ia more than one wife is the rule, and the Arabs in Jerusalem take
three or four wives as soon as they have sufficient means. The poorest
have at least two.[1157]

+367. Consistency of the mores under polygamy or polyandry.+ When the
life conditions, real or imagined, produce polygamy, monogamy, or
polyandry, all the mores conform to the one system or the other, and
develop it on every side. All the concepts of right and wrong--rights,
duties, authority, societal policy, and political interest--are implicit
in the mores. They must necessarily all be consistent. A Nair woman is
no more likely to overstep the mores of her society than an English
woman is to overstep the mores of hers. "The relations between the sexes
in Malabar are unusually happy."[1158] Tibetan men are said to be
courteous to women.[1159] Tibetan women like polyandry. They sneer at
the dullness and monotony of monogamic life.[1160] Thus the ethics
follow the customs.

+368. Mother family and father family.+ The ultimate reasons for the
mother family and for a change to the father family are in the life
conditions, industrial arts, war, pressure of population, etc. In fact,
our terms are only names for a group of mores which cover some set of
interests, and we need to be on our guard against the category fallacy,
that is, against arguing from the contents of the classification which
we have made. The term "matriarchate" encouraged this fallacy and has
gone out of use. By the mother family we mean the system in which
descent and kin are reckoned through women, not through men. In that
form of the family the relation of man and wife is one of contract. The
woman must be thought of as at her home, with her kin, and the husband
comes to her. She has great control of the terms on which he is
accepted, and she and her kin can drive him away again, if they see fit.
The children will be hers and will remain with her. The property will
remain hers, while her husband must abandon his property when he comes
to her. The next male friend of a woman will be her brother, not her
husband, and the next male guardian of a child will be his mother's
brother, not his father. Words of relationship, address, etc., must all
conform to the fundamental notion which rules the family. Religion,
political control, modes of warfare and alliance, and education are all
constructed to fit the family-form. At puberty boys are taken into the
political organization (tribe) to which the f