16 The Descent of Man. Taut i. 



earliest possible age. The young men are often required to shew 

 that they can support a wife ; and they generally have first to 

 earn the price with which to purchase her from her parents. 

 With savages the difficulty of obtaining subsistence occasionally 

 limits their number in a much more direct manner than with 

 civilised people, for all tribes periodically suffer from severe 

 famines. At such times savages are forced to devour much bad 

 food, and their health can hardly fail to be injured. Many 

 accounts have been published of their protruding stomachs and 

 emaciated limbs after and during famines. They are then, also, 

 compelled to wander much, and, as I was assured in Australia, 

 their infants perish in large numbers. As famines are period- 

 ical, depending chiefly on extreme seasons, all tribes must 

 fluctuate in number. They cannot steadily and regularly 

 increase, as there is no artificial increase in the supply of food. 

 Savages, when hard pressed, encroach on each other's territories, 

 and war is the result ; but they are indeed almost always at war 

 with their neighbours. They are liable to many accidents on 

 land and water in their search for food ; and in some countries 

 they suffer much from the larger beasts of prey. Even in 

 India, districts have been depopulated by the ravages of 

 tigers. 



/ Malthus has discussed these several checks, but he does not 

 I lay stress enough on what is probably the most important of all, 

 ! namely infanticide, especially of female infants, and the habit of 

 i procuring abortion. These practices now prevail in many 

 quarters of the world ; and infanticide seems formerly to have 

 prevailed, as Mr. M'Lennan'' has shewn, on a still more extensive 

 scale. These practices appear to have originated in savages re- 

 cognising the difBcuIty, or rather the impossibility of supporting 

 all the infants that are born. Licentiousness may also be added 

 to the foregoing checks; but this does not follow from failing 

 means of subsistence ; though there is reason to believe that in 

 some cases (as in Japan) it has been intentionally encouraged 

 as a means of keeping down the population. 



If we look back to an extremely remote epoch, before man had 

 arrived at the dignity of manhood, he would have been guided 

 more by instinct and less by reason than are the lowest savages 

 at the present time. Our early semi-human progenitors would 

 not have practised infanticide or polyandry : for the instincts of 

 the lower animals are never so perverted "'^ as to lead them re- 



"' 'Primitive Marriage,' 1865. ments as follows on this passage: — 



•' A writer ia the ' Speot.ator ' " Mr. Darwin finds himself compelled 



fMaroh I2t!;, 1871, p. 320) coi*- " to reintroduce a new doctrine of th< 



