might be so much more important, owing to the need of mutual protection
and aid, than that between the mother and her child, as to lead to the
sole use of terms expressive of the former relationships; but Mr.
Morgan is convinced that this view is by no means sufficient.
The terms of relationship used in different parts of 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 believing in absolutely promiscuous intercourse; and I am
glad to find that this is Sir J. Lubbock s view. 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 whether the unions last for life
or only for a season.
Besides the evidence derived from the terms of relationship, other
lines of reasoning indicate the former wide prevalence of communal
marriage. Sir J. Lubbock accounts for the strange and widely-extended
habit of exogamy that is, the men of one tribe taking wives from a
distinct tribe, by communism having been the original form of
intercourse; so that a man never obtained a wife for himself unless he
captured her from a neighbouring and hostile tribe, and then she would
naturally have become his sole and valuable property. Thus the practice
of capturing wives might have arisen; and from the honour so gained it
might ultimately have become the universal habit. According to Sir J.
Lubbock (6. Address to British Association On the Social and Religious
Condition of the Lower Races of Man, 1870, p. 20.), we can also thus
understand the necessity of expiation for marriage as an infringement
of tribal rites, since according to old ideas, a man had no right to
appropriate to himself that which belonged to the whole tribe. Sir J.
Lubbock further gives a curious body of facts shewing that in old times
high honour was bestowed on women who were utterly licentious; and
this, as he explains, is intelligible, if we admit that promiscuous
intercourse was the aboriginal, and therefore long revered custom of
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