[338] R. Cubain, _Lois civiles de Rome_, p. 181. CHAPTER VIII. PRIMITIVE POLYGAMY. I. _Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America._--Polygamy and sociability--Polygamy in Australia, in New Caledonia, and at Fiji--The legitimate wife and concubines at Fiji--Polygamy among the Hottentots and Kaffirs--Economic reasons of polygamy in Africa--Brutality of husbands on the Gaboon--Polygamy limited by the law of supply and demand--Its effects on the morality of women--Commercial fidelity--Mumbo Jumbo--Love unknown in black Africa--Legal marriage with the Bongos at Madagascar--Hierarchical polygamy at Madagascar--Polygamy in Polynesia, in America--Jealousy unknown to the female savage--The sister-wives among the Redskins--Religion sanctifies polygamy--Monogamic tendencies in America. II. _Polygamy in Asia and in Europe._--Polygamy among the aborigines of India, in Bootan, among the Ostiaks and the Battas--Universality of primitive polygamy--Polygamy of the ancient Peruvians, Chinese, and Vedic Aryans--Polygamy among the Gauls and the Germans--Causes of primitive polygamy--Its evolution. I. _Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America._ We have seen that in the animal kingdom species are sometimes monogamous, sometimes polygamous, but that in general a gregarious life, a life in association, favours polygamy. Now, man is surely the most sociable of animals, therefore he is much inclined to polygamy, like the great anthropoid apes, with whom our primitive ancestors must have had more than one analogy. We have already spoken of the causes which in human societies of the earliest ages disturbed the normal relation of the sexes, or the approximate equilibrium between the number of men and that of women. We have seen how savage life rapidly uses up the men to such a degree that often, in spite of the custom of female infanticide, there is still an excess of women sufficient to impose polygamy. Although primitive morality may not think in the least of blaming the plurality of wives, it yet happens that this polygamy, to which all men aspire in a savage country, is spontaneously restricted; and, as with chimpanzees, and for the same reasons, it becomes, in fact, the privilege of a small number of the strongest and the most feared, the chiefs, the sorcerers, or the priests, when there are any. In Australia, for example, the adult men take possession of the women of all ages, and in consequence the greater number of young men cannot become proprietors of a woman before the age of about thirty years.[339]