III. THEORY OF THE ORIGINAL PAIRING OR MONOGAMOUS FAMILY

III. THEORY OF THE ORIGINAL PAIRING OR MONOGAMOUS FAMILY

[BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE III.--The theory of the pairing family is not so much the result of a reaction against the theory of promiscuity as it is a consequence of the perception that the problems of society can only be solved by appealing to the laws of human life and organic evolution. Hence Starcke's highly original Primitive Family (New York, 1889), and Westermarck's more elaborate and very able treatise on Human Marriage (London and New York, 1891), showing the influence in some passages of Starcke's acute reasoning, may fairly be regarded as epoch-making. Important also are Wake's Marriage and Kinship (London, 1889) and Letourneau's L'évolution du mariage (Paris, 1888), which is supplemented by his Sociology Based upon Ethnology (London, 1893). These writers have carried farther the suggestions of Darwin, Descent of Man and Animals and Plants under Domestication; and Spencer, Principles of Sociology (New York, 1879), who had already thrown doubt upon the communistic theory. A similar general conclusion is reached in the valuable monograph of Kautsky, "Entstehung der Ehe und Familie," in Kosmos, XII (Stuttgart, 1882), whose original "hetairism" is but "defective monogamy;" and Peschel's Races of Man (London, 1889) tends in the same direction. Hildebrand likewise rejects the communistic theory in his inaugural address on Das Problem einer allgemeinen Entwicklungsgeschichte des Rechts und der Sitte (Graz, 1894); and this work should be read in connection with his Recht und Sitte auf den verschiedenen wirthschaftlichen Kulturstufen (Jena, 1896). On the other hand, Kulischer, in "Die geschlechtliche Zuchtwahl bei den Menschen in der Urzeit," in ZFE., VIII, defends original communal marriage against the views of Darwin. Of special value, likewise, for this chapter are Grosse, Die Formen der Familie (Freiburg and Leipzig, 1896); which is favorably examined by Cunow, "Die ökonomischen Grundlagen der Mutterherrschaft," in Neue Zeit, XVI; Keane, Ethnology (2d ed., Cambridge, 1896); idem, Man: Past and Present (Cambridge, 1899); Frerichs, Naturgeschichte des Menschen (2d ed., Norden, 1891); Bagehot, Physics and Politics (London, 1872); as are also the works of Posada, Crawley, Lang, and Hellwald elsewhere mentioned.

For the family among the lower animals in addition to Letourneau, Hellwald, and Westermarck, consult Brehm, Tierleben (Leipzig and Vienna, 1891); his Bird-Life (London, 1874); Herman Müller, Am Neste (Berlin, 1881); Schäffle, Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers (Tübingen, 1881); Espinas, Des sociétés animales (2d ed., 1878); Groos, Die Spiele der Thiere (Jena, 1896), or the English translation (New York, 1898); and Wagner, "Die Kulturzüchtung des Menschen gegenüber der Naturzüchtung im Tierreich," in Kosmos, 1886, I. In this connection read also Houzeau, Études sur les facultés mentales des animaux (Mons, 1872); Vignoli, Ueber das Fundamentalgesetz des Intelligenz im Tierreiche (Leipzig, 1879); and Salt, Animals' Rights (New York, 1894).

On the problems of sex and kinship mentioned in the text see Geddes and Thompson, Evolution of Sex (New York, n. d.); Ellis, Man and Woman (London, 1896); Finck, Primitive Love (New York, 1899), vigorously attacking some of Westermarck's theories; his Romantic Love and Personal Beauty (London, 1887); Duboc, Psychologie der Liebe (Hannover, 1874); Mantegazza, Physiologie der Liebe (30th ed., Berlin, 1897); Klebs, Verhältniss des männ. und weibl. Geschlechts in der Natur (Jena, 1894); Schroeder, Das Recht in der geschlechtl. Ordnung (Berlin, 1893); Thomas, "Relations of Sex to Primitive Social Control," and his "Difference in the Metabolism of the Sexes," both in Am. Journal of Sociology, III (1898); Sadler, The Law of Population (London, 1830); Starkweather, The Law of Sex (London, 1883); Hofacker and Notter, Uber die Eigenschaften ... welche sich auf die Nachkommen vererben (Tübingen, 1827); Ploss, Das Weib (Leipzig, 1895); also his Ueber die das Geschlechtsverhältniss der Kinder bedingenden Ursachen (Berlin, 1859); Schenk, Einfluss auf das Geschlechtsverhältniss (3d ed., Magdeburg and Vienna, 1898); the brilliant monograph of Düsing, Die Regulierung des Geschlechtsverhältnisses (Jena, 1884); Huth, Marriage of Near Kin (2d ed., 1887); Lewkowitsch, "Die Ehen zwischen Geschwisterkindern and ihre Folgen," in ZFE., VIII; and Mitchell, "Blood-Relationship in Marriage," in Mem. of London Anth. Society, 1865, II, 402 ff.

Several important points are treated in Tylor's Early History of Mankind (New York, 1878); and in his Method of Investigating Institutions. See also Kovalevsky, Tableau des origines et de l'évolution de la famille (Stockholm, 1890); Swinderen, De Polygynia (Groningae, 1795); and for a curiosity, read Premontval, La monogamie (1751). In general, the literature cited in Bibliographical Note II has been used, and so need not here be described.]

I. THE PROBLEM OF PROMISCUITY

The researches of several recent writers, notably those of Starcke and Westermarck, confirming in part and further developing the earlier conclusions of Darwin and Spencer, have established a probability that marriage or pairing between one man and one woman, though the union be often transitory and the rule frequently violated, is the typical form of sexual union from the infancy of the human race. The problem is not yet fully worked out; but if in the end the theory of original promiscuity must be abandoned, and the pairing or monogamous family accepted as the primitive social unit, it is not because of the spiritual and moral superiority of man, as compared with other animals, but because sexual communism as a primitive and general phase of life appears to be inconsistent with the biological, economic, and psychological laws which have determined the general course of organic evolution. Strongly supported and highly probable as is the pairing or monogamic theory, it must be clearly understood in the outset that it is still only a theory and has not yet reached the stage of demonstration. It will hardly do, however, to set aside the researches of its adherents as being superficial and devoid of real scientific method; for the champions of the opposite doctrine of primitive communism are nothing if not daring, and their sweeping generalizations often rest solely on comparatively few "survivals" of alleged conditions which are absolutely "prehistoric."[266]

[266] Among the great living investigators in this field no one, perhaps, has sinned more frequently in making hazardous generalizations than KOHLER, who is particularly harsh in his criticism of Westermarck, Curr, and other adversaries. See, for example, his Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe, 2 ff., 150 ff.

It may be impossible to prove that there ever was a uniform primitive state. "So long as we are within the sphere of experience," says Starcke, "we cannot begin by assuming that there was at any time only a single human community. Experience begins with a plurality of communities, and the single community of which we are in search must be found on the indeterminate boundary between man and animals."[267] Indeed, it seems certain that if we are ever to understand the character of the earliest forms of human marriage and the human family, we must begin by studying the family and marriage as they exist among other and less advanced members of the animal world.[268] Biology, declares Letourneau, is the starting-point of sociology.[269] In this view Starcke coincides. "We have no reason to regard the social life of man as a recent form. Not only do the same psychical forces which influence gregarious man also influence the gregarious animal; probability also leads us to infer that the primitive communities of mankind are derived from those of animals. Since man in so many respects only goes on to develop the previous achievements of animal experience, it may be supposed that he made use of the social experience of animals as the firm foundation of his higher advancement." Besides, "there are human communities which are far less firmly established than those of animals;" and "it may even be asserted that the social faculty is positive in animals and negative in man," for man is "less subservient to instinct."[270] "If we want to find out the origin of marriage," says Westermarck, "we have to strike into another path, the only one which can lead to the truth, but a path which is open to him alone who regards organic nature as one continued chain, the last and most perfect link of which is man. For we can no more stop within the limits of our own species, when trying to find the root of our psychical and social life, than we can understand the physical condition of the human race without taking into consideration that of the lower animals."[271]

[267] Primitive Family, 7, 8.

[268] See LETOURNEAU, L'évolution du mariage, chap. ii, on "Le mariage et la famille chez les animaux;" and his Sociology, 327-30, 380-82.

[269] L'évolution du mariage, chap. i.

[270] STARCKE, op. cit., 8, 9.

[271] Human Marriage, 9. See also ibid., chap. iii, on the "Antiquity of Human Marriage."

Accordingly three principal arguments against the existence at any time of a general state of promiscuity have been advanced:

First is the so-called zoölogical argument, based on a comparison of the sexual habits and institutions of animals with those of the lowest races of men. In the outset it is important to observe that the physical differentiation of the sexes is itself a product of the struggle for existence. This important fact is made the starting-point of the argument by which Hellwald[272] finds the elements of the human mother-group and of mother-right in earlier animal experiences. Among the lowest members of the animal kingdom there is no individual distinction of sex. That first makes its appearance when the "artistically constructed organism, in order to sustain itself in the process of evolution, is called upon to perform a wider series of functions." Thus "when an animal is forced to greater exertion, when it must work in order to exist, when unresistingly it can no longer suffer the stream of events to press upon it, but withstands it and seeks in it to follow its own course, then the separation of the sexes appears, and, indeed, as a division of labor created by nature for the purpose of developing species." With further evolution, male and female characteristics become more pronounced, in response to the special functions which each sex is called upon to perform. The same process continues in the case of man. To see in him anything other than the "highest and foremost representative of the animal world, one must be drunk with metaphysical nectar, and nothing is better fitted than comparative physiology to humble one's pride in this regard." For man's entire physical organization is "homologous to that of the higher species of animals." Accordingly, the lower a group of men stands on the ladder of culture, the less marked is the "bodily differentiation of the sexes." Among various backward peoples there is relatively slight difference in outward appearance between the men and the women.[273] The growth of sexual variation in physical structure keeps pace exactly with progress in civilization. This progress depends mainly on two original forces. Of these "without doubt the mightiest is hunger," the need of nourishment. For everywhere on earth the "first thought and striving" of living beings is the "stilling of hunger." Next to the struggle for food, the sexual and pairing impulse is the most potent factor in the genesis of society. The former influence, it is important to observe, is the more constant and the more imperative. The latter grows and becomes more acute with increase in refinement and the consequent development of the nervous system.[274] It follows that in the origin of social institutions the erotic or pairing impulse, however important, is a less cogent genetic force than the economic necessity of a food supply.

[272] Die mensch. Familie, 4 ff.

[273] Among the aborigines of New Britain, according to POWELL, Unter den Kannibalen von Neubritannien, 123; and among the Lacondou Indians of Central America, according to CHARNAY, Les anciennes villes du nouveau monde, 399. "Negro women of unmixed blood seldom have voluptuous figures, and in anatomical structure they resemble the men in a remarkable way, so that seen from a distance they are scarcely to be distinguished from them. The same is true for a whole series of low races."--HELLWALD, op. cit., 6.

[274] "Bedenken wir die vielen Mittel, die gerade die Civilisation hierzu bietet, so dürfte dem befremdenden Urteile nicht mehr zu widersprechen sein, dass bei wirklichen Naturvölkern und unter normalen sozialen Verhältnissen der erotische Antrieb ein beschränkterer sei, als auf höheren Stufen der Civilisation."--LIPPERT, Geschichte der Familie, 29, 30. Among the highly civilized of our own times the nervous system is very greatly developed, and therewith the capacity for sexual pleasure is proportionately increased; see HELLWALD, op. cit., 11 ff., 128, and the literature there cited.

The lives of the lower animals reveal a great variety of sexual relations. The lowest form, and perhaps the most frequent, is that of unlimited promiscuity.[275] Among the invertebrates the preservation of the young is left almost wholly to chance. The duties of the parents are limited mainly to the functions of reproduction. "In the lowest classes of vertebrata, parental care is likewise almost unheard of." It "rarely happens that both parents jointly take care of their progeny."[276] But the chelonia, or tortoise group, are "known to live in pairs;" and here we reach, among animals, the first trace of the family, properly so called. "The chelonia form, with regard to their domestic habits, a transition to the birds, as they do also from a zoölogical and, particularly, from an embryological point of view." Who that has experienced the keen delight afforded by watching the domestic habits of birds, from the building of the nest to the teaching of the young to make the first wavering trial of its wings, cannot bear witness to the high development of marriage and the family among them? The great work of Brehm supplies abundant evidence of their human-like social life.[277] "Parental affection," summarizes Westermarck, "has reached a very high degree of development, not only on the mother's side, but also on the father's. Male and female help each other to build the nest, the former generally bringing the materials, the latter doing the work. In fulfilling the numberless duties of the breeding season both birds take a share. Incubation rests principally with the mother, but the father, as a rule, helps his companion, taking her place when she wants to leave the nest for a moment, or providing her with food and protecting her from every danger. Finally, when the duties of the breeding season are over, and the result desired is obtained, a period with new duties commences. During the first few days after hatching, most birds rarely leave their young for long, and then only to procure food for themselves and their family. In cases of great danger, both parents bravely defend their offspring. As soon as the first period of helplessness is over, and the young have grown somewhat, they are carefully taught to shift for themselves; and it is only when they are perfectly capable of so doing that they leave the nest and the parents."[278] The bird family is usually monogamic, and the marriage is lasting. Birds are generally faithful to the marriage vow; and this is particularly true of the females.[279] "With the exception of those belonging to the gallinaceous family, when pairing," they do so "once for all till either one or the other dies.[280] And Dr. Brehm is so filled with admiration for their exemplary family life that he enthusiastically declares that 'real genuine marriage can only be found among the birds.'"[281]

[275] Ibid., 22.

[276] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 9 ff.

[277] BREHM, Tierleben: Allgemeine Kunde des Tierreichs (10 vols., Leipzig and Vienna, 1891). Vols. IV-VI are devoted to birds. See also his Bird-Life (London, 1874).

[278] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 11; cf. BREHM, op. cit., IV, 19 ff., passim; and HERMAN MÜLLER'S Am Neste, which Brehm has used.

[279] DARWIN, Animals and Plants under Domestication, II, 81, speaks of pigeons as being "true to their wedding-vow." On polygyny and monogamy among animals see idem, Descent of Man, 216 ff. "Many mammals and some few birds are polygamous, but with animals belonging to the lower classes I have found no evidence of this habit. The intellectual powers of such animals are, perhaps, not sufficient to lead them to collect and guard a harem of females" (216, 217). Birds sometimes lose the pairing "instinct" under domestication (220). Regarding the "marital virtue" of birds, see HELLWALD, op. cit., 30.

[280] "Abweichend von anderen Tieren leben die meisten Vögel in geschlossener Ehe auf Lebenszeit und nur wenige von ihnen, gleich den Säugetieren, in Vielweiberei oder richtiger Vielehigkeit, da eine Vielweiberei einzig und allein bei den Straussen stattzufinden scheint. Das Pärchen, welches sich einmal vereinigte, hält während des ganzen Lebens treuinnig zusammen, und nur ausnahmsweise geschiet es, dass einer der Gatten die Gesetze einer geschlossenen Ehe missachtet." But since there are more males than females, the husband often has to fight for the retention of his wife, though in exceptional cases she aids him in repelling the aggressor. The wife is sometimes too ready to follow the victor, and in some cases the widow is very easily consoled. "Vögel, deren Männchen getötet wurde, waren schon eine halbe Stunde später wieder verehelicht; der zweite Gespons wurde ebenfalls ein Opfer seiner Feinde: und dieselben Weibchen nahmen ohne Bedenken flugs einen dritten Gatten an. Die Männchen legen gewöhnlich viel tiefere Trauer um den Verlust ihrer Gattin an den Tag, wahrscheinlich aber nur weil es ihnen ungleich schwerer wird als den Weibchen, wieder einen Ehegenossen zu erwerben."--BREHM, op. cit., IV, 20, 21. For very interesting examples of marriage and the family among birds, see HELLWALD, op. cit., 26 ff., 38; and compare WUNDT, Menschen und Thierseele, 448 ff.; and ESPINAS, Des sociétés animales, 417 ff., 439.

