chief, and others like him, had lost. How, then, if it was so
beneficial, could they ever lose it? The answer is plain: they could
lose it if they had it as an irrational propensity and habit, and
not as a moral and rational feeling. When reason came, it would
weaken that habit like all other irrational habits. And reason is a
force of such infinite vigour--a victory-making agent of such
incomparable efficiency--that its continually diminishing valuable
instincts will not matter if it grows itself steadily all the while.
The strongest competitor wins in both the cases we are imagining; in
the first, a race with intelligent reason, but without blind
instinct, beats a race with that instinct but without that reason;
in the second, a race with reason and high moral feeling beats a
race with reason but without high moral feeling. And the two are
palpably consistent.

There is every reason, therefore, to suppose pre-historic man to be
deficient in much of sexual morality, as we regard that morality. As
to the detail of 'primitive marriage' or 'NO marriage,' for that is
pretty much what it comes to, there is of course much room for
discussion. Both Mr. M'Clennan and Sir John Lubbock are too
accomplished reasoners and too careful investigators to wish
conclusions so complex and refined as theirs to be accepted all in a
mass, besides that on some critical points the two differ. But the
main issue is not dependent on nice arguments. Upon broad grounds we
may believe that in pre-historic times men fought both to gain and
to keep their wives; that the strongest man took the best wife away
from the weaker man; and that if the wife was restive, did not like
the change, her new husband beat her; that (as in Australia now) a
pretty woman was sure to undergo many such changes, and her back to
bear the marks of many such chastisements; that in the principal