CHAPTER XL. Marriage

MARRIAGE

MAN'S sexual nature gives rise to various modes of conduct on which moral judgments are passed. We shall first consider such relations between the sexes as are comprised under the heading Marriage.

In a previous work I have endeavoured to show that in all probability there has been no stage in the social history of mankind where marriage has not existed, human marriage apparently being an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor. I then defined marriage as a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. This is marriage in the natural history sense of the term. As a social institution, on the other hand, it has a somewhat different meaning: it is a union regulated by custom or law. Society lays down rules relating to the selection of partners, to the mode of contracting marriage, to its form, and to its duration. These rules are essentially expressions of moral feelings.

There is, first, a circle of persons within which marriage is prohibited. It seems that the horror of incest is well-nigh universal in the human race, and that the few cases in which this feeling is said to be absent can only be regarded {365} as abnormalities. But the degrees of kinship within which marriage is forbidden are by no means the same everywhere. It is most, and almost universally, abominated between parents and children. It is also held in general abhorrence between brothers and sisters who are children of the same mother as well as of the same father. Most of the exceptions to this rule refer to royal persons, for whom it is considered improper to contract marriage with individuals of less exalted birth; but among a few peoples incestuous unions are practised on a larger scale on account of extreme isolation or as a result of vitiated instincts. It seems, however, that habitual marriages between brothers and sisters have been imputed to certain peoples without sufficient reason. This is obviously true of the Veddahs of Ceylon, who have long been supposed to regard the marriage of a man with his younger sister as the proper marriage. "Such incest," says Mr. Nevill, "never was allowed, and never could be, while the Vaedda {366} customs lingered. Incest is regarded as worse than murder. So positive is this feeling, that the Tamils have based a legend upon the instant murder of his sister by a Vaedda to whom she had made undue advances. The mistake arose from gross ignorance of Vaedda usages. The title of a cousin with whom marriage ought to be contracted, that is, mother's brother's daughter, or father's sister's daughter, is nagâ or nangî. This, in Sinhalese, is applied to a younger sister. Hence if you ask a Vaedda, 'Do you marry your sisters?' the Sinhalese interpreter is apt to say, 'Do you marry your nagâ?' The reply is (I have often tested it), 'Yes--we always did formerly, but now it is not always observed.' You say then, 'What? marry your own-sister-nagâ?' and the reply is an angry and insulted denial, the very question appearing a gross insult." The same writer adds:--"In no case did a person marry one of the same family, even though the relationship was lost in remote antiquity. Such a marriage is incest. The penalty for incest was death."

As a rule, the prohibited degrees are more numerous among peoples unaffected by modern civilisation than they are in more advanced communities, the prohibitions in a great many cases referring even to all the members of the tribe or clan; and the violation of these rules is regarded as a most heinous crime.

The Algonquins speak of cases where men have been put to death by their nearest kinsfolk for marrying women of their own clan. Among the Asiniboin, a Siouan tribe, a chief can commit murder with impunity if the murdered person be without friends, but if he married within his gens he would be dismissed, on account of the general disgust which such a union would arouse. The Hottentots used to punish alliances between first or second cousins with death. A Bantu of the coast region considers similar unions to be "something horrible, something unutterably disgraceful." The Busoga of the Uganda {367} Protectorate held in great abhorrence anything like incest even amongst domestic animals. Among the Kandhs of India "intermarriage between persons of the same tribe, however large or scattered, is considered incestuous and punishable with death." In the Malay Archipelago submersion is a common punishment for incest, but among certain tribes the guilty parties are killed and eaten or buried alive. In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it would be a crime punishable with death for a man or woman to marry a person belonging to his or her mother's clan; and the Mortlock Islanders are said to inflict the same punishment upon anybody who has sexual intercourse with a relative belonging to his own "tribe." Nowhere has marriage been bound by more severe laws than among the Australian aborigines. Their tribes are grouped in exogamous subdivisions, the number of which varies; and at least before the occupation of the country by the whites the regular punishment for marriage or sexual intercourse with a person belonging to a forbidden division was death.

Not less intense is the horror of incest among nations that have passed beyond savagery and barbarism. Among the Chinese incest with a grand-uncle, a father's first cousin, a brother, or a nephew, is punishable by death, and a man who marries his mother's sister is strangled; nay, punishment is inflicted even on him who marries a person with the same surname as his own, sixty blows being the penalty. So also incest was held in the utmost horror by the so-called Aryan peoples in ancient times. In the 'Institutes of Vishnu' it is said that sexual intercourse {368} with one's mother or daughter or daughter-in-law is a crime of the highest degree, for which there is no other atonement than to proceed into the flames.