[281] BREHM, Bird-Life, 324; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 11, 482, 502.

With the lower mammals the union of the sexes is generally of short duration, often only for a single birth, though in several species the parents remain together even after the arrival of the young. But among the higher members examples of monogamic marriage are not infrequent, such being the case with animals of prey.[282] As a rule, the quadrumana live in pairs. Gorillas, however, are said sometimes to be polygynous. "According to Dr. Savage, they live in bands, and all his informants agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in every band."[283] But monogamy is perhaps most common. M. du Chaillu declares that he found "almost always one male with one female, though sometimes the old male wanders companionless."[284] The orang-utan and the chimpanzee, like the gorilla, also live in families.[285] Of a truth, promiscuity is far from universal in the pre-human stage.

[282] HELLWALD, op. cit., 25, 26.

[283] Description of Troglodytes Gorilla, 9 ff.; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 13.

[284] DU CHAILLU, _Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa_, 349; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 14. But see HELLWALD, op. cit., 23.

[285] Cf. DARWIN, Descent of Man, 108, 217 ff., 590, 591, who is cautious in his statement as to the rule among the quadrumana. KAUTSKY, "Entstehung der Ehe und Familie," Kosmos, XII, 198 ff., gives some interesting illustrations of marriage among animals; and see ESPINAS, op. cit., 444 ff.; ATKINSON, Primal Law, 219-25.

Yet it would be easy to overestimate the value of the argument based upon the sexual relations of the lower animals. But it will not do with Kohler and Lippert to set it aside as entirely irrelevant.[286] Upon the precedents afforded by "anthropomorphic" species in particular, as Hellwald justly insists, no "slight weight should be placed;" for these are "not merely the highest organized animals, but they must also be regarded as the nearest animal relatives of man."[287] Indeed, the transition from the family as it exists among the quadrumana to that of the least-developed races of man is not abrupt, although the lowest examples of mankind yet observed are advanced beyond the supposed primitive human stage. The broad characteristics of the one are the characteristics of the other. The "relations of the sexes are, as a rule, of a more or less durable character." There is conjugal affection. The immediate care of the children belongs to the mother. "Among mammals as well as birds," declares Espinas, "maternal love is the corner-stone of the family."[288] The father is the protector and provider, although paternal love is more slowly developed. Like the male among the lower animals, savage or barbarous man may be "rather indifferent to the welfare of his wife and children, ... but the simplest paternal duties are, nevertheless, universally recognized. If he does nothing else, the father builds the habitation, and employs himself in the chase and in war."[289]

[286] KOHLER, Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe, 6, 7; LIPPERT, Kulturgeschichte, I, 72, 73.

[287] HELLWALD, op. cit., 26, 27.

[288] Op. cit., 444; cf. HELLWALD, op. cit., 40-42.

[289] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 14-19. HILDEBRAND, Ueber das Problem einer allgemeinen Entwicklungsgeschichte, 23 ff., maintains the existence of monogamy in what he holds to be the first culture-stage, that of the chase. A similar result is reached by MUCKE, Horde und Familie, 59 ff., passim: KAUTSKY, op. cit., 190 ff.; GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, as above summarized.

But the argument for the pre-human origin of the elements of marriage and the family does not rest merely upon precedents of sexual habits. It is based rather upon the entire experience of animals in the hard struggle for existence. That struggle, as Hellwald suggests, forced upon them primarily the problem of food-supply, the need of a sort of economic co-operation, more lasting in its results than the pairing instinct. It is the entire social, mental, and moral product of animal experience, of living together, so well described among others by Espinas, Schäffle, Groos, and Wundt, which man in some measure inherited as a rich legacy from his humbler predecessor.[290] Accordingly Westermarck believes that marriage was probably "transmitted to man from some ape-like ancestor, and that there never was a time when it did not occur in the human race."[291] With Starcke, and in harmony with the view of Hellwald already quoted, he holds that marriage and the family cannot rest upon the sexual impulse alone. This is too transitory. Among animals it is obvious that "it cannot be the sexual instinct that keeps male and female together for months and years," for the "generative power is restricted to a certain season;" and it seems highly probable that among men a pairing season prevailed in ancient times. Thus the "wild Indians of California, belonging to the lowest races on earth," are said to "have their rutting seasons as regularly as have the deer, the elk, the antelope, or any other animals."[292] According to Powers, the California Kabinapek "are extremely sensual. In the spring when the wild clover is lush and full of blossoms and they are eating it to a satiety after the famine of winter, they become amorous. This season, therefore, is a literal Saint Valentine's Day with them, as with the natural beasts and birds of the forest."[293] The Tasmanians, the Australian Watch-an-dies, and various other peoples appear to show evidences of the same habit.[294] Vignoli reaches a similar conclusion. "The family union in which man originally finds himself is not an essentially human but likewise an animal fact, since that mode of common social life is found with the greater part of animals and always among the higher. It is the necessity of rearing the young which unites the parents and gives them a common life for a shorter or longer period; indeed in some species this marriage of love and care continues throughout their whole existence. Hence the fact of family sociality is not an exclusive product of humanity, but of the universal laws of the whole animal life upon the earth. Let it not be asserted that in man affection between the sexes and toward their offspring ... is more active, more intense, and more lasting; for it manifests itself with equal strength and sometime with equal duration between animals and toward their young. Thus man loves, cohabits, and lives socially in a primitive family community only because he is an animal and moreover an animal higher in the organic series. So the fact of the family is consummated according to the necessity of cosmic laws governing a great part of the reproductive and social activity of the animal kingdom."[295]

[290] For the social systems among animals, even insects, see SCHÄFFLE, Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers, 20 ff.; WUNDT, Menschen und Tierseele, 369 ff., 447 ff.; GROOS, Spiele der Thiere, 147 ff., 162 ff., 230 ff.; and especially ESPINAS, op. cit., 207 ff., 274 ff., 458 ff., 543 ff. Compare HOUZEAU, Étude sur les facultés mentales des animaux; and the other authors on this subject cited in Bibliographical Note III.

[291] Op. cit., 20; cf. KEANE, Ethnology, 9, taking the same view.

[292] SCHOOLCRAFT, Indian Tribes, IV, 224.

[293] POWERS, Tribes of California, 206. Similar evidence is furnished by Corbusier: "For two years in succession I observed that in August and September the women solicited the attentions of the men, and an unusual number of couples were seen with their heads hidden in a blanket caressing each other. The majority of the children were born in the spring."--"The Apache-Yumas and Apache-Mojaves," Am. Antiquarian, VIII, 330.

[294] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 20, 24-38, cites the literature. On the pairing seasons among men and animals, see also HELLWALD, op. cit., 127 ff.; KULISCHER, in ZFE., VIII, 149 ff.; and MUCKE, op. cit., 67 ff. The pairing season appears to be the result of natural selection, a device of nature to make sure that the young shall be born at a time most favorable to their sustenance and survival.

[295] VIGNOLI, _Ueber das Fundamentalgesetz des Intelligenz im Thierreiche_: translated from HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 42.

According to Starcke, "we are in some respects disposed to underestimate the great influence which sexual matters exert on all the concerns of social life, and the attempt is sometimes made to sever it from moral life, as a matter of which we are constrained to admit the practical existence, although, from the ideal point of view, it ought not to be. On the other hand, its influence on primitive communities has been greatly overrated." The sexual instinct, however powerful, is "devoid of the conditions which form the basis of the leading tendencies in which man's struggle for existence must be fought out." Hence primitive marriage does not rest upon the tender sentiment which we call love,[296] but "as hard and dry as private life itself," it has its "origin in the most concrete and prosaic requirements." The "common household," he continues, "in which each had a given work to do, and the common interest of obtaining and rearing children were the foundations upon which marriage was originally built."[297] Therefore, according to this view, marriage appears to be a kind of contractual relation from the beginning.[298] The conclusions of Westermarck on this point are in substantial harmony with those of Starcke: "The prolonged union of the sexes is, in some way or other, connected with parental duties.... The tie which joins male and female is an instinct developed through the powerful influence of natural selection." This instinct as well as parental affection are "thus useful mental dispositions which, in all probability, have been acquired through the survival of the fittest." So he concludes that "it is for the benefit of the young that male and female continue to live together. Marriage is therefore rooted in family, rather than family in marriage."[299] Hence it is that among many peoples "true conjugal life does not begin before a child is born;" and there are other races who "consider that the birth of a child out of wedlock makes it obligatory for the parents to marry."[300]

[296] Compare the interesting chapter of HELLWALD, "Kuss und Liebe," op. cit., 97-120.

[297] Primitive Family, 241, 242, 268, and the whole of chap. vii, of the second division of the work, in which he gives the results of the researches comprised in the preceding chapters. Cf. DARGUN, Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht, 17, 18, who favors Starcke's view as against HELLWALD, op. cit., 457; also LIPPERT, Geschichte der Familie, 118, who takes a similar position.

[298] "The family is therefore distinguished from the family group and the clan as a group of kinsfolk established by contract, and only in a subsidiary sense by the tie of blood between parents and children."--Op. cit., 13. With Starcke's view compare that of Posada, who uses the suggestive word symbiose (convivencia) to express the totality of influences concerned in the origin of society. He says: "En somme, d'après tout ce qui vient d'être dit, la société humaine ne peut pas être considérée comme ayant eu la familie pour origine. A la force instinctive du sang, au fait nécessaire et primitif de l'union sexuelle, il faut ajouter et combiner la symbiose, qui tend à devenir territoriale, et résulte du besoin fondamental de la conservation: elle implique la coopération universelle et la vie de relation, déterminée par le plaisir, par la sympathie, par la nécessité de faire face aux exigences d'autres hommes; elle implique aussi la coopération universelle, non plus de mari à femme, ni de père à fils, mais d'homme à homme."--Théories modernes, 99, 100, 96, 81 ff., passim.

[299] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 20-22.

[300] Ibid., 22 ff., 379, 535. On these customs, often taken as evidences of former promiscuity, compare LIPPERT, Geschichte der Familie, 6, 7; and the examples in ZVR., V, 353; XI, 135, 136.

As a result of the first argument, then, marriage appears as a fundamental institution, whose beginnings are anterior to the dawn of human history. But there is need of a new definition, one broad enough to satisfy the demands of science. For most existing definitions are of a "merely juridical or ethical nature, comprehending either what is required to make the union legal, or what, in the eye of an idealist, the union ought to be." Hence Westermarck defines marriage, from a scientific point of view, as a "more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of offspring;" and Starcke, in like spirit, declares that marriage in the widest sense is "only a connection between man and woman which is of more than momentary duration, and as long as it endures they seek for subsistence in common."[301]

[301] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 19, 20; STARCKE, op. cit., 13. FRIEDRICHS, "Familienstufen und Eheformen," ZVR., X, 253-56, accepts Starcke's conception of marriage, but finds his definition inadequate. He offers the following: "Eine von der Rechtsordnung anerkannte und privilegirte Vereinigung geschlechtsdifferenter Personen, entweder zur Führung eines gemeinsamen Hausstandes und zum Geschlechtsverkehr, oder zum ausschliesslichen Geschlechtsverkehr." Cf. HEUSLER, Institutionen, II, 271-76, on the distinction between Familie and Sippe. "Die Familie des Rechtes," he says, "ist nicht ein Verband von Blutsverwandten sondern eine Gemeinschaft der Hausgenossen;" but the Sippe (gens) is based on blood-relationship (271). He combats the view of ROSIN, Der Begriff der Schwertmagen, §5. Hellwald, as already seen, prefers the term "mother-group" for the so-called primitive family; and does not find marriage proper until the stage of property and full "mother-right" is reached; see chap. ii.

The second or physiological argument may be very briefly stated. It rests upon the evidence, referred to by Sir Henry Maine, that promiscuous intercourse between the sexes "tends nowadays to a pathological condition very unfavorable to fecundity; and infecundity, amid perpetually belligerent savages, implies weakness and ultimate destruction."[302] Thus Dr. Carpenter, "who visited the West Indies before the abolition of slavery, well remembers the efforts of the planters to form the negroes into families, as the promiscuity into which they were liable to fall produced infertility, and fertility had become important to the slave-owner through the prohibition of the slave-trade."[303] Again "it is a well-known fact that prostitutes very seldom have children, while, according to Dr. Roubaud, those of them who marry young easily become mothers."[304] Furthermore, as Westermarck urges, "in a community where all the women equally belonged to all the men, the younger and prettier ones would of course be most sought after, and take up a position somewhat akin to that of the prostitutes of modern society."[305] Nor is the objection, that "the practice of polyandry prevails among several peoples without any evil results as regards fecundity being heard of," insuperable. For "polyandry scarcely ever implies continued promiscuous intercourse of many men with one woman;" and where it exists the relations of the woman with her husbands is often so regulated as to make the union practically monogamous.[306] In this connection also should be considered the infertility and other evils resulting from the intermarriage of near kindred.[307] For in a state of promiscuity such unions must have been very frequent; and at one stage of social development, if the theory of Morgan were to be accepted, they must have constituted the general rule.

[302] Early Law and Custom, 204, 205; cf. also WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 115-17.

[303] Early Law and Custom, 204, 205, note.

[304] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 115; MANTEGAZZA, Die Hygiene der Liebe, 405; cf. MAINE, op. cit., 204.

[305] Op. cit., 115.

[306] Ibid., 115-17. Thus in Tibet but one of the husbands was usually at home; and among the Todas betrothals are made with the condition that each of the husbands should live with the wife a month by turns: ibid., 116.

[307] See the elaborate investigation of WESTERMARCK, op. cit., chaps, xiv, xv, especially 334 ff.

