urd to say that
they demoralized the unsophisticated savages."

And again (I., 186),

"It is untrue that in sexual license the savage has
ever anything to learn. In almost every tribe there are
pollutions deeper than any I have thought it necessary
to mention, and all that the lower fringe of civilized
men can do to harm the uncivilized is to stoop to the
level of the latter, instead of teaching them a better
way."[165]

THE QUESTION OF PROMISCUITY

As regards the promiscuity question, Spencer and Gillen's observations
go far to confirm some of the seemingly fantastic speculations
regarding "a thousand miles of wives," and so on, contained in the
volume of Fison and Howitt[166] and to make it probable that
unregulated intercourse was the state of primitive man at a stage of
evolution earlier than any known to us now. Since the appearance of
Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_ it has become the fashion to
regard the theory of promiscuity as disproved. Alfred Russell Wallace,
in his preface to this book, expresses his opinion that "independent
thinkers" will agree with its author on most of the points wherein he
takes issue with his famous predecessors, including Spencer, Morgan,
Lubbock, and others. Ernst Grosse, in a volume which the president of
the German Anthropological Society pronounced "epoch-making"--_Die
Formen der Familie_--refers (43) to Westermarck's "very thorough
refutation" of this theory, which he stigmatizes as one of the
blunders of the unfledged science of sociology which it will be best
to forget as soon as possible; adding that "Westermarck's best weapons
were, however, forged by Starcke."

In a question like this, however, two independent observers are worth
more than two hundred "independent thinkers." Spencer and Gillen are
eye-witnesses, and they inform us repeatedly (100, 105, 108, 111) that
Westermarck's objections to the theory of promiscuity do not stand the
test of facts and that none of his hypotheses explains away the
customs which point to a former prevalence of promiscuity. They have
absolutely disproved his assertion (539) that "it is certainly not
among the lowest peoples that sexual relations most nearly approach
promiscuity." Cunow, who, as Grosse admits (50), has written the most
thorough and authentic monograph on the complicated family
relationship of Australia, devotes two pages (122-23) to exposing some
of Westermarck's arg