e.

But let us return to Morgan from whom we moved away a considerable
distance. The historical investigation of social institutions developed
during the period of civilization exceeds the limits of his book. Hence
the vicissitudes of monogamy during this epoch occupy him very briefly.
He also sees in the further development of the monogamous family a
progress, an approach to perfect equality of the sexes, without
considering this aim fully realized. But he says: "When the fact is
accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and
is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be
permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it
must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as
it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system, and
will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved greatly
since the commencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern
times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still farther
improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the
monogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the requirements
of society, assuming the continuous progress of civilization, it is
impossible to predict the nature of its successor."

FOOTNOTES:

[7] 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.

[8] Translator's note.

The female of the European cuckoo (cuculus canorus) keeps intercourse
with several males in different districts during the same season. Still,
this is far from the human polyandry, in which the men and one women all
live together in the same place, the men mutually tolerating one
another, which male cuckoos do not.

[9] Westerma