According to Westermarck, the strongest objection to ancient promiscuity "is derived from the psychical nature of man and other animals."[308] The third or psychological argument therefore alleges the universal prevalence of sexual jealousy among the races of men.[309] Darwin declares that this passion is found among all male quadrupeds with which he is acquainted; and comes to the conclusion, therefore, that "looking far enough back in the stream of time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or if powerful with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other men."[310] That jealousy is unknown among "almost all uncivilized peoples" is, indeed, asserted by many adherents of the horde theory.[311] But a mass of evidence relating to savage and barbarous races in all parts of the world shows that such assertions are without foundation. In many tribes the suspected wife is exposed to the vengeful fury of the jealous husband. For example, among the California Indians, according to Powers, "if a married woman is seen even walking in the forest with another man than her husband she is chastised by him;" and "a repetition of the offense is generally punished with speedy death."[312] So "among the Creek 'it was formerly reckoned adultery, if a man took a pitcher of water off a married woman's head and drank of it.'"[313] Women, we are told, are held in little esteem among the Innuit on the coast of Labrador; yet "the men are very jealous," and death is often the penalty for adultery on the part of either spouse.[314] Magalhães, who visited "more than a hundred villages" among "thirty tribes" of Brazilian natives, some of them "already half civilized and others still entirely free from any participation in our institutions, ideas, and pre-conceived notions," records as a result of his observations that "there exists in the Indian family all grades from institutions strict to a degree exceeding anything history tells us about down to the community of women.... Thus I know tribes where there is no marriage, and I know others in which a woman committing adultery is punished by being burned."[315] Moreover, he emphatically warns us that he is speaking here of the "uncatechised" native, not yet demoralized by missionary influence.[316] According to Dobrizhoffer, the Abipones of Paraguay are conspicuous for "conjugal fidelity;" and they are very jealous, taking swift vengeance when infidelity is suspected.[317] Souza, who "lived in Brazil, in what is now the state of Bahia, from 1570 to 1587,"[318] says that "there are always jealousies among" the wives of the polygamous Tupinambás, especially on the part of the first wife, because usually she is "older than the others and less gentle."[319] On the other hand, the Jesuit Anchieta, who was in the same country "from 1553 until his death in 1597," declares that women frequently abandon their consorts to take other men "without any feeling upon the part of the husbands; and I never saw and never heard of any Indian killing any of his wives on account of any feeling about adultery;" but his narrative reveals unmistakable evidence of the existence of sexual jealousies.[320]

[308] Ibid., 117-33, 495, 551. With this passage should be read his extremely interesting chapters on the "Courtship of Man," the "Means of Attraction," "Liberty of Choice," "Sexual Selection among Animals," "Sexual Selection of Man; Typical Beauty," and the "Law of Similarity."

[309] FINCK, Primitive Love, 87 ff., criticises Westermarck's view, presenting a mass of facts to prove the absence of true jealousy among low races.

[310] Descent of Man, 591; cf. WESTERMARCK, 117; and KAUTSKY, 194 ff. On jealousy among animals, see HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 23, 37.

[311] LE BON, L'homme et les sociétés, II, 293; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 117; cf. GIRAUD-TEULON, Origines du mariage, 71.

[312] Tribes of California, 412.

[313] ADAIR, History of the American Indians, 143; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 119. Cf. KLEMM, Kulturgeschichte, II, 80, who finds evidence in both Americas of male jealousy among the natives.

[314] "Although the men are very jealous of the favors of their wives, and incontinence on the part of the latter is certain to be more or less severely punished, the male offender, if notoriously persistent in his efforts to obtain forbidden favors, is usually killed by the injured lover or husband." Separations are often caused by jealousy.--TURNER, "Ethnology of the Ungava District," XI. Rep. Bureau of Eth., 178, 188, 189. Cf. KRAUSE, Die Tlinkit Indianer, 221, who says the "betrayer of a woman, if he escapes the dagger of the offended husband, must pay for his offense with presents. If, however, he is a relative, he takes the position of a subordinate husband (Nebenmann) and must help contribute to the support of the woman."

[315] JOSÉ VIEIRA DE MAGALHÃES, "Familia e religião Selvagem," in his "Ensais de Anthropologia, Região e Raças Selvagens," published in Revista Trimensal do Instituto ... do Brasil, XXXVI, 108 ff. The passages quoted here and elsewhere from Magalhães are given in the translation made for the author by Professor J. C. Branner. The reports of MARTIUS, Ethnographie, I, 112, 115, 116, 119, 120; idem, Rechtszustande, 59, 63, 64, 66-68, seem to confirm that of Magalhães.

[316] "I refer," he says, "to the uncatechised Indian, for the catechised one is, as a rule, a degraded being. Whether the system of catechising is bad, or whether in the efforts directed especially toward making a religious man, the development of the eminently social ideas of free labor is forgotten, or whether it is something else, the fact is this: the catechised Indian is a degraded man, without original customs, indifferent to everything and consequently to his wife and almost to his family."

[317] "Of the Weddings and Marriages of the Abipones," in his Account of the Abipones, II, 213. Dobrizhoffer was eight years among this people during his stay in South America, 1749-67.

[318] I am indebted to Professor J. C. Branner for a translation of the passages here and elsewhere quoted from Souza and Anchieta, as also for the dates.

[319] SOUZA, "chap. clii, which treats of the manner of marriages of the Tupinambas," in his "Tratado descriptivo do Brazil em 1587," Revista Inst. Hist., XIV, 311 ff.

[320] JOSÉ D'ANCHIETA, "Informação dos Casamentos dos Indios do Brazil," Revista Trimensal de Hist. e Geog., VIII, 254-62. "At most," he continues, "they beat the one guilty of adultery if they can, and he bears it patiently, knowing what he has done, except in case he is some great chief, and the woman has no father or strong brothers of whom he is afraid." Then the author relates how a "great chief," Ambirem, cruelly put a wife to death for adultery; but this act and others of the same sort he ascribes to the influence of the French, whom the good priest evidently does not like.

In fact, among primitive peoples, as suggested by the preceding examples, death or other severe punishment is often the penalty for adultery. It is so in Polynesia, although the fault of the man is usually "condoned;"[321] as also in Micronesia, where the husband does not escape so easily.[322] Extraordinary precautions are sometimes taken to prevent marriage with an impure bride. Frequently the husband requires that the "woman he chooses for his wife shall belong to him, not during his life-time only, but after his death." Hence the widespread practice of sacrificing the wife at the death of the husband; and the frequent restraint upon the remarriage of widows is ascribed to the same cause.[323]

[321] AVERY, "Races of the Indo-Pacific Oceans," Am. Antiquarian, VI, 366. The death penalty also appears in New Zealand: RUSDEN, I, 21.

[322] WAITZ, Anthropologie, V, 106, 107. "When the wife has broken the marriage vow, the husband may put her away, returning her property; but when the man is guilty of this crime, or has even made himself suspected of it, his fate is worse; for then all the women of the neighborhood troop together and fall upon the offender with his possessions, who is lucky if he gets off with a whole skin. His landed property, his house, and everything he has are completely destroyed. If the husband does not bear himself humbly or friendly enough towards his wife, or if otherwise she is no longer pleased with him, she abandons him and goes to her parents, who then undertake the same work of destruction. Therefore many men are not willing to marry, and they live with paid women."

[323] For examples of all these customs read WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 124 ff. On the sacrifice of widows in India and elsewhere, explained usually as an evidence of patria potestas under influence of ancestor-worship, consult ZIMMER, Altindisches Leben, 328 ff.; KOHLER, "Indisches Ehe- und Familienrecht," ZVR., III, 376 ff.; LETOURNEAU, L'évolution du mariage, chap. xv; WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 437 ff.; HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 478-80 (India), 381 (China).

As a final result of his minute examination, Westermarck concludes that there is "not a shred of genuine evidence for the notion that promiscuity ever formed a general stage in the social history of mankind." The hypothesis, he declares, is "essentially unscientific." How, then, it may be asked, can the series of phenomena adduced by McLennan and others to support that hypothesis be otherwise explained?

In the first place, it is believed, the direct evidence as to the existence of races living promiscuously in ancient and modern times will not stand the test of criticism.[324] Often the statements of writers and travelers prove on examination to be erroneous. Thus, for instance, Sir Edward Belcher's assertion, that among the Andaman Islanders "the custom is for the man and woman to remain together until the child is weaned, when they separate, and each seeks a new partner,"[325] has been "disproved by Mr. Man, who, after a very careful investigation of this people, says not only that they are strictly monogamous, but that divorce is unknown, and conjugal fidelity till death not the exception but the rule among them."[326] Sometimes the "facts adduced are not really instances of promiscuity." This appears to be true, as already seen, of the alleged Australian group-marriages. So also the "communism" practiced among the Cahyapós, "who seem to be the most numerous tribe of the central plateaux of Brazil," turns out on examination to be something very different from promiscuity, resembling more the "temporary" marriages already mentioned, though combined with polygyny. "The communism of wives among them," says Magalhães,[327] "is as follows: The woman as soon as she reaches the age at which she is permitted to have relations with a man, conceives by the one who pleases her. During the period of gestation and nursing she is maintained by the father of the child, who may have others in similar charge and these others during similar periods live in the same cabin. As soon as the woman begins to work she is free to conceive by the same man or she may procure another, the charge of supporting the earlier offspring passing to the latter."[328] This institution, it is clear, involves considerable social regulation. Indeed we are particularly warned that "by communism of women is not to be understood anything like prostitution.... This distinction is the more important for the proper comprehension of the savage family, since it is certain that in those same tribes where this communism exists, prostitutes are held in great displeasure." The custom "is a mode of family existence that they judge best according to their ideas and means of living." With it Magalhães contrasts the "exclusiveness" of the neighboring Guatos of the river Plate, in "Brazilian Paraguay," who are not monogamous, each man having "one, two, or three wives according to his ability in hunting, fishing, and the gathering of the different fruits which make up the base of their food." The women are exceedingly modest. "If a Guato woman brought us a fish, some game, wild fruit," or in any way sought "something of ours that she wanted, she did it always with her eyes fixed on the ground or turned toward her husband." The related Chambioás of the Amazon valley are even more severe. Among them women are burned for adultery; and in their "widows' men" they have a curious device for the preservation of domestic peace.[329] All these tribes "guard with great caution against, and some even punish with death, the union of the two sexes before the complete puberty of the woman.... Friar Francisco assured me that the virginity of the man was strictly maintained until the epoch of his marriage, and this was not allowed before he was twenty-five years of age, without even this being the ordinary thing: marriage is commonly after thirty." As a principal reason for this usage are assigned the "force and energy of the offspring."[330]

[324] For general criticism of the hypothesis of promiscuity compare with WESTERMARCK, op. cit., chaps. iv-vi, 51-133; WAKE, op. cit., 14-53; LETOURNEAU, op. cit., 46 ff.; STARCKE, op. cit., 121 ff., 241 ff., passim; SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 661-71, 641 ff., passim; GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, 41 ff.

[325] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 52, 53; BELCHER, "Notes on the Andaman Islands," Trans. Eth. Soc., N. S., V, 45.

[326] Journal Anth. Inst., XII, 135; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 57.

[327] MAGALHÃES, op. cit., 108 ff.

[328] Compare the somewhat analogous "communism" of the Sia: STEVENSON, "The Sia," XI. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 19-26.

[329] There are in the villages "men destined to be viri viduarum. These individuals have no other duty; they are supported by the tribe and do not, like the others, engage in the exercises of long trips which they all make annually, each in his turn." This indulgence was justified on the ground that "the peace which the families enjoyed, and which they would not enjoy without these individuals, or rather without this institution, compensated largely for the work that fell upon the others in supporting them."--MAGALHÃES, loc. cit.

[330] MAGALHÃES, loc. cit.

Savage tribes are often extremely licentious; but it is significant that the most immoral are not always lowest in the scale of development. Besides, it is well known that "contact with a higher culture, or more properly, the dregs of it, is pernicious to the morality of peoples living in a more or less primitive condition."[331] Nor can promiscuity as a general social stage be assumed from the existence of some tribes whose sexual relations are but slightly restrained, since, as just seen, there are others, not otherwise more advanced, remarkable for the chastity of the wedded as well as the unwedded life.[332]

[331] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 66 ff., where examples are given. See the quotation from Magalhães above.

[332] Ibid., 61 ff.

The indirect evidence of a former stage of unrestricted sexual relations, based on the existence of certain customs assumed to be its survival, particularly female kinship, exogamy, and polyandry, turns out on examination to be even less convincing than that obtained from direct observation. Primitive man is usually influenced by extremely simple motives; and the great fault of speculation has been the assignment of remote and complex causes for phenomena which are often capable of easier explanation. "The most important features of the life of a community," Starcke observes, "are due to forces at once simple and universal."[333]

[333] Primitive Family, 9; ibid., 30. STARCKE is conspicuous for the simple causes which he assigns for the various phenomena connected with marriage and the family. See examples, op. cit., 43, 49, 50, 106.

II. THE PROBLEM OF MOTHER-RIGHT

Such is the case with attempts to account for kinship in the female line. McLennan thinks it "inconceivable" that it can be due to any cause other than uncertainty of fatherhood; and he holds therefore that it must have preceded the paternal system.[334] Careful research, however, has shown that these assumptions are far from axiomatic. In the first place, the acute criticism of Friedrichs is deserving of special attention. Among a number of low races where relationship with the begetter is not recognized he finds that certainty of fatherhood through securing the fidelity of the wife nevertheless exists. The number is small, but a single certain example, he insists, is sufficient to refute McLennan's hypothesis. Such an example is provided by Semper[335] in the case of the people of the Palau Islands; and it is all the more convincing because here it is only the wife who is prohibited from general sexual intercourse, while young girls may give free play to their desires, and in a measure this is not merely suffered, but even enjoined by social custom.[336] Indeed, savages know well how to secure chastity on the part of their women by such "naïve arts" as infibulation, so realistically described by Ploss in his well-known book on woman.[337]

[334] Studies, I, 88, 83-146; Patriarchal Theory, chap. xiii. In general, on kinship in the female line, compare HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 124, 150 ff., 239, 456-58; LIPPERT, Die Geschichte der Familie, 4 ff., 8 ff.; Kulturgeschichte, II, 90 ff., passim; DARGUN, Mutterrecht und Raubehe, 1 ff., 13, 17; Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht, 1 ff., 43 ff.; GIRAUD-TEULON, Origines, 131 ff.; POST, Geschlechtsg., 88 ff., 94 ff.; Familienrecht, 7 ff.; Ursprung, 37 ff.; Anfänge, 10 ff.; Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, I, 13 ff.; KOHLER, Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe, 53 ff.; KOVALEVSKY, Tableau, 7 ff.; TYLOR, On a Method, 252 ff.; WILKEN, Das Matriarchat, 3 ff.; SMITH, Kinship and Marriage, 131 ff., 151 ff.; LUBBOCK, Origin of Civilization, 149 ff.; MORGAN, Ancient Society, 63 ff., 153-83, 344 ff. All the foregoing writers sustain in the main McLennan's and Bachofen's principal assumptions. On the other hand, they are rejected or criticised by SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 665 ff.; WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, chaps. viii, ix, x; BERNHÖFT, in ZVR., VIII, 4 ff.; MAINE, Early Law and Custom, chap, vii; FRIEDRICHS, in ZVR., VIII, 370-83; X, 189 ff.; SCHURMAN, Ethical Import of Darwinism, 223; STARCKE, Primitive Family, 1-120; WESTERMARCK, Human Marriage, 96-113. HILDEBRAND, Ueber das Problem, 28-31, holds that the earlier mother-right gave place to the paternal system under influence of property. See also LETOURNEAU, L'évolution, 424, 377 ff., who believes that the maternal system is more archaic, but does not imply promiscuity; MUCKE, Horde und Familie, 114 ff., passim; and KAUTSKY, Entstehung der Ehe, 256 ff., 338 ff., who holds that the systems were independently developed; GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, 48 ff., 61, who believes it possible that the two systems may have been worked out side by side and that they are not necessarily successive phases of development.

[335] Palauinseln (1873), 320, 119, 181; KOHLER, in ZVR., VI, 327.

[336] FRIEDRICHS, "Ueber den Ursprung des Matriarchats," ZVR., VIII, 374, 375.

[337] Das Weib, I, 172 ff., 179 ff. See also his Das Kind, I, 383 ff.; and compare FRIEDRICHS, op. cit., 375, 376; HELLWALD, op. cit., 343.

