Nearly in every age, and nearly in every place, woman, by reason of her native weakness, has been subordinate to her companion, often oppressed by him, and her subjection is the more severe as the civilisation is the more primitive. It is a great error to believe that in all times and places monogamic union is the sign and necessary seal of an advanced civilisation. A number of primitive tribes are monogamous; certain monkeys are so too. Among the inferior monogamous races I will mention the Veddahs[1] of the woods of Ceylon, so low in intelligence that they have not even names for the numbers; the Bochimans of South Africa,[2] scarcely more developed; the Kurnais of Australia, among whom monogamy, though not obligatory, is general.[3] Certain aborigines of India,[4] less primitive, no doubt, than these very humble specimens of our species, but still very savage, are also monogamous. These are: the Nagas, who are contented to make their one wife work very hard; the Kisans, who limit themselves to a single wife, and have not even any concubines;[5] the Padans, who set a good example to more than one superior race, for not only do they blame polygamy and only practise it exceptionally, but they do not buy their wives, and leave to their young people the liberty of marrying as they please.[6]
The form of marriage is therefore not necessarily connected with the degree of general civilisation. The contrary is well proved, since very civilised peoples have adopted polygamy, sometimes openly, and very often in a masked form. Man is willingly polygamous by instinct, but he is often forced to bend to the necessities of social existence. Therefore, in the same country, and in the same race, we may meet with tribes and ethnic groups very analogous in everything else, but practising very dissimilar conjugal forms. It is not rare, for example, to see monogamy and polygamy elbowing each other. Thus the Redskins are willingly polygamous, and yet the Pimas, the Cocomaricopas, and a number of tribes on the banks of the Gilo, of Colorado and of New Mexico, only marry one wife, whilst