Various theories have been set forth to account for the prohibition of marriage between near kin. I criticised some of them in my book on the 'History of Human Marriage,' and ventured at the same time on an explanation of my own. I pointed out that there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as such persons are in most cases related by blood, this feeling would naturally display itself in custom and law as a horror of intercourse between near kin. Indeed, an abundance of ethnographical facts seem to indicate that it is not in the first place by the degree of consanguinity, but by the close living together, that prohibitory laws against intermarriage are determined. Thus many peoples have a rule of "exogamy" which does not depend on kinship at all, but on purely local considerations, all the members of a horde or village, though not related by blood, being forbidden to intermarry. The prohibited degrees are very differently defined in the customs or laws of different nations, and it appears that the extent to which relatives are prohibited from intermarrying is nearly connected with their close living together. Very often the prohibitions against incest are more or less one-sided, applying more extensively either to the relatives on the father's side or to those on the mother's, according as descent is reckoned through men or women. Now, since {369} the line of descent is largely connected with local relationships, we may reasonably infer that the same local relationships exercise a considerable influence on the table of prohibited degrees. However, in a large number of cases prohibitions of intermarriage are only indirectly influenced by the close living together. Aversion to the intermarriage of persons who live in intimate connection with one another has called forth prohibitions of the intermarriage of relations; and, as kinship is traced by means of a system of names, the name comes to be considered identical with relationship. This system is necessarily one-sided. Though it will keep up the record of descent either on the male or female side, it cannot do both at once; and the line which has not been kept up by such means of record, even where it is recognised as a line of relationship, is naturally more or less neglected and soon forgotten. Hence the prohibited degrees frequently extend very far on the one side--to the whole clan--but not on the other. It should also be remembered that, according to primitive ideas, the name itself constitutes a mystic link between those who have it in common. "In Greenland, as everywhere else," says Dr. Nansen, "the name is of great importance; it is believed that there is a spiritual affinity between two people of the same name." Generally speaking, the feeling that two persons are intimately connected in some way or other may, through an association of ideas, give rise to the notion that marriage or sexual intercourse between them is incestuous. Hence the prohibitions of marriage between relations by alliance and by adoption. Hence, too, the prohibitions of the Roman and Greek Churches on the ground of what is called "spiritual relationship."

{370} The question arises:--How has this instinctive aversion to marriage and sexual intercourse in general between persons living closely together from early youth originated? I have suggested that it may be the result of natural selection. Darwin's careful studies of the effects of cross- and self-fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom, the consensus of opinion among eminent breeders, and experiments made with rats, rabbits, and other animals, seem to have proved that self-fertilisation of plants and close inter-breeding of animals are more or less injurious to the species; and it is probable that the evil chiefly results from the fact that the uniting sexual elements were not sufficiently differentiated. Now it is impossible to believe that a physiological law which holds good of the rest of the animal kingdom, as also of plants, would not apply to man as well. But it is difficult to adduce direct evidence for the evil effects of consanguineous marriages. We cannot expect very conspicuous results from other alliances than those between the nearest relatives--between brothers and sisters, parents and children,--and the injurious results even of such unions would not necessarily appear at once. The closest kind of intermarriage which we have opportunities of studying is that between first cousins. Unfortunately, the observations hitherto made on the subject are far from decisive. Yet it is noteworthy that of all the writers who have discussed it the majority, and certainly not the least able of them, have expressed their belief in marriages between first cousins being more or less unfavourable to the offspring; and no evidence which can stand the test of scientific investigation has hitherto been adduced against this view. Moreover, we have reason to believe that consanguineous marriages are much more injurious in savage regions, where the struggle for existence is often very severe, than they have proved to be in civilised societies, especially as it is among the well-to-do classes that such marriages occur most frequently.

Taking all these facts into consideration, I am inclined to think that consanguineous marriages are in some way or {371} other detrimental to the species. And here I find a quite sufficient explanation of the horror of incest; not because man at an early stage recognised the injurious influence of close intermarriage, but because the law of natural selection must inevitably have operated. Among the ancestors of man, as among other animals, there was no doubt a time, when blood-relationship was no bar to sexual intercourse. But variations, here as elsewhere, would naturally present themselves--we know how extremely liable to variations the sexual instinct is; and those of our ancestors who avoided in-and-in breeding would survive, while the others would gradually decay and ultimately perish. Thus a sentiment would be developed which would be powerful enough, as a rule, to prevent injurious unions. Of course it would display itself, not as an innate aversion to sexual connections with near relatives as such, but as an aversion on the part of individuals to union with others with whom they lived; but these, as a matter of fact, would be blood-relations, so that the result would be the survival of the fittest. Whether man inherited this sentiment from the predecessors from whom he sprang, or whether it was developed after the evolution of distinctly human qualities, we cannot know. It must have arisen at a stage when family ties became comparatively strong, and children remained with their parents until the age of puberty or even longer. And exogamy, resulting from a natural extension of this sentiment to a larger group, would arise when single families united into hordes.

This attempt to explain the prohibition of marriage between kindred and exogamy has not lacked sympathetic support, but more commonly, I think, it has been rejected. Yet after a careful consideration of the various objections raised against it I find no reason to alter my opinion. Some of my opponents have evidently failed to grasp the {372} argument on which the theory is based. Thus Professor Robertson Smith argued that it begins by presupposing the very custom which it professes to explain, the custom of exogamy; that "it postulates the existence of groups which through many generations (for the survival of the fittest implies this) avoided wiving within the group." But what my theory postulates is not the existence of exogamous groups, but the spontaneous appearance of individual sentiments of aversion. And if, as Mr. Andrew Lang maintains, my whole argument is a "vicious circle," then the theory of natural selection itself is a vicious circle, since there never could be a selection of qualities that did not exist before.

It has been argued that if close living together calls forth aversion to sexual intercourse, such aversion ought to display itself between husband and wife as well as between near relatives. But these cases are certainly not identical. The feeling of which I have spoken is aversion associated with the idea of sexual intercourse between persons who have lived in a long-continued intimate relationship from a period of life when the action of sexual desire is naturally out of the question. On the other hand, when a man marries a woman his feeling towards her is of a very different kind, and his love impulse may remain, nay increase, during the conjugal union; though even in this case long living together has undoubtedly a tendency to lead to sexual indifference and sometimes to positive aversion. The opinion that the home is kept free from incestuous intercourse only by law, custom, and education,{373} shows lack of discrimination. Law may forbid a son to marry his mother, a brother to marry his sister, but it could not prevent him from desiring such a union. Have the most draconic codes ever been able to suppress, say, homosexual love? As Plato observed, an unwritten law defends as sufficiently as possible parents from incestuous intercourse with their children, brothers from intercourse with their sisters; "nor does the thought of such a thing ever enter at all into the minds of most of them." Considering the extreme variability to which the sexual impulse is subject, it is not astonishing that cases of what we consider incestuous intercourse sometimes do occur. It seems to me more remarkable that the abhorrence of incest should be so general, and the exceptions to the rule so few.