While not denying that uncertainty of fatherhood may have been influential in some cases, Spencer argues that without this assumption it is perfectly natural that the child should be named from the mother with whom it spends its early life; and where exogamy prevails the custom would become a convenient rule for determining who are marriageable women within the group; for the "requirement that a wife shall be taken from a foreign tribe readily becomes confounded with the requirement that a wife shall be of foreign blood."[338]

[338] Principles of Sociology, I, 665, 666.

Westermarck seeks a simple explanation of female kinship in the necessary relations of a child with its mother. "Especially among savages, the tie between a mother and a child is much stronger than that which binds a child to the father. Not only has she given birth to it, but she has also for years been seen carrying it about at her breast. Moreover, in cases of separation, occurring frequently at lower stages of civilization, the infant children always follow the mother, and so, very often, do the children more advanced in years."[339] Polygyny has doubtless favored the choice of the female line of descent;[340] and the odd custom of the couvade, found here and there among rude peoples, instead of being a mark of transition to the paternal system, only implies some connection or "some idea of relationship" between father and child;[341] and accordingly simpler and more probable reasons for its origin have been assigned.[342] Thus it may take its rise in the notion of a mysterious physical connection between the father and the child. "The well-being of the child is its object." The father occupies the so-called lying-in bed, not as a bed of sickness "affording rest and strength after travail," but he abstains from certain foods lest they should injure the child, and he fasts in order that his powers of endurance may be assured to it.[343] This view is strongly supported by the fact that among many primitive peoples, in various stages of advancement, the belief is found that the child springs from the father alone, the mother merely performing the function of nourishment.[344] Finally Westermarck's generalization as to the real import of kinship through females only may be noted. The "facts adduced as examples" of this system, he declares, "imply chiefly that children are named after their mothers, not after their fathers, and that property and rank succeed exclusively in the female line."[345]

[339] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 107-13; cf. LUBBOCK, Origin of Civilization, 149 ff.

[340] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 108; STARCKE, op. cit., 27, 28, 35, 36, 40, 41, 69 n. 4, citing WINTERBOTTOM, _An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighborhood of Sierra Leone_. Cf., however, DARGUN, Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht, 59 ff.

[341] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 106, 107, 17.

[342] In the couvade the father occupies the erroneously so-called lying-in bed; is nursed and otherwise cared for as if he were the mother: while he rigidly fasts or abstains from certain kinds of food. GIRAUD-TEULON, Origines du mariage, 138; BACHOFEN, Mutterrecht, 17, 255, 419; LETOURNEAU, L'évolution du mariage, 394-98; BERNHÖFT, in ZVR., IX, 417; and LUBBOCK, Origin of Civilization, 14 ff., 159, regard the couvade as a mark of transition. Such, in effect, is also the view of LIPPERT, Kulturgeschichte, II, 312; Geschichte der Familie, 213 ff., who believes the custom is a form of redemption-sacrifice rendered by the father instead of the actual sacrifice of the first-born child, a sacrifice exacted in the stage of earlier mother-right. HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 361 ff., accepts the theory of Lippert. On the other hand, TYLOR, Early History of Mankind, chap, x, 297 ff.; STARCKE, Primitive Family, 51, 52, 283, 284; and DARGUN, Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht, 18-26, hold that it takes its rise in a supposed physical connection between father and child, and therefore that it exists for the welfare of the child alone. LUBBOCK, op. cit., 14 ff., emphasizes this fact, while regarding the practice as an evidence of transition. TYLOR, however, in his Method of Investigating Institutions, 254-56, accepts the view of Bachofen and Giraud-Teulon, relegating the explanation first assigned by him to a secondary place. ROTH, "On the Significance of the Couvade," Jour. Anth. Inst., XXII, 204-44, holds the custom to be a form of magic or witchcraft, resting on the belief in a physical connection between the father and child, and so implying power over the child. According to CRAWLEY, Mystic Rose, 416-28, the custom has its origin in sexual taboo. It is a case of "substitution." The father simulates the mother so that by exposing himself to the same danger he may help her and the child against the magical or evil influences which are especially harmful in the great sexual crises of human life. Cf. KOHLER, "Das Recht der Azteken," ZVR., XI, 49; MÜLLER, Chips from a German Workshop, II, 281, 278; PLOSS, Das Kind, I, 143-53; MUCKE, Horde und Familie, 219 ff.; FRIEDRICHS, in Ausland (1890), 801, 837, 856, 877, 895; CHAMBERLAIN, The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought, 124, 125.

[343] STARCKE, op. cit., 52. See the preceding note; also LIPPERT, Geschichte der Familie, 213 ff., who criticises the use of the term "lying-in bed."

[344] FUSTEL DE COULANGES, Ancient City, 47, 70, passim; see further, WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 107, 108; HOWITT, Smithsonian Report (1883), 813; MAINE, Early Law and Custom, 203; WILKINSON, Ancient Egyptians, I, 320.

[345] Human Marriage, 97. He insists on the powerful influence of names on the roles of succession: ibid., 111.

Starcke has devoted the first half of his book to a detailed investigation of the problem of female descent, and comes to the conclusion that it depends mainly on local and economic causes. He first shows that the clan is of later origin than the family; and holds that these are by nature very different institutions. The family is juridical, established by contract, and only "in a subsidiary sense" founded on the "tie of blood between parents and children;" but the clan is a natural and homogeneous group of kindred among whom degrees of relationship are not counted. It is an exclusive group into which the child is born; and "it is absolutely impossible for one person to belong to two distinct clans."[346] In the primitive stage, before the formation of clans, the family must always be a more or less isolated group. The man usually chooses the place of abode, and hence paternal kinship may be easily recognized. A considerable number of rude peoples exist who take kinship from the father;[347] and Starcke is inclined to believe, though he presents rather slender evidence, that as a general rule the paternal precedes the maternal system. With the rise of the clan organization, it became absolutely necessary for the local groups to take one system or the other. So the "definition of kinship results from the conflict between clans, and teaches us nothing further with respect to the child's relation to its parent. The choice between the two possible lines is decided by the economic organization of the community and by the local grouping of individuals, but there is not the slightest trace of the fact that considerations with respect to the sexual relations had any influence in the matter."[348]

[346] STARCKE, op. cit., 10-16, 25.

[347] Ibid., 26, 27, 30, 58 ff., 101; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 98 ff.

[348] STARCKE, op. cit., 118; cf. ibid., 54. FRIEDRICHS agrees with Starcke on the essential point. The uterine system arises with the formation of families and gentes. In a very primitive state, the natural means of subsistence sufficing, the children leave the parents and look out for themselves; as it becomes more and more difficult to find food and shelter, family groups are formed, and the children remain a longer time with the mother. Hence naturally the name and kinship are taken from her: "Ueber den Ursprung des Matriarchats," ZVR., VIII, 378 ff. Compare idem, "Familienstufen und Eheformen," ibid., X, 197 ff., 201. DARGUN, Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht, 43-66, discusses the original mother-right, but rejects Starcke's theory of local causes, accepting uncertainty of fatherhood as a primary influence. Starcke is also criticised by HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 456-58, 465, 484 ff.

Starcke's opinion that such rules of succession depend on local connections, those persons being each other's heirs "who dwell together in one place,"[349] seems to gain some support from the result of Dr. Tylor's examination of the so-called "beena"[350] marriage form, which requires the man to live in the family of his wife, usually serving for her as did Jacob for Laban's daughters. It is remarkable that this custom and the maternal system of kinship are commonly found together. "Thus the number of coincidences between peoples where the husband lives with the wife's family and where the maternal system prevails, is naturally large in proportion, while the full maternal system as naturally never appears among peoples whose exclusive custom is for the husband to take his wife to his own home."[351] Furthermore, adds Westermarck, "where both customs--the woman receiving her husband in her own hut, and the man taking his wife to his--occur side by side among the same people, descent in the former cases is traced through the mother, in the latter through the father."[352]

[349] Op. cit., 36, passim; summarized by WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 110.

[350] See above, p. 16, on "beena" marriage.

[351] TYLOR, On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions, 258. Cf. WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 109; also STARCKE, op. cit., 79, 80, who regards serving as a form of wife-purchase, and the migration of the husband as "due to the great cohesive power of the several families, which causes them to refuse to part with any of their members." Among various American peoples it is the custom for the husband to take up his abode permanently in the wife's family: SOUZA, "Tratado descriptivo do Brazil," Revista Inst. Hist., XIV, 311 ff.; STEVENSON, "The Sia," XI. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 20, 22; or temporarily: DOBRIZHOFFER, Account of Abipones, II, 208, 209; POWELL, "Wyandotte Society," in A. A. A. S., XXIX, 681; MACCAULEY, "Seminole Indians," V. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 496; MCGEE, "The Seri Indians," XVII. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 280.

[352] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 110. Compare SMITH, Kinship and Marriage, 74 ff.; MCLENNAN, Studies, I, 101 ff.; and MARSDEN, History of Sumatra, 225.

It seems certain that the whole truth regarding the problems of kinship, as well as regarding the rise and sequence of the forms of the family, can be reached only through a thorough historical investigation of the industrial habits of mankind. In fact, the position of Starcke, that the rise of rules of descent and kinship depends mainly on economic and local causes, is strengthened in a remarkable way by the researches of Grosse, which have already been presented in outline. Nowhere does promiscuity appear among the peoples known to history or ethnology; and everywhere, even among the "lower hunters," comprising the most backward members of the human kind, appears the single family in which the man holds the place of power, which is often despotic. There is no definite sequence between the maternal and the paternal systems. The existence of either depends upon favorable economic conditions; and they may both appear side by side. In fact, according to Cunow, among the lower hunters, with the single exception of the Australians, the custom of female descent has not yet been discovered; and even in Australia it is precisely the most advanced tribes among which the maternal system appears. It first arises when women are sought outside of the original horde, in order to prevent intermarriage of maternal kindred.[353]

[353] See CUNOW, "Die ökonomischen Grundlagen der Mutterherrschaft," Neue Zeit (1897-98), XVI, 115, 113, 14, reviewing and supplementing GROSSE'S Die Formen der Familie, summarized above. The investigations of Hildebrand, elsewhere mentioned, tend in the same direction.

In the light of present research, therefore, the most that can safely be admitted concerning the system of kinship through females only is that it has widely existed among the races of mankind;[354] although, as elsewhere shown, its prevalence has been greatly exaggerated. Partially under the influence of monogamy and the rise of modern forms of property, it has often been superseded by the parental and sometimes by the agnatic system, although this sequence is by no means invariable. It is very archaic, yet not necessarily primitive. There is no satisfactory evidence that it implies an original stage of promiscuity. It is not impossible, in view of the facts disclosed by Starcke, that sometimes it may be preceded by a custom in which the child is named from the father, and rank and property descend in the male line; while there is evidence that in the lower hunting stage, before rules of descent were yet subjects of reflection, a kind of patriarchate or androcracy generally prevailed.[355]

[354] LETOURNEAU, L'évolution du mariage, 424, thus concludes his investigation of the question of kinship: "Ce qui est vraisemblable, c'est que, dans la majorité des cas, la filiation paternelle a succédé à la filiation maternelle et à des formes familiales plus ou moins confuses." Cf. ibid., 399, 400. MAX MÜLLER, Biographies of Words, p. xvii, thinks that "we can neither assert nor deny that in unknown times the Aryans ever passed through a metrocratic stage." Cf. WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 104, 113.

[355] "Among the lower hunters there is no matriarchate, but--if indeed one may make the distinction--only a patriarchate or rather an androcracy (Mannesherrschaft). Even in those Australian tribes where the custom of maternal succession exists, the woman follows the man into his horde and becomes his property. Their children remain in his horde, and not she but he has the disposition of the offspring.... This primitive patriarchate, of course, has nothing to do with that of the later patriarchal family. It is not based on any reflection regarding descent or the man's share in procreation; it rests simply on the right of the stronger, on the rude physical superiority of man, his position as winner of the greater share of the food and as protector" of the family community.--CUNOW, op. cit., 115, 116.

III. THE PROBLEM OF EXOGAMY

The case is much the same with the problem of exogamy, which is closely connected with the question of kinship. According to McLennan, as already seen, exogamy, or the prohibition of marriage within the clan, owes its rise to wife-capture occasioned by scarcity of women through female infanticide; and it is contrasted with the opposite custom of endogamy, which, it is alleged, usually implies a higher stage of civilization. This account of its origin, he thinks, is, on the whole, the "only one which will bear examination."

How far it really falls short of the truth was first pointed out by Herbert Spencer. "In all times and places, among savage and civilized," he says, "victory is followed by pillage. Whatever portable things of worth the conquerors find, they take.... The taking of women is manifestly but a part of this process of spoiling the vanquished. Women are prized as wives, as concubines, as drudges; and, the men having been killed, the women are carried off along with the other moveables." Thus "women-stealing" is an "incident of successful war." But a woman so taken has a double value. "Beyond her intrinsic value she has an extrinsic value. Like a native wife, she serves as a slave: but unlike a native wife, she serves also as a trophy." A warrior possessing such a token of prowess gains social distinction. "In a tribe not habitually at war, or not habitually successful in war, no decided effect is likely to be produced on the marriage customs." But in warlike and successful tribes an "increasing ambition to get foreign wives" will arise. Among savages, proofs of courage are often required as qualifications for marriage. Hence it is not surprising that the abduction of a foreign woman should be accepted as the best proof of all. "What more natural than that where many warriors of the tribe are distinguished by stolen wives, the stealing of a wife should become the required proof of fitness to have one? Hence would follow a peremptory law of exogamy." Spencer's interpretation, therefore, agrees with that of McLennan in finding the origin of exogamy in wife-capture and in implying that usage grows into law. But it does not, "like his, assume either that this usage originated in a primordial instinct, or that it resulted from a scarcity of women caused by infanticide.[356] Moreover, unlike Mr. McLennan's, the explanation so reached is consistent with the fact that exogamy and endogamy in many cases co-exist; and with the fact that exogamy often co-exists with polygyny;" nor does it "involve us in the difficulty raised by supposing a peremptory law of exogamy to be obeyed throughout a cluster of tribes." For if exogamy would be likely to arise in tribes usually successful in war, peaceful tribes and those usually worsted in war, though living side by side with the successful and warlike, would be naturally led to adopt the rule of endogamy. Furthermore, among tribes not differing much from one another in strength, endogamy and exogamy may coexist. "Stealing of wives will not be reprobated, because the tribes robbed are not too strong to be defied; and it will not be insisted on, because the men who have stolen wives will not be numerous enough to determine the average opinion." Spencer also maintains that the symbol of rape in the marriage ceremony does not necessarily imply the previous existence either of foreign wife-stealing or of exogamy, assigning three other reasons which singly or together may account for it. First, it may result from a struggle for women within the tribe. "There still exist rude tribes in which men fight for possession of women, the taking possession of a woman naturally comes as a sequence to an act of capture. That monopoly which constitutes her a wife in the only sense known by the primitive man is a result of successful violence."[357] Secondly, contrary to the view of Sir John Lubbock,[358] the symbol of rape may be due to the struggle of the bride and her female friends, many manifestations of which are found in the marriage customs of primitive races; though the dread of harsh treatment is thought to be an additional motive. But Starcke, doubting whether among savages there is much to choose between the brutality of the husband and that of the father, thinks the weeping of the woman merely symbolizes her sorrow "on leaving her former home; her close dependence on her family is expressed by her lamentation." The existence of such symbols is not surprising in "communities of which the family bond is the alpha and omega."[359] The ceremony of capture, finally, may be due to the resistance of the father and other male friends of the bride. A woman has an economic value, "not only as a wife but also as a daughter; and all through, from the lowest to the highest stages of social progress, we find a tacit or avowed claim to her service by her father." Her service is an object of purchase; and in English law "we have evidence that it was originally so among ourselves: in an action for seduction the deprivation of a daughter's services is the injury alleged."[360]

[356] SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 649-52. It should be noted that McLennan really ascribes the origin of exogamy to wife-capture, though, inadvertently seemingly, in one passage he refers it to a "primitive instinct."

