We have seen that although among the orders of life below mankind there are no arbitrary laws governing the relations of the sexes, there nevertheless exists a system of natural marriage which in no wise resembles promiscuity. Now it was under this natural system controlled by the higher instincts developed within the female organism, that the extreme “lawlessness” indicated by the savants prevailed—lawlessness seeming to denote that state of female independence in which women were personally free, or in which they were not held in actual bondage as captive wives. In the reasoning of many of our guides in this matter it is implied, if not actually asserted, that the freedom of women which is now known to have prevailed in earlier times denotes a state of laxity in morals, a condition of society directly contrary to the facts which they themselves have recorded relative to existing tribes under less advanced conditions of life, and which would seem to argue for these peoples a sense of decency which among the masses in civilized countries is almost entirely wanting. At the dawn of human existence, had no higher instincts been developed than passion, or the desire for selfish gratification, whence could have arisen this reserve, and these ideas of chastity and modesty which are observed among many of the less developed peoples, notably those which have not come in contact with the higher races? Upon this subject Mr. Tylor remarks: “Yet even among the rudest clans of men, unless depraved by vice or misery and falling to pieces, a standard of family morals is known and lived by.”[73] [73] _Anthropology_, chap, xvi., p. 405. Observing the habits of the lower animals, Mr. Darwin cannot believe that promiscuous intercourse prevailed among the early races of mankind. At a very early period, before man attained to his present rank in the scale, many of his conditions would be different from what now obtains amongst savages. Judging from the analogy of the lower animals he would then either live with a single female, or be a polygamist.[74] [74] _The Descent of Man_, p. 594.