expect to find direct proofs of its former existence among these social fossils, backward savages. Bachofen's merit consists in having brought this question to the fore.[1]
It has lately become a fashion to deny the existence of this early stage of human sex life, in order to spare us this "shame." Apart from the absence of all direct proof, the example of the rest of animal life is involved. From the latter, Letourneau (Evolution du mariage et de la famille, 1888) quoted numerous facts, alleged to prove that among animals also an absolutely unlimited sexual intercourse belongs to a lower stage. But I can only conclude from all these facts that they prove absolutely nothing for man and the primeval conditions of his life. The mating of vertebrates for a lengthy term is sufficiently explained by physiological causes, e.g., among birds by the helplessness of the female during brooding time. Examples of faithful monogamy among birds do not furnish any proofs for men, for we are not descended from birds.
And if strict monogamy is the height of virtue, then the palm belongs to the tapeworm that carries a complete male and female sexual apparatus in each of its 50 to 200 sections and passes its whole lifetime in fertilizing itself in every one of its sections. But if we confine ourselves to mammals, we find all forms of sexual intercourse, license, suggestions of group mar-
- ↑ Author's note.How little Bachofen understood what he had discovered, or rather guessed, is proved by the term "hetaerism," which he applies to this primeval stage. Hetaerism designated among the Greeks an intercourse of men, single or living in monogamy, with unmarried women. It always presupposes the existence of a well defined form of marriage, outside of which this intercourse takes place, and includes the possibility of prostitution. In another sense this word was never used, and I use it in this sense with Morgan. Bachofen's very important discoveries are everywhere mystified in the extreme by his idea that the historical relations of man and wife have their source in the religious conceptions of a certain period, not in the economic conditions of life.