[357] See STARCKE, op. cit., 217, who thinks Spencer inconsistent with his own theory; for "if the rape of women can be practised within the tribe, it need no longer be assumed that a young man's ambition impels him to take a wife from another tribe."

[358] Origin of Civilization, 111, 130.

[359] STARCKE, op. cit., 217, 218.

[360] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 652-60. Spencer is criticised by WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 311 ff.; STARCKE, op. cit., 215 ff.

Sir John Lubbock is likewise an adherent of the view that exogamy originates in wife-capture; but he connects his explanation with his peculiar theory of the communistic family, and it cannot therefore be accepted, if that theory is to be rejected.[361] He holds that originally all the men and women of a tribe lived in sexual communism and individual marriage was looked upon "as an infringement of communal right." But "if a man captured a woman belonging to another tribe he thereby acquired an individual and peculiar right to her, and she became his exclusively." In this way, the practice of capturing foreign wives led to individual marriage, and its evident advantages eventually produced the rule of exogamy. Accordingly, the "symbol of rape became such an important part of the wedding ceremonies, because it was the symbol of giving up the woman to become the exclusive possession of one man."[362] McLennan, however, criticises this view on the ground that "in almost all cases the form of capture is the symbol of a group act--of a siege, or a pitched battle, or an invasion of a house by an armed band." Seldom does it represent a capture by an individual. "On the one side are the kindred of the husband; on the other the kindred of the wife." Furthermore, if women were commonly captured by the men of a group or parties of them, as he justly observes, it is hard to see how an individual who had captured a woman could appropriate her more easily than he could appropriate any woman of his own group for whom he had a fancy.[363] Very different is the explanation offered by Tylor, who regards exogamy as the primitive mode of alliance and "political self-preservation." "Among tribes of low culture there is but one means known of keeping up permanent alliance, and that means is intermarriage." Often the alternative has been "marrying out" or "being killed out." Endogamy, on the other hand, "is a policy of isolation, cutting off a horde or village, even from the parent stock whence it separated."[364] That exogamy has often, perhaps generally, served the political purpose suggested by Tylor is not improbable, and his view is sustained by that of Post and Kohler;[365] but this will not account for its origin.

[361] LUBBOCK, op. cit., 86, 98, 103, 104-43. Cf. the criticism of STARCKE, op. cit., 220, 221; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 316; MCLENNAN, Studies, I, 329-47.

[362] STARCKE, op. cit., 220; LUBBOCK, op. cit., 109 ff.

[363] MCLENNAN, op. cit., I, 344, 345, 329 ff.

[364] _On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions_, 267, 268; cf. WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 316, 317.

[365] KOHLER, "Indisches Ehe- und Familienrecht," ZVR., III, 360-62; POST, Familienrecht, 79, 83. TYLOR, op. cit., 365, 366, denies that capture and exogamy are related as cause and effect.

Both Lubbock and Spencer, it will be observed, agree with McLennan in assigning the origin of exogamy to wife-capture. On the other hand, a group of writers, differing widely on ancillary questions, unite in identifying the causes which have produced exogamy with those which, in general, have led to the establishment of forbidden degrees of consanguinity in marriage. In other words, tribal or clan exogamy is but one of many rules for the prevention of close intermarriage between kindred. It must be admitted that a profound horror of incest is now "an almost universal characteristic of mankind, the cases which seem to indicate a perfect absence of this feeling being so exceedingly rare that they must be regarded merely as anomalous aberrations from a general rule."[366] But, from the beginning, has there been an innate aversion to the sexual union of persons closely related by blood? Is that aversion derived from experience of the injurious results of such unions? Did it originally extend only to marriage and not to irregular sexual connections? Or, finally, is it the indirect result of a custom, such as wife-capture, hardening into a rule of forbidden degrees? These are questions to which very different answers have been given.

[366] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 290.

Adherents of the horde theory, of course, deny that horror of incest is a primitive instinct. Such is the view also of Spencer, who thinks that "regular relations of the sexes are results of evolution, and that the sentiments upholding them have been gradually established,"[367] though--somewhat inconsistently, as we have seen--he agrees with McLennan in regarding exogamy as the result of custom growing into law. Lubbock takes a similar position, denying that we can "attribute to savages any such farsighted ideas" as the recognition of the injurious effects of close intermarriage.[368] On the other hand, Morgan, whose consanguine family implies the absence of any primitive abhorrence of incest, considers exogamy "explainable, and only explainable as a reformatory movement to break up the intermarriage of blood relations," thus implying that the aversion to such a union is derived from experience.[369] But knowledge which "can only be gained by lengthened observation," Dr. Peschel believes, "is 'unattainable by unsettled and childishly heedless races,' among whom, nevertheless, a horror of incest is developed most strongly."[370] Sir Henry Maine, on the contrary, "cannot see why the men who discovered the use of fire and selected the wild forms of certain animals for domestication and of vegetables for cultivation should not find out that children of unsound constitution were born of nearly related parents."[371] The researches of Starcke, and still more those of Westermarck, render it almost certain, however, that Morgan and Maine are mistaken in their view, though it may point the way to the truth.[372]

[367] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 636 ff.

[368] LUBBOCK, op. cit., 133.

[369] MORGAN, _Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences_, VII, 469; Ancient Society, 69, 424 ff.; cf. STARCKE, op. cit., 323; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 317.

[370] PESCHEL, Races of Man, 224; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 317, 318; also DARWIN, Animals and Plants under Domestication, II, 124; LUBBOCK, "Customs of Marriage and Systems of Relationship among the Australians," Jour. Anth. Inst., XIV, 300.

[371] MAINE, Early Law and Custom, 228.

[372] DARWIN, op. cit., II, 103, 104, accepts HUTH'S view (Marriage of Near Kin), that there is no "instinctive feeling in man against incest any more than in gregarious animals."

Starcke's argument leads up to the conclusion that the basis of exogamy is to be sought in the causes which produced the clan; for between the clans of a tribe exogamy almost always prevails, and, without exception, clanless tribes are "endogamous or at least not exogamous." Furthermore, tribes divided into clans are usually endogamous as to the tribe.[373] Now, prohibitions are found which cannot be due to "exogamy as a definition of the clan;" such is the prohibition of marriage between mother and son where agnation is in force, and "between father and daughter where the uterine line prevails." Since, therefore, "exogamy as a definition of the clan cannot directly produce these prohibitions, which are found wherever exogamy occurs, and in some instances where it is absent," the inference follows that exogamy must have its origin in the abhorrence of close intermarriage and the ideas to which that is due. But these ideas are not necessarily the same as those underlying "the various prohibited degrees of marriage which are now in force;" nor do they imply that the injuriousness of such unions is the ground of the aversion. "In a community in which marriage takes place between consumptive and syphilitic persons, and those affected by hereditary disease, without being condemned by public opinion, and still less by the law, it cannot be said that the condemnation of incest is founded on our regard for posterity."[374] In harmony with his view that marriage is juridical, not founded on sexual relations, he finds the origin of the horror of marriage between near kindred in the legal incongruity of such unions and in their danger to the peculiar constitution of the ancient family itself. Marriage between a brother and sister or between a mother and son would usually be impossible because the "son possesses nothing which he could offer to the father as purchase-money." To accomplish the purpose by force would be an "unheard-of crime among savages." A connection between a father and daughter would seldom occur, "since a father is unwilling to renounce the advantages of bestowing his daughter in marriage."[375] "If in this way an impression arises that there is something unusual and incompatible with other ideas in marriage between such persons, an occasional calamity which befalls any of them will be enough to excite the imaginative faculty in the highest degree; and if no prohibition previously existed, the absolute condemnation of such marriages would then be pronounced." In a word, "the intermarriage of individuals of the same family implies that persons who have no legal right to dispose of themselves and their property nevertheless agree upon such legal disposition, an encroachment which would certainly be violently opposed by primitive men." In the same way, exogamy will arise between clans; and the co-existence of endogamy and exogamy seems to be consistently explained by this theory. "Exogamy prohibits marriage between persons who are so nearly related that they have no legal independence of each other; endogamy prohibits the marriage of persons whose legal status is too remote from each other."[376] In corroboration of his view, Starcke finds evidence that, here and there, a distinction is made between regular marriage and sexual intercourse, the former being forbidden, unless for special reasons, while the latter is allowed.[377]

[373] This is the view of MORGAN, Ancient Society, 512-14; also of MAINE, op. cit., 221 ff.; FISON AND HOWITT, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 117, 138 ff.; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 363.

[374] STARCKE, op. cit., 212, 223, 224.

[375] In this part of his argument Starcke's generalizations are scarcely sustained by the evidence. See the criticism of CUNOW, Australneger, 180-84, who urges the well-known fact that many of the lowest peoples are not acquainted with wife-purchase at all; and even where wife-purchase exists, it might seem to be of as much advantage to a father to marry his daughter to her brother as, for instance, to allow the son to obtain a wife by offering his sister in exchange.

[376] STARCKE, op. cit., 233, 229, 230.

[377] Ibid., 227, 228.

If Starcke's explanation of the origin of the dread of close intermarriage between kindred is too vague and ill supported by definite proof, his original suggestion that exogamy must take its rise in that horror is sustained and placed on a broader foundation by the singularly interesting researches of Westermarck[378]--a scholar who has rendered to social science a very important service by carrying the principles of organic evolution into the sphere of domestic institutions. He starts with the assertion that horror of incest is universal. Writers have, indeed, collected evidence which they believe points to a time when such an aversion did not exist. Thus marriage with a sister is permitted in Ceylon and Annam; in the royal families of Siam, Burma, and the Sandwich Islands; while the same custom prevailed, as is well known, among the Ptolemies of Egypt, and among the kings of ancient Persia.[379] But these unions are either "anomalous aberrations" from the general rule; or else they are allowed in order to preserve the purity of caste or the royal blood; or, in case of half-sisters, because relationship is traced in one line only;[380] while occasionally they may result from "extreme isolation" or from "vitiated instincts."[381] Everywhere prohibitions exist, though they vary greatly in the "degrees of kinship within which union is forbidden." As a rule, "among peoples unaffected by modern civilization the prohibited degrees are more numerous than in advanced communities, the prohibitions in a great many cases referring even to all the members of the tribe or clan."

[378] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., chaps. xiv, xv, xvi, 290-382. These chapters should be read in the light of the results obtained in those on "Law of Similarity," the "Means of Attraction," "Sexual Selection," and the "Liberty of Choice."

[379] For the evidence of incestuous marriages, see WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 292 ff., 331 ff.; STARCKE, op. cit., 44, 209 ff.; SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 636; GIRAUD-TEULON, Origines, 60 ff.

[380] This may perhaps explain why half-sisters and half-brothers may marry among the Todas where relationship is in the male line: MARSHALL, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 206, 221.

For instance, to select a few examples from the wealth of illustration provided by Westermarck, the "Californian Gualala account it 'poison,' as they say, for a person to marry a cousin or an avuncular relation, and strictly observe in marriage the Mosaic table of prohibited affinities."[382] Among the "Bogos of Eastern Africa, persons related within the seventh degree may not intermarry, whether the relationship be on the paternal or maternal side;" and a similar rule exists among the Pipiles of San Salvador. "Among the Kalmucks, no man can marry a relation on the father's side; and so deeply rooted is this custom among them, that a Kalmuck proverb says, 'The great folk and dogs know no relationship,' alluding to the fact that only a prince may marry a relative." Often clan exogamy is enforced by the severest penalties. "The Algonquins tell of cases where men, for breaking this rule, have been put to death by their nearest kinsfolk."[383]

[381] Here and there among low races one finds examples of alleged incest recorded. Thus among the New England Indians marriages between brothers and sisters are said to have existed: WAITZ, Anthropologie, III, 106. "Among these people only," says Turner of the Innuit on the Labrador coast, "have I heard of a son who took his mother as a wife, and when the sentiment of the community compelled him to discard her he took two other women, who were so persecuted by the mother that they believed themselves to be wholly under her influence." "Ethnology of the Ungava District," XI. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 180. So also D'EVREUX suspects incest, not marriage, between brothers and sisters among the Brazilian Indians: Voyage dans le Nord du Brésil, 1613-14, 85-95. On the other hand, DOBRIZHOFFER says the Abipones abhor marriage with near kindred: Relation, II, 212; and the same appears to be true of the Kafirs: RATZEL, History of Mankind, II, 435. See also the examples mentioned by GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, 129, 130.

[382] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 297; POWERS, Tribes of California, 192.

[383] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 297, 305, 306.

Westermarck next takes up the origin of prohibited degrees; and after a critical examination of the various theories to explain it, he comes to the conclusion that in no case observed is the prohibition of incest founded on conscious experience of its injurious effects. It has not come into existence as the result of observation or calculation or through education on the part of the savage. Law and custom might thus arise; and these may "prevent passion from passing into action, they cannot wholly destroy its inward power." The home is kept pure "neither by laws, nor by customs, nor by education, but by an instinct which under normal circumstances makes sexual love between the nearest kin a psychical impossibility." But this instinct is not an "innate aversion to marriage with near relations." It is rather an "innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth;" and "as such persons are in most cases related, this feeling displays itself chiefly as a horror of intercourse between near kin." It is not "by the degrees of consanguinity, but by the close living together that prohibitory laws against intermarriage are determined."[384]

[384] Ibid., 318, 320, 321. WAKE, _Marriage and Kinship_, 55, 56, expresses a similar view.

This theory, it will be noticed, coincides with that of Starcke in selecting local contiguity or the intimate association of family life as the fundamental fact. It differs, however, in several important particulars. The economic or legal motives are not emphasized; and Westermarck's explanation is broader than Starcke's, for he holds that the aversion extends to sexual connections outside of regular marriage.

It is impossible here to do more than indicate the character of the evidence by which Westermarck powerfully supports his conclusion. Among the Greenlanders, for instance, "it would be reckoned uncouth and blamable, if a lad and a girl, who had served and been educated in one family, desired to be married to one another." It is even "preferred that the contracting parties should belong to different settlements."[385] Among the Kandhs, according to Colonel Macpherson, "marriage cannot take place even with strangers who have been long adopted into, or domesticated with, a tribe;" and the Cis-Natalian Kafirs are reputed to "dislike marriage between persons who live very closely together, whether related or not."[386] Further proof is derived from the fact that "many peoples have a rule of exogamy, which does not depend on kinship at all." Piedrahita, in the seventeenth century, "relates of the Panches of Bogota that the men and women of one town did not intermarry, as they held themselves to be brothers and sisters, and the impediment of kinship was sacred to them; but such was their ignorance that, if a sister were born in a different town from her brother, he was not prevented from marrying her."[387] So also the "Yaméos, on the river Amazon, will not suffer an intermarriage between members of the same community 'as being friends in blood, though no real affinity between them can be proved;'" and the Uaupés, of the same region, "do not often marry with relations, or even neighbours, preferring those from a distance, or even from other tribes."[388]

[385] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 321, citing EGEDE, Description of Greenland, 141; NANSEN, The First Crossing of Greenland, II, 330.

