X. THE LIBERTY OF CHOICE…

X. THE LIBERTY OF CHOICE

It would be easy to adduce numerous instances of savage and barbarous tribes among whom a girl is far from having the entire disposal of her own hand. Being regarded as an object of property, she is treated accordingly.

Among many peoples the female children are usually “engaged” in their earliest youth. Concerning the Eskimo to the north of Churchill, Franklin states that, “as soon as a girl is born, the young lad who wishes to have her for a wife goes to her father’s tent and proffers himself. If accepted, a promise is given which is considered binding, and the girl is delivered to her betrothed at the proper age.”[1286] Early betrothals are among the established customs of the Chippewyans,[1287] Columbians,[1288] Botocudos,[1289] Patagonians,[1290] and other American peoples.[1291] Among the African Marutse, the children “are often affianced at an early age, and the marriage is consummated as soon as the girl arrives at maturity.”[1292] The Negroes of the Gold Coast, according to Bosman, often arranged for the marriage of infants directly after birth;[1293] whilst, among the Bushmans, Bechuanas, and Ashantees, children are engaged when they are still in the womb, in the event of their proving to be girls.[1294]

In Australia, too, girls are frequently promised in early youth, and sometimes before they are born.[1295] The same is the case in New Guinea,[1296] New Zealand,[1297] Tahiti,[1298] and many other islands of the South Sea, as also among several of the tribes inhabiting the Malay Archipelago.[1299] Mariner supposed that, in Tonga, about one-third of the married women had been thus betrothed.[1300] In British India infant-marriage has hitherto been a common custom; and all peoples of the Turkish stock, according to Professor Vámbéry, are in the habit of betrothing babies.[1301] So also are the Samoyedes[1302] and Tuski;[1303] and among the Jews of Western Russia, parents betroth the children whom they hope to have.[1304]

Among some peoples, it is the mother,[1305] brother,[1306] or maternal uncle,[1307] who has the chief power of giving a girl in marriage. In Timor-laut, Mr. Forbes says, “nothing can be done of such import as the disposal of a daughter without the advice, assistance, and witness of all the villagers, women and youths being admitted as freely to speak as the elder males;”[1308] and in West Australia, according to Mr. Oldfield, the consent of the whole tribe is necessary for a girl’s marriage.[1309] Yet such cases are no doubt rare exceptions, and give us no right to conclude that there ever was a time when children were generally considered the property of the tribe, or of their maternal kinsfolk.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that, among the lower races, women are, as a rule, married without having any voice of their own in the matter. Their liberty of selection, on the contrary, is very considerable, and, however down-trodden, they well know how to make their influence felt. Thus, among the Indians of North America, numberless instances are given of woman’s liberty to choose her husband. Schoolcraft asserts that their marriages are brought about “sometimes with, and sometimes against, the wishes of the graver and more prudent relatives of the parties,” the marital rite consisting chiefly in the consent of the parties.[1310] Heckewelder quotes instances of Indians who committed suicide because they had been disappointed in love, the girls on whom they had fixed their choice, and to whom they were engaged, having changed their minds, and married other lovers.[1311] Among the Kaniagmuts, Thlinkets, and Nutkas, the suitor has to consult the wishes of the young lady.[1312] Among the Chippewas, according to Mr. Keating, the mothers generally settle the preliminaries to marriage without consulting the children: but the parties are not considered husband and wife till they have given their consent.[1313] The Atkha Aleuts occasionally betrothed their children to each other, but the marriage was held to be binding only after the birth of a child.[1314] Among the Creeks, if a man desires to make a woman his wife “conformably to the more ancient and serious custom of the country,” he endeavours to gain her own consent by regular courtship.[1315] Among the Pueblos,[1316] &c.,[1317] “no girl is forced to marry against her will, however eligible her parents may consider the match.”

As to the South American Guanas, Azara states, “Aucune femme ne consent à se marier, sans avoir fait ses stipulations préliminaires très-détaillées avec son prétendu, et avec son père et ses parents, à l’égard de leur genre de vie réciproque.”[1318] In Tierra del Fuego, according to Lieutenant Bove, the eagerness with which the women seek for young husbands is surprising, but even more surprising is the fact that they nearly always attain their ends.[1319] Speaking of the same people, Mr. Bridges says, “It frequently happens that there is insuperable aversion on the girl’s part to her husband, and she leaves him, and if she persists in hating him she is then given to one she likes.”[1320] It is, indeed, common in America for a girl to run away from a bridegroom forced upon her by the parents;[1321] whilst, if they refuse to give their daughter to a suitor whom she loves, the couple elope.[1322] Thus, among the Dacotahs, as we are told by Mr. Prescott, “there are many matches made by elopement, much to the chagrin of the parents.”[1323]

In Australia it is the rule that a father alone can give away his daughter, and, according to Mr. Curr, the woman herself has no voice in the selection of her husband.[1324] But, with reference to the Narrinyeri, Mr. Taplin states that, “although the consent of a female is not considered a matter of the first importance, as, indeed, is the case in many uncivilized nations, yet it is always regarded as desirable.”[1325] Among the Kurnai, according to Mr. Howitt, she decidedly enjoys the freedom of choice. Should the parents refuse their consent, she goes away with her lover, and if they can remain away till the girl is with child she may, it is said, expect to be forgiven. Otherwise it may become necessary for them to elope two or three times before they are pardoned, the family at length becoming tired of objecting.[1326] Mr. Mathew asserts that, with varying details, marriage by mutual consent will be found among other tribes also, though it is not completed except by means of a run-away match.[1327] Elopement undertaken with the consent of the woman is, indeed, and has been, a recognized institution among at least some of the aboriginal tribes in Australia. Among the Kurnai it is the rule.[1328]

The Maoris have a proverb, “As a kahawai (a fish which is very particular in selecting the hook that most resembles its food) selects the hook which pleases it best out of a great number, so also a woman chooses one man out of many.”[1329] Mariner supposed that, in Tonga, perhaps two-thirds of the girls had married with their own free consent.[1330] Concerning the natives of Arorae, Mr. Turner says, “In choosing a husband the lady sat in the lower room of the house, and over her head were let down through the chinks of the floor of the upper room two or three cocoa-nut leaflets, the ends of which were held by her lovers. She pulled at one, and asked whose it was. If the reply was not in the voice of the young man she wished to have, she left it and pulled at another leaf, and another, until she found him, and then pulled it right down. The happy man whose leaf she pulled down sat still, while the others slunk away.”[1331] In the Society Islands, the women of the middle and lower ranks had the power to choose husbands according to their own wishes; and that the women of the highest classes sometimes asserted the same right appears from the addresses a chief of Eimeo had to pay to the object of his attachment before she could be induced to accept his offer.[1332] In Radack, “marriages depend on a free convention,” as seems to be generally the case in Micronesia.[1333] In the New Britain Group, according to Mr. Romilly, after the man has worked for years to pay for his wife, and is finally in a position to take her to his house, she may refuse to go, and he cannot claim back from the parents the large sums he has paid them in yams, cocoa-nuts, and sugar-canes.[1334] With reference to the New Caledonian girl, M. Moncelon remarks, “Elle est consultée quelquefois, mais souvent est forcée d’obéir. Alors elle fuit à chaque instant pour rejoindre l’homme qu’elle préfère.”[1335]

In the Indian Archipelago, according to Professor Wilken, most marriages are contracted by the mutual consent of the parties.[1336] Among the Dyaks, “the unmarried girls are at perfect liberty to choose their mates.”[1337] In some parts of Java, much deference is paid to the bride’s inclinations;[1338] and, among the Minahassers of Celebes, courtship or love-making “is always strictly an affair of the heart and not in any way dependent upon the consent or even wish of the parents.”[1339] Similar statements are made by Riedel with reference to several of the smaller islands.[1340] Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, if a young man runs away with a virgin without the consent of her father, he does not act contrary to the laws of the country; and, if he is willing to make the usual payments afterwards, the woman cannot be reclaimed by her father or other kinsfolk.[1341]

In Burma, “the choice of marriageable girls is perfectly free,” and marriages are occasionally contracted even in direct opposition to the parents.[1342] Among the Shans, mutual consent is required to constitute a valid union;[1343] and, regarding the Chittagong Hill tribes, Captain Lewin says that the women’s “power of selecting their own husband is to the full as free as that enjoyed by our own English maidens.”[1344] The same is the case with many, perhaps most, of the uncivilized tribes of India. The young couple often settle the affair entirely between themselves, even though marriages are ostensibly arranged by the parents;[1345] or the parents, before they give their children in marriage, consult them, and, as a rule, follow their likings.[1346] In case of parental objection, elopements frequently take place.[1347] Among the Kukis, a girl who runs away from a husband she does not like is not thought to act wrongly in doing so.[1348] Among the aboriginal tribes of China,[1349] the Ainos,[1350] Khamchadales,[1351] Jakuts,[1352] Ossetes,[1353] &c.,[1354] the daughter’s inclinations are nearly always consulted. And, in Corea, mutual choice was the ancient custom of the country.[1355]

Turning to Africa we find that, among the Touaregs, a girl may select out of her suitors the one whom she herself prefers.[1356] As to the West African negroes, Mr. Reade informed Mr. Darwin that “the women, at least among the more intelligent Pagan tribes, have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom they may desire, although it is considered unwomanly to ask a man to marry them.”[1357] The accuracy of this statement is confirmed by several travellers,[1358] and it seems to hold good for other parts of Africa. Among the Shulis, according to Dr. Felkin, the women have a voice in the selection of their husbands.[1359] The Mádi girls, says Emin Pasha, enjoy great freedom, and are able to choose companions to their liking.[1360] Among the Marutse, “free women who have not been given away or sold as slaves are allowed to choose what husbands they please.”[1361] The young Kafirs endeavour generally at first to gain the consent of the girls, for it is, as Mr. Leslie remarks, “a mistake to imagine that a girl is sold by her father in the same manner, and with the same authority, with which he would dispose of a cow.”[1362] And, among the Hottentots[1363] and Bushmans,[1364] when a girl has grown up to womanhood without having previously been betrothed, her lover must gain her approbation, as well as that of the parents.