Dr. Havelock Ellis, again, objects that my theory assumes the existence of a kind of instinct which can with difficulty be accepted. "An innate tendency," he says, "at once so specific and so merely negative, involving at the same time deliberate intellectual processes, can only with a certain force be introduced into the accepted class of instincts. It is as awkward and artificial an instinct as would be, let us say, an instinct to avoid eating the apples that grew in one's own orchard. The explanation of the abhorrence of incest is really, however, exceedingly simple. . . . The normal failure of the pairing instinct to manifest itself in the case of brothers and sisters, or of boys and girls brought up together from infancy, is a merely negative phenomenon due to the inevitable absence under those circumstances of the conditions which evoke the pairing impulse. . . . Between those who have been brought up together from childhood all the sensory stimuli of vision, hearing, and touch have been dulled by use, trained to the calm level of affection, and deprived of their potency to {374} arouse the erethistic excitement which produces sexual tumescence." I think that Dr. Ellis has considerably exaggerated the difference between my theory and his own. The "instinct" of which I have spoken is simply aversion to sexual intercourse with certain persons, and this is a no more complicated mental phenomenon than, for instance, an animal's aversion to eating certain kinds of substances. Indeed, Dr. Ellis himself, in his excellent 'Studies in the Psychology of Sex,' gives us many instances not only of sexual indifference, but of sexual aversion, quite instinctive in character. Thus the largest proportion of male inverts described by him experience what is called horror feminæ, that is to say, "woman as an object of sexual desire is disgusting" (not merely indifferent) to them. And Dr. Ellis also repeatedly speaks of the "abhorrence" of incest.

The objection has been raised that, if my explanation of the prohibition of incest were correct, connections between unrelated persons who have been brought up together should be as repulsive as connections between near kin; whereas, as a matter of fact, the two cases are regarded in a very different light, the latter, only, being held incestuous. Much, of course, depends on the closeness of the union, and Dr. Steinmetz's argument that "the very sensual Frenchmen often seem to marry the lady friends of their earliest youth," is certainly not to the point. I believe that sexual love between a man and his foster-daughter is almost as great an abnormality as sexual love between a father and his daughter; and among some peoples marriages between persons who have been brought up together in the same family or who {375} belong to the same local group, without being related to each other by blood, are held blamable or are actually prohibited. Even between lads and girls who have been educated in the same school there is a remarkable absence of erotic feelings, as appears from an interesting communication by a person who has for many years been the head-mistress of such a school in Finland. One youth assured her that neither he nor any of his friends would ever think of marrying a girl who had been their school fellow; and I heard of a lad who made a great distinction between girls of his own school and other, "real," girls, as he called them. Yet however objectionable and unnatural unions between foster-parents and foster-children or between foster-brothers and foster-sisters may appear to us, I do not deny that unions between the nearest blood-relatives inspire a horror of their own; and it seems natural that they should do so considering that from earliest times the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together has been expressed in prohibitions against unions between kindred. Such unions have been stigmatised by custom, law, and religion, whilst much less notice has been taken of intercourse between unrelated persons who may occasionally have grown up in the same household. The belief in the supernatural, especially, has played a very important part in the ideas referring to incest, as in other points of sexual morality, owing to the mystery which surrounds everything connected with the function of reproduction. The Aleuts in early times believed that incest, which they considered the gravest crime, was always followed by the birth of monsters with walrus tusks, beards, and other disfigurations. The Kafirs {376} likewise maintain that the offspring of an incestuous union will be a monster, as "a punishment inflicted by the ancestral spirit." The Bataks of Sumatra regard a long drought as a decisive proof that two cousins have had criminal intercourse with each other. The Galelarese think that incest calls forth alarming natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, the eruption of a volcano, or torrents of rain. So also the higher religions have branded incest as a heinous sin. As for Christianity's views on the subject, it is sufficient to notice that the prohibited degrees were extended by the Church, and that the jurisdiction over incest, as over all sexual offences, was exercised by the ecclesiastical courts.

It has, finally, been argued that my theory utterly fails to explain the fact that prohibitions of intermarriage frequently refer to all the members of a clan, even those who live in different localities. In addition to what I have previously observed on this point, I desire to emphasise that every hypothesis pretending to give a full explanation of prohibitions of incest must assume the operation of the very same mental law--that of association--which in my opinion accounts for clan-exogamy. Thus Professor Durkheim, while maintaining that my theory as regards the horror of incest could not apply to exogamy because the members of the same totem do not live together, is himself quite ready to resort to analogy to explain prohibitions extending outside the totem clan. He tries to show that clan-exogamy is the source of all other prohibitions against incest, and that clan-exogamy itself springs from totemism. According {377} to him the rule of clan-exogamy has been extended to near relatives belonging to different clans, because they are in no less intimate contact with each other than are the members of the same clan. According to my own theory, again, the prohibition of marriage between near relatives living closely together has been extended to all the members of the clan on account of the notion of intimacy connected with the idea of a common descent and with a common name. If I consider Professor Durkheim's hypothesis extremely unsatisfactory, it is certainly not because he has called in the law of association to explain the rules against incest. How could anybody deny the operation of this law for instance in the Roman Catholic prohibition of marriage between co-sponsors, or in the rule prevalent in Eastern Europe according to which the groomsman at the wedding is forbidden to intermarry with the family of the bride, or in laws prohibiting marriage between relatives by alliance? And why might not the {378} same law be applied to other relationships also, such as those constituted by a common descent or a common name?

