If he is a member of the disinherited class, he is simply either a fallen or degraded being, whom opportunity has made a thief, who lives in horrible promiscuity with his sisters or daughters, etc.
To abandon it and return to primitive promiscuity would be the most profound atavism of degeneracy.
On the arrival of this period of rut, fecundation took place on a large scale, this being very easy, thanks to the promiscuity in which primitive man lived.
There was certainly considerable promiscuity in bathing and indifference to nakedness.
I have now to show how far this rejection of promiscuity affects our position with regard to mother-descent and mother-right.
What matters now is that with the giving up of promiscuity the whole structure of McLennan's theory falls to pieces.
Another fact against a belief in promiscuity is that the lowest savages known to us are not promiscuous, in so far as there is no proved case of the sexual relations being absolutely unregulated.
This factor of sexual jealousy--the conflict of the male for possession of the female--has not been held in sufficient account by those who regard promiscuity as being the earliest stage in the sexual relationships.
The strongest argument against promiscuity is to be gained from what we know of this factor of jealousy in the sexual relationships.
In differentiation then from the promiscuity prevailing at the lowest stage, we here find one generation excluded from sexual intercourse with another generation.
That promiscuity prevailed in a prehistoric stage, that the primeval horde was characterized by unrestricted sexual intercourse, is also shown in the Indian myth that Brama wedded his own daughter Saravasti.
Aboriginal Wantonness Lower than Brutes Indifference to Chastity Useless Precautions Survivals of Promiscuity Aboriginal Depravity The Question of Promiscuity Why do Australians Marry?
Just as cattle are situated, so are human beings, too, within their respective castes" which suggests a state of promiscuity as decided as that which prevailed in Australia.
Such customs our authors interpret plausibly as partial promiscuity pointing to a time when still greater laxity prevailed--suggesting rudimentary organs in animals (96).
Westermarck's ingeniously and elaborately built up argument against the theory of promiscuity is a leaning tower which crashes to the ground when weighted by this one consideration.
But his remedy for this evil was, as we have seen (775), quite as bad as the evil itself, since it involved promiscuity and the elimination of chastity and family life.
The question of promiscuityitself I cannot examine in detail here, as it hardly comes within the scope of this book.
I think that it must be the vast tumult and promiscuity of the ground floor which is responsible for the relative inferiority of the restaurant in a great American hotel.
If these views be correct the argument for primitive promiscuity derived from pirrauru falls to the ground.
A second presumption in favour of original promiscuity has been drawn by the eminent Australian students, Baldwin Spencer and F.
Theories based on a supposed primal state of promiscuitycertainly encounter, when explaining the social oganization of Australian savages, difficulties which they do not surmount.
Nowhere else do they live in conditions of such demoralizing promiscuity as in some of the cities of Morocco.
They would be happier there than jostled by the promiscuity of hotels.
No wonder that poor Asako could not sleep that night in the cramped promiscuity of the family dead.
In England we love our dead; but we consign them to the care of nature, to the change of the seasons, and the cold promiscuity of the graveyard.
The theory of original communism has been accepted by many writers,[125] though examples of absolute promiscuity have not been produced.
Many evidences of the former universality of promiscuityare brought forward.
For in a state of promiscuity such unions must have been very frequent; and at one stage of social development, if the theory of Morgan were to be accepted, they must have constituted the general rule.
More recent and more detailed examination of the classificatory nomenclatures has thrown new light on their meaning; although their origin in promiscuity or "group-marriage" has not been conclusively established.
That they imply a primitive state of promiscuity is emphatically denied by Crawley.
Even the promiscuity which is thus assumed is not "perfectly indiscriminate," but restricted to the members of the unorganized horde or tribe occupying a particular locality or roaming about together.
Footnote 266: The long list of peoples practising promiscuity given by Lubbock dwindles as we become better acquainted with the different populations in question.
Secondary unregulated promiscuity is distinguished from primary promiscuity by the co-existence of other forms of sexual relations.
Before this again a stage of absolute promiscuity is supposed to have existed.
It may be noted that promiscuity de jure, which is all that is implied by Morgan's hypothesis, is not necessarily also de facto promiscuity.
The objections to which attention has been called seem to make it difficult if not impossible to accept Morgan's explanations either of the processes or of the causes which led to the passage from promiscuity to communal marriage.
Primary unregulated promiscuity is the hypothetical state assumed by Morgan and others to be the primitive state of mankind.
It is sufficiently clear from these examples that Morgan entirely failed to work out the process by which the transition from pure to regulated promiscuity came about.
By sexual communism we do not mean a state of promiscuity where man knows no matrimonial rules: we believe that such a state has never existed.
This ritual promiscuityis found especially in the initiation ceremonies (Spencer and Gillen, Nat.
The ceremonies of initiation of girls in Central Australia, and sexual promiscuity connected with them, are also mentioned by W.
It is interesting to note that thus the area of greater sexual promiscuity and less pronounced jealousy is conterminous with the area where natural paternity is unknown.
And in a Latin footnote the author enumerates the proofs: promiscuity of unmarried people; wife-lending and exchange; general ceremonial licence.
The existence of sexual jealousy, especially on the part of the males, has been often referred to by various authors in order to criticize the theories of primitive promiscuity and group marriage.
In general all sexual licence regulated and devoid of the character of promiscuity and disorder (pp.
But the whole question is very complicated by the fact that the sexual features of marital life in Australia have caused much discussion in connection with the hypothesis of primitive promiscuity and group marriage.
But promiscuity and impersonality are not the same thing.
The real definition of a prostitute is a woman who has intercourse both promiscuously and for a money reward, promiscuity and gain must be united.
I do not believe that there was in that genteel Bohemia an intensive culture of chastity, but I do not remember so crude a promiscuity as seems to be practised in the present day.
While I dressed -- for Stroeve wished me to go at once with him to the hospital -- he told me that he had arranged for his wife to have a private room, so that she might at least be spared the sordid promiscuity of a ward.
It is not supposable that a people living in promiscuity could have attained such a degree of advancement.
It is not probable that promiscuity in the primitive period was long continued even in the horde; because the latter would break up into smaller groups for subsistence, and fall into consanguine families.
It is with respect to this primitive savage, and with respect to him alone, that promiscuity may be inferred.
Promiscuity may be deduced theoretically as a necessary condition antecedent to the consanguine family; but it lies concealed in the misty antiquity of mankind beyond the reach of positive knowledge.
It recognized promiscuity within defined limits, and those not the narrowest, and it points through its organism to a worse condition against which it interposed a shield.