In works by ancient writers we find statements of the same kind. Among the Cathæi, according to Strabo, the girls chose their husbands, and the young men their wives;[1365] and the same is said by Herodotus of the women of Lydia.[1366] In Indian and old Scandinavian tales virgins are represented as having the power to dispose of themselves freely.[1367] Thus it was agreed that Skade should choose for herself a husband among the Asas, but she was to make her choice by the feet, the only part of their persons she was allowed to see.[1368]

In view of such facts it is impossible to agree with M. Letourneau that, during a very long period, woman was married without her wishes being at all consulted.[1369] There can be no doubt that, under more primitive conditions, she was even more free in that respect than she is now among most of the lower races. At present a daughter is very commonly an object of trade, and the more exclusively she is regarded from this point of view, the less, of course, are her own likings taken into account. Among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, who have marriage by purpose, no father thinks it necessary to consult his daughter before selling her, whereas, among the Arabs of the eastern plain, the Aenezes, &c., according to Burckhardt, “the father never receives the price of the girl, and therefore some regard is paid to her inclinations.”[1370] But it will be shown that marriage by purchase forms a comparatively late stage in the history of the family relations of mankind, owing its origin to the fact that daughters are valuable as labourers, and therefore not given away for nothing. Speaking of the Gippsland natives, Mr. Fison says, “The assertion that women ‘eat and do not hunt’ cannot apply to the lower savages. On the contrary, whether among the ruder agricultural tribes or those who are dependent on supplies gathered from the ‘forest and the flood,’ the women are food-providers, who supply to the full as much as they consume, and render valuable service into the bargain. In times of peace, as a general rule, they are the hardest workers and the most useful members of the community.”[1371] Now, the Australians, although a very rude race, have advanced far beyond the original state of man. There is no reason to doubt that, among our earliest human ancestors, the possession of a woman was desired only for the gratification of the man’s passions. It may be said generally that in a state of nature every grown-up individual earns his own living. Hence there is no slavery, as there is, properly speaking, no labour. A man in the earliest times had no reason, then, to retain his full-grown daughter; she might go away, and marry at her pleasure. That she was not necessarily gained by the very first male, we may conclude from what we know about the lower animals. As Mr. Darwin remarks, the female generally, or at least often, exerts some choice. She can in most cases escape, if wooed by a male who does not please her, and when pursued, as commonly occurs, by several males, she seems often to have the opportunity, whilst they are fighting with one another, of going away with, or at least of temporarily paring with, some one male.[1372]

It might be supposed that at a later stage, when family ties grew stronger, and bride-stealing became a common way of concluding a marriage, the consent of the woman in the event of capture would be quite out of the question. Certainly it must generally have been so when she fell as a booty into the hands of an enemy. But women thus captured may in many cases have been able to escape from the husbands forced on them, and to return to their own, or some friendly neighbouring, tribe. Very frequently, however, bride-stealing seems to have taken place with the approval of the girl, there being no other way in which the match could be concluded if her parents were not willing to agree to it. It is a common mistake, as Mr. Howitt remarks, to confound marriage by capture and marriage by elopement. They are essentially different, the one being effected without, the other with, the woman’s consent.[1373] Thus, among the Australians, many, perhaps most, cases of so-called bride-stealing come under the head of elopements.[1374]

Something remains to be said as to the position of sons among uncivilized peoples. When young they are everywhere as much dependent on the parents, or at least on the father, as are their sisters. A boy may be sold, bartered away, or even killed, if his father thinks proper. That the power of life and death, under certain circumstances, rests with the tribe is a matter of little importance in this connection. But as soon as the young man grows up, the father, as a rule, has no longer any authority over him, whereas a woman is always more or less in a state of dependence, marriage implying for her a change of owner only. Among the Australians, says Mr. Curr, “sons become independent when they have gone through the ceremonies by which they attain to the status of manhood.”[1375] The full-grown man is his own master; he is strong enough not to be kept in check by his father, and, being able to shift for himself, he may marry quite independently of the old man’s will.

It often happens, indeed, as we have seen, that parents betroth their children when they are young.[1376] But, if such an engagement is not always binding even for the woman, it is of course all the less so for the man. “The choice among the Kalmucks,” Liadov says, “belongs entirely to the parents. Still, there is no constraint upon this point, and, if the son declares that the selection of his parents displease him, there is no further question about the matter.”[1377]

Moreover, marriage contracts are concluded among certain peoples by the parents of the parties, even when these are full-grown.[1378] Among the Iroquois, according to Mr. Morgan, the mother, when she considered her son of a suitable age for marriage, looked about for a maiden whom she thought likely to accord with him in disposition and temperament, and remonstrance or objection on the part of the children was never attempted.[1379] Among the Basutos, the choice of “the great wife” is generally made by the father.[1380] And, in many of the uncivilized tribes of India, parents are in the habit of betrothing their sons.[1381] In certain cases, the parents merely go through a form of selection, the matter having already been really settled by the parties concerned;[1382] and usually a man who has been induced to marry a woman he does not like, may divorce her and choose another according to his taste. Yet, speaking of the Kisáns, Colonel Dalton says that “there is no instance on record of a youth or maiden objecting to the arrangement made for them.”[1383] The paternal authority among these tribes of India implies, indeed, a family system of higher type than we are accustomed to find among wild races: it approaches the patria potestas of the ancient Aryan nations. Thus, among the Kandhs, in each family the absolute authority rests with the house-father; the sons have no property during the father’s lifetime, and all the male children, with their wives and descendants, continue to share the father’s meal, prepared by the common mother.[1384] The father chooses a full-grown woman as a wife for his young son. “In the superior age of the bride,” says Colonel Macpherson, “is seen a proof of the supremacy of the paternal authority amongst this singular people. The parents obtain the wives of their sons during their boyhood, as very valuable domestic servants, and their selections are avowedly made with a view to utility in this character.”[1385]

* * * * *

Among savages the father’s power depends exclusively, or chiefly, upon his superior strength. At a later stage, in connection with a more highly developed system of ancestor-worship, it becomes more ideal, and, at the same time, more extensive and more absolute. Obedience to the father is regarded as a sacred duty, the transgression of which will be punished as a crime against the gods. Indeed, so prevalent has this strengthened authority of the father been among peoples who have reached a relatively high degree of civilization, that it must be regarded as marking a stage in all human history.

The family system of the savage Indians differs widely, in this respect, from that which was established among the ancient inhabitants of Mexico and Peru. Concerning the Mexicans, Clavigero says that “their children were bred to stand so much in awe of their parents, that, even when grown up and married they hardly durst speak before them.”[1386] The following was an exhortation of a Mexican to his son:—“Honour all persons, particularly thy parents, to whom thou owest obedience, respect, and service. Guard against imitating the example of those wicked sons, who, like brutes that are deprived of reason, neither reverence their parents, listen to their instruction, nor submit to their correction; because whoever follows their steps will have an unhappy end, will die in a desperate or sudden manner, or will be killed and devoured by wild beasts.”[1387] A youth was seldom allowed to choose a wife for himself; he was expected to abide by the selection of his parents. Hence it rarely happened that a marriage took place without the sanction of parents or other kinsfolk, and he who presumed to marry without such sanction had to undergo penance, being looked upon as ungrateful, ill-bred, and apostate.[1388] The belief was, according to Torquemada, that an act of that kind would be punished by some misfortune.[1389] In a province of the Mexican empire, it was even required that a bridegroom should be carried, that he might be supposed to marry against his inclinations.[1390] Touching the Guatemalans, Mr. Bancroft says, “It seems incredible that the young men should have quietly submitted to having their wives picked out for them without being allowed any voice or choice in the matter. Yet we are told that so great was their obedience and submission to their parents that there never was any scandal in these things.”[1391] In the greater part of Nicaragua, matches were arranged by the parents; though there were certain independent towns in which the girls chose their husbands from among the young men, while the latter sat at a feast.[1392] Again, in Peru, Inca Pachacutec confirmed the law that sons should obey and serve their fathers until they reached the age of twenty-five, and that none should marry without the consent of the parents, and of the parents of the girl, a marriage without this consent being invalid and the children illegitimate.[1393]

