Much institutional work is and has been sadly neglected by students; while some departments have been almost overwhelmingly attended to. Marriage comes under the latter category. Treatise after treatise has appeared often only to be relegated to the accumulated mass of useless literature. But the effect of this constant attention to the subject of marriage as a matter of research is, that it is lifted out of its position as one of the elements of human institutions, and made to stand by itself as something quite apart from everything else. But is this right? Has marriage no sort of relationship to other institutions? This question must be answered by noting what is going on in the studies relating to the early history of man.
It is well known that these depend upon the comparative method of study for their chief results. So much has been done by this method that it seems almost too late to suggest that a very important element in this study has been almost entirely overlooked. The work of comparison has hitherto been chiefly occupied with certain definite characteristics of early man: as, for instance, animism in the researches of Dr. Tylor; bride-capture in Mr. McLennan's great work; or with certain stages in man's social development, as, for instance, totemism. Wherever examples of these or other characteristics have been found they have been carefully considered and classified, so that we may get a sufficiently wide area of observation from which to draw some general conclusions as to the attitude of early man upon these subjects. But in thus grouping the practices of early man we lose sight of one very important source of fresh evidence. When we subtract a particular custom of a tribe to compare it with a similar custom subtracted from another tribe, we have hitherto taken but little count of the place this custom so subtracted occupies in the life of the respective peoples; we have never ascertained whether it is a dominant factor in tribal custom or a subordinate factor; whether it is on the line of further development or on the line of decay, and what relationship it bears to other