* * * * *

There is not only an inner circle within which no marriage is allowed, but also an outer circle outside of which marriage is either prohibited or at least disapproved of. Like the inner circle, the outer one varies greatly in extent. Probably every people considers it a disgrace, if not a crime, for its men, and even more so for its women, to marry within a race very different from its own, especially if it be an inferior race. The Romans were prohibited from marrying barbarians--the emperor Valentinian inflicted the penalty of death for such unions; and a modern European girl who married an Australian native would no doubt be regarded as an outcast by her own society. Among many peoples marriage very seldom or never takes place outside the limits of the tribe or community. In India there are several instances of this. The Tipperahs and Abors view with abhorrence the idea of their girls marrying out of their clan; and Colonel Dalton was gravely assured that, "when one of the daughters of Pádam so demeans herself, the sun and moon refuse to shine, and there is such a strife in the elements that all labour is necessarily suspended, till by sacrifice and oblation the stain is washed away." In ancient Peru it was not lawful for the natives of one province or village to intermarry with those of another. Marriage with foreign women was unlawful at Sparta and Athens. At Rome any marriage of a citizen with a woman who was not herself a Roman citizen, or did not belong to a community possessing the privilege of connubium with Rome, was invalid, and no legitimate children could be born of such a union.

{379} Prohibitions of intermarriage also very often relate to persons belonging to different classes or castes of the same community. To mention a few instances. The wild tribes of Brazil consider alliances between slaves and freemen highly disgraceful. In Tahiti, if a woman of condition chose an inferior person as her husband, the children he had by her were killed. In the Malay Archipelago marriages between persons of different rank are, as a rule, disapproved of, and in some places prohibited. In India intermarriage between different castes, though formerly permissible, is now altogether prohibited. In Rome plebeians and patricians could not intermarry till the year 445 B.C., nor were marriages allowed between patricians and clients; and Cicero himself disapproved of intermarriages of ingenui and freedmen. Among the Teutonic peoples in ancient times any freeman who married a slave became a slave himself. As late as the thirteenth century a German woman who had intercourse with a serf lost her liberty; and both in Germany and Scandinavia, when the nobility emerged as a distinct order from the class of freemen, marriages between persons of noble birth and persons who, although free, were not noble came to be considered misalliances. Even in modern Europe there survive traces of the former class endogamy. According to German Civil Law, the marriage of a man belonging to the high nobility with a woman of inferior birth is still regarded as a disparagium, and the woman is not entitled to the rank of her husband, nor is the full right of inheritance possessed by her or her children. Although in no way prevented by law, marriages out of {380} the class are generally avoided by custom. As Sir Henry Maine observes, "the outer or endogamous limit, within which a man or woman must marry, has been mostly taken under the shelter of fashion or prejudice. It is but faintly traced in England, though not wholly obscured. It is (or perhaps was) rather more distinctly marked in the United States, through prejudices against the blending of white and coloured blood. But in Germany certain hereditary dignities are still forfeited by a marriage beyond the forbidden limits; and in France, in spite of all formal institutions, marriages between a person belonging to the noblesse and a person belonging to the bourgeoisie (distinguished roughly from one another by the particle 'de') are wonderfully rare, though they are not unknown."

Religion, also, has formed a great bar to intermarriage. Among Muhammedans a marriage between a Christian man and a Muhammedan woman is not permitted under any circumstances, whereas it is held lawful for a Muhammedan to marry a Christian or a Jewish, but not a heathen, woman, if induced to do so by excessive love of her, or if he cannot obtain a wife of his own religion. The Jewish law does not recognise marriage with a person of another belief; and during the Middle Ages marriage between Jews and Christians was prohibited by the Christians also. St. Paul indicates that a Christian was not allowed to marry a heathen. Tertullian calls such an alliance fornication; and in the fourth century the Council of Elvira forbade Christian parents to give their daughters in marriage to heathens. Even the adherents of different Christian confessions have been prohibited from intermarrying. In {381} the Roman Catholic Church the prohibition of marriage with heathens and Jews was soon followed by the prohibition of "mixed marriages," and Protestants likewise forbade such unions. Mixed marriages are not now contrary to the civil law either among Roman Catholic or Protestant nations, but in countries belonging to the Orthodox Greek Church ecclesiastical restrictions have been adopted, and are still recognised, by the State.

The endogamous rules are in the first place due to the proud antipathy people feel to races, nations, classes, or religions different from their own. He who breaks such a rule is regarded as an offender against the circle to which he belongs. He hurts its feelings, he disgraces it at the same time as he disgraces himself. Irregular connections outside the endogamous circle are often looked upon with less intolerance than marriage, which places the parties on a more equal footing. A traveller relates that at Djidda, where sexual morality is held in little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or European, but would think herself for ever dishonoured if she were joined to him in lawful wedlock. In Rome contubernium, but not marriage, could take place between freemen and slaves. And among ourselves public opinion regards it as a much more lenient offence if a royal person keeps a woman of inferior rank as his concubine than if he marries her.

Modern civilisation tends more or less to pull down the barriers which separate races, nations, the various classes of society, and the adherents of different religions. The endogamous rules have thus become less stringent and less restricted. Whilst civilisation has narrowed the inner limit within which a man or woman must not marry, it has widened the outer limit within which a man or woman may marry, and generally marries. The latter of these processes has been one of vast importance in man's history. {382} Originating in race- or class-pride, or in religious intolerance, the endogamous rules have in their turn helped to keep up and to strengthen these feelings. Frequent intermarriages, on the other hand, must have the very opposite effect.