[386] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 321, citing MACPHERSON, Memorials of Service in India, 69.

[387] TYLOR, On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions, 268; PIEDRAHITA, Historia general (1688), 11; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 321.

[388] Ibid., 322; WALLACE, Travels on the Amazon, 497.

The great variation in the extent of prohibited degrees found among nations is "nearly connected with their close living together." Savage and barbarous peoples, "if they have not remained in the most primitive social condition of man, live, not in separate families, but in large households or communities, all the members of which dwell in very close contact with each other." Such are the house-communities of the American aborigines, found everywhere, from the "long houses" of the Iroquois to the vast pueblos or "cities" of Mexico and Yucatan;[389] the "joint undivided families" of the Hindus and Southern Slavs;[390] and the trevs or clan households of ancient Wales, comprising four generations living in one inclosure, whose members are forbidden to intermarry.[391] It is significant that in all such cases we find extended prohibitions of close intermarriage, which do not exist "where the family lives more separately." In fact, there is a marked tendency, amounting almost to a law, that the larger the family or clan group, the wider is the circle of forbidden degrees; and, on the contrary, the more isolated and dispersed the manner of life, the greater is the liberty of matrimonial choice.[392]

[389] MORGAN, _Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines_; FISKE, Discovery of America, I, 64 ff.; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 324.

[390] MAINE, Early History of Institutions, 7, 78, 106, 195, 200, passim; Early Law and Custom, chap, viii; KRAUSS, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, 14, 64, 72, 79 ff., 84, etc.; KOHLER, "Indisches Ehe- und Familienrecht," ZVR., III, 362; cf. LYALL, _Asiatic Studies_, chap. vii.

[391] LEWIS, Ancient Laws of Wales, 56, 57, 196.

[392] Westermarck, op. cit., 323-28.

In the same way prohibition of marriage on the ground of "affinity" or "spiritual relationship" may take place. "By association of ideas" the "feeling that two persons are intimately connected in some way" may "give rise to the notion that marriage or intercourse between them is incestuous." A strong argument is also derived from the "classificatory system of consanguinity." Tylor has shown that this system and the system of exogamy are, in most cases, found together. They are the "two sides of one institution."[393]

[393] TYLOR, On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions, 261 ff.; cf. WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 328, 329.

But a deeper and still more interesting question remains: "How has this instinctive aversion to marriage between persons living closely together originated?" We cannot help feeling that through his masterly solution of this difficult problem Westermarck has at last brought us very near to the truth. He finds the key to it in the biological law of similarity.[394] It is demonstrated that a "certain degree of similarity as regards the reproductive system of two individuals is required to make their union fertile and the progeny resulting from this union fully capable of propagation." But the similarity must not be too close. A certain amount of differentiation is requisite; but the differentiation must not be too great.[395] There must be homogeneity combined with heterogeneity. Among domestic animals close interbreeding, it is well known, leads to infertility and degeneration; and Darwin's researches prove that self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom produces the same results.[396] There is abundant evidence tending to show that what is true of plants and the lower animals is true also of man. "Taking all these facts into consideration," says Westermarck, in closing his argument, "I cannot but believe that consanguineous marriages, in some way or other, are more or less detrimental to the species. And here, I think, we may find a quite sufficient explanation of the horror of incest; not because man at an early stage recognized 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; and those of our ancestors who avoided in-and-in breeding would survive, while the others would gradually decay and ultimately perish. Thus an instinct would be developed which would be powerful enough, as a rule, to prevent injurious unions. Of course it would display itself simply 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 the feeling from the predecessors from whom he sprang, or whether it was developed after the evolution of distinctly human qualities, we do not know."[397]

[394] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., chap, xiii, and compare chap, xv, 334 ff.

[395] On sterility as the result of crossing in species, see WALLACE, Darwinism, 152-86; DARWIN, Animals and Plants under Domestication, II, 78 ff.; and on the good effects of crossing and the evil effects of close interbreeding, ibid., II, 92-126, 104. Cf. QUATERFAGES, The Human Species, 85-88 (crossing species), 276-86 (effects of crossing in mixed races); MITCHELL, "Blood-Relationship in Marriage," in Memoirs of London Anth. Society, 1865, II, 402-56; and WITHINGTON, Consanguineous Marriages, 2 ff., who believes the injurious effects of such unions on the offspring have been overestimated. On the other hand, it has been maintained that under primitive conditions the advantages of close intermarriage may have outweighed all disadvantages: Mucke, Horde und Familie, 245-47, combating Westermarck's view.

[396] DARWIN, Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom, 436.

[397] CUNOW, Australneger, 184 ff., rejects Westermarck's theory, first, on the ground that the prohibition of intermarriage in the cases cited often extends far beyond the local group; and secondly, because where the members of a gens do not at the same time form a local community, marriage is not forbidden in the group of persons actually living together. But Westermarck is dealing with origins; and he does not mean to say that all the existing complex systems of kinship which have gradually been developed through association of ideas or other influences actually now conform to the principle for which he contends. On the other hand HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 178 ff., following WAGNER, in Kosmos, 1886, I, 21, 24-34, reaches a conclusion essentially like that obtained by Westermarck. He finds the origin of exogamy in a dread of close intermarriage producing a horror of incest. During the period of the endogamous mother-group such marriages were the rule. With the rise of fixed habitations for the group, beginning in the glacial age and carried farther in the diluvial period, came more permanent sexual relations, the prototype of real marriage. This close living together, because of its deadening effect on sexual attraction, produced a dislike of unions in the group, leading to exogamy, often accompanied by wife-capture; although neither rape nor exogamy must be regarded as a universal stage of social evolution. CRAWLEY, Mystic Rose, 222, 223, 443 ff., rejects Westermarck's theory of a general human "instinct" against inbreeding. He insists that neither incest nor promiscuity was "ever anything but the rarest exception in any stage of human culture, even the earliest; the former being prevented by the psychological difficulty with which love comes into play between persons either closely associated or strictly separated before the age of puberty, a difficulty enhanced by the ideas of sexual taboo, which are intensified in the closeness of the family circle, where practical as well as religious considerations cause parents to prevent any dangerous connections." Westermarck's theory, he holds, does not account for all the facts; for example, "that to no little extent brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, do not live together. This is a result of sexual taboo, and is originally a part of the cause why such marriage is avoided, and not a result of avoidance of incest." In short, it "is the application of sexual taboo to brothers and sisters, who, because they are of opposite sexes, of the same generation, and are in close contact, and for no other reasons, are regarded as potentially marriageable, that is the foundation of exogamy and the marriage system." Cf. LANG, Social Origins, 10-34, 238-40 note, whose criticism of Westermarck and McLennan follows similar lines; and ATKINSON, Primal Law, 209-40, who believes that jealousy may have set up a bar to sexual unions within the "fire-circle" before totems or the idea of incest arose.

Exogamy appears, then, to be the result of natural selection, arising "when single families united in small hordes. It could not but grow up if the idea of union between persons intimately associated with one another was an object of innate repugnance." Conversely, the law of similarity enables us to understand the coexistence of clan-exogamy and tribal endogamy. The one springs from a horror of sexual union between persons who are too near; the other arises in a dislike of connection between those who are too remote. Among primitive men, and sometimes even among those well advanced in civilization, there exists a shrinking from physical contact with strange races only less violent than the aversion which the dread of incest excites. But this prejudice yields to the sympathy produced by the growing similarity of interests, ideas, sentiments, and general culture among men. Sympathy, upon which affection mainly depends, has widened the sphere of sexual selection.[398]

[398] Consult the very interesting chapter of WESTERMARCK on "Selection as Influenced by Affection and Sympathy, and by Calculation," op. cit., 356 ff. "Affection depends in a very high degree upon sympathy. Though distinct aptitudes, these two classes of emotions are most intimately connected: affection is strengthened by sympathy, and sympathy is strengthened by affection.... If love is excited by contrast, it is so only within certain limits. The contrast must not be so great as to exclude sympathy."--Ibid., 362. "Civilization," he adds, "has narrowed the inner limit, within which a man or woman must not marry;" while "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."--Ibid., 376.

IV. THE PROBLEM OF THE SUCCESSIVE FORMS OF THE FAMILY

From the preceding analysis it will appear, we trust, that scientific examination of the problems of kinship and exogamy has disclosed something of the real origin of the laws which govern human sexual relations. The searching criticism to which the theory of polyandry has been subjected, in connection with the opposite custom of polygyny, carries us still nearer the truth. For, in the light of recent research, it does not seem entirely hopeless to discover a trace of the actual sequence in which, according to natural law, the general forms of marriage and the family have been evolved.

According to McLennan, it will be remembered, polyandry originates in a scarcity of women due to female infanticide; and it is a universal phase of social progress through which transition is made from promiscuity and the system of kinship in the female line to the paternal system and higher types of family life. Furthermore, he seems to think, though on this point he is not very clear,[399] that polygyny may grow out of polyandry through the practice of capturing wives. This theory has by no means gone unchallenged.[400] It has been shown, in the first place, that the extent to which the custom of polyandry has prevailed is greatly exaggerated. Though it is found among various peoples in different parts of the world, its occurrence is on the whole comparatively rare; and the practice is much less extended than that of polygyny. Its former existence cannot be inferred from such customs as the niyoga and the levirate; for these are capable of simpler explanation.[401] It is highly probable, as Starcke urges, that they are merely expedients for procuring an heir or for conveniently regulating the succession to property and authority,[402] particularly in the joint family; but there is no good reason to doubt that Spencer's explanation is adequate in some cases. "Under early social systems," he declares, "wives, being regarded as property," are inherited like other possessions.[403] The procuring of an heir through a brother or some other third person harmonizes with the "juridical character of fatherhood among primitive men."[404]

[399] MCLENNAN, Studies, I, 116, passim; cf. SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 679.

[400] See, especially, WESTERMARCK, op. cit., chaps. xx-xxiii; STARCKE, Primitive Family, 128-70; WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, chaps. v, vi, vii; and compare HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 241 ff. For the literature of polyandry, see p. 80, n. 2, above.

[401] For the literature relating to the levirate and similar customs, see above p. 84, n. 2.

[402] This may be the explanation of the levirate among the Todas: MARSHALL, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 206-9, 213. Similar practical motives influenced the rise of the levirate elsewhere: DORSEY, "Omaha Sociology," III. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 258; cf. MARTIUS, Ethnographie, 117, notes; idem, Rechtszustande, 64.

[403] SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 679-81, 748 ff., 750. See, however, the criticism of STARCKE, op. cit., 151-53, 159 ff.; and compare WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 510 ff.; MCLENNAN, Studies, I, 108 ff.; Fortnightly Review (1877), 701; and SPENCER'S "Short Rejoinder," ibid., 897. But elsewhere Spencer thinks the levirate may arise in the duty of caring for the brother's children--a general cause of polygyny: op. cit., 691, 692. For examples of inheritance of widows, see KOHLER, "Das Recht der Azteken," ZVR., XI, 54; "Das Negerrecht, namentlich in Kamerun," ibid., XI, 416, 423; and for widower inheritance among the Chins, idem, ibid., 186 ff.

[404] STARCKE, op. cit., 141 ff. For his theory of juridical fatherhood see ibid., 121-27, 135, 139; and compare the similar view of WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 78 ff. This author gives an interesting discussion of the case of Boaz and Ruth, op. cit., 172-78, which may be compared with MCLENNAN, Studies, I, 109 n. 3. On the evidence for juridical fatherhood among the Arabs, consult SMITH, Kinship and Marriage, 119, 120.

Again, not only is the general extent of polyandry limited, but even where it exists it is confined in almost every case "to a very small part of the population."[405] It is sometimes restricted to the poorer classes, sometimes to the rich; and nearly always it is found side by side with polygyny or monogamy. There is another limitation, already noticed, which tells very strongly against the theory of its origin in promiscuity. Polyandry usually shows a tendency in the direction of monogamy. Sometimes each of the husbands lives with the wife during a certain period, while the others are absent; or frequently, "as one, usually the first married, wife in polygynous families is the chief wife;" so also, "one, usually the first, husband in polyandrous families is the chief husband." In him authority and the property are vested, and all the children, even, are feigned to be his.[406]

[405] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 455-57.

[406] Ibid., 457-59, 113-17; cf. especially STARCKE, op. cit., 135. HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 264 ff., gives many interesting details.

In opposition to the theory of McLennan various explanations of the origin of polyandry have been advanced. Spencer regards both polygyny and polyandry as mere limitations of promiscuity. "Promiscuity may be called indefinite polyandry joined with indefinite polygyny; and one mode of advance is by diminution of the indefiniteness." Polyandry, therefore, does not originate in scarcity of women; nor can it be due to poverty; "though poverty may, in some cases, be the cause of its continuance and spread." It is rather one of several independent "types of marital relations emerging from the primitive unregulated state; and one which has survived where competing forms, not favored by the conditions, have failed to extinguish it."[407] Hellwald holds a similar view.[408] Robertson Smith traces its origin to the practice of capturing or of purchasing wives in common by a group of kinsmen; and in the case of purchase, poverty or the high price of women must have exerted a favorable influence.[409] Not entirely dissimilar is the view of Wake who, rejecting the hypothesis of McLennan, believes that polyandry can be satisfactorily explained "only as being established, under the pressure of poverty, either independently or as an offshoot from the phase of punaluan group marriage in which several brothers have their wives in common."[410] Starcke in like manner finds that it "is adapted in every respect to this organization of the joint family group." In its highest forms "it is only the eldest brother who is married," and "the younger ones are not husbands, but merely specially authorized lovers. There is nothing to indicate that the band of brothers, as such, take a wife in common; that is, that the marriage is the act of the whole community." Hence "polyandry belongs to the category of facts which have to do with the ordinary family communism;" and it does not forfeit its character of a marriage in which the individual does not quite lose his personality in the group.[411]

[407] SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 673-75, 678, 679. Insufficient food-supply may cause polygynic and monogamic families to die out; and it is favorable to the survival of the polyandrous family. But the infertility of polyandrous families is unfavorable to their survival, for there are fewer members available for defense.--Ibid., 681.

[408] Polyandry is favored by poverty and scarcity of women; but it is essentially the outgrowth of ancient sexual relations: HELLWALD, op. cit., 258-61; agreeing with LIPPERT, Kulturgeschichte, II, 10. MARSHALL, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 223 ff., follows Lubbock and McLennan in regarding polyandry as a survival of communism. On the other hand, FRITSCH, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrikas, 227, is decidedly of the opinion that polyandry among the Kafir Herero is the direct result of poverty and low condition (niedrige Gesinnung); it is, he says, "keine Sitte, sondern eine Unsitte," harmonizing with the laxity of their moral ideas.

[409] SMITH, Kinship and Marriage, 125 ff., 128.

[410] WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 172, 134-78.

[411] STARCKE, op. cit., 135, 139, 128-70.

