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 CHAPTER X.

PROSTITUTION AND CONCUBINAGE.

I. Concubinage in General.—Frequency and reason of polygamic instincts—Palliatives of monogamy. II. Prostitution.—Primitive prostitution—Slow rise of scruples—Specialisation of prostitution in civilised societies—Prostitution in the ancient States of Central America, in China and Japan—The right of the father, and prostitution in Japan—Prostitution in India—Religious prostitution—Prostitution in Europe. III. Various Forms of Concubinage.—The concubinate—Concubine captives in Judæa and Homeric Greece—Some modern facts of the same kind—Slave concubines in Africa, in Abyssinia, and Madagascar—Legal concubinate in Central America—Categories of the concubinate in Mexico—The "lesser wives" in Tartary and China—Concubines in Assyria, among the Arabs, and in India—Greek hetaïrism—The concubinate in ancient Rome—The concubinate of the primitive catholic clergy—Concubines "by precaution"—Contemporary concubinage—Why it does not exist in Kabyle—The evolution of concubinage. I. Concubinage in General.

As a connecting link between polygamy and monogamy, concubinage deserves special study.

Between institutions, as between organised beings, there is no sudden leap. Societies evolve slowly; it is by degrees that customs become refined, and that laws are formulated of a less and less brutal kind. It has been with marriage as with everything else. To the confusion of primitive bestial unions, when polygamy after the manner of chimpanzees prevailed, have succeeded sexual associations regulated by laws and customs. I have successively