Like the rules referring to the choice of partners, so the modes of contracting marriage and the ideas as to what in this respect is right and proper have undergone successive changes. The practice of capturing wives prevails in certain parts of the world, and traces of it are met with in the marriage ceremonies of several peoples, indicating that it occurred more frequently in past ages. This practice, as it seems to me, has chiefly sprung from the aversion to close intermarriage, together with the difficulty a savage man may have in procuring a wife in a friendly manner, without giving compensation for the loss he inflicts on her family. We may imagine that it chiefly occurred at a stage of social growth where family ties had become stronger, and man lived in small groups of nearly related persons, but where the idea of barter had scarcely presented itself to his mind. Yet there is no reason to think that capture was at any period the exclusive form of contracting marriage; its prevalence seems to have been much exaggerated by McLennan and his school. It is impossible to believe that there ever was a time when friendly negotiations between families who could intermarry were altogether unknown. The custom prevalent among many savage tribes of a husband taking up his abode in his wife's family seems to have arisen very early in man's history.

Among most uncivilised peoples now existing a man has, in some way or other, to give compensation for his bride. The simplest way of purchasing a wife is to give a kinswoman in exchange for her--a practice prevalent among {383} Australian tribes. Much more common is the custom of obtaining a wife by services rendered to her father, the man taking up his abode with the family of the girl for a certain time, during which he works as a servant. But the ordinary compensation for a girl is property paid to her father, or in some cases to her uncle, or to some other relatives as well as to the father. Marriage by exchange or purchase is not only general among existing lower races; it occurs, or formerly occurred, among semi-civilised nations of a higher culture as well--in Central America and Peru, in China and Japan, in the various branches of the Semitic race, in the past history of all so-called Aryan peoples. We have no evidence that it is a stage through which every race has passed; we notice its absence among some of the rudest races with whom we are acquainted. Yet with much more reason than marriage by capture, purchase of wives may be said to form a general stage in the social history of mankind. Although the two practices may occur simultaneously, the former seems more often to have succeeded the latter, as barter in general has followed upon robbery. It has been suggested that the transition from marriage by capture to marriage by purchase was brought about in the following way: abduction, in spite of parents, was the primary form; then there came the offering of compensation to escape vengeance; and this grew eventually into the making of presents or paying a sum beforehand. The price was a compensation for the loss sustained in the giving up of the girl and a remuneration for the expenses incurred in her maintenance till the time of her marriage. The girl was regarded more or less in the light of property, to take her away from her owner without his consent was theft. To claim a compensation for her was his right, or even his duty. The Indians in Columbia consider it in the highest degree disgraceful to the girl's family if she is given away without a price; and in certain tribes of California {384}"the children of a woman for whom no money was paid are accounted no better than bastards, and the whole family are condemned."

With progressing civilisation, however, the practice of purchasing wives has been gradually abandoned, and come to be looked upon as infamous. The wealthier classes took the first step, and poorer and ruder persons subsequently followed their examples. Thus in India, in ancient times, the Âsura form, or marriage by purchase, was lawful for all the four castes. Afterwards it fell into disrepute, and was prohibited among the Brâhmanas and Kshatriyas, whereas it was still approved of in the case of a Vaisya and a Sûdra. But in the 'Laws of Manu' it is forbidden altogether. It is said there, "No father who knows the law must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring." The Greeks of the historical age had ceased to buy their wives. In Rome confarreatio, which suggested no idea of purchase, was in the very earliest known time the form of marriage in force among the patricians; and among clients and plebeians, also, the purchase of wives came to an end in remote antiquity, surviving as a mere symbol in their coëmptio. Among the Germans marriage by purchase was abolished only after their conversion to Christianity. In the Talmudic law the purchase of wives appears as merely symbolical, the bride-price being fixed at a nominal amount. In China, although marriage presents correspond exactly to purchase-money in a contract of sale, the people will not hear of their being called a "price"; which shows that here, too, some feeling of shame is attached to the idea of selling a daughter.

We may discern two different ways in which this {385} gradual disappearance of marriage by purchase has taken place. On the one hand, the purchase became a symbol, appearing as a sham sale in the marriage ceremonies or as an exchange of presents; on the other hand, the purchase sum was transformed into the morning gift and the dotal portion, a part--afterwards the whole--being given to the bride either directly by the bridegroom or by her father. These transformations of marriage by purchase have taken place not only in the history of the civilised nations, but among several peoples who are still in a savage or semi-civilised state; and of a few of them it is expressly stated that they consider marriage by purchase a disgraceful practice.

From marriage by purchase we have thus come to the practice of dower, which is apparently the very reverse of it. But whilst the marriage portion partly derives its origin from the purchase of wives, it does not do so in every case. It serves different ends, often indissolubly mixed up together. It may have the meaning of a return gift. It may imply that the wife as well as the husband is expected to contribute to the expenses of the joint household. It is also very often intended to be a settlement for the wife in case the marriage be dissolved through the husband's death or otherwise. In the social history of the civilised races the marriage portion has played so prominent a part, that, as we have spoken of a stage of marriage by purchase, we may speak of another and later stage where fathers are bound by custom or law to portion their daughters. The Jews and Muhammedans consider it a religious duty for a man to give a dower to his daughter. In Greece the dowry came to be thought almost necessary to make the distinction between a wife and a concubine. Isaeus says that no decent man would give his legitimate daughter less than a tenth of his {386} property; indeed, so great were the dowers given that in the time of Aristotle nearly two fifths of the whole territory of Sparta were supposed to belong to women. In Rome, even more than in Greece, the marriage portion became a mark of distinction for a legitimate wife; and though later on Justinian in several of his constitutions declares that dos is obligatory for persons of high rank only, the old custom did not fall into desuetude. The Prussian 'Landrecht' still prescribes that the father, or eventually the mother, shall arrange about the wedding and fit up the house of the newly-married couple. According to the 'Code Napoléon,' on the other hand, parents are not bound to give a dower to their daughters, and the same principle is generally adopted by modern legislation. It is true that especially in the so-called Latin countries there is still a strong tendency to dotation, but another feeling, in some measure opposed to it, is gaining ground everywhere. In a society where monogamy is prescribed by law, where the adult women outnumber the adult men, where many men never marry, and where married women too often lead an indolent life--in such a society the marriage portion in many cases becomes a purchase-sum by means of which a father buys a husband for his daughter, as formerly a man bought a wife from her father. But, as Mr. Sutherland observes, "that pecuniary interests, either on one side or on the other, should conspicuously enter into the motives which lead to marriage, becomes repulsive to the increasing delicacy of feeling; and so we find that in cultured communities the dowry dies out, just as the purchase-money declined in the civilised stages."