More satisfactory, from a scientific point of view, is the result of Westermarck's inquiry. This is so, not only because we feel that he is probably right in his conclusion, but because his argument affords an excellent illustration of the success with which the statistical method may be applied to social questions. The way for a solution of the problem had been prepared by McLennan and his critics. They had established a strong probability that poverty and scarcity of women are in some intimate way connected with polyandry. Westermarck shows that there is, in fact, a close relation, but that relation is a consequence of natural selection. The ultimate causes of polyandry, he demonstrates, are identical with the forces which have produced a numerical disparity between the sexes.[412] First of all the assumption[413] that "monogamy is the natural form of human marriage because there is an almost equal number of men and women," is proved to be untenable by an appeal to the statistics of population, which reveal a considerable variation in the numerical proportion of the sexes. Among many peoples the men are greatly in majority; among others there is a corresponding surplus of women. This disparity is in part easily explainable by referring to the varying conditions of life among different peoples. The "preponderance of women," for instance, "depends to a great extent upon the higher mortality of men" due chiefly to the "destructive influence of war" and the other dangers and hardships to which primitive men are exposed. On the other hand, the surplus of men may, in some degree, be ascribed to female infanticide and, still more, to the severe labor and harsh treatment which usually fall to the lot of women among low races.[414]

[412] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., chap. xxi, in connection with chaps. xx and xxii.

[413] Thus LORD KAMES, Sketches of the History of Man, I, 277 ff., declares "polygyny to be an infringement of the law of nature, basing his opinion on the false assumption that, 'in all countries and at all times,' males and females are equal in number, and supporting it by the consideration that the 'God of nature has enforced conjugal society, not only by making it agreeable, but by the principle of chastity inherent in our nature.'"--WAKE, op. cit., 198 ff., who shows this assumption to be unfounded.

[414] The facts are collected by WESTERMARCK, with elaborate reference to authorities: op. cit., 460-66.

But such causes are by no means entirely adequate to account for the numerical inequality of the sexes. For, in the second place, statistics show a considerable disparity between them at birth. "Among some peoples more boys are born, among others more girls; and the surplus is often considerable." With the Todas, for instance, are found about 100 boys to 80 girls under fourteen years of age;[415] while in Mesopotamia, Armenia, Syria, the Arabias, the Holy Land, and in various other portions of Asia, two, three, or even four women to one man are born.[416] "In Europe, the average male births outnumber the female by about five per cent.... But the rate varies in different countries. Thus, in Russian Poland, only 101 boys are born to 100 girls; whilst, in Roumania and Greece, the proportion is 111 to 100."[417]

[415] MARSHALL, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 100; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 467.

[416] BRUCE, _Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile_, I, 284 ff.; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 467, 468.

[417] OETTINGEN, Moralstatistik in ihrer Bedeutung für eine Socialethik, 55; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 469. DARWIN, Descent of Man, chap, viii, discusses the numerical proportion of the sexes, showing their inequality. Cf. PLOSS, Das Weib, I, 244-46, giving a table of the number of male and female births for European countries and for several of the commonwealths of the United States, the male predominating.

At this point Westermarck finds it necessary to consider the problem of the "causes which determine the sex of the offspring." The view that sex is influenced either by the relative or by the absolute age of the parents is untenable;[418] nor can the theory be accepted that "polygyny leads to the birth of a greater proportion of female infants."[419] The theory of Düsing, however, must be regarded as the most probable explanation which has yet been advanced.[420] According to him, "the characters of animals and plants which influence the formation of sex are due to natural selection. In every species the proportion between the sexes has a tendency to keep constant, but the organisms are so well adapted to the conditions of life that, under anomalous circumstances, they produce more individuals of that sex of which there is the greatest need. When nourishment is abundant, strengthened reproduction is an advantage to the species, whereas the reverse is the case when nourishment is scarce. Hence--the power of multiplication depending chiefly upon the number of females--organisms, when unusually well nourished, produce comparatively more female offspring; in the opposite case, more male."[421] The observations of Ploss[422] and others[423] appear to sustain Düsing's hypothesis. Wherever nourishment is scarce there seems to be a surplus of male births. Such is the case in highlands as compared with lowlands; among the poor as compared with the rich; in sterile regions as compared with those that are more fertile. Furthermore, Düsing has suggested a second cause due also to natural selection, which influences the numerical proportion of the sexes born; and his conclusion is confirmed by the researches of Westermarck. Mixture of race among animals and plants appears to cause a surplus of female births;[424] while, on the contrary, incestuous unions, being injurious to the species, "have a tendency to produce an excess of male offspring."[425] So, among half-breeds, the number of girls usually predominates;[426] while among in-and-in bred plants, animals, or men the reverse is the case. Hence it seems probable "that the degree of differentiation in the sexual elements of the parents exercises some influence upon the sex of the offspring, so that, when the differentiation is unusually great, the births are in favour of females; when it is unusually small, in favour of males."[427]

[418] Thus, according to SADLER, The Law of Population, II, 333 ff., and HOFACKER AND NOTTER, Ueber die Eigenschaften welche sich bei Menschen und Thieren von den Eltern auf die Nachkommen vererben, "more boys are born if the husband is older than the wife, more girls if the wife is older than the husband." But Noirot and Breslau have reached the opposite result; and Berner, from Norwegian statistics, has shown that "the law is untenable." From the registers of births in Alsace-Lorraine, STIEDA, Das Sexualverhältniss der Geborenen, proves "that neither the relative nor the absolute ages of the parents exercise this sort of influence." Platter "concludes from the examination of thirty million births that the less the difference in the age of the parents the greater is the probability of boys being born." For these authorities and others see WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 469, 470; and compare THOMPSON AND GEDDES, Evolution of Sex, 32 ff., for a review of theories, particularly the comparative table, p. 35, and the bibliography, p. 40.

[419] The authorities are compared by WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 470; and there is an interesting discussion of this point by WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 223 ff. Cf. DARWIN, Descent of Man, chap. viii, 215 ff. PLOSS, Das Weib, I, 239-44, gives a comparative view of the notions of various peoples as to the knowledge of sex before the birth of the child.

[420] DÜSING, Die Regulierung des Geschlechtsverhältnisses bei der Vermehrung der Menschen, Tiere, und Pflanzen (Jena, 1884), 121-237.

[421] As summarized by WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 470, 471.

[422] PLOSS, _Ueber die das Geschlechtsverhältniss der Kinder bedingenden Ursachen_, 21 ff., 30, passim.

[423] Compare GEDDES AND THOMPSON, Evolution of Sex, 32-54, who discuss the literature relating to sex-determination; and GEDDES, article "Sex" in Encycl. Brit. See the bibliographies of the subject in GEDDES AND THOMPSON, op. cit., 40, 53, 54. MARSHALL, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 110, 111, regards the tendency to produce more males than females as due to natural selection, practiced by an in-and-in breeding people, made necessary originally by female infanticide. Thus a "male-producing variety of man is formed."

[424] Consistent with the rule is the fact that the majority of illegitimate births are female.

[425] DÜSING, op. cit., 237.

[426] POWERS, Tribes of California, 403, 149; STARCKWEATHER, The Law of Sex, 159 ff.; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 476-80, who cites many other authorities.

[427] Ibid., 481, 482.

Now, it is a significant fact that polyandrous peoples show a tendency to close intermarriage among kindred; while polyandrous countries are notoriously poor. "The Todas of the Neilgherry Hills," for instance, "are probably the most in-and-in bred people of whom anything is known," and among them "the disproportion between male and female births is strikingly in favour of the males." But the "coincidence of polyandry with poverty of material resources" cannot depend, as often asserted, "upon the intention of the people to check an increase of population, or upon the fact that the men are not rich enough to support or buy wives for themselves." For only in Tibet, with her nunneries, among such peoples, is there found a class of unmarried women, and polyandry is often seen in rich families; while in Ceylon "it prevails chiefly among the wealthier classes." With pastoral and agricultural peoples poverty would be no reason for the avoidance of individual marriage, since women are valuable for their labor and "fully earn their own subsistence." In some districts of the Himalayas, we are told, "it is the poor who prefer polygamy, on account of the value of the women as household drudges."[428]

[428] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 475, 476, citing STULPNAGEL, in Indian Antiquary, VII, 135. Cf. SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 688.

Accordingly as a general result of his argument, Westermarck concludes that there is some reason to believe that polyandry originates in a surplus of men "due, on the one hand, to poor conditions of life, on the other, to close inter-marrying. As a matter of fact, the chief polyandrous peoples either live in sterile mountain regions, or are endogamous in a very high degree."[429] It does not follow, however, that a surplus of men will always produce polyandry, any more than a plurality of women will always lead to polygyny. Other conditions must be favorable. "This practice presupposes," for instance, "an abnormally feeble disposition to jealousy;" and this is actually a "peculiarity of all peoples among whom polyandry occurs."[430]

[429] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 482, 483. Cf. MARSHALL, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 110, 111, 221, passim, for illustrations.

[430] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 515.

The evidence adduced seems conclusive that polyandry holds a relatively unimportant place in the sociological history of mankind. It is not of frequent occurrence; it is usually modified in the direction of monogamy; and it always implies a considerable progress in civilization. The case is much the same with polygyny.[431] It is not a mere limitation of promiscuity, as some writers believe,[432] but usually makes its appearance comparatively late in social history. It is found side by side with polyandry and does not grow out of it, as McLennan supposes. Finally, like polyandry, its importance as a form of sexual relations has been greatly magnified. True, polygyny is much more widely dispersed than polyandry, being found perhaps among the majority of races both in ancient and modern times.[433] Its rise is particularly favored by the economic and social forces which produce the patriarchal system.[434] But, on the other hand, among many barbarous peoples it is "almost unknown or even prohibited." Monogamy appears to be the prevailing form of the family precisely among peoples least advanced in general culture and particularly in the economic arts.[435] It is highly significant, to take a single example, that among the Dravidian Veddahs of Ceylon, commonly regarded as anatomically and intellectually among the most backward races of mankind, monogamous unions last until death dissolves them. To those still untouched by foreign influences polyandry and polygyny are entirely unknown. There is no prostitution. Conjugal fidelity is remarkable. Free courtship exists. Children are treated with kindness; and in general the Sarasin brothers present a picture of pleasing domestic life among this singular people.[436]

[431] On polygyny see SWINDEREN, _Disputatio de polygynia_ (1795); WEINHOLD, _Die deutschen Frauen_, II, 13 ff.; POST, Familienrecht, 63 ff.; Geschlechtsgenossenschaft, 17 ff., 26 ff.; KOVALEVSKY, Tableau, 101 ff.; HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 367-437; MASON, _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture_, 222 ff.; DARWIN, Descent of Man, chaps. viii, xx; LUBBOCK, Origin of Civilization, 143; LETOURNEAU, L'évolution du mariage, chaps. viii, ix, x, xi; WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, chap. vi; SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 682-97; STARCKE, Primitive Family, 261 ff., passim; WESTERMARCK, Human Marriage, 431 ff., and Index. For examples of polygyny see KOHLER, in ZVR., VII, 370, 379 (Papuas); VIII, 114 (Dekkan); IX, 324 (Bengal); X, 55 (Azteks); 97-99 (Bombay); XI, 432, 433 (Kamerun); HENRICI, "Das Recht der Epheneger," ZVR., XI, 134; POST, "Die Kodification des Rechts der Amaxosa," ibid., XI, 232, 233; REHME, "Das Recht der Amaxosa," ibid., X, 36.

[432] For instance, SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 672, 688.

[433] See the enumeration of polygynous peoples in WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 431-35; SPENCER, op. cit., I, 682, 683; WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 181 ff.; MASON, Woman's Place in Primitive Culture, 222 ff.

[434] HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 366 ff.; GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, 104 ff.

[435] See the lists of monogamous peoples in WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 435-38; and compare DARWIN, Descent of Man, 591; POST, Familienrecht, 73; LETOURNEAU, L'évolution du mariage, chap. xi; and especially GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, as above summarized, chap. ii.

[436] SARASIN, Die Weddas von Ceylon, I, 457-75. These investigators, sustaining Westermarck's view of social evolution, regard the monogamy of the Veddahs as a typical primitive institution. Of course, as KOHLER, Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe, 10 ff., 14 ff., urges against Westermarck and the Sarasin brothers, the accumulation of a great number of examples of peoples among whom monogamy prevails does not necessarily constitute proof of the original condition of man. It is possible, for example, that the Veddahs are far advanced beyond their former condition, or, conversely, that they are a degraded race. Still the existence of these examples of the single pairing family among barbarous and savage men, as well as those found among the anthropoid mammals, puts the burden of proof on the other side. At any rate, it must not be lightly assumed that this kind of evidence has been used more critically by the adherents of the theory of promiscuity than by those who take the opposite view.

Where polygyny exists it is sometimes the chiefs alone who are "permitted to have a plurality of wives." Besides, just as in the case of polyandry, "almost everywhere it is confined to a very small part of the people, the majority being monogamous." It is so "among all Mohammedan peoples, in Asia and Europe, as well as in Africa." Ninety-five per cent. of the Mohammedans of India, for instance, are said to be monogamists; and in Persia, it is reported, only "two per cent. of the population enjoy the questionable luxury of a plurality of wives." Among the American aborigines monogamy is the rule. Although polygyny widely exists among them, seldom are more than two wives found.[437] Indeed the numerical proportion of the sexes throughout the world renders it impossible for polygyny to become the general practice.[438]

[437] Polygyny is found, for example, among the Innuit, but monogamy is the rule, though marriages are often of very short duration. Occasionally there are two, three, four, or in very rare cases even five wives: TURNER, "Ethnology of the Ungava District," XI. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 182, 188, 189. Among the Point Barrow Eskimo Murdoch found usually one wife, and never heard of more than two: "Point Barrow Expedition," ibid., 411. "Rich men" among the Thlinkets often have two wives: NIBLACK, "Coast Indians," Rep. Smith. Inst., 1888, 367, 368; KRAUSE, Die Tlinkit Indianer, 220. The Pima Indian has more than one wife when he can support them, for "the wife is the slave of the husband": GROSSMANN, "The Pima Indians of Arizona," Rep. Smith. Inst., 1871, 415, 416. A Ponca chief married four wives at one time, took them at once to his wigwam, and all got on well: Rep. Smith. Inst., 1885, 64. The Wyandottes allow polygyny if the wives are taken from different gentes, but polyandry is prohibited: POWELL, "Wyandotte Society," A. A. A. S., XXIX, 681. Sometimes "duogamy" is found among the Seminoles: MACCAULEY, in V. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 495. Among the Sioux "a plurality of wives is required of a good hunter, since in the labors of the chase women are of great service": DORSEY, "Siouan Sociology," XV. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 225; but the "maximum number of wives that one man (an Omaha Sioux) can have is three, e. g., the first wife, her aunt, and her sister or niece, if all be consanguinities. Sometimes the three are not kindred": idem, "Omaha Sociology," III. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 261; and compare KOHLER, Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe, 65 ff., 82, who finds here an evidence of group-marriage. One wife is the rule among the South American Abipones: DOBRIZHOFFER, Account, II, 209, 210; and Appiacás: GUIMARÃES, "Memoria," Revist. Trimens. Hist., VI, 307; and in general it is the prevalent form in South America: MARTIUS, Ethnographie, II, 104; idem, Rechtszustande, 53. Two wives is the average number among the Seri: MCGEE, in XVII. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., Part I, 279.

[438] For a collation of the facts as to the ratio of polygynists to the whole population among polygynous peoples, consult WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 438-42; cf. HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 413, 414.

