r that faults will be accumulated. This is a
logical deduction. Embryology, at present, seems to teach that there is
a combination and extrusion of germ units of such a kind that the
physiological process conforms only in a measure to this logical
deduction, and the historical-statistical verification of the harm of
inbreeding remains very imperfect. It is possible that at first, and
within limits, inbreeding is not harmful, but becomes such if repeated
often. Is it possible that the lowest savages can have perceived this
and built a policy on it? Morgan[1660] thinks that it is possible.
Westermarck[1661] thinks it beyond the mental power of the lowest races.
He thinks that, by natural selection, those groups which practiced
inbreeding for any reason died out or were displaced by those who
followed the other policy. He goes on to propose a theory that persons
who grew up, or who now grow up, in intimacy develop an instinctive
antipathy to sex relations with each other.[1662] While it is true that
primitive savages do not observe and reflect, it is also true that, in
their own blundering way, when their interests are sharply at stake,
they do observe, and they change their ways accordingly. Therefore they
appear to us at one time hopelessly brutish; at another time we are
amazed at their ingenuity and their mental activity (myths, legends,
proverbs, maxims). If the loss or pain is great enough, the savage man
is capable of astounding cleverness to escape it. After animal breeding
began men had ample opportunity to observe the effects of close
inbreeding. There is more doubt now about the penalties of inbreeding
than there is about the power of savage men to perceive them and try to
escape them, if they exist.

+511. Status-wife, work-wife, love-wife.+ In the primitive horde it
appears that there was a prescribed wife for each man, or the
classification was such that his choice was restricted to a very small
number. The prescribed wife was a status-wife. She alone could hold the
position of a true "wife." The man might also capture a woman abroad who
would be a worker, or work-wife, and she might win the man, so that she
became a love-wife. There would often be a comparison between the
children of the status-wife and the children of a work-wife or
love-wife, in which the latter would appear the more vigorous. If so,
there would be a school in which the advantages of outbreeding would
appear as a fact, although not explain