It is indisputable that this evolution has everywhere coincided with a general progress in civilisation, and the advance has been sensibly the same among the peoples of all races, on the sole condition that they should have emerged from savagery. Everywhere, in the end, the paternal family and monogamic marriage have become a sort of ideal to which men have striven to conform their customs and institutions. It has very naturally been concluded that these last forms of the family and of conjugal union have an intrinsic sociologic superiority over the others, that in all times and places they strengthen the ethnic group, and create for it better conditions in its struggle for existence. But this reasoning has nothing strict in it; civilisation is the result of very complex influences, and if a certain social practice has been adopted by inferior races, it does not logically follow that it is, for that reason only, bad in itself. What seems indisputable is, that man tends willingly towards individualism, and yields himself up to it with joy as soon as that becomes possible to him, thanks to the general progress of civilisation. At the origin of civilisations, in a tribe of savages, surrounded with perils, and painfully struggling for existence, a more or less strict solidarity is imperative; the co-associates must necessarily form as it were a large family, in which a more or less communal _régime_ is essential. The children, the weak ones, and the women have more chance of surviving if in some measure they belong to the entire clan; perpetual war soon cuts down a great number of men; it is therefore necessary that their widows and children should find support and protection without difficulty, and the _régime_ of the clan, with its wide and confused kinship, lends itself better to this helpful fraternity than a strict distinction of _tuum_ and _meum_ applied to property and persons. The same may be said of patriarchal polygamy, which often flourished on the ruins of the clan. For this _régime_ to become general, it is necessary that, in the ethnic group, the proportion of the sexes should be to the advantage of the feminine sex; in this case it is imperative, and evidently becomes favourable to the maintenance of the social body; in fact it guarantees the women against desertion, augments the number of births, and assures to the children the care of one or more adoptive mothers, if the real mother happens to die. The opinion of Herbert Spencer, who quite _à priori_ attributes to monogamy a diminution in the mortality of children,[1110] is a most hazardous one. By the last census taken in Algeria we learn, not without surprise, that the increase in the indigenous Mussulman and polygamic population was much superior to that of the most prolific of the European monogamous states. Polygamy may therefore have its utilitarian value, and this is the case as soon as it adapts itself to the general conditions of social life. II. _The Present._