[1107] McLennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 101. CHAPTER XX. MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY IN THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE. I. _The Past._--Sociology and evolution--Sociology and scientific method--The biological reason of marriage and the family--Primitive forms of marriage--Its evolution--Consanguineous primitive groups--The evolution of the family--The stages of this evolution--From communism to individualism--Advantages of the primitive clan--Polygamy and statistics of births. II. _The Present._--Present marriage in Europe--The dangers of celibacy according to A. Bertillon--They marry who can--Imperfect categories of celibates--Money and matrimony--Selection by money--Marriages by purchase. III. _The Future._--Prehistoric peoples still surviving--Progress is the law of the world--The meaning of matrimonial and familial evolution--Sociological rhythms--Future collective societies--The family and society--Progress of conjugal discord--The marriage of the future--Herbert Spencer and Montaigne--Slowness of social evolutions--Conservatives and innovators--Nothing dies; everything is renewed. I. _The Past._ In the preceding chapters I have attempted to describe how men of all countries and all races have more or less constituted and organised their marriage and their family, and for this purpose I have patiently classified a multitude of facts collected singly by an army of observers. Moreover, in conformity with the method of evolution, and in order not to neglect the most distant sources, I have prefaced my minute inquiry into marriage and the family among men by an investigation of the same kind in regard to animals. Man is neither a demi-god nor an angel; he is a primate more intelligent than the others, and his relationship with the neighbouring species of the animal kingdom is more strongly shown in his psychic than in his anatomical traits. More than once, I fear, the accumulation of detailed facts which forms the groundwork of this book may have fatigued my readers; but this is the only condition on which it is possible to give a solid basis to sociology. It is, in fact, nothing less than a matter of creating a new science. We are scarcely beginning to be really acquainted with mankind, to take a complete survey of it in time and space. Now this would be quite impossible without the help of comparative ethnography. We must regard the existing inferior races as survivals, as prehistoric or protohistoric types that have persisted through long ages, and are still on different steps of the ladder of progress; it is this view alone which we shall find suggestive and enlightening; and it is in strict correlation with the method of evolution, to which, indeed, it owes its value.