Note 28 — Chapter III

The question to solve is this: “How has monogamy taken its rise?” With the aid of sociology I shall endeavor to give the answer as summarily as possible.28 It will, however, be necessary to recall the ancient forms of marriage, without which it would be impossible to grasp the origin and evolution of the present form. Most sociologists are of the opinion that primitive man lived in promiscuity, which, if true, must have been in the most remote period, when man was hardly distinguishable from the anthropoid apes. Other authors, on the contrary, have attempted to show that such a state of things has never existed.29 However, the only thing proved is that no case of promiscuity has ever been established among peoples observed by serious ethnologists. But all these peoples, however far removed they may be from us, had already attained a certain degree of development, and were by no means in their primitive state. No amount of observation can prove whether or not primitive man really lived in a state of promiscuity, and we can only take refuge in hypotheses.