The argument for original promiscuity based on the various practices just mentioned is not conclusive. Most, if not all, of them are perhaps capable of other and simpler explanations. The wife-lending, as suggested by Westermarck, may be "due merely to savage ideas of hospitality;"[141] while the custom of sacred prostitution evidently belongs "to phallic-worship, and occurred, as Mr. McLennan justly remarks, among peoples who had advanced far beyond the primitive state. The farther back we go, the less we find of such customs in India; 'the germ only of phallic-worship shows itself in the Vedas, and the gross luxuriance of licentiousness, of which the cases referred to are examples, is of later growth.'"[142] So likewise the _jus primae noctis_, instead of being an expiation for an encroachment on communal right, may be more naturally explained either as an abuse of power,[143] in some cases as an evidence of hospitality,[144] or in others as a "common war-right, exercised whenever, under any circumstances, capture of a woman is made by a war-party."[145] The toleration of the custom, like that of wife-lending, may sometimes be due to the "juridical" nature of fatherhood as conceived by primitive men.[146] [141] WESTERMARCK, _Human Marriage_, 73, 74; WAKE, _Marriage and Kinship_, 81, 82. The custom may possibly be accounted for by the slow growth of the sentiment upon which "conjugal attachment depends:" MCLENNAN, _Studies_, I, 341. For an alleged "survival" see SCHMIDT, _Hochzeiten in Thüringen_, 31. For the strictly regulated form of wife-lending among certain Australian tribes see the reference to the work of Spencer and Gillen below. [142] WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 72; MCLENNAN, _Studies_, I, 341, 342. This is also the view of CLIFFORD HOWARD in his _Sex Worship_, chaps. v, ix, x. [143] WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 78; SCHMIDT, _Jus primae noctis_, 41. [144] WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 73. [145] MCLENNAN, _op. cit._, I, 337; WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 76. [146] The well-known theory of STARCKE, _op. cit._, 121-27. It is not essential, according to this view, in early stages of development, that a child should be actually begotten by the father. It is enough that it should be borne by his legal wife and be accepted by him. Hence the _jus primae noctis_, exercised by a priest, king, or other distinguished person, is sometimes regarded as an honor: _ibid._, 125, 126; WESTERMARCK, _op. cit._, 79.