{387} Whilst most of the lower animal species are by instinct either monogamous or polygynous, with man every possible form of marriage occurs. There are marriages of one man with one woman (monogamy), of one man with many women (polygyny), of many men with one woman (polyandry), and, in a few exceptional cases, of many men with many women.

Among the causes by which the forms of marriage are influenced the numerical proportion between the sexes plays an important part. Polyandry seems to be due chiefly to a surplus of men, though it prevails only where the circumstances are otherwise in favour of it. It presupposes an abnormally feeble disposition to jealousy, and has probably at all times been exceptional in the human race. There is no solid evidence for the theory set forth by McLennan that it was the rule in early times. On the contrary, this form of marriage seems to require a certain degree of civilisation; we have no trustworthy account of its occurrence among the lowest savages. In polyandrous families the husbands are most frequently brothers, and the eldest brother, at least in many cases, has the superiority. It seems a fair conclusion that in such instances polyandry was originally an expression of fraternal benevolence on the part of the eldest brother, or of urgent demands on the part of the younger ones, who otherwise, on account of the scarcity of women, would have to live unmarried. If additional wives were afterwards acquired, they would naturally be considered the common property of all the brothers; and in this way the group marriage of the Toda type seems to have evolved. Polygyny, also, is to some extent dependent upon the proportion between the sexes. It has been observed in India that polyandry occurs in those parts of the country where the males outnumber the females, polygyny in those {388} where the reverse is the case. Indeed, in countries unaffected by European civilisation polygyny is likely to prevail wherever there is a majority of women. But the proportion between the sexes is only one cause out of many to which polygyny is due.

There are several reasons why a man may desire to possess more than one wife. Monogamy requires from him periodical continence, not only for a certain time every month, but among many peoples during the pregnancy of his wife, and as long as she suckles her child. One of the chief causes of polygyny is the attraction which female youth and beauty exercise upon a man; and at the lower stages of civilisation women generally become old much sooner than in more advanced communities. The liking of men for variety is also a potent factor; the Negroes of Angola asserted that they "were not able to eat always of the same dish." We must further take into account men's desire for offspring, wealth, and authority. The barrenness of a wife is a very common reason for the choice of a new partner; the polygyny of the ancient Hindus seems to have been due chiefly to the fact that men dreaded the idea of dying childless, and even now in the East the desire for offspring is one of the principal causes of polygyny. The more wives, the more children; and the more children, the greater power. In early civilisation a man's relations and connections are often his only friends; and where slavery does not prevail, next to a man's wives the real servant, the only to be counted upon, is the child. Moreover, a man's fortune is increased by a multitude of wives not only through their children, but through their work. Manual labour among savages is undertaken largely by women; and when neither slaves nor persons who will work for hire can be procured, {389} it becomes necessary for any man who requires many servants to have many wives.

Nevertheless, however desirable polygyny may be from the man's point of view, it is altogether prohibited among many peoples, and in countries where it is an established institution it is practised--as a rule to which there are few exceptions--only by a comparatively small class. The proportion between the sexes partly accounts for this, but there are other causes of no less importance. Where the amount of female labour is limited and no accumulated property exists, it may be very difficult for a man to keep a plurality of wives. Again, where female labour is of considerable value, the necessity of paying the purchase-sum for a wife is a hindrance to polygyny which can be overcome only by the wealthier men. There are, moreover, certain factors of a psychical character which are unfavourable to polygyny. When love depends on external attractions only, it is necessarily fickle; but when it implies sympathy arising from mental qualities, there is a tie between husband and wife which lasts long after youth and beauty are gone. As another obstacle to polygyny we have to note the true monogamous sentiment, the absorbing passion for one, which is not unknown even among savage races. Polygyny is finally checked by the respect in which women are held by men. Jealousy is not exclusively a masculine passion, and it is the ambition of every wife to be the mistress of her husband's house. Hence where women have succeeded in obtaining some power over their husbands, or where the altruistic feelings of men have become refined enough to lead them to respect the feelings of those weaker than themselves, monogamy is frequently the result.

