Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/89

 alarmed at their violence that, in general, she tranquilly looks on at the duels, and afterwards gives herself, one may say, freely to the victor. With certain species of birds a lyric tourney is substituted for the fight, and so ardently do the birds engage in it that a competitor will often die of exhaustion.

Lastly, when the tourney is over, the couples paired, and the marriage concluded, all rivalry ceases, the newly-mated birds isolate themselves more or less, and devote all their energies to the production of a family. Now these are delicate refinements unknown to primitive man, whose rivalries on the subject of the possession of women resemble far more the struggles of the old males with the young in the hordes of the gorillas or chimpanzees. We are forced to acknowledge that the sexual morality of primitive man does not much differ from that of anthropoid apes, and it is quite a stranger to the æsthetic and poetic refinements of certain birds.

I here end my short inquiry into the morals of primitive man and the eccentric modes of conjugal union which have preceded the institution of a more durable, exclusive, and solemn marriage.

We are filled with astonishment when we find such complete animal laxity in our undeveloped ancestors, and we can hardly understand the total absence of scruples which are now profoundly incarnate in us.

Those anthropologists who insist on making man a being apart in the universe shut their eyes to these gross aberrations. Evolutionists are not so timid, and do not fear to face the truth.

If, as it is impossible to deny, man is subject to the laws of evolution like all other beings, we are forced to admit that he must have passed through very inferior phases of physical and moral development. Homo sapiens surely descends from an ancient pithecoid ancestor, and this original blot has necessarily been a drawback to his moral evolution.

But here it is important to make a distinction. The resemblance between the moral coarseness of the savage and the depravation of the civilised man is quite superficial. Who thinks of being shocked at the morals of