When modern critics at length find it convenient to admit the overwhelming force of the enormous mass of evidence that has been collected concerning this subject, they still exhibit a great dislike to the conception and the term sexual “promiscuity,” whereby is understood the boundless and indiscriminate intermingling of the sexes. They admit the possibility of group-marriage, although this is merely a socially limited form of promiscuity; they admit even the existence of polyandry and polygamy, and of indiscriminate religious prostitution; but they refuse to believe in the existence of genuine promiscuity. And yet, if they only chose to make use of their eyes, they could observe sexual promiscuity at the present day among the modern civilized nations. In certain strata and classes of the population, such an indiscriminate and unregulated sexual intercourse, in no way leading to the formation of enduring relationships, can be observed to-day. Ask a young man, even of the better classes, with how many women he has had connexion during a single year--not one of these need have been a prostitute--and, if he speaks the truth, you will be astounded at the number of the “objects of lust”! This last expression is suitable enough, because in most cases there is no individual relationship between such casual partners. Ask certain girls also--maidservants, for example, or girls engaged in the manufacture of ready-made clothing--and you will obtain analogous information regarding the number of their annual lovers. Phillip Frey (“Der Kampf der Geschlechter”--“The Battle of the Sexes,” p. 51; Vienna, 1904) bases on similar grounds the assumption of a primitive sexual promiscuity; he refers especially to the condition of the seaports: “Ports in which ocean-going vessels come to harbour are familiar with the sexual impulse in its most completely animal form, and devoid of every refinement and concealment. We find ourselves transported into the depths of an urgent primitiveness and savagery, which gives the lie to the advance in civilization, and this will enable us to form a clearer idea of the bestial indifference in sexual matters that must have obtained amongst the herds of primitive man. Intercourse between man and woman promoted by the lust of the moment, dependent solely upon reciprocal animal desire, the various male and female individuals of the human herd differing too little each from the other to make it worth while to strive for permanent rights of possession, the absence of any ownership of land amongst those wandering to and fro through the primeval forest, the common ownership of children by the herd or tribe--that such was the primitive, ape-like condition of the human race, one actually inferior to that of many other mammals, is a belief amply justified by the polygamous and polyandrous instincts of _homo sapiens_, recurring again and again in all the stages of civilization.”