It is certain that polygyny has been less prevalent at the lowest stages of civilisation--where wars do not seriously disturb the proportion of the sexes, where life is chiefly supported by hunting and female labour is consequently of slight value, and where there is no accumulation of wealth {390} and no distinction of class--than it is at somewhat higher stages. The more advanced savages and barbarians seem to indulge in this practice to a greater extent than the lower ones, many, or most, of whom are either little addicted to polygyny or strictly monogamous. Various forest tribes in Brazil are monogamous, and so are several of the Californian tribes--"a humble and a lowly race, . . . one of the lowest on earth." Thus the Karok do not allow bigamy even to a chief; and though a man may own as many women for slaves as he can purchase, he brings obloquy on himself if he cohabits with more than one. Among the Veddahs and Andaman Islanders monogamy is as rigidly insisted upon as any where in Europe. The natives of Kar Nicobar "have but one wife, and look upon unchastity as a very deadly sin." Among the Koch and Old Kukis polygyny and concubinage are forbidden; whilst among some other aboriginal tribes in India a man, though not expressly forbidden to have many wives, is blamed if he has more than one. Among the Karens of Burma and certain tribes of Indo-China, the Malay Peninsula, and the Indian Archipelago, polygyny is said either to be prohibited or unknown. The Hill Dyaks marry but one wife, and a chief who once broke through this custom lost all his influence. In Australia there are said to be some truly monogamous tribes; in the Birria tribe, for instance, "the possession of more than one wife is absolutely forbidden, or was so before the coming of the whites." {391} Monogamy is all the more likely to have been the general rule among our earliest human ancestors as it seems to be so among the man-like apes. Darwin certainly mentions the gorilla as a polygamist; but the majority of statements we have regarding this animal are to the opposite effect. Relying on the most trustworthy authorities, Professor Hartmann says, "The gorilla lives in a society consisting of male and female and their young of varying ages."

Whilst civilisation is thus up to a certain point favourable to polygyny, it leads in its higher forms to monogamy. Owing to the decrease of wars, the death-rate of the men becomes less, and the considerable disproportion between the sexes which among many warlike peoples makes polygyny almost a law of nature no longer exists among the most advanced nations. No superstitious belief keeps the civilised man apart from his wife during her pregnancy and while she suckles her child; and the suckling time has become much shorter since the introduction of domesticated animals and the use of milk. To a cultivated mind youth and beauty are by no means the only attractions of a woman; and civilisation has made female beauty more durable. The desire for offspring becomes less intense. A large family, instead of being a help in the struggle for existence, is often considered an insufferable burden. A man's kinsfolk are no longer his only friends, and his wealth and power do not depend upon the number of his wives and children. A wife ceases to be a mere labourer, and manual labour is to a large extent replaced by the work of domesticated animals and the use of implements and machines. Moreover, the sentiment of love becomes more refined, the passion for one more absorbing. The feelings of the weaker sex are frequently held in higher regard. And the better education bestowed on women enables them to live comfortably without the support of a husband.

{392} As for the moral valuation of the various forms of marriage, it should be noticed that even among polygynous and polyandrous peoples monogamy is permitted by custom or law, although in some instances it is associated with poverty and considered mean, whereas polygyny, as associated with greatness, is thought praiseworthy. Again, the notion that monogamy is the only proper form of marriage, and that any other form is immoral, is due either to the mere force of habit; or, possibly, to the notion that it is wrong of some men to appropriate a plurality of wives when others in consequence can get none; or to the feeling that polygyny is an offence against the female sex; or to the condemnation of lust. As regards the obligatory monogamy of Christian nations, we have to remember that monogamy was the only recognised form of marriage in the societies on which Christianity was first engrafted, and that it was the only form that could be tolerated by a religion which regarded every gratification of the sexual impulse with suspicion and incontinence as the gravest sin. In its early days the Church showed little respect for women but its horror of sensuality was immense.

A few words still remain to be said of a form of marriage which has of late been the subject of much discussion in connection with Australian ethnology. Many years ago attention was drawn to the fact that the Kamilaroi tribes in South Australia are divided into four classes, in which brothers and sisters are respectively Ipai and Ip[=a]tha, K[)u]bi and Kub[)i]tha, M[)u]ri and M[=a]tha, Kumbu and B[=u]tha; and that the members of one class are forbidden to marry among themselves, but bound to marry into a certain other class. Thus Ipai may only marry Kub[)i]tha; K[)u]bi, Ip[=a]tha; Kumbu, M[=a]tha; and M[)u]ri, B[=u]tha. In a certain sense, we were told, every Ipai is regarded as married, not by any individual contract, but by organic law, to every Kub[)i]tha; every K[)u]bi to every Ip[=a]tha, and so forth. If, for instance, a K[)u]bi meet a stranger Ip[=a]tha, they address {393} each other as "spouse"; and "a K[)u]bi thus meeting an Ip[=a]tha, though she were of another tribe, would treat her as his wife, and his right to do so would be recognised by her tribe." The institution according to which the men of one division have as wives the women of another division, the Rev. L. Fison called "group marriage." He contends that among the natives of South Australia it has given way in later times, in some measure, to individual marriage. But theoretically, he says, marriage is still communal: "it is based upon the marriage of all the males in one division of a tribe to all the females of the same generation in another division." The chief argument advanced by Mr. Fison in support of his theory is grounded on the terms of relationship in use in the tribes. These terms belong to the "classificatory system" of Mr. Morgan; but he admits that he is not aware of any tribe in which the actual practice is to its full extent what the terms of relationship imply. "Present usage," he says, "is everywhere in advance of the system so implied, and the terms are survivals of an ancient right, not precise indications of custom as it is." The same is granted by Mr. Howitt. Yet I have pointed out, in my criticism of the classificatory system, to what absurd results we must be led if, guided by such terms, we begin to speculate upon early marriage. Moreover, as I have said, "if a K[)u]bi and an Ip[=a]tha address each other as spouse, this does not imply that in former times every K[)u]bi was married to every Ip[=a]tha indiscriminately. On the contrary, the application of such a familiar term might be explained from the fact that the women who may be a man's wives, and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him." This suggestion derives support from the following statement made by Dr. Codrington with reference to the Melanesians:--"Speaking {394} generally, it may be said that to a Melanesian man all women, of his own generation at least, are either sisters or wives, to the Melanesian woman all men are either brothers or husbands. . . . It must not be understood that a Melanesian regards all women who are not of his own division as, in fact, his wives, or conceives himself to have rights which he may exercise in regard to those women of them who are unmarried; but the women who may be his wives by marriage and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him."

