[153] There is no room here to discuss this general assertion at length. But it may be made plausible by pointing out that a certain status must be quite fundamental in a society to get the religious sanction (for instance monogamy in our country), and that it requires undoubtedly a long process in order to transform this sanction into a formal act and put into a material form the accumulated action of many social forces. [154] In what these individual rights consist will be discussed in detail below. Evidently it is erroneous, though a frequent error, to understand here exclusively the sexual rights. In short the modes of obtaining wives enforced and expressed of themselves a good deal of the validity of marriage. We have still to ask if the marriage was binding for both sides or only for the female. This is an important question and closely connected with the legal aspect of marriage. For marriage being a kind of obligation, the question presents itself, whether only one party was bound by it or both. There is but little direct evidence upon this point in the statements. Beveridge asserts stoutly the latter; from Dawson's statement we conclude that the former was the case, as he says that a man could only under certain conditions repudiate his wife and had to ask the permission of the Chief. But it must be borne in mind that marriage had by no means the features of a contract into which both consorts would enter with mutual agreement. Marriage in Australia must be much more viewed in the light of a privilege acquired by the man, and for which, as we saw, he usually has to pay in one way or the other. It was always a great advantage to a man, both for sexual and economic reasons, as will be clearly evident in the respective chapters. The economic advantages persisted even when she grew old (compare Lumholtz, p. 207). It was therefore scarcely necessary to compel an individual to fulfil an obligation that was advantageous to him. It may be therefore said that marriage, being an advantage for a man--usually acquired by exchange, gifts, or an act of bravery, sometimes inherited (Levirate)--was an obligation binding on the woman in the first place. There are practically no reasons to suppose that a man would ever repudiate a wife. As long as the woman was young, her husband tried obviously by all means to keep her, and would display all his personal force and social influence to frustrate any attempt at abduction. When his wife grew old he would, perhaps, secure a new one if possible; in two of the few authentic anecdotes told of the natives a man is represented as possessing one old wife and another quite young (see Grey, _loc. cit._, ii. pp. 350-361, and Curr, _Recollections_, pp. 141-145); there was no reason to repudiate the old one, as she would go on working and providing food for her husband.