rriage. In this respect, these savages are more just and
wiser than us.

In man, a special reason in favor of marriage is the fact that he has
no rutting period. In animals the rutting period is generally
regulated so that the young are born exactly at the time of year when
they will find food most abundant. For example, the muscardin
copulates in July and brings forth young in August, at the time when
nuts are ripe, while elephants, whales and certain monkeys, who find
food at all seasons, do not copulate at any definite period.

The anthropoid apes, however, have a rutting period, and something
analogous is found among certain human races (Californians, Hindus and
certain Australians) in the spring, when sexual orgies are indulged
in. In man there is no particular correlation between eroticism and
the possibility of easily obtaining food for the children at the time
of birth. Nevertheless, a recrudescence of the sexual appetite is
generally observed in the spring and beginning of summer, with a
corresponding increase in the number of conceptions. This is probably
explained by the fact that infants born in the autumn or winter are
more robust. Moreover, natural selection has almost entirely ceased in
civilized peoples, owing to the artificial means used to rear
children, and to the diminution which results from their mortality.

We thus see that the institution of marriage in man does not depend on
the excitation of the sexual appetite, for this is, on the whole,
continuous.

ANTIQUITY OF MATRIMONIAL INSTITUTIONS

The fact that the anthropoid apes produce feeble and dependent young,
whose infancy is long, has probably been the origin of marriage.
Kautsky says that in primitive man the child belongs to the clan; but
this is an error. Originally, human societies were composed of
families, or rather associations of families. In primitive man, these
families play the fundamental role and constitute the nucleus of
society. In the anthropoid ape we already find the family, but not the
clan. This must also have been the case with the pithecanthropoids and
other extinct transitory forms. In fact, the lowest savages still live
as isolated families like the carnivorous mammals, rather than in
clans or tribes. This is the case, for example, with the Weddas of
Ceylon, the indigenes of Terra del Fuego, the aboriginal Australians,
the Esquimaux and certain Indians of Brazil. In this way they have
better conditions for subsis