Similar ideas formerly prevailed, and to some extent are still found, among the civilized nations of the Old World. The Chinese have a maxim that, as the Emperor should have a father’s love for his people, so a father should have a sovereign’s power over his family.[1394] From earliest youth the Chinese lad is imbued with such respect for his parents that it becomes at last a religious sentiment, and forms, as he gets older, the basis of his only creed—the worship of ancestors.[1395] Disobedience to parents is looked upon as a sin to be punished with death, whether the offender be an infant or a full-grown son or daughter. And in everything referring to the marriage of the children parents are omnipotent. “From all antiquity in China,” Navarette says, “no son ever did, or hereafter will, marry without the consent of his parents.”[1396] Indeed, according to Mr. Medhurst, it is a universally acknowledged principle in China that no person, of whatever age, can act for himself in matrimonial matters during the lifetime or in the neighbourhood of his parents or near senior kinsfolk. The power of these guardians is so great that they may contract a marriage for a junior who is absent from home, and he is bound to abide by such engagement even though already affianced elsewhere without their privity or consent.[1397] The consequence of this system is that, in many cases, the betrothed couple scarcely know each other before marriage, the wedding being the first occasion on which the man catches a glimpse of his wife’s face.[1398] In some parts of the Empire children are affianced in infancy.[1399]

In Japan, according to Professor Rein, a house-father enjoyed the same extensive rights as the Roman paterfamilias—an unlimited power over the person and property of his children.[1400] Filial piety is considered the highest duty of man, and not even death or the marriage relation weakens, to any great extent, the hold of a father on a child. “With affection on the one hand, and cunning on the other,” says Mr. Griffis, “an unscrupulous father may do what he will.... The Japanese maiden, as pure as the purest Christian virgin, will, at the command of her father, enter the brothel to-morrow, and prostitute herself for life. Not a murmur escapes her lips as she thus filially obeys.”[1401] Marriages are almost invariably arranged by the parents or nearest kinsfolk of the parties, or by the parties themselves with the aid of an agent or middleman known as the “nakōdo,” it being considered highly improper for them to arrange it on their own account. Among the lower classes, such direct unions are not unfrequent; but they are held in contempt, and are known as “yagō,” i.e., “meeting on a moor,”—a term of disrespect showing the low opinion entertained of them. The middleman’s duty consists in acquainting each of the parties with the nature, habits, good and bad qualities, and bodily infirmities of the other, and in doing his utmost to bring the affair to a successful conclusion. It seldom happens that the parties immediately interested communicate directly with the middleman; if they have parents or guardians, it is done by these, and, if not, by the nearest relation. The middleman has to arrange for a meeting between the parties, which meeting is known as the “mi ai,” literally “see meeting” and, if either party is dissatisfied with the other after this introduction, the matter proceeds no further. But, formerly, says Mr. Küchler, “this ante-nuptial meeting was dispensed with in the case of people of very exalted rank, who consequently never saw each other until the bride removed her veil on the marriage day.”[1402]

Among the ancient Arabs[1403] and Hebrews, fathers exercised very great rights over their families. According to the old law of Jahveism, a father might sell his child to relieve his own distress, or offer it to a creditor as a pledge.[1404] Death was the penalty for a child who struck a parent, or even cursed one;[1405] though the father himself could not inflict this penalty on his children, but had to appeal to the whole community.[1406] How important were the duties of the child to the parents, is shown in the primitive typical relation of Isaac to Abraham, and may, as Ewald remarks, be at once learned from the placing of the law on the subject among the Ten Commandments, and from its position there in immediate proximity to the commands relating to the duties of man towards God.[1407] According to Michaelis, there is nowhere the slightest trace of its having been the will of Moses that paternal authority and the subjection of sons should cease after a certain age.[1408] A Hebrew father not only disposed of his daughter’s hand, but chose wives for his sons,—the selection, however, being sometimes made by the mother.[1409]

Judging from the marked severity of filial duties among the Egyptians, some of which are distinctly alluded to in the inscription of Thebes, we may conclude that, in Egypt, much more was expected from a son than in any European nation of the present day.[1410] And in the ‘Precepts of Ptah-Hotep,’ which have been called “the most ancient book in the world,” we read that the father ought to command, the son to obey:—“The son who accepts the word of his father will attain old age on that account. God wishes us to obey; disobedience is abhorrent to Him.”[1411]

Among the Romans, the house-father had, in the earlier time, the jus vitae necisque—the power of life and death—over his children. He could imprison, sell, or kill his children under an express law of the Twelve Tables;[1412] and Plutarch says Brutus condemned his sons to death, without judicial forms, not as consul, but as father.[1413] “All in the household,” Mommsen remarks, “were destitute of legal rights—the wife and the child no less than the bullock or the slave.”[1414] Even the full-grown son and his children were subject to the house-father’s will,[1415] and in marriage without conventio in manum a daughter remained in the power of her father or tutor after marriage. The consent of the paterfamilias was indispensable to the marriage of children, sons and daughters alike;[1416] and so strict was this rule originally, that down to the reign of Marcus Aurelius the children of a mente captus could not contract a legal marriage while in the power of their father, the latter being incapable of giving his consent.[1417] The religious character of this unlimited paternal authority has been pointed out by M. Fustel de Coulanges. “In primitive antiquity,” he says, “the father is not only the strong man, the protector who has power to command obedience; he is the priest, he is heir to the hearth, the continuator of the ancestors, the parent stock of the descendants, the depositary of the mysterious rites of worship, and of the sacred formulas of prayer. The whole religion resides in him.”[1418]

It has been suggested by Sir Henry Maine and others that the patria potestas of the Romans was a survival of the paternal authority which existed among the primitive Aryans.[1419] But no clear evidence of the general prevalence of such unlimited authority among other Indo-European peoples has been adduced. Justinian justly observed, “The power which we have over our children is peculiar to Roman citizens; for there are no other men possessing such a power over their children as we have.”[1420] That the father, among the Greeks, Germans, and Celts, had the power to expose his children when they were very young and to sell his marriageable daughters, does not imply the possession of a sovereignty like that which the Roman house-father exercised over his descendants at all ages. As, however, the family institution seems to have had a religious basis among the early Aryans, the father probably had a higher authority than he has among any existing uncivilized people.

According to Sir Henry Maine, the fulness of the ancient Hindu patria potestas may be safely inferred from the veneration which even a living father must have inspired under a system of ancestor-worship.[1421] At a later date, the law-book of Manu declares that three persons—a wife, a son, and a slave—have in general no wealth exclusively their own; the wealth which they may earn being regularly acquired for the man to whom they belong.[1422] A more recent, but still ancient authority, Narada, says that a son is “of age and independent, in case his parents be dead; during their lifetime he is dependent, even though he be grown old.”[1423] And, speaking of the South of India, Mr. Nelson observes, “It is an undoubted fact that, amongst the so-called Hindus of the Madras Province, the father is looked upon by all at the present day as the Rajah or absolute Sovereign of the family that depends upon him. He is entitled to reverence during his life, as he is to worship after his death. His word is law, to be obeyed without question or demur. He is emphatically the ‘Master’ of his family, of his wife, of his sons, of his slaves, and of his wealth.”[1424] But, on the other hand, it appears from the ‘Rig-Veda’ that, among the ancient Hindus, the father was the head of the family only as long as he was able to be its protector and maintainer,[1425] decrepit parents being even allowed to die of starvation,—a custom which was prevalent among the ancient Teutons and Eranians.[1426] Moreover, according to the ‘Laws of Manu,’ a daughter might choose her husband in accordance with her own wish. This permission, however, seems to have been an innovation, as Manu himself disapproves of such a “voluntary union of a maiden and her lover, ... which springs from desire and has sexual intercourse for its purpose.”[1427] The four marriages—Brâhma, Daiva, Ârsha, and Prâgâpatya—in which the father gives away his daughter, are blessed marriages, and from them spring sons radiant with knowledge of the Veda, honoured by good men, and destined to live a hundred years. But the remaining four marriages—those effected by purchase, voluntary union, forcible abduction, or stealth—are blamable marriages, from which spring sons who are cruel and untruthful, who hate the Veda and the sacred law.[1428] Among the ancient Persians also, marriage contracted with the woman’s own consent, but against the will of her parents, was looked upon as the worst kind of marriage.[1429] In India,[1430] as well as in Persia,[1431] children were often affianced in earliest youth by their parents.

According to M. Fustel de Coulanges, the unlimited subjection of the son to the father existed amongst the ancient Greeks, but disappeared at an early period at Athens, and somewhat later at Sparta.[1432] It seems very doubtful, however, whether this subjection ever was so unlimited as among the Romans. The relations of Ulysses and Laertes in the Odyssey indicate that, at least under certain circumstances, a father in the decrepitude of age could be deposed from the headship of the family. In the mature Greek jurisprudence, as Sir Henry Maine points out, the direct authority of the parent is restricted, as in European codes, to the nonage or minority of the children.[1433] At Athens, a son was in his father’s power till twenty years of age; then he could marry without paternal sanction.[1434] Women, on the other hand, were in a state of nonage throughout life. A woman could not be a party to any act of importance without the consent of her guardians, whose rights, after her marriage, passed to the husband. As a rule, it was the lot of a Greek woman to be given in marriage to a man whom she did not know.[1435] “Les femmes, à Athènes,” says M. Cauvet, “ne devaient jamais choisir elles-mêmes leur époux, toujours il leur était par le tuteur que la loi leur donnait.”[1436] At Sparta, as well as at Athens, the betrothal of the bride by her father or guardian was requisite as an introduction to marriage.[1437]

