360 
SEXUAL selection: man. 
Part II. 
the world may be divided, according to the author just 
quoted, into two great classes, the classificatory and 
descriptive, — the latter being employed by us. It is 
the classificatory system which so strongly leads to the 
belief that communal and other extremely loose forms 
of marriage were originally universal. But as far as 
I can see, there is no necessity on this ground for be- 
lieving in absolutely promiscuous intercourse. Men and 
women, like many of the lower animals, might formerly 
have entered into strict though temporary unions for 
each birth, and in this case nearly as much confusion 
would have arisen in the terms of relationship as in 
the case of promiscuous intercourse. As far as sexual 
selection is concerned, all that is required is that choice 
should be exerted before the parents unite, and it 
signifies little Avhether the unions last for life or only 
for a season. 
Besides the evidence derived from the terms of re- 
lationship, other lines of reasoning indicate the former 
wide prevalence of communal marriage. Sir J. Lub- 
bock ingeniously accounts ^ for the strange and widely- 
extended habit of exogamy, — that is, the men of one 
tribe always taking wives from a distinct tribe, — by 
communism havins: been the original form of mar- 
riage ; so that a man never obtained a wife for himself 
unless he captured her from a neighbouring and liostile 
tribe, and then she would naturally have become his 
sole and valuable property. Thus the practice of cap- 
turing wives might have arisen ; and from the honour 
■so gained might ultimately have become the universal 
habit. We can also, according to Sir J. Lubbock,^ 
thus understand the necessity of expiation for mar- 
^ Address to British Association ^On the Social and Religious Con- 
dition of the Lower Races of Man/ 1870, p. 20. 
