reason about
and to make more definite the customs that outlined permitted
marriage. The varieties of social expression in these ancient customs
is witness alike to economic pressure, the effect of climate and
immigration, political struggle and the institutions of war and of
private property.

=Purchase and Capture of Wives.=--Purchase and capture began early to
run a race in the supply of wives. Purchase, which kept the twain
together in nearness to one or the other side of the family line, was
usually best for women; especially when, as often happened, it gave
her the protection of her own blood relations. Capture, on the other
hand, made woman not only the possession of her husband in a peculiar
sense as separating her from all who might, through the working of
natural affection, act as her helpers in time of need, but made it
possible for the slavery of the wife to the husband to take on more
cruel forms. Although, it must be said, even capture gave a few women
of superlative charm a chance to take precedence of common wives
gained in the usual manner.

Two influences, one from the custom to allow marriages only within a
certain blood bond, and one to allow marriages only outside that
family relationship, have worked in the first instance to preserve
certain racial traits from extinction, and in the second place to mix
the common elements of human nature to the enrichment of the common
stock. This balancing regard for the known and allurement of the novel
has also worked to give manifold forms of family association, since
those customs were superseded.

It would seem that not only were "trial marriages" for individuals an
ancient, not at all a modern device, to see how the twain could get
along together, but varying trial forms of marriage for racial,
tribal, and national groups have made all manner of experiments to see
what on the whole would serve best the social need in the family
relationship.

That process of wide experimentation at last settled into the ideal
and practice of one father-head, at least, even if still allowing more
than one wife and mother within its bond. That father-head seems to
have found his place only on condition of grant from society of
complete authority over wife and children.

=The Patriarchal Family.=--The patriarchal family, which Sir Henry
Maine described so well, but which he mistakenly supposed to be the
first great type of familial association, placed firmly at the cent