by a
process of courtship. There is a sound physiological reason for this
courtship, for in the act of wooing and being wooed the psychic excitement
gradually generated in the brains of the two partners acts as a stimulant
to arouse into full activity the mechanism which ensures sexual union and
aids ultimate impregnation. Such courtship is thus a fundamental natural
fact.

It is as a natural fact that we still find it in full development among a
large number of peoples of the lower races whom we are accustomed to
regard as more primitive than ourselves. New conditions, it is true, soon
enter to complicate the picture presented by savage courtship. The
economic element of bargaining, destined to prove so important, comes in
at an early stage. And among peoples leading a violent life, and
constantly fighting, it has sometimes happened, though not always, that
courtship also has been violent. This is not so frequent as was once
supposed. With better knowledge it was found that the seeming brutality
once thought to take the place of courtship among various peoples in a low
state of culture was really itself courtship, a rough kind of play
agreeable to both parties and not depriving the feminine partner of her
own freedom of choice. This was notably the case as regards so-called
"marriage by capture." While this is sometimes a real capture, it is more
often a mock capture; the lover perhaps pursues the beloved on horseback,
but she is as fleet and as skilful as he is, cannot be captured unless she
wishes to be captured, and in addition, as among the Kirghiz, she may be
armed with a formidable whip; so that "marriage by capture," far from
being a hardship imposed on women is largely a concession to their modesty
and a gratification of their erotic impulses. Even when the chief part of
the decision rests with masculine force courtship is still not necessarily
or usually excluded, for the exhibition of force by a lover,--and this is
true for civilised as well as for savage women,--is itself a source of
pleasurable stimulation, and when that is so the essence of courtship may
be attained even more successfully by the forceful than by the humble
lover.

The evolution of society, however, tended to overlay and sometimes even to
suppress those fundamental natural tendencies. The position of the man as
the sole and uncontested head of the family, the insistence on paternity
and male descent, the accompanying economic developments