Among the Teutons, the father certainly had the power to expose or sell his children under age, but an adult son could put his infirm and aged parents to death.[1438] “Quelle que soit la ressemblance des deux institutions,” says M. Laboulaye, “on ne peut pas confondre la puissance paternelle (patria potestas) des Romains et la puissance paternelle des barbares, le mundium.”[1439] Far from being, as in Rome, a power throughout life, the mundium over a son ceased as soon as he was able to shift for himself.[1440] M. Pardessus asserts that, at any rate in the fifth and sixth centuries, such paternal authority as a Roman father exerted did not exist among the Franks;[1441] and an old commentator states that, “by the law of the Langobardi, children are not under the ‘power’ of the father.” Nevertheless, the mundium among these people was more severe than among any other of the Teutonic nations.[1442] The extent of the father’s rights in earlier times, when the Teutons had no written laws, we do not definitely know; but, according to Tacitus, a house-father had not unlimited power even over his slaves;[1443] so it is impossible to believe in the prevalence of a patria potestas of the Roman type among them. In choosing a wife, however, the men had apparently in early days to take counsel with their kinsfolk.[1444] “The parents and relations of the parties,” says Tacitus, “are consulted in cases of marriage, and determine the nature of the bridal gifts.”[1445] Women always remained in a state of dependence. Girls, wives, or widows, they were under the guardianship of the father, husband, or nearest male relative. The father could freely dispose of his daughter’s hand, and her own inclinations seem to have been very little taken into consideration.[1446]

According to ancient Russian laws, fathers had great power over the children;[1447] but Macieiowski thinks it improbable that a son could be sold as a slave.[1448] Baron von Haxthausen, who wrote before the Emancipation in 1861, says, “The patriarchal government, feelings, and organization are in full activity in the life, manners, and customs of the Great Russians. The same unlimited authority which the father exercises over all his children is possessed by the mother over her daughters.... The Russian addresses the same word to his real father, to the Starosta (a communal authority), to his proprietor, to the Emperor, and finally to God, viz., Father (‘Batushka’).”[1449] According to Sir Mackenzie Wallace, however, the head of the household was rather the administrator of a labour association than a house-father in the proper sense of the term. The house and nearly everything it contained were the joint-property of the family, and not even the head of it could sell or buy anything without the express or tacit consent of all the other grown-up men.[1450] In Poland, according to Nestor, a father used to select a bride for his son;[1451] and in Russia, previous to the Emancipation, it was a common custom for fathers to marry their young sons to full-grown women. According to Professor Bogišić, the power of the father is not so great among the South Slavonians as among the Russians.[1452] But Dr. Krauss asserts that a son is not permitted to make a proposal of marriage to a girl against the will of his parents; and, among the Croatians and Servians, it is quite exceptional for the young man himself to look about for his future wife.[1453] A daughter, of course, enjoys still less freedom of disposing of her own hand.[1454]

* * * * *

The paternal authority of the archaic type here considered formed only a transitional stage in the history of human institutions. It declined gradually, according as the religious basis on which it rested became more unstable. The introduction of a new religion with higher conceptions of human rights particularly contributed to its fall. Paying special attention to its influence on the laws of marriage, I shall endeavour to trace the main features of this highly important process, which released children from paternal despotism.

Among the Hebrews, a modification of the patriarchal principle took place as early as the seventh century before the Christian era;[1455] and, according to the Talmudic law, a marriage, to be valid, must be contracted with the voluntary consent of both the parties concerned.[1456] In Arabia, Mohammed limited the paternal power.[1457] According to all the Mohammedan schools, a son is at liberty to contract a marriage without his father’s consent, after he has completed his fifteenth year. The Hanafîs and Shiahs grant the same privilege to a daughter, whereas, according to other schools, a woman is emancipated from paternal control only through marriage.[1458] A Mohammedan father certainly has the right to impose the status of marriage on his children during their minority, sons and daughters alike, but the law takes particular care that this right shall never be exercised to the prejudice of the infant. Any act of the father which is likely to injure the interest of the minor is considered illegal, and entitles the judge to interfere in order to prevent the completion of such act, or, if complete, to annul it.[1459]

In the mature Greek jurisprudence the paternal power was more restricted than during the Homeric age;[1460] and the Roman patria potestas gradually became a shadow of what it had been. Under the Republic the abuses of paternal authority were checked by the censors, and in later times the Emperors reduced the father’s power within comparatively narrow limits. Alexander Severus ordained that severe punishments should be inflicted on members of a family only by the magistrate. Diocletian and Maximilian took away the power of selling freeborn children as slaves; and Constantine declared the father who killed his child guilty of murder.[1461] The father’s privilege of dictating marriage for his sons declined into a conditional veto;[1462] and it seems as if daughters also, at length, gained a certain amount of freedom in the choice of a husband. At any rate, a daughter could protest, if the father wished to give her in marriage to a man with a bad reputation.[1463]

“La philosophie stoïcienne et le christianisme,” says M. Koenigswarter, “qui hâtèrent le développement des principes d’égalité, furent surtout favorables aux fils de famille et aux femmes.”[1464] The influence of Christianity shows itself in Teutonic legislation as well as in Roman. An edict of Clothaire I. in 560 prohibited the forcing of women to marry against their will;[1465] although a Council held at Paris three years earlier expressly required the consent of the parents also.[1466] According to the laws of Cnut, no woman or girl could be forced to marry a man whom she disliked.[1467] The Swedish ‘Westgöta-lag’ permitted a woman to dissolve a marriage which had been contracted without her consent;[1468] and similar privileges were granted to her in the ‘Uplands-lag’[1469] and certain other Teutonic law-books.[1470] Later on, the ‘Schwabenspiegel’—a faithful echo of canonical ideas—says, “When a young man has completed his fourteenth year, he can take a wife without the consent of his father.... At twelve years, a maiden is marriageable; and the marriage subsists, even if contracted in spite of her father, or other relatives.”[1471] A similar privilege, during the Middle Ages, was granted to German women in general.[1472] But the feelings of the people seemed to have been opposed to it, and required the consent of the parents. Thus Ulrich von Lichtenstein says in his ‘Frauenbuch,’ “A girl who has no parents should follow the advice of her kinsfolk; if she gives herself to a man of her own accord, she may live with shame.”[1473]

Paternal authority has declined more rapidly in some countries than in others. The process has been especially slow in France. In the literature of the eleventh century, says M. Bernard, the paternal character is “everywhere honoured, and filial piety everywhere praised and rewarded. In the romances of chivalry fathers are never ridiculous; nor sons insolent and mocking.... Above the majesty of the feudal baron, that of the paternal power was held still more sacred and inviolable. However powerful the son might be, he would not have dared to outrage his father, whose authority was in his eyes always confounded with the sovereignty of command.”[1474] This respect exercised a tyrannical dominion for centuries. Du Vair remarks, “Nous devons tenir nos pères comme des dieux en terre.”[1475] Bodin wrote, in the later part of the sixteenth century, that, though the monarch commands his subjects, the master his disciples, the captain his soldiers, there is none to whom nature has given any command except the father, “who is the true image of the great sovereign God, universal father of all things.”[1476] In the Duke of Sully’s ‘Memoirs’ we read that, in his days in France, children were not permitted to sit in the presence of their parents without being commanded to do so.[1477] According to the edicts of Henry III. (1566), Louis XIII. (1639), and Louis XIV. (1697), sons could not marry before the age of thirty, nor daughters before that of twenty-five, without the consent of the father and mother, on pain of being disinherited.[1478] Speaking of the women among the nobility and upper classes in France during the eighteenth century, Messrs. de Goncourt remark, “Généralement le mariage de la jeune fille se faisait presque immédiatement au sortir du couvent, avec un mari accepté et agréé par la famille. Car le mariage était avant tout une affaire de famille, un arrangement au gré des parents, qui décidaient des considérations de position et d’argent, des convenances de rang et de fortune. Le choix était fait d’avance pour la jeune personne, qui n’était pas consultée.”[1479]

Even now French law accords considerable power to parents. A child cannot quit the paternal residence without the permission of the father before the age of twenty-one except for enrolment in the army.[1480] For grave misconduct by his children the father has strong means of correction.[1481] A son under twenty-five and a daughter under twenty-one cannot marry without the consent of their parents;[1482] and, even when a man has attained his twenty-fifth year, and the woman her twenty-first, both are still bound to ask for it, by a formal notification.[1483] Parental restraints upon marriage exist to a very great extent in Germany and Holland also, the marriage of minors being absolutely void, if effected without the consent of the father, or of the mother if she be the survivor. According to American, Scotch, and Irish law, on the other hand, the consent of parents and guardians to the marriage of minors is not requisite to the validity of the union. The same was the case in England prior to the statute of 26 Geo. II. c. 33, which declared all marriages by license, when either of the parties was under the age of twenty-one years, if celebrated without publication of banns, or without the consent of the father or unmarried mother, or guardian to be absolutely null and void.[1484]

There is thus a certain resemblance between the family institution of savage tribes and that of the most advanced races. Among both, the grown-up son, and frequently the grown-up daughter, enjoys a liberty unknown among peoples at an intermediate stage of civilization. There are, however, these vital differences:—that children in civilized countries are in no respect the property of their parents; that they are born with certain rights guaranteed to them by society; that the birth of children gives parents no rights over them other than those which conduce to the children’s happiness. These ideas, essential as they are to true civilization, are not many centuries old. It is a purely modern conception the French Encyclopedist expresses when he says, “Le pouvoir paternel est plutôt un devoir qu’un pouvoir.”[1485]