More recently Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have shown that a marriage system essentially similar to that of the South Australian natives prevails in Central Australia; and they, also, regard it as a later modification of genuine group marriage. Nowadays, they say, the system of individual wives prevails--"modified, however, by the practice of customs according to which, at certain times, much wider marital relations are allowed." But to this rule there is one exception:--"In the Urabunna tribe group marriage actually exists at the present day, a group of men of a certain designation having, not merely nominally but in actual reality, and under normal conditions, marital relations with a group of women of another special designation"; here "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice." But, after all, it appears that even among the Urabunna every woman is the special Nupa of one man, and that certain other men, her Piraungaru only have a secondary right to her. Thus, if the Nupa man (the real, or at all events the chief, husband) be present, the Piraungaru (accessory husbands) are allowed to have intercourse with her only in case the Nupa man consents. Is this modification of the Urabunna group marriage a later development from a previous system according to which all the men of a certain group had an equal right to all the {395} women of another group? Here we are on dangerous ground; nothing is more difficult than to decide whether certain customs are survivals or not. We find modifications resembling those connected with the group marriage of the Urabunna both in polyandry and in polygyny; the first husband in a polyandrous family is usually the chief husband, and the first wife in a polygynous family is very frequently the chief wife. We must certainly not conclude that these restrictions have been preceded by an earlier custom which gave equal rights to all the husbands or all the wives; on the contrary, it is more likely that the higher position granted to the first husband or to the first wife is due to the fact that monogamy was the usual form of marriage. Similarly the Urabunna custom may very well have developed out of ordinary individual marriage, and the cause of it may perhaps be, as Mr. N. W. Thomas has suggested, the difficulties which an Australian native often experiences in getting a wife. As for other facts which have been adduced as evidence of Australian group marriage in the past, such as the jus primæ noctis, &c., I only desire to emphasise the circumstance that extra-matrimonial intercourse is practised by the Australian natives in a variety of cases the real meaning of which seems obscure. In some instances at least, a magic significance appears to be attributed to it; and that it is a survival of group marriage, in the strict sense of the term, is again only a conjecture.

I must admit, therefore, that the facts produced by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and the severe criticism which they have passed on my sceptical attitude towards Mr. Fison's group marriage theory have not been able to convince me that among the Australian aborigines individual marriage has evolved out of a previous system of marriage between groups of men and women. Nor has Mr. Howitt, {396} in his recent work on the 'Native Tribes of South-East Australia,' in my opinion, sufficiently proved that such an evolution has taken place. He blames certain "ethnologists of the study" for not being willing "to take the opinion of men who have first-hand knowledge of the natives"; but I think we do well in distinguishing between statements based on direct observation and the observer's interpretation of the stated facts. Even suppose, however, that group marriage really was once common in Australia, would that prove that it was once common among mankind at large? Mr. Hewitt's supposition that the practice of group marriage "will be ultimately accepted as one of the primitive conditions of mankind" is no doubt shared by a host of anthropologists. The group marriage theory will probably for some time to come remain the residuary legatee of the old theory of promiscuity; the important works which have lately been published on the Australian aborigines have made people inclined to view the early history of mankind through Australian spectacles. But even the most ardent advocate of Australian group marriage should remember that the existence of kangurus in Australia does not prove that there were once kangurus in England.

* * * * *

The time during which marriage lasts varies extremely in the human race. There are unions which, though legally recognised as marriages, do not endure long enough to deserve to be so called in the natural history sense of the term; there are others which are dissolved only by {397} death. As has already been pointed out, it is probable that among primitive men the union of the sexes lasted till after the birth of the offspring, and we have perhaps some reason to believe that the connection lasted for years. On the whole, progress in civilisation has tended to make marriage more durable. It is evident that at the early stage of development at which women first became valuable as labourers, a wife was united with her husband by a new bond more lasting than youth and beauty. The tie was strengthened by the bride-price and the marriage portion. And a higher development of the paternal feeling, better forethought for the children's welfare, in some instances greater consideration for women, and a more refined love passion have gradually made it stronger, until it has become in many cases indissoluble. Yet we must not conclude that divorce will in the future be less frequent and more restricted by law than it is now in European countries. It should be remembered that the laws of divorce in Christian Europe owe their origin to an idealistic religious commandment which, interpreted in its literal sense, gave rise to legal prescriptions far from harmonising with the mental and social life of the mass of the people. The powerful authority of the Roman Church was necessary to enforce the dogma that marriage is indissoluble. The Reformation introduced somewhat greater liberty in this respect, and modern legislation has gone further in the same direction. In those Christian states of Europe where absolute divorce is permitted the grounds on which it may be sued for are nearly the same for the man and the woman, except in England, where the husband must be accused of one or other of several offences besides adultery. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal, a judicial separation may always be decreed on the ground of the adultery of the wife, but, on the ground of the adultery of the husband, only if it has been committed under certain aggravating circumstances. These laws imply that marriage is not yet a contract on the footing of perfect equality between the sexes; but there is {398} a growing opinion that, where it is not, it ought to be so. Again, when both husband and wife desire to separate, it seems to many enlightened minds that the State has no right to prevent them from dissolving the marriage contract, provided the children are properly cared for; and that for the children, also, it is better to have the supervision of one parent only than of two who cannot agree.