarcely have been the con- 

 sequence of the overplus of females caused by war ; though it 

 may be admitted that a greater mortality of the males, as for in- 

 stance, is caused in Greenland by a dangerous and noxious mode 

 of life, 5 may have contributed to establish the custom. It is 

 chiefly the result of woman being considered as property and a 

 beast of burden capable of being applied to useful labour. An- 

 other circumstance which leads to polygamy is the early fading 

 of woman (in the Bast Indies girls marry at the age of twelve, 

 and are old between twenty-five and thirty), whether it be in 

 consequence of the climate, or of being overworked. Among 

 some African nations women are considered unclean during the 

 whole period of lactation, during which all intercourse with 

 the other sex is strictly forbidden. It has been asserted that 



1 Wilkes, iii, p. 192. 



2 " G-eschichte der Heidenthums," i, p. 184. 



3 Dessalles' description (" Hist, gen des Antilles/' i, p. 197, 1847) of poly- 

 gamy and polyandry among the Caribs in the West India Islands, is unre- 

 liable. Polyandry, however, is found as a permanent custom among the 

 Avanoes and Maypures in South America (Huniboldt and Bonpland, " Eeise," 

 iv, p. 477) ; also in Ladakh, in the highland of Thibet, in the alpine state of 

 Sirmore, although the inhabitants of the latter region seem to be Hindoos 

 (Bitter, "Erdk.," iii, pp. 623, 752, 880). The arrangement is, that several 

 brothers have but one wife between them. In Ladakh, the eldest brother 

 must support the children. One ground of the custom may be, that the sup- 

 port of a wife is expensive. 



4 Cranz, i, p. 218. 