XI. SEXUAL SELECTION AMONG ANIMALS

The expression, “Sexual Selection,” was first used by Mr. Darwin. Besides natural selection, which depends on the success of both sexes, at all ages, in relation to the general conditions of life, he introduced another principle, sexual selection, which depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species. According to the former principle, those individuals who are most successful in the struggle for existence survive the others, and characters useful to the species are thus inherited; according to the latter, those individuals who have the greatest success in the struggle for mates have the most numerous offspring, and the characters which gave them the preference pass on to the new generation, and are afterwards intensified by the operation of like causes. The sexual struggle is of two kinds. In both it is carried on by individuals of the same sex; but in one these individuals, generally the males, try to drive away or kill their rivals; in the other, they seek to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, who select the most attractive males for their partners. Therefore, the characters acquired through sexual selection, and transmitted chiefly to offspring of the same sex, generally the males, are, on the one hand, weapons for battle, vigour and courage; on the other hand, certain colours, forms, ornaments, sounds, or odours, which are felt to be pleasant. The secondary sexual characters of the latter sort are thus due to the taste of the females. They have been acquired because they are beautiful or otherwise agreeable, whereas the characters resulting from natural selection have been acquired because they are useful. How are we to explain the origin of this wonderful æsthetic faculty? “The senses of man and of the lower animals,” says Mr. Darwin, “seem to be so constituted that brilliant colours and certain forms, as well as harmonious and rhythmical sounds, give pleasure and are called beautiful; but why this should be so we know not.”[1486] According to Mr. Darwin, natural and sexual selection are two different sources from which animal characters have arisen. There is some truth in the statement of one of his critics, “Mr. Darwin, in fact, has so far abandoned his former belief in the efficacy of ‘natural selection’ as an agent in producing the differences which separate different species of animals, as to admit that some supplementary cause must, in some cases at any rate, be looked for; and this he thinks is to be found in the action, through long periods, of ‘sexual selection.’”[1487]

Far from co-operating with the process of natural selection, sexual selection, as described by Mr. Darwin, produces effects disadvantageous to the species. “It is evident,” he says, “that the brilliant colours, top-knots, fine plumes, &c., of many male birds cannot have been acquired as a protection; indeed, they sometimes lead to danger.”[1488] When we consider what an important part is played by colours, as means of protection, in the whole animal kingdom, it is certainly surprising that many male animals display brilliant hues, which cannot fail to make them conspicuous to their enemies. The strong odours emitted by certain reptiles and mammals, during the pairing season, and the sounds produced by various species at the same period, have also the effect of attracting hostile animals that are searching for food. And the danger arising for the species from these secondary sexual characters is all the greater because they generally appear at the time when offspring is about to be produced. Thus, besides colours, structures, and functions, adapted in the most marvellous way to the requirements of each species, there are others highly dangerous, which, according to Mr. Darwin, depend upon an æsthetic sense, the origin of which we do not know, and which is absolutely useless.

Mr. Darwin, in his many works, has shown how immense is the influence exercised by natural selection on the organic world. A disciple, therefore, naturally feels perplexed when he is told of a series of facts, which, according to the explanation given by the master, are opposed to natural selection. When the contradiction between the theories of natural and sexual selection is distinctly realized, the question arises:—Can we be sure that the secondary sexual characters are so useless as Mr. Darwin suggests? May not they also be explained by the principle of the survival of the fittest? The larger size and greater strength of the males, and the weapons of offence or defence many of them possess, may easily be so accounted for, as, among the higher animals, the males generally fight with each other for the possession of the females. The point is whether the other secondary sexual characters can be due to the same cause.

* * * * *

It is an established fact that the colours of flowers serve a definite end. Through them the flowers are recognized by insects in search of honey; and the insects, during their visits, involuntarily carry the pollen of one flower to the stigma of another, and thus effect cross-fertilization, which is proved to be of great importance for the vigour and fertility of the next generation of plants. Now it is extremely interesting to note that brilliant colours are found only in species of flowers to which they are useful as means of attracting insects; they never occur in plants which are fertilized by the wind.[1489] Mr. Wallace observes that plants rarely need to be concealed, because they obtain protection by their spines, or their hardness, or their hairy covering, or their poisonous secretions. Hence there are very few cases of what seems to be true protective colouring among them.[1490] In animals, on the contrary, colour is greatly influenced by their need of protection from, or warning to, their numerous enemies; colours of other kinds must always, to a certain extent, be dangerous for the species. Is it probable, then, that, whilst gay colours occur only in the flowers of those plants to which they are of real use, conspicuous colours should occur in animals to which they are of real danger—merely because the females find them beautiful?

Mr. Wallace, whose well-known criticism of Mr. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection[1491] seems, in many points, to be conclusive, suggests that the very frequent superiority of the male bird or insect in brightness or intensity of colour is due to the greater vigour and activity and the higher vitality of the male. This intensity of coloration is therefore most manifest in the male during the breeding season, when the vitality is at a maximum. It would be further developed by the combats of the males for the possession of the females; and the most vigorous and energetic usually leaving the most numerous and most healthy offspring, natural selection would indirectly become a preserver and intensifier of colour.[1492] Mr. Wallace has made it very probable that there is some connection between vigour and colour, but another question is whether this connection, depending on some unknown physiological law, is so necessary that it takes place even when colour is positively disadvantageous to the species. Nothing of the kind is found in the vegetable kingdom. We know, as Mr. Wallace himself remarks, that colours which rarely or never appear in the species in a state of nature, continually occur among cultivated plants and domesticated animals—a fact which shows that the capacity to develop colour is ever present.[1493] Among wild plants such colour variations are never preserved except when they are useful. Is it not most reasonable to suppose that the like is the case with animals?

The truth seems to be that colour subserves the same purpose in both of the great kingdoms of the organic world. Just as flowers are coloured that insects may recognize where honey is to be found, and thus may be led to promote fertilization, so the sexual colours of animals have been developed to make it easier for the sexes to find each other during the pairing time. Protective colours are useful so far as they conceal the animal from its enemies, but, at the same time, they conceal it from individuals of its own species. Sexual colours are therefore useful as well, because they make the animal more visible. It is quite in accordance with the theory of natural selection that, where such colours occur, the advantage from them should be greater than the disadvantage. We can see the reason for the brilliant colours of humming-birds, as these birds, on account of their great activity “are practically unmolested,”[1494] and for the bright hues of the rose chafers, who are saved from attack by a combination of protecting characters.[1495] But generally there is danger in sexual colours, so that nature has given them with the utmost cautiousness. Usually they occur in males only, because of the females’ greater need of protection.[1496] They are not developed till the age of reproduction, and they appear, in a great many species, only during the pairing season. The greatest advantage is won with the least possible peril.

It is a fact of great importance that sexual colours occur exactly in those species whose habits make these colours most visible. Thus the nocturnal moths, taken as a body, are much less gaily decorated than butterflies, all of which are diurnal in their habits, although, according to Mr. Wallace, the general influence of solar light and heat is no adequate cause for the variety, intensity, and complexity of the colours. The females of the ghost moth are yellow with darker markings, whereas the males are white, that they may be more easily seen by the females whilst flying about in the dusk; and it is remarkable that, in the Shetland Islands, the male of this moth, instead of differing widely from the female, frequently resembles her closely in colour,—as Mr. Fraser suggests,[1497] because, at the season of the year when the ghost moth appears in these northern latitudes, the whiteness of the males is not needed to render them visible to the females in the twilight night. Both Mr. Darwin[1498] and Mr. Wallace[1499] think that, in this case, colour may be a means of recognition. Sexual colours occur chiefly in species which, because of their manner of living, are to be seen at a distance; they seldom occur in sedentary or slowly moving terrestrial animals.[1500] The members of the lowly organized order Thysanura are wingless and dull-coloured. The Hemiptera, which usually lurk about plants, and prey upon hapless insects, are not, as a rule, remarkable for conspicuous hues. The Orthoptera are all terrestrial in their habits, generally feeding upon plants, and, although some exotic locusts are beautifully ornamented, their bright tints, according to Mr. Darwin, do not seem to fall under the head of sexual coloration. On the other hand, the dragon-flies, which live in the open air, possess splendid green, blue, yellow, and vermilion metallic tints, and the sexes often differ in their coloration. Every one has admired the extreme beauty of many butterflies, especially of the males. Amongst the Fishes, living in a medium through which bright colours may be observed at a distance, we often find, besides protective colours, conspicuous hues which are especially intense and visible during the pairing time. Among the Reptiles, the little lizards of the genus Draco especially deserve attention; they glide through the air on their rib-supported parachutes, and the beauty of their colours baffles description. Mammals, on the other hand, do not generally present the splendid tints so common among male birds; and the brighter colours of certain arboreal mammals serve chiefly as means of concealment.

These phenomena seem to show that sexual colours have been evolved for the purpose of being seen. They can scarcely be due merely to the fact that coloration is connected with the degree of vitality, since the Mammals, for instance, are certainly not less vigorous than any of the other Vertebrate orders. It may perhaps be suggested that, as flying animals more easily escape their enemies than terrestrial, they may with less danger be decorated with conspicuous hues. But here we have to observe the most important fact, that animals which do not possess sexual colours generally have some other means of making themselves discoverable.

