Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/56

 that within a group, a horde, or a tribe, all the women belong, without rule or distinction, to all the men. In a society so bestial there is surely no room for what we call love, however grossly we may understand this sentiment. There is no choice, no preference; the sexual need is reduced to its simplest expression, and absolutely debased to the level of the nutritive needs; love is no more than a hunger or thirst of another kind; there is no longer any distinction between the man and the tatoway.

Some sociologists have affirmed, without hesitation, that community of women represented a primitive and necessary stage of the sexual associations of mankind. Surely they would have been less dogmatic on this point if, before approaching human sociology, they had first consulted animal sociology, as we have done. We have seen that many vertebrated animals are capable of a really exclusive and jealous passion, even when they are determined polygamists. As a matter of fact, the vertebrates with whom love is merely a need, like any other, seem to be a very small minority. Some among them, especially birds, are models of fidelity, constancy, and devoted attachment, which may well inspire man with feelings of modesty. Mammals, while less delicate in their love than many birds, are, however, for the most part, already on a moral level incompatible with promiscuity. The mammals nearest to man, those whom we may consider as the effigies of our nearest animal ancestors, the anthropoid apes, are sometimes monogamous and sometimes polygamous, but, as a rule, they cannot endure promiscuity. Now, this fact manifestly constitutes a very strong presumption against the basis of the theory according to which promiscuity has been, with the human species, the primitive and necessary stage of sexual unions. Do we thus mean to say that there is no example of promiscuity in human societies, primitive or not? Far from it. It would be impossible to affirm this without neglecting a large number of facts observed in antiquity or observable in our own day. But we are warranted in believing that the very inferior stage of promiscuity has never been other than exceptional in humanity. If it has existed here and there, it is that by the very reason of the relative superiority