It would be a very easy matter to produce further examples of a custom which appears as a simple incident of war and rapine at certain stages of human progress. Everywhere among rude men we find lust and physical force triumphing over the weakness of woman. In the successful foray or in the sack of a town she is treated merely as a part of the prey, becoming the slave, the concubine, or even the wife of the spoiler. "But in these brutal practices," it is patent, "there is nothing which bears even a distant resemblance to marriage."[500] It is highly necessary, as Letourneau rightly insists, to distinguish sharply between rape and the marriage institution. So-called marriage by capture, he declares, is not a form of marriage at all; "it is merely a manner of procuring one or several wives, whatever the matrimonal system in use."[501] As a matter of fact, actual wife-capture usually, perhaps always, coexists with regular forms of marriage. Thus, as we shall presently see, it frequently makes its appearance side by side with wife-purchase; and sometimes the transition from capture to purchase, as a means of procuring wives, may be clearly perceived. [500] LETOURNEAU, _op. cit._, 116. [501] _Ibid._, 110. _Cf._ the similar conclusion of BERNHÖFT, "Principien des eur. Familienrechts," _ZVR._, IX, 392, 393, 394; and GROSSE, _Die Formen der Familie_, 105 ff. Accordingly Letourneau is of the opinion that the name "marriage by capture" should be reserved for legal and pacific marriages in whose ceremony the symbol of rape appears.[502] But even this is too broad a use of the term, which at most can strictly be applied only to the comparatively small number of cases in which the form of capture is an essential part of the legal ceremony. For the symbol occurs in every shape and in every grade of significance, from the brutal combat of the Australian savage to the harmless prank of casting the old shoe with which among ourselves the wedding festivities are enlivened. It exists in connection with every phase of development, from the rudest savagery to the most advanced type of Aryan culture; and it is found among the same people, sometimes in various forms, side by side with actual capture or associated with the most refined conception of the marriage relation.[503] [502] LETOURNEAU, _op. cit._, 116, 117 ff. [503] DARGUN'S classification of peoples, among whom occurs so-called marriage by capture in its various forms, will be found useful (_Mutterrecht und Raubehe_, 78 ff., 92, 138, 139). They are divided into two major classes: I. Peoples among whom wife-capture is an essential part of marriage. This class comprehends three grades according to the consent of the guardian (_Gewalthaber_) of the woman: 1. In the first grade fall peoples among whom wife-capture is customary without any regard to the guardian: East Indians, Slavs, Germans, and various non-Aryan peoples.