Flowers which need the help of insects for fertilization attract them, in some cases, not by bright colours, but by peculiar odours. And as we do not find conspicuous colours in plants fertilized by the wind, so flowers have no perfume except where it is of real use. The most brilliant flowers, as a rule, are those which possess least odour, whilst many of them have no scent at all. White or very pale flowers are generally the most odoriferous. M. Mongredien gives a list of about 160 species of hardy trees and shrubs with showy flowers, and another list of sixty species with fragrant flowers; but only twenty of the latter are included among the showy species, and these are almost all white-flowered.[1501] Most of the white flowers are scented only at night, or their perfumes are most powerfully emitted at that time; the reason being that white flowers are fertilized chiefly by night-flying insects. We arrive thus at two conclusions: first, that powerful odours and conspicuous colours as guides to insect fertilizers are, as a rule, complementary to each other; secondly, that they occur alternately in the way most useful to the species.

In the animal kingdom various odours and sounds are closely connected with the reproduction of the species. During the season of love a musky odour is emitted by the submaxillary glands of the crocodile, and pervades its haunts. At the same period the anal scent-glands of snakes are in active function, and so are the corresponding glands of the lizards. Many mammals are odoriferous. In some cases the odour appears to serve as a defence or a protection, but in other species the glands are confined to the males, and almost always become more active during the rutting season. Again, a great many insects have the power of producing stridulous sounds. In two families of the Homoptera and in three of the Orthoptera, the males alone possess organs of sound in an efficient state, and these are used incessantly during the pairing season. Some male fishes have sound-producing instruments, and the fishermen of Rochelle assert that the males alone make the noise during the spawning-time. Of frogs and toads the males emit various sounds at the pairing time, as in the case of the croaking of our common frog. During the rutting season, and at no other time, the male of the huge tortoise of the Galapagos Islands utters a hoarse bellowing noise, which can be heard at a distance of more than a hundred yards. Professor Aughey states that on two occasions, being himself unseen, he watched from a little distance a rattle-snake coiled up with head erect, which continued to rattle at short intervals for half an hour; at last he saw another snake approach, and when they met they paired. Among Birds the power of song, or of giving forth strange cries, or even instrumental music, is exceedingly common, particularly in the males during the pairing season; and almost all male mammals use their voices much more during that period than at any other time. Some, as the giraffe and porcupine, are stated to be completely mute except during the rutting season.

The colours, odours, and sounds of animals, like the colours and odours of plants—so far as they may be assumed to be in some way connected with the reproductive functions—are, as a rule, complementary to each other. Stridulating insects are generally not conspicuously coloured. Among the Homoptera, there do not seem to be any well-marked cases of ornamental differences between the sexes. Among crickets, the Locustidæ, and grasshoppers, some species are beautifully coloured; but Mr. Darwin says, “It is not probable that they owe their bright tints to sexual selection. Conspicuous colours may be of use to these insects by giving notice that they are unpalatable.” Other species have directly protective colours. The bright hues of stridulating beetles seem to be of use chiefly for protective and warning purposes; whereas species belonging to the orders Neuroptera and Lepidoptera, often extremely conspicuously coloured, are not remarkable for any stridulous sounds. Frogs and toads, which have an interesting sexual character in the musical powers possessed by the males, are evidently coloured according to the principle of protection, or sometimes tinted with conspicuous hues in order to be more easily recognized by their enemies as a nauseous food. Of Reptiles, the Lacertilia excel mainly in bright tints; the Chelonia, Crocodilia, and Ophidia, in sounds and odours. Among Birds, in one instance at least, the male is remarkable for his scent. “During the pairing and breeding season,” says Mr. Gould, with reference to the Australian musk-duck, “ ... this bird emits a strong musky odour;” it is not ornamented with any conspicuous hues.[1502] Sexual colours and the power of song are generally complementary to each other among Birds. “As a general rule,” Mr. Wood remarks, “it is found that the most brilliant songsters among the birds are attired in the plainest garb; and it may safely be predicted of any peculiarly gorgeous bird, that power, quality and sweetness of voice are in inverse ratio to its beauty of plumage.”[1503] Thus, of the British birds, with the exception of the bullfinch and goldfinch, the best songsters are plain-coloured, and the brilliant birds of the tropics are hardly ever songsters. The wild camel in the desert of Kum-tagh has a reddish, sandy hue, and the males, “even during the rutting season, utter no sound, but find their consorts by scent.”[1504] The musk-deer, well known for the intolerable perfume which the males emit at the pairing time, is also entirely silent.[1505]

Moreover, as appears from what has just been said, the sexual colours, the perceptible scents and sounds of animals are complementary to each other in the way that is best suited to make the animals easily discoverable. As bright colours would be of no advantage to flowers fertilized by night-flying insects, so they would be of comparatively little advantage to animals living among grass and plants, in woods and bushes; whereas sounds and scents make the animal recognizable at a considerable distance. We have also seen that it is among flying and aquatic animals that sexual colours chiefly occur, whereas terrestrial animals excel in sound and scents. Thus most of the stridulating insects are terrestrial. Whilst brightly-coloured lizards, living on trees or running from stone to stone, must attract attention by the brilliance of their covering, crocodiles inhabiting rivers and jungles, and frogs crawling among the grass, allure their mates, the former by emitting musky odours, the latter by producing loud sounds. The odour of the Australian musk-duck, which depends for its food and for its preservation from danger upon its powers of diving rather than upon those of flying, is, as Mr. Gould observes, often perceptible long before the animal can be seen.[1506]

Mr. Darwin remarks, as regards birds, “Bright colours and the power of song seem to replace each other. We can perceive that, if the plumage did not vary in brightness, or if bright colours were dangerous to the species, other means would be employed to charm the females; and melody of voice offers one such means.”[1507] But if we accept Mr. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, we are compelled to suppose that that inexplicable æsthetic sense of the females has been developed in the way most dangerous to the species. Conspicuous colours are admired by the females of those animals which, by means of such colours, are most easily discovered by their enemies, and sounds and odours are appreciated exactly in those species to which they are most perilous. If, on the contrary, we accept the explanation that, although sexual colours, odours, and sounds are in some ways hurtful to the species, they are upon the whole advantageous, inasmuch as they make it easier for the sexes to find each other, we have a theory in accordance with all known facts, as well as with the great principle of natural selection. It may be objected that it is not the females but the males that are the seekers, whilst the secondary sexual characters generally occur in the males only. But we have no reason to think that the females are entirely passive during the pairing season; and several of the statements collected by Mr. Darwin directly indicate that females are attracted by the sounds of their future partners. If Burdach is correct in saying that the male sex generally possesses more acute senses than the female,[1508] it is obvious that secondary sexual characters would be of less use to females than to males, as it certainly would be of greater danger.

In his work on ‘Darwinism,’ Mr. Wallace expresses the opinion that the various sounds and odours which are peculiar to the male serve as a call to the female, or as an indication of his presence; and, as he says, “the production, intensification, and differentiation of these sounds and odours are clearly within the power of natural selection.”[1509] Mr. Wallace has also shown the immense importance of colour as a means of recognition. The theory here set forth thus, in fact, very nearly approaches his views. The only difference is that the sexual colours have been classified under the head of “colour for recognition,” though the positive cause by which they have been produced may be a surplus of vital energy.

We have still to consider certain secondary sexual characters which, according to Mr. Darwin, must be regarded as ornaments. With these he classes the great horns which rise from the head, thorax, and clypeus of many male beetles; the appendages with which some male fishes and reptiles are provided; the combs, plumes, crests, and protuberances of many male birds; and various crests, tufts, and mantles of hair which are found in certain mammals. But some of these characters may be of use to the males in their fights for females, or serve as means of recognition. Mr. Wallace suggests that crests and other erectile feathers may have been useful in making the bird more formidable in appearance, and in thus frightening away enemies; while long tail or wing feathers might serve to distract the aim of a bird of prey.[1510] Moreover, characters of which we cannot yet perceive the use may in the future be brought under the law of utility, as has been the case in so many other instances. According to Mr. Wallace, the ornamental appendages of birds and other animals are due to a surplus of vital energy, leading to abnormal growths in those parts of the integument where muscular and nervous action are greatest.[1511] And where these “ornaments” are of no positive disadvantage to the species, certainly no other explanation is needed.

For other arguments which may be advanced against Mr. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, reference may be made to Mr. Wallace’s criticisms in ‘Tropical Nature’ and ‘Darwinism.’ We have sufficient evidence that females are pleased or excited by the males’ display of their sexual colours,[1512] and are charmed by their songs. But Mr. Darwin’s theory presupposes, amongst many other things, that almost all the females of a species, over a wide area and for many successive generations, prefer exactly the same modification of the colour, or ornament or sounds.[1513] Moreover, if the secondary sexual characters are due to female choice, how shall we explain the strange fact that the taste of the females varies so much that there are scarcely two species in which the standard of perfection is exactly the same? This difficulty did not escape Mr. Darwin. “It is a curious fact,” he says, “that in the same class of animals sounds so different as the drumming of the snipe’s tail, the tapping of the woodpecker’s beak, the harsh trumpet-like cry of certain waterfowl, the cooing of the turtle-dove, and the song of the nightingale, should all be pleasing to the females of the several species.” And further, “What shall we say about the harsh screams of, for instance, some kinds of macaws; have these birds as bad taste for musical sounds as they apparently have for colour, judging by the inharmonious contrast of their bright yellow and blue plumage?”[1514]

The theory now suggested accounts fully for this difference in taste. The immense variability of the secondary sexual characters is precisely what might be expected, if their object is to make it easier for the sexes to find and recognize each other. And it is natural that the females should be pleased by colours, odours, or sounds which, by the association of ideas, are to them the symbols of the most exciting period of their lives. On the other hand, we know that differently coloured races of the same species may be disinclined to pair together.[1515] And here, I think, we may draw an important conclusion. The great stability of the secondary sexual characters which we find in wild species, but certainly not in animals under domestication, seems to be due chiefly to the fact that those males which most typically represent the peculiarities of their species have the best chance of finding mates.