Polygyny, like polyandry, is modified in several ways in the direction of monogamy. Often, as in Africa[439] and among many American peoples, a "higher position is given to one of the wives, generally the first married." She possesses superior authority and becomes the real mistress of the household. Thus, according to Waitz, among the Eskimo a second wife is seldom taken unless the first is childless; but in polygynous families the first wife has domestic precedence. The same is true generally of the red Indians of the north-west coast.[440] Among the Siouan tribes the bride's sisters sometimes become subordinate wives;[441] and usually where there are several, according to Dorsey, the first wife and the last are "the favorites, all others being regarded as servants."[442] The principal Indians among the Brazilian Tupinambás, says Souza, "have more than one wife, and he who has most wives is the most honored and esteemed; but they all yield obedience to the eldest wife and all serve her." She "has her hammock tied up next to that of her husband, and between the two there is always a fire burning."[443] Among various peoples it is required "that the first wife shall be of the husband's rank, whilst the succeeding wives may be of lower birth." Sometimes, as among the Chinese, the ancient Hebrews, and the kings of early Egypt, the secondary wives really hold the position of concubines.[444] Frequently the husband has a favorite whom he treats especially as his wife; or conversely, as among the Abipones,[445] he is "bound by custom or law to cohabit with his wives in turn." Finally, it is important to note that everywhere bigamy, or rather duogamy, is the "most common form of polygyny, and a multitude of wives is the luxury of a few despotic rulers or very wealthy men."[446]

[439] WAITZ, Anthropologie, II, 109; but here the subordinate women are not always legitimate wives. Cf. GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, 109; FRITSCH, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrikas, 114, 192, 193, 227, 363.

[440] WAITZ, op. cit., III, 308, 328. In the Ungava District the children of the first wife take precedence: TURNER, op. cit., 190; cf. NIBLACK, "Coast Indians," Rep. Smith. Inst., 1888, 367.

[441] MCGEE, "The Siouan Indians," XV. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 178.

[442] DORSEY, "Siouan Sociology," ibid., 225. Among the Siouan Omahas, "when a man wishes to take a second wife he always consults his first wife, reasoning thus with her: 'I wish you to have less work to do, so I think of taking your sister, your aunt, or your brother's daughter for my wife. You can then have her to aid you with your work.' Should the first wife refuse, the man cannot marry the other woman. Generally no objection is offered, especially if the second woman be one of the kindred of the first wife. Sometimes the first wife will make the proposition to her husband.... The first wife is never deposed."--Idem, "Omaha Sociology," III. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 261.

[443] SOUZA, "Tratado Descriptivo do Brazil," _Revist. Inst. Hist._, XIV (1851), 311 ff. Compare MARTIUS, Ethnographie, 104-06, 108, 109, notes; idem, Rechtszustande, 53, 54, 57, 58.

[444] On these modifications see SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 694-96; WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 196, 197, 186 ff., 210. "The phases of this custom [wives of different grades] may be practically divided into (a) those in which all a man's wives have equal rights, (b) and those where there is a superior wife (or wives) and inferior ones, the latter being sometimes legal wives, and at others slave wives or concubines."--WAKE, 197. "The Siamese occupy the almost unique position of having four classes of wives, of which, however, the slave wife answers to the concubines of other forms of polygyny."--Ibid., 197. Cf. further, GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, 109; WAITZ, Anthropologie, III, 328; HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 368, 382 (China), 414; AVERY, "The Indo-Pacific Oceans," Am. Antiquarian, VI, 366.

[445] "I have known many who kept the same wife all their lives. But if any Abipon marries several women, he settles them in separate hordes, many leagues distant from one another, and visits first one, then the other, at intervals of a year."--DOBRIZHOFFER, Account, II, 210.

[446] WESTERMARCK, Human Marriage, 442-50; cf. STARCKE, Primitive Family, 261, 262.

Let us next consider the causes which favor the rise of polygyny. It is highly probable, in countries "unaffected by European civilization," that a surplus of women has exerted an influence in its favor.[447] Thus in India polygyny is found among peoples where there is a plurality of women, and polyandry where the reverse is the case.[448] Among the Kafirs and the aboriginal tribes of North America polygyny usually appears only where the women outnumber the men.[449] This disparity of the sexes may sometimes be due to the ravages of war;[450] but it is more likely, as in the case of polyandry, that it owes its origin to natural selection, abundance of nourishment tending to produce an excess of female births. Polygyny also arises from calculation. According to Wake, "abundance may be said to be the chief inducement to the practice;" and, as a matter of fact, it is usually the wealthier persons among polygynous peoples who indulge in the luxury of many wives.[451] Poverty and the approximate equality of the sexes, Spencer holds, are the natural restrictions of polygyny.[452] Again, "superior strength of body and energy of mind, which gained certain men predominance as warriors and chiefs, also gave them more power of securing women; either by stealing them from other tribes or by wresting them from men of their own tribe."[453] In this way the possession of a number of wives would become a mark of distinction. Consequently polygyny sometimes appears as the special privilege of the ruler or of a class; and, as Spencer suggests, from its association with greatness it may gain popular approbation, just as monogamy may be thought "mean" from its association with poverty. "Even the religious sanction is sometimes joined with the ethical sanction," as among the Chippewayans.[454]

[447] This is the view of WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 482, as opposed to that of CHERVIN, Recherches médico-philosophiques sur les causes physiques de la polygamie dans les pays chauds (Paris, 1812), 38; and he is sustained by GOEHLERT, "Die Geschlechtsverschiedenheit der Kinder in den Ehen," ZFE., XIII, 127. See also SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, I, 689, 690; WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 204, 205.

[448] WAKE, op. cit., 205; WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 482; GOEHLERT, loc. cit.

[449] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 684, 689, 690; WAKE, op. cit., 205; CATLIN, _North American Indians_, I, 118.

[450] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 689, 690.

[451] WAKE, op. cit., 179-81; SPENCER, op. cit., 685. So the African has as many wives as he can buy; and only the rich in ancient Mexico indulged in polygyny: WAITZ, Anthropologie, II, 108; IV, 130. Among the American Indians the cost and difficulty of feeding them make several wives the privilege of the opulent. Increased labor gives the California Wintun woman increased rights; "for then she extorts monogamy": RATZEL, History of Mankind, II, 124, 494 (China and Japan). Compare AVERY, "The Indo-Pacific Oceans," Am. Antiquarian, VI, 366.

[452] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 683, 684. Cf. STARCKE, op. cit., 261, who says: "It follows from the nature of things ... that polygamy can never have been the normal condition of a tribe, since it would have involved the existence of twice as many women as men. Polygamy must necessarily have been restricted to the noblest, richest, and bravest members of the tribe." Spencer holds that polygyny is connected especially with the "militant" stage of society, as opposed to the industrial: op. cit., 706.

[453] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 685, 686.

[454] Ibid., 685-88; cf. STARCKE, op. cit., 261.

Various other reasons for the rise and spread of polygyny have been advanced. Among these are the motives arising in passion, such as man's love of beauty[455] and variety, and his unwillingness to practice abstinence in certain seasons.[456] More powerful than these is the "desire for offspring, wealth, and authority." In certain stages of advancement the more children a man has, the greater are his power and distinction. His "fortune is increased by a multitude of wives not only through their children, but through their labour."[457] For this reason, in some cases where jealousy is weak, women cling to polygyny; since by sharing the toil with others they hope that its burden may be lessened.[458] Spencer assigns another cause of the rise of polygyny which has enabled it to hold its ground even against the superior type, monogamy. For "under rude conditions," he believes that "it conduces in a higher degree to social self-preservation." The loss of population sustained by the ravages of war are thus repaired. A bias in favor of polygyny may be founded which will even come to be sustained by natural selection. "In a barbarous community formed of some wifeless men, others who have one wife each, and others who have more than one, it must on the average happen that this last class will be relatively superior--the stronger and more courageous among savages, and among semi-civilized peoples the wealthier also, who are mostly the more capable. Hence, ordinarily, a greater number of offspring will be left by men having natures of the kind needed. The society will be rendered ... not only numerically stronger, but more of its units will be efficient warriors." Furthermore, there will be a "structural advance" as compared with lower types of the family. Paternity is certain; and, where descent is traced in the male line, "inheritance of power by sons becomes possible; and, where it arises, government is better maintained." The family cohesion is greater; and "this definite descent in the male line aids the development of ancestor-worship; and so serves in another way to consolidate society."[459] For these reasons chiefly he regards polygyny as a type of marriage higher than polyandry; though he remarks that, "were it not for the ideas of sacredness associated with that Hebrew history which in childhood familiarized us with examples of polygyny, we should probably feel as much surprise and repugnance on first reading about it as we do on first reading about polyandry."[460] But this is too favorable an estimate of the relative social value of polygyny. It is doubtful, to say the least, whether morally and physically it is more favorable to the offspring than polyandry; and it is almost certain that it is far worse in its effects upon the home and condition of women.[461] This fact alone, when considered in all its consequences, far outweighs the alleged relative structural advantages of polygyny, which besides have not been conclusively established.

[455] Owing to the hard conditions of life, female beauty fades early among savage and barbarous peoples, sometimes even among those reckoned as civilized. A fresh wife is demanded when the first grows old. In some cases the husband is forbidden by custom to cohabit with his wife until the child is weaned, though suckling may continue two, three, or four years: WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 483-88; PLOSS, Das Weib, I, 58, 59 (fading beauty).

[456] WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 202 ff., thus summarizes the causes of polygyny: "First, the sterility of the first wife," as in the case of Rachel; "secondly, the length of time during which a woman suckles her child; thirdly, the sexual requirements of man while leading a hunting or pastoral mode of life; fourthly, the accidental scarcity of men; and, fifthly, the luxury or sensuality of man, or the desire for influence and power."

[457] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 489-91; cf. STARCKE, op. cit., 261.

[458] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 495,496; SPENCER, op. cit., I, 688.

[459] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 688, 689, 690 ff., 697. Cf. on causes of polygyny, LUBBOCK, _Origin of Civilization_, 112.

[460] SPENCER, op. cit., I, 682. Cf. the similar view of WAKE, Marriage and Kinship, 219.

[461] This evil effect Spencer himself emphasizes, though he thinks polygyny favorable to women where the habitat is unfavorable to their self-support and men are scarce: op. cit., I, 692-94. See WAKE, op. cit., 219 ff., for the relatively advanced condition of women under polyandry; and compare HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 256 ff., who summarizes opinions as to the influence of polyandry; and GROSSE, Die Formen der Familie, 110, who emphasizes the degradation of woman among pastoral polygynists.

But, as a rule, neither polygyny nor polyandry is favored by woman, in whom the passion of jealousy is very strongly developed. "Polygyny is an offence against the feelings of women, not only among highly civilized peoples, but even among the rudest savages." It is a noteworthy fact that "among monogamous savage or barbarous races the position of women is comparatively good;"[462] while, on the other hand, polygyny is in almost every way degrading to the female sex.[463] Accordingly, under influence of ideas and sentiments favoring the freedom and dignity of woman, both polygyny and polyandry must yield to individual marriage. With woman in its favor monogamy could never be entirely superseded as the type of human marriage. "Polygamy must disappear as soon as a growing development brings into play permanent motives and fundamental forces."[464] Among these forces is the "idea of procreative conditions" entering into the conception of fatherhood. From this follow chastity on the part of the wife, and consequently a limit to the sexual liberty of the husband. Out of this also sprang ancestor-worship, a powerful force in differentiating the monogamic household. "Even in primitive times, the character, or soul--the inward, mysterious being--of the father was supposed to decide the character of the child.... The joy excited by the excellent qualities of a child was first aroused in the breast of a primitive man when that child owed its being to himself, and its excellence was a proof of the excellence of its begetter, that is, of himself. I venture to assert that even now this idea plays the strongest part in what we call the voice of blood.... Vanity, a sentiment which is often condemned, yet not always blameworthy, finds sustenance in the most trivial occurrences of everyday life from the thought, 'Here I trace myself; the child has inherited that tendency from me.'"[465] With advancing culture and the growth of altruism it is inevitable that monogamy should assert its right to prevail over all other forms of the family which have yet appeared among mankind.

[462] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 496-504.

[463] The facts are collected by WAKE, op. cit., 210 ff., 198 ff.; cf. SPENCER, op. cit., I, 693.

[464] STARCKE, Primitive Family, 264.

[465] Ibid., 264-66. On the influence of ancestor-worship and the sense of propriety, see WAKE, op. cit., chaps. vii and xii, 227 ff., 234, 435 ff. Cf. SPENCER, op. cit., I, 691, 697; and on monogamy, LETOURNEAU, L'évolution du mariage, chaps. xix, ii; POST, Familienrecht, 72 ff.

So we come back to the starting-point. The complex phenomena of human sexual relations have been examined in the light of scientific criticism and recent research. The result seems unmistakably to show that pairing has always been the typical form of human marriage. Early monogamy takes its rise beyond the border-line separating man from the lower animals. But, considering the aberrations from the type, development has been in a circle.[466] At the dawn of human history individual marriage prevails, though the union is not always lasting. In later stages of advancement, under the influence of property, social organization, social distinctions, and the motives to which they gave rise, various forms of polyandry and polygyny make their appearance, though monogamy as the type is never superseded. "Nothing, indeed, is more favourable to polygyny," says Westermarck, "than social differentiation."[467] In its "highest and regulated form," declares Morgan, "it presupposes a considerable advance of society, together with the development of superior and inferior classes, and of some kinds of wealth."[468] Furthermore there is direct evidence in some cases that a transition from monogamy has actually occurred.[469] At a still more advanced stage of culture, under pressure of those influences which have led to the social elevation of woman, polygyny yields in turn to monogamy. "When the feelings of women are held in due respect, monogamy will necessarily be the only recognized form of marriage. In no way does the progress of mankind show itself more clearly than in the increased acknowledgment of women's rights, and the causes which, at lower stages of development, may make polygyny desired by women themselves, do not exist in highly civilized societies. The refined feeling of love, depending chiefly upon mutual sympathy and upon appreciation of mental qualities, is scarcely compatible with polygynous habits; and the passion for one has gradually become more absorbing."[470] But the later monogamy differs from the earlier in one important characteristic. The primitive monogamy "is not a form of marriage which can be regarded as the expression of a marriage law; that is, it is not a form of marriage which is striving for the mastery, and which cannot tolerate other co-existent forms of marriage. On the other hand the later monogamy, which arises from a distinct condemnation of polygamy, or from a secret aversion to it, is characterized by self-assertion, and seeks to exclude other forms of marriage."[471]

[466] See STARCKE'S masterly summary in chapter vii, "Marriage and its Development," who reaches the conclusion presented in the text. WESTERMARCK, chaps. xxi, xxii, xxiv, obtains practically the same result. Compare also WAKE, op. cit., chap. xii, who holds that group-marriage in the Australian and Punaluan forms is the original type of marriage. Then follow polyandry and polygyny; and these are in turn superseded by monogamy. HELLWALD, Die mensch. Familie, 389, declares that polyandry and polygyny are the rule, and in this sense more "natural" than monogamy.

[467] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 505, 506.

[468] MORGAN, Systems of Consanguinity, 477.

[469] WESTERMARCK, op. cit., 507, 508.

[470] Ibid., 509.

[471] STARCKE, op. cit., 264, 265, 255, 258, 259.

For a full understanding of the evolution, which has here been sketched in outline, there remains, however, a fact of primary importance to which but casual reference has thus far been made: the element of contract in the marriage relation. This fact will receive some consideration in the next chapter.

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