practicability to the average European; the law enabling the
strange Papuan, thousands of miles from his home and among people whose
language he does not understand, to find frequently, from camp to camp
and from tribe to tribe, women who will without resistance and
guilelessly surrender to him; the law according to which a man with
several women offers one to his guest for the night. Where the European
sees immorality and lawlessness, there in reality a strict law is
observed. The women belong to the marriage class of the stranger and,
therefore, they are his wives by birth. The same moral law assigning
both to one another forbids under penalty of proscription all sexual
intercourse outside of the two marriage classes. Even when women are
abducted, as is frequently the case in certain regions, the class law is
carefully respected.

In the abduction of women, by the way, a trace of transition to monogamy
is found even here, at least in the form of the pairing family. If a
young man has abducted a girl with the help of his friends, they hold
sexual intercourse with her one after another. But after that the girl
is regarded as the wife of the young man who planned the abduction. And
again, if an abducted woman deserts her husband and is caught by another
man, she becomes the wife of the latter and the first has lost his
privilege. Alongside of and within the generally existing group marriage
such exclusive relations are formed, pairing for a shorter or longer
term by the side of polygamy, so that here also group marriage is
declining. The question is only which will first disappear under the
pressure of European influence: group marriage or the Papuans addicted
to it.

The marriage in whole classes, such as is in force in Australia, is no
doubt a very low and primitive form of group marriage, while the
Punaluan family, so far as we know, is its highest stage of development.
The former seems to be corresponding to the social stage of roving
savages, the latter requires relatively settled communistic bodies and
leads directly to the next higher stage of development. Between these
two, we shall no doubt find many an intermediate stage. Here lies a
barely opened, hardly entered field of investigation.[17]

3. THE PAIRING FAMILY.

A certain pairing for a longer or shorter term took place even during
the group marriage or still earlier. A man had his principal wife (one
can hardly call it favorite wife as yet) among many