There is another trait in actual custom which also could only have acquired its most remarkable features in this era of change, and that is hostile capture itself, in its legacy of those ‘forms’ of capture which we find connected with more peaceful connubium all over the world. Such ‘forms’ have rightly been considered as mere survivals, and thus in agreement with our own theory capture is generally accepted as the earliest form of outside marriage.[2] But in some minds the brutality necessarily attending real capture, and its occurrence solely among very low races with whom any idea of sexual restraint is expected to be quite unfamiliar, has simply connected the process with the general lawlessness which, amongst such peoples, is supposed to characterise the relations between the sexes. Its occurrence in form of survival among higher races has been considered a meaningless ceremony, and its evident symbolism in legality dismissed as incredible. Students are, however, aware how much in error is the idea of utter lawlessness in connection with the marriage relationships of any savage race. On the contrary, as is well known, the list of prohibited kindred is not only much wider than our own, but no stage in the marital arrangements is without irksome and minute legislative restraints, strictly limiting and defining the rights of each individual, male and female. To other minds the fact that a ‘hostile capture,’ presenting as its most characteristic feature an utter violence, should ever have been constituted into a symbol of legality in marriage, has given rise to much perplexity. Mr. McLennan in fact remarks--‘It is impossible to believe that the mere lawlessness of savages should be consecrated into a legal symbol’--an assertion which we may accept, however little we are prepared to accept his general views on early society. It is evident that the whole difficulty has arisen from the apparent complete incompatibility of a seeming method in violence with a virtual act in law. The hypothesis we have presented of the ‘primal law,’ and its exogamous sequel, would seem however to throw a new light on the matter. All unions within the group being by the action of primal law, as we have shown, considered incestuous and illicit, marriage could only take place with an outside mate. The presence of a captured female within the camp would thus, as we see, actually constitute in itself a proof, and the only one possible at the epoch, of the legal consummation of marriage as ordained by the primal law. It is thus easy to see how a form of capture should be retained as a symbol of legality in later connubium. Its continued vitality results from the intense conservatism of lower peoples, and from the fact of the halo of prowess that surrounds it.