n be due only
to the fact that it admitted families which had undergone a thorough
change. This does not exclude the possibility that these same families
were thus enabled to reorganize later on under infinitely more favorable
circumstances."[11]

It becomes apparent from this, that animal societies may indeed have a
certain value in drawing conclusions in regard to human life--but only
negatively. The higher vertebrate knows, so far as we may ascertain,
only two forms of the family: polygamy or pairs. In both of them there
is only one grown male, only one husband. The jealousy of the male, at
the same time tie and limit of the family, creates an opposition between
the animal family and the herd. The latter, a higher social form, is
here rendered impossible, there loosened or dissolved during mating
time, and at best hindered in its development by the jealousy of the
male. This in itself is sufficient proof that the animal family and
primeval human society are irreconcilable; that ancient man, struggling
upward from the animal stage, either had no family at all or at the most
one that does not exist among animals. A being so defenceless as
evolving man might well survive in small numbers though living in an
isolated state, the highest social form of which is that of pairs such
as Westermarck, relying on hunter's reports, attributes to the gorilla
and the chimpanzee. Another element is necessary for the elevation out
of the animal stage, for the realization of the highest progress found
in nature: the replacing of the defencelessness of the single individual
by the united strength and co-operation of the whole herd. The
transition from beast to man out of conditions of the sort under which
the anthropoid apes are living to-day would be absolutely unexplainable.
These apes rather give the impression of stray sidelines gradually
approaching extinction, and at all events in process of decline. This
alone is sufficient to reject all parallels between their family forms
and those of primeval man. But mutual tolerance of the grown males,
freedom from jealousy, was the first condition for the formation of such
large and permanent groups, within which alone the transformation from
beast to man could be accomplished. And indeed, what do we find to be
the most ancient and original form of the family, undeniably traceable
by history and even found to-day here and there? The group marriage,
that form in which whole groups of men and