Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/17

 Social science, if it is to be seriously constituted, must submit with docility to the method of natural science. The first task, and the one which especially falls to the lot of the sociologists of the present day, is to collect the facts which will form materials for the future edifice. To their successors will fall the pleasure of completing and adorning it.

The present work is, therefore, above all, a collection of facts which, even if taken alone, are curious and suggestive. These facts have been patiently gleaned from the writings of ethnographers, travellers, legists, and historians. I have classed them as well as I could, and naturally they have inspired me here and there with glimpses of possible inductions, and with some slight attempts at generalisation.

But whether the reader rejects or accepts my interpretations, the groundwork of facts on which they rest is so instructive of itself that a perusal of the following pages cannot be quite fruitless.

CH. LETOURNEAU.