Yet Mr M'Lennan's theory is virtually endorsed (_vide infra_) by Sir J. Lubbock, who refers to it (p. 60, note), as "Mr M'Lennan's masterly work." If, then, we must discuss the theory upon its merits, the objection which I should take, _in limine_, is that it is a partial generalisation from facts, irrespective of the historical evidence as a whole. There stands against it, of course, the direct evidence of the Bible, also there stands against it the researches of oriental archaeology, and, again, what Mr M'Lennan calls the "so-called revelation of philology," which shows that mankind, in the period previous to their dispersion, "had marriage laws regulating the rights and obligations of husbands and wives, of parents and children." This evidence he rejects because "the preface of general history _must be_ compiled from the materials presented by barbarism" (p. 9), thus _assuming_ barbarism to have been the primitive state. Mr M'Lennan struggles vainly for universal facts on which to build, and seems to find one in what he has termed exogamy (_i.e._ marriage outside the tribe), combined with the capture of wives and the infanticide of female children within the tribe. Impossible! If this state of things had been _universal_, the human race would have exterminated itself long before "the historic period!" The theory necessarily supposes that some tribes were addicted to these practices, whilst others were not. Exogamy, therefore, is not a universal fact; but neither could endogamy have been, _for "the conversion of an endogamous tribe into an exogamous tribe is inconceivable,"_ p. 146. But as Mr M'Lennan is as much constrained to choose between exogamy and endogamy as was Mons. Jourdain between poetry and prose, he apparently elects in favour of the universal primitive prevalence of exogamy, _i.e._ he supposes mankind to have commenced under conditions which would have ensured its proximate extinction. Mr M'Lennan (p. 144) says, "the two types of organisation (viz. exogamy and endogamy) may be equally archaic;" but it is evident that he inclines to the opinion that exogamy is the more archaic; and his analysis at p. 142, commencing with "Exogamy Pure, No. 1, and continuing on to ... Endogamy Pure, No. 6," is "the analysis of a series of phenomena which appears to form a progression" (141). Moreover, the difficulties which I have just urged will immediately recur if we allow "the two types to have been equally archaic."