Primitive Marriage; An Inquiry Into the Origin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies - Softcover

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. ON THE STATE OF HOSTILITY. The state of hostility is a theme which requires no research to illustrate it. It is a fact too familiar to require demonstration. If war is a lamentable feature of human life, it is not quite so ugly among savages as when waged by civilized men. In proportion to their masses and the weight of the interests at stake, the advanced nations are perhaps quite as frequently embroiled as the most barbarous; also in their case the natural beneficence--if we may so call it--of the impulse to feud is not always apparent. In the lower stages of society we recognise war as a condition of the rise of governments, of the subordination of classes, of civility--its agonies as the growing pains of civil society; in the higher it appears /u^lltijb, too often as a mere scourge of mankind, de- '' forming and impairing, if not destroying, the precious results and accumulations of long periods of peace and industry. If the wars of savages are petty, they are habitual. While the domestic affections are little pronounced, the social are confined to the smallest fraction of humanity. Whoever is foreign to a group is hostile to it. Even in comparatively advanced stages of savagery, groups rarely combine for common purposes; when they do-- the object of the combination being accomplished--they return to their isolated independence. And when tribes have combined in nations, and the nations have become polite, it is yet some time before a distinction is drawn between strangers and enemies. No wonder if the dis K 134 (KV THE STA TE OF HOSTILIT\ tinotion be not made by savages. Whoever is not with them is against them --a rival in the competition for food, a possible plunderer of their camp and ravisher of their women. Lay out...

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