The further difficulty of dividing small fields, which must retain fixed relations to an irrigation system, will largely affect the means which shall unconsciously be adopted by society for its perpetuation without increase. Here, indeed, we have the simple relation considered by Malthus—the pressure of population upon sustenance,—a relation obscured in our world, where continued expansion into new lands (either by direct immigration or by commerce with new peoples) and continued invention, have cornbined to fill easily an increasing number of stomachs.
But the Tibetans are so situated that their world is apart ; it is for them almost as if it were all the world—a narrow, snow-bound, treeless, upheaved world, in whose rough creases and folds they must scantily live or incontinently die. That some systematic check upon population should appear, together with the variable checks, war and pestilence, is to be supposed. The relative indivisibility of the land has, I believe, determined the particular social forms, polyandry and monasticism, as such systematic checks. A marriage relation so unique as this, standing quite on the opposite side of normal monogamy from the more familiar variant, polygamy, challenges attention and at once declares the existence of special predisposing causes. This is not the occasion for insisting at length upon the generally intimate relation of property to marriage relation. It will be sufficient to summarise thus : In highly developed societies, polygamy (including concubinage) suggests concentrated wealth and privilege. Monogamy is democratic ; it suggests divided property and privilege. Polyandry suggests poverty and
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