system of polyandry. In Thibet, among the Nairs of Malabar, and elsewhere, we still find this system in force. Several men have one wife in common. A refinement of this arlangement is to insist, as in Thibet, that the co-husbands must be brothers. A traveller in Thibet of the last century, says: "They club together in matrimony as merchants do in trade. Nor is this joint concern often productive of jealousy among the partners. They are little addicted to jealousy. Dis putes, indeed, sometimes arise about the children of the marriage, but they are set tled either by a comparison of the features of the child with those of its several fathers, or left to the determination of its mother." (Cited by H. Spencer, Principles of Soci ology, third edition, p. 648). The course of development is then said to be (i) promiscuity, in which paternity is al together uncertain; (2) polyandry, in which paternity lies between the members of a small partnership: and (3) monogamy, in which pater est qucm nuptiœ démonstratif, As paternity becomes more and more de monstrable, the unreasonableness of reckon ing kin by the mother only is more apparent, until a time is reached when the men assert their independence and claim that the children should bear their name, and not that of their mother. The rise of private property facilitated the change. It made men anxious to see their sons provided for as their heirs. That many races took to polygamy instead of monogamy does not affect the argument, because there, too, paternity was indis putable. The theory of the progress of the race which I have sketched, has met in the last few years with much criticism. Westermark, Starcke and other able writers have advanced many cogent arguments against it. The general line of attack may be indi cated in a few words. (i) It is denied that primitive mankind lived in a state of promiscuity. Even many animals which men look down upon, live in
pairs; e. g. the man-like apes, whales, seals, the hippopotamus, and squirrels. As for birds, one naturalist affirms that "real genu ine marriage can only be found among birds." (Westermark, Hist, of Human Mar riage, p. ii). It is true that modern ob servers would not go so far as Ulpian. He said natural law was shared by man with all animals, and gave as instances of its opera tion the union of the sexes which we call marriage, and the care which all animals show in the rearing of their young. But the most kindly critic must admit that, as to sexual relations, some of the lower animals set but a low standard of decorum, and that, as to the education of the offspring, they leave their young to fight their own battles at a dangerously early age. Notwithstanding, if it can be shown that some of the so-called inferior animals form more or less durable alliances, it seems too harsh a view to think that our ancestors were less virtuous than the gorilla or the hippopotamus. Moreover, this is confirmed by the fact that some of the rudest races of existing men are found living in separate families. To give one example out of many: "The wild or forest Veddahs (in Ceylon), Mr. Pridham states, built their huts in trees, live in pairs, only occasionally assembling in greater numbers, and exhibit no traces of the remotest civilization, nor any knowledge of social rites." And a very strong argument against promiscuity is the prevalence of jealousy. In spite of many curious and interesting cus toms, most savages are extremely jealous: e. g. "Among the nomadic Koriaks many wives are killed by passionate husbands. Hence the women endeavor to be very ugly: they refrain from dressing their hair or wash ing, and walk about ragged, as the husbands take for granted that if they dress them selves, they do so in order to attract ad mirers." (Westermark, p. 120). (2) There is no evidence to show that polyandry was ever a wide-spread, far less a universal institution. Rather it seems to