* * * * *

The reader may have felt some surprise at this strange jump from the patria potestas to a discussion of merely zoological facts, which have nothing to do, directly, with the history of human marriage. But we have now to deal with the sexual selection of man, and, for the right understanding of this, it was necessary to show that the sexual selection of the lower animals is entirely subordinate to the great law of natural selection. Mr. Darwin discussed the origin of the secondary sexual characters as a preliminary to the statement of his theory regarding the origin of man, and of the different races of men. At the end of the next chapter we shall consider whether this theory appears to be in accordance with facts or not.

XII. THE SEXUAL SELECTION OF MAN: TYPICAL BEAUTY

By the “Sexual Selection of Man” is meant the choice made by men and women as regards relations with the opposite sex. Mr. Darwin has shown that such selection takes place among the lower Vertebrata, and, judging from what we know of domesticated animals, it is much more common in the case of females than in that of males. The male, indeed, as a rule, seems to be ready to pair with any female, provided she belongs to his own species.[1516] As this probably depends upon the great strength of his sexual impulse, we may infer that in primitive times, when man had a definite pairing season, he displayed a like tendency, and that the sexual instinct, in proportion as it has become less intense, has become more discriminating.

Even now woman is more particular in her choice than man, provided that the union takes place without reference to interest. A Maori proverb says, “Let a man be ever so good-looking, he will not be much sought after; but let a woman be ever so plain, men will still eagerly seek after her.”[1517] With regard to the Negroes of Sogno, Merolla da Sorrento states, “Women would have experience of their husbands before they married them, in like manner as the men were to have of them; and in this particular I can aver that they are commonly much more obstinate or fickle than men, for I have known many instances in which the men were willing to be married, while the women held back, and either fled away or made excuses.”[1518] Among the Eastern Central Africans, according to Mr. Macdonald, many cases are known of slave wives running away from free husbands, but none of slave husbands running away from free wives.[1519] In the crossings between unequal human races, the father almost always belongs to the superior race. “In every case,” says M. de Quatrefages, “and especially in transient amours, woman refuses to lower herself; man is less delicate.”[1520] Thus, cases in which negresses form unions with the indigenous men of America are very rare;[1521] and Dr. Nott, who wrote in the middle of this century, never personally met any one who was the offspring of a negro man and a white woman, because of the extreme rarity of such half-breeds.[1522] In New Zealand it sometimes happens that a European man marries a Maori woman; but Mr. Kerry Nicholls never came across an instance where a European woman had married a Maori man.[1523] Even in civilized society men are less particular in their connections than women of corresponding education, no doubt, would be, even if the rules of everyday morality were the same for both sexes.

* * * * *

In this and the following four chapters we shall deal with the instinctive feelings by which the sexes are guided in the act of selection. We have already observed that the sexual instinct is excited by artificial means, such as ornaments, mutilations, &c. Now we have to consider the intrinsic characters of a human being which affect the passions of a person of the opposite sex.

Mr. Darwin has shown that, among the lower Vertebrata, the female commonly gives the preference to “the most vigorous, defiant, and mettlesome male,”—a taste the origin of which is easily accounted for by the theory of natural selection. A similar instinctive appreciation of manly strength and courage is found in women, especially in the women of savage races. In a song, communicated by Mr. Schoolcraft, an Indian girl gives the following description of her ideal:— “My love is tall and graceful as the young pine waving on the hill—And as swift in his course as the noble stately deer—His hair is flowing, and dark as the blackbird that floats through the air—And his eyes, like the eagle’s, both piercing and bright—His heart, it is fearless and great—And his arm, it is strong in the fight.”[1524] A tale from Madagascar tells of a princess whose beauty fascinated all men. Many princes fought to obtain possession of her; but she refused them all, and chose a lover who was young, handsome, courageous, and strong.[1525] The beautiful Atalanta gave herself to the best runner;[1526] and the hero suitors of the Finnish myths had to undergo difficult trials to prove their courage.[1527] “When a Dyak wants to marry,” says Mr. Bock, “he must show himself a hero before he can gain favour with his intended.” He has to secure a number of human heads by killing men of hostile tribes; and the more heads he cuts off, the greater the pride and admiration with which he is regarded by his bride.[1528] The demands of the Sàkalàva girls of Madagascar are less cruel. When a young man wishes to obtain a wife, his qualifications, according to Mr. Sibree, are tested thus:—“Placed at a certain distance from a clever caster of the spear, he is bidden to catch between his arm and side every spear thrown by the man opposite to him. If he displays fear or fails to catch the spear, he is ignominiously rejected; but if there be no flinching and the spears are caught, he is at once proclaimed an accepted ‘lover.’” It is said that a similar custom prevailed among the Bétsiléo, another Madagascar tribe.[1529] Among the Dongolowees, as we are informed by Dr. Felkin, if two men are suitors for a girl, and there is a difficulty in deciding between the rivals, the following method is adopted. The fair lady has a knife tied to each forearm, so fixed that the blade of the knife projects below the elbow. She then takes up a position on a log of wood, the young men sitting on either side with their legs closely pressed against hers. Raising her arms, the girl leans forward, and slowly presses the knives into the thighs of her would-be husbands. The suitor who best undergoes this trial of endurance wins the bride, whose first duty after marriage is to dress the wounds she has herself inflicted.[1530] Speaking of the natives on the River Darling, Major T. L. Mitchell says that the possession of gins, or wives, appears to be associated with all their ideas of fighting; “while, on the other hand, the gins have it in their power on such occasions to evince that universal characteristic of the fair, a partiality for the brave. Thus it is, that, after a battle, they do not always follow their fugitive husbands from the field, but frequently go over as a matter of course, to the victors.”[1531]

We may infer that women’s instinctive inclination to strong and courageous men is due to natural selection in two ways. A strong man is not only father of strong children, but he is also better able than a weak man to protect his offspring. The female instinct is especially well marked at the lower stages of civilization, because bodily vigour is then of most importance in the struggle for existence. The same principle explains the attraction which health in a woman has for men. In civilized society, infirmity and sickliness are not always a serious hindrance to love, but in a savage state, says Alexander v. Humboldt, “nothing can induce a man to unite himself to a deformed woman, or one who is very unhealthy.”[1532]

The ancient Greeks conceived Eros as an extremely handsome youth, and Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty as well as of love. So closely are these two ideas—love and beauty—connected. This connection is not peculiar to the civilized mind. In Tahiti, Cook saw several instances where women preferred personal beauty to interest.[1533] The Negroes of the West African Coast, according to Mr. Winwood Reade, often discuss the beauty of their women;[1534] and, among the cannibal savages of Northern Queensland, described by Herr Lumholtz, the women take much notice of a man’s face, especially of the part about the eyes.[1535] But, although in every country, in every race, beauty stimulates passion, the ideas of what constitutes beauty vary indefinitely. As Hume says, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”[1536]

A flat, retreating brow seems to white men to spoil what would otherwise be a pretty face; but “the Chinook ideal of facial beauty,” says Mr. Bancroft, “is a straight line from the end of the nose to the crown of the head.”[1537] A little snubnose may embitter the life of a European girl; but the Australian natives “laugh at the sharp noses of Europeans, and call them in their language ‘tomahawk noses,’ much preferring their own style of flat broad noses.”[1538] The Tahitians frequently said to Mr. Williams, “What a pity it is that English mothers pull the children’s noses so much, and make them so frightfully long!”[1539] We admire white teeth and rosy cheeks; but a servant of the king of Cochin China spoke with contempt of the wife of the English ambassador, because she had white teeth like a dog and a rosy colour like that of potato flowers.[1540] In the northern parts of the Chinese Empire, according to Pallas, those women are preferred who are of the Manchu type,—that is, who have a broad face, high cheek-bones, very broad noses, and enormous ears;[1541] and the South American Uaupés consider a swollen calf one of the chief attractions a young lady can possess, the result being that girls wear a tight garter below the knee from infancy.[1542]

Even among the Aryan peoples the standard of beauty varies. “To an honest Fleming, who has never studied design,” says M. Bombet, “the forms of Rubens’s women are the most beautiful in the world. Let not us, who admire slenderness of form above everything else, and to whom the figures even of Raphael’s women appear rather massive, be too ready to laugh at him. If we were to consider the matter closely, it would appear that each individual, and, consequently, each nation, has a separate idea of beauty.”[1543]

What human characteristics are considered beautiful, and how has beauty come to influence the sexual selection of man? In trying to answer these questions, we shall note only such characteristics as are held to be beautiful by considerable groups of men, apart from individual differences of taste; and we shall confine ourselves to physical beauty, as presenting itself in bodily forms and the colour of the skin. Mr. Spencer maintains that “mental and facial perfection are fundamentally connected,” and that “the aspects which please us are the outward correlatives of inward perfections, while the aspects which displease us are the outward correlatives of inward imperfections.”[1544] But Mr. Spencer evidently looks upon beauty, or “facial perfection,” as something real in the sense in which mental qualities are real,—an opinion with which it is difficult to agree. The lateral jutting-out of the cheek-bones, which seems to him an index of imperfection, is admired by many of the lower races.

