These primitive customs, combined with polyandrous or collective marriage and the matriarchate, have deceived many observers, both ancient and modern.
When we come to scrutinise these facts, and to view them in the light of animal sociology, we arrive at the conclusion that human promiscuity can only have been rare and exceptional, and that the theory of the community of wives and of obligatory hetaïrism will not bear examination.
The procreative need is one of the most tyrannical, and primitive man has satisfied it as he best could, without the least delicate refinement; but the egotism of individuals has had for its result, from the origin of human societies, the formation of unions based on force, and, correlatively, a right of property which fettered more or less rigorously the liberty of the women who were thus possessed.
These primitive unions were concluded according to the chance caprices or needs of extremely gross societies, who cared little to submit to a uniform conjugal type. There are some very singular ones among them, which differ essentially from the legal forms of marriage finally and very tardily adopted by the majority of mankind. It is these isolated conjugal unions, extravagant and immoral in our eyes, that we now have to consider.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Herodotus, Book xvi. p. 17.
[67] Strabo, vol. xvi. ch. iv. p. 25.
[68] Herodotus, Book i. p. 216.
[69] Herodotus, iv. 104.
[70] Ibid. iv. 180.