in the investigation of the old-fashioned. This furniture may not have been used by the family; it may have been inherited from distant relatives; it may have been bought at auction; or it may not even be "an antique," and thus have had no previous association with the family at all. As an interpretation of the past, difficulties are often encountered in the study of survivals. One can go too far, and many lines of explanation are often available to account for curious customs out of place in their present environment. The true interpretation is perhaps not the most obvious.

Writers of the Evolutionary School have cited many customs which they believe are survivals of a time when promiscuity reigned. There seems little doubt that all of these practices can be satisfactorily explained in other ways, and that indiscriminate sexual relations are not accountable for their beginnings. The levirate is one of these customs, the marriage of the dead brother's widow. This was formerly a practice of the Hebrews, and is still found among many savage peoples. In Deuteronomy, xxv, 5-6, we read: "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto à stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it shall be that the first-born which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel." This was a religious obligation among the Jews, based upon the desire for offspring and the fact that a marriage contract was between families and not between individuals. The levirate may assume several forms; sometimes the widow is given to one of the younger brothers of the

deceased husband, at other times the widow may be allowed to choose from a large number of her husband's kinsmen. The man may even have access to his wife's sisters during her lifetime. As Lowie makes clear, the juridical and psychological implications of the levirate may be quite different. The custom does not in any way indicate a previous state of promiscuity, but is, in general, as Tylor states, the result of the idea that marriage is a contact between groups rather than between individuals, and the support of the widow is incumbent upon the family of the dead husband. The sororate is also found, where the man marries the sister or sisters of his wife.

Another series of customs advocated as proof of the free sexual relations cluster about the term "phallic worship." The greatest development of this type of practice is found, not among the most primitive peoples, but among those far higher in the scale of culture, as in Greece, Rome, and India. In the latter country there is proof that it was a comparatively late arrival. The germ of phallic worship shows itself in the Vedas, and the "gross luxuriance of licentiousness . . . is of later growth." There is nothing necessarily unusual and repelling in worshipping the powers of generation, the symbol of life. The fruits of the field may be dependent upon magical rites of an earthly nature, and the presence of these rites in the spring festivals of many peoples, the May Pole dances, for example,are interesting survivals of the same idea. But they do not carry with them any proof of sexual license as a universal stage in the development of society. The same can be said regarding sacred prostitution, the lascivious religious rites connected with the worship of

the Babylonian Mylitta, the Hellenic Aphrodite, the Carthaginian Moloch, and the Italian Venus. These are special developments among an advanced people of the worship of procreation. The sacred harlotry mentioned in the Old Testament falls into the same category.

Another class of practices advanced in the attempt to prove the same theory is the "scandalous nuptial rites" which Bachofen and Lubbock regard as acts of "expiation for individual marriage." It was argued that when a woman, originally held as a common possession, became the companion of one man, there was a violation of communal rights, and some compensation was demanded by the companions of the single owner. The law of jus primæ noctis applies to chiefs, priests, and other leaders, as well as to the friends of the bridegroom. The droit du seigneur which some suppose existed in feudal times in Europe falls into the same class. Westermarck gives a whole chapter to customs of this kind. There seems little doubt that they can be explained in several ways. The strict regulations thrown about this class of customs in regard to time, place, and those accorded the privilege, seem to show it is an encroachment on monogamy rather than a delimitation of a former state of promiscuity.

There remains to be considered group-marriage or sexual communism, found principally in parts of Australia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Here, it must be confessed, there is far more difficulty in finding an explanation pointing away from promiscuity. In its simplest form, a group of men is married to a group of women. In practically every case, each man has a primary wife, but access to her is allowed to others. In the same way a woman has a main husband, but she is

not his sole companion. In most instances the men as a group are related to each other and also in a very definite way to the women who, in turn, are of the same kindred. It is not a haphazard arrangement between a heterogeneous collection of men and a group of women. This custom is hedged about usually by the strictest rules. Here, as in the former case of jus primæ noctis, it seems probable that we have an intrenchment on monogamy, starting with a single wife and enlarging the gamut of sexual relations, rather than a legalization and a more strict proscribing of the limits of free sexual communism. Strength is given to this view by the fact that tribal incest rules are usually strictly enforced in all places where group-marriage is found. Among the Masai, for example, who allow a preliminary freedom to unmarried warriors and immature girls which may be likened to prostitution, each man finally settles down in a separate establishment with one wife.

The classificatory system of relationships has to be considered in connection with the question of promiscuity. Morgan was the first to record the fact that most peoples with cultures of the lower order have a system of designating relationship which differs to a great extent from the method in use among civilized peoples. This classificatory system uses terms for classes of persons rather than for any distinct individual. Our system is classificatory in several instances as, for example, in the use of the word cousin. Limiting its use to first cousins, it may refer to mother's brother's or sister's children, male or female, and father's brother's or sister's children of either sex. It is quite as general a term as several used in connection with the classificatory

system. There are very many 'complications and differences in the orders of nomenclature used by primitive peoples which cannot be considered here.

In the Hawaiian system of classificatory terms there is a segregation by generations. Excluding differences based on age or sex, all a man's relatives of the same generation are addressed by the same term. The word father is used for the father and all the father's brothers and for mother's brothers as well. Mother is the term employed in addressing the true mother and all her sisters, and also the father's sisters. Brother is used for own brother, and for all male cousins; sister for own sister, and for all female cousins. Several writers have shown that this system, far from being the first, as thought by Morgan, is a later development of a less simple method, often called the Dakota system. In this the terms used for persons of an older generation than that of the speaker are employed for father and father's brother, mother's brother, father's sister, and mother and mother's sister. Both systems are alike in having single words for father and father's brother and mother and mother's sister, but the second has a separate term for mother's brother and for father's sister. These are only two of the many varieties of family nomenclature.

Do these terms used in the classificatory system connote sexual communism? Morgan believed that the Hawaiian system, based strictly on generations, pointed to a time when there was sexual license between all members of the same generation, between brothers and sisters and between all cousins, as each sex addressed the other sex of the same generation in the same terms. It barred intercourse between parents and children, as they belonged to different generations. A man's uncles