The full development of those visible properties which are essential to the human organism is universally recognized as indispensable to perfect beauty,—natural deformity, the unsymmetrical shape of the body, apparent traces of disease, &c., being regarded by every race as unfavourable to personal appearance. We distinguish between masculine and feminine beauty, and, in spite of racial differences, the ideas of what constitute these forms of beauty are fundamentally the same throughout the world. To be really handsome a person must approach the ideal type of his or her sex. The male organism is remarkable for the development of the muscular system, the female for that of fatty elements; and conspicuous muscles are everywhere considered to improve the appearance of a man, rounded forms that of a woman. According to v. Humboldt, the natives of Guiana, to express the beauty of a woman, say that “she is fat and has a narrow forehead.” A traveller found that a Kirghiz’s estimate of female beauty was regulated by the amount of fat, “for even when dilating on the beauties of his favourite wife, he laid the greatest stress on her embonpoint.”[1545] The Kafirs and Hottentots are charmed by their women’s long and pendant breasts, which, in certain tribes, assume such monstrous dimensions, that the usual way of giving suck, when the child is carried on the back, is by throwing the breast over the shoulder.[1546] Mr. Reade tells us that, among the Mpongwé of Gaboon, even very young girls “strive to emulate the pendant beauties of their seniors.”[1547] The Makololo women, according to Dr. Livingstone, make themselves fat and pretty by drinking a peculiar drink called “boyáloa”;[1548] and, among the Trarsa, a Moorish tribe in the Western Sahara, the women take immense quantities of milk and butter to make themselves more attractive.[1549] Such exaggerations, however repugnant to a more refined taste, indicate a general tendency in men’s notions of female beauty.

Among Europeans, men are on an average two or three inches taller than women,[1550] and have a greater breadth of shoulder. A high-built and broad-shouldered figure is also regarded as an ideal of manly beauty, whereas women who are very tall or broad are apt to be rather awkward. A woman’s face is shorter, her mouth less broad, her nose less prominent, her neck longer, her pelvis wider, her waist narrower than a man’s; and her fingers are more slender and pointed, her hands and feet smaller. The halving line of a woman’s body is lower than that of a man’s, so that her steps are shorter and lighter.[1551] As a matter of fact, a long face, a broad mouth, and large hands and feet are much more objectionable in a woman than in a man. Women have a special liking for low-bodied dresses, which display the full length of the neck; and by means of a corset they make the waist narrower than it is by nature.

There is thus an ideal of beauty which, no doubt, may be said to be common to the whole human race. But this ideal is merely an abstraction which can never be realized. General similarities in taste are accompanied by specific differences. Though every one admits that a face without a nose is ugly, no particular form of the nose is universally admired; and races which regard a swelling bosom as essen— tial to feminine beauty differ widely from the Hottentots as to the charm of pendant breasts.

Every race has, indeed, its own standard of beauty. Alexander von Humboldt long ago observed, “Nations attach the idea of beauty to everything which particularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their natural physiognomy. Thence it results that, if nature have bestowed very little beard, a narrow forehead, or a brownish-red skin, every individual thinks himself beautiful in proportion as his body is destitute of hair, his head flattened, his skin more covered with ‘annotto,’ or ‘chica,’ or some other coppery-red colour.”[1552] This view has been adopted by several later writers,[1553] but, as it has been disputed by others,[1554] it may be well to bring together some fresh evidence, as an addition to that collected by Mr. Darwin.

The Sinhalese, says Dr. Davy, who are great connoisseurs of the charms of the sex, and have books on the subject, and rules to aid the judgment, would not allow a woman to be perfectly beautiful unless she had the following characteristics:—“Her hair should be voluminous like the tail of the peacock, long, reaching to the knees, and terminating in graceful curls; her nose should be like the bill of the hawk, and lips bright and red, like coral on the young leaf of the iron-tree. Her neck should be large and round, her chest capacious, her breasts firm and conical, like the yellow cocoa-nut, and her waist small—almost small enough to be clasped by the hand. Her lips should be wide; her limbs tapering; the soles of her feet without any hollow, and the surface of her body in general, soft, delicate, smooth, and rounded, without the asperities of projecting bones and sinews.” Dr. Davy adds, “The preceding is the most general external character that can be given of the Sinhalese.”[1555]

The women of the Indo-European race are remarkable for the length of their hair. “Dans nos contrées,” Isidore Geoffroy observes, “ces développements ajoutent à la beauté des femmes; dans d’autres pays, si on les y observait, ils passeraient presque pour de légers vices de conformation.”[1556] “A small round face,” says Castrén, “full rosy red cheeks and lips, white forehead, black tresses, and small dark eyes are marks of a Samoyede beauty. Thus in a Samoyedian song a girl is praised for her small eyes, her broad face, and its rosy colour.”[1557] These, as we know, are the typical characteristics of the Samoyedes.[1558] As to the Tartar women, who generally have far less prominent noses than we in Europe are accustomed to see, Father de Rubruquis states, “The less their noses the handsomer they are esteemed.”[1559] In Fiji, the remarkably broad occiput, peculiar to its people, is looked upon as a mark of beauty.[1560] Among the Egyptians Mr. Lane scarcely ever saw corpulent persons, and, unlike many other African peoples, they do not admire very fat women:—“In his love-songs, the Egyptian commonly describes the object of his affections as of slender figure, and small waist.”[1561] “The negroes,” says v. Humboldt, “give the preference to the thickest and most prominent lips; the Kalmucks to turned-up noses; and the Greeks, in the statues of heroes, raised the facial line from 85° to 100° beyond nature. The Aztecs, who never disfigure the heads of their children, represent their principal divinities, as their hieroglyphical manuscripts prove, with a head much more flattened than any I have ever seen among the Caribs.”[1562]

The fashion, prevalent among many peoples, of transforming parts of the body, affords a good illustration of their ideas about personal beauty. The Indians of North America, who have a low and flat forehead, often exaggerate this natural peculiarity by an artificial flattening of the forehead.[1563] In Tahiti, Samoa, and other islands of the Pacific Ocean, it has been customary from time immemorial to flatten the occiputs and to press the noses of the infants, as Professor Gerland observes, in order to increase a national characteristic which is considered beautiful.[1564] The same practice occurs in Sumatra, and Marsden could learn no other reason for it, but that it was an improvement of beauty in the estimation of the natives.[1565] Among the Ovambo of South Africa, the fashion is quite different:—“With the exception of the crown, which is always left untouched,” says Andersson, “the men often shave the head, which has the effect of magnifying the natural prominence of the hinder parts of it.”[1566] Among the Chinese, small feet are considered a woman’s chief attraction; hence the feet of girls are pressed from early childhood. Now we know from the measurements made by Scherzer and Schwarz, that Chinese women have by nature unusually small feet—a peculiarity which has always distinguished them from their Tartar neighbours. And, as a matter of fact, the Manchu Tartars, who at present rule the Chinese Empire, never press the feet of their daughters.[1567]

Each race considers its own colour preferable to every other. The North American Indians admire “a tawny hide,” and the Chinese dislike the white skin of the Europeans.[1568] Some young New Zealanders, who themselves were lightly copper-coloured, were greatly amused at the dark tint of an Australian, and laughed at him for being so ugly.[1569] Barrington tells us on the other hand, of an Australian woman, who, having had a child by a white man, smoked it and rubbed it with oil to give it a darker colour.[1570] The Hovas, who are probably, as a rule, the lightest people in Madagascar, often put a spot of dark colour on the cheeks, in order to heighten the effect of their fair complexion, of which they are very proud.[1571] Among the Malays, according to Mr. Crawfurd, “the standard of perfection in colour is virgin gold, and, as a European lover compares the bosom of his mistress to the whiteness of snow, the East Insular lover compares that of his to the yellowness of the precious metal.”[1572]

The object of the painting of the body, so commonly practised among savages, seems sometimes to be to exaggerate the natural colour of the skin. Von Humboldt believes that this is the reason why the American Indians paint themselves with red ochre and earth.[1573] The natives of Tana, who have the colour of an old copper coin, usually dye their bodies a few shades darker;[1574] whilst the Bornabi Islanders, who have a light copper-coloured complexion, “anoint their bodies with turmeric, in order to give themselves a whiter appearance.”[1575] The Javanese, when in full dress, smear themselves with a yellow cosmetic.[1576] And, speaking of the people of a place in Maabar (Coromandel Coast), Marco Polo says, “The children that are born here are black enough, but the blacker they be the more they are thought of; wherefore from the day of their birth their parents do rub them every week with oil of sesamé, so that they become as black as devils. Moreover, they make their gods black and their devils white, and the images of their saints they do paint black all over.”[1577]

The question,—What characteristics of the human form are deemed beautiful? may now be answered. Men find beauty in the full development of the visible characteristics belonging to the human organism in general; of those peculiar to the sex; of those peculiar to the race. We have next to consider the connection of love and beauty.

That this connection does not depend upon the æsthetic pleasure excited by beauty is obvious from the fact that the intrinsic character of an æsthetic feeling is disinterestedness, whereas the intrinsic character of love is the very reverse. So far as beauty implies the full development of characteristics essential to the human organism, or to either of the sexes, the preference given to it follows from the instinctive inclination to healthiness, already mentioned, and needs no further discussion. The question is to explain the stimulating influence of racial perfection.

“In barbarous nations,” says v. Humboldt, “there is a physiognomy peculiar to the tribe or horde rather than to any individual. When we compare our domestic