ort; but Skeat and Blagden, in their more
recent and very elaborate investigations in the Malay States, find that it
is a rite.

Even if we regard "marriage by capture" as simply a primitive human
institution stimulated by tribal exigencies and early social conditions,
yet, when we recall its widespread and persistent character, its close
resemblance to the most general method of courtship among animals, and the
emotional tendencies which still persist even in the most civilized men
and women, we have to recognize that we are in presence of a real
psychological impulse which cannot fail in its exercise to introduce some
element of pain into love.

There are, however, two fundamentally different theories concerning
"marriage by capture." According to the first, that of MacLennan, which,
until recently, has been very widely accepted, and to which Professor
Tylor has given the weight of his authority, there has really been in
primitive society a recognized stage in which marriages were effected by
the capture of the wife. Such a state of things MacLennan regarded as once
world-wide. There can be no doubt that women very frequently have been
captured in this way among primitive peoples. Nor, indeed, has the custom
been confined to savages. In Europe we find that even up to comparatively
recent times the abduction of women was not only very common, but was
often more or less recognized. In England it was not until Henry VII's
time that the violent seizure of a woman was made a criminal offense, and
even then the statute was limited to women possessed of lands and goods. A
man might still carry off a girl provided she was not an heiress; but even
the abduction of heiresses continued to be common, and in Ireland remained
so until the end of the eighteenth century. But it is not so clear that
such raids and abductions, even when not of a genuinely hostile character,
have ever been a recognized and constant method of marriage.

According to the second set of theories, the capture is not real, but
simulated, and may be accounted for by psychological reasons. Fustel de
Coulanges, in _La Cite Antique_,[68] discussing simulated marriage by
capture among the Romans, mentioned the view that it was "a symbol of the
young girl's modesty," but himself regarded it as an act of force to
symbolize the husband's power. He was possibly alluding to Herbert
Spencer, who suggested a psychological explanation of the apparent
prevalence of marri