Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/49

 But all the forms of the group marriage known to us are accompanied by such peculiarly complicated circumstances that they of necessity point to a preceding simpler form of sexual intercourse and, hence, in the last instance to a period of unrestricted sexual intercourse corresponding to a transition from the animal to man. Therefore the references to animal marriages lead us back to precisely that point, from which they were intended to remove us forever.

What does the term "unrestricted sexual intercourse" mean? Simply, that the restrictions in force now were not observed formerly. We have already seen the barrier of jealousy falling, if anything is certain, it is that jealousy is developed at a comparatively late stage. The same is true of incest. Not only brother and sister were originally man and wife, but also the sexual intercourse between parents and children is permitted to this day among many nations. Bancroft testifies to the truth of this among the Kaviats of the Behring Strait, the Kadiaks of Alaska, the Tinnehs in the interior of British North America; Letourneau compiled reports of the same fact in regard to the Chippeway Indians, the Coocoos in Chile, the Caribeans, the Carens in Indo-China, not to mention the tales of ancient Greeks and Romans about the Parthians, Persians, Scythians, Huns and so forth. Before incest was invented (and it is an invention, a really valuable one indeed), sexual intercourse between parents and children could not be any more repulsive than between other persons belonging to different generations, which takes place even in our day among the most narrow-minded nations without causing any horror. Even old "maids" of more than sixty years sometimes, if they are rich enough, marry young men of about thirty. Eliminating from the primeval forms of the family known to us those conceptions of incest—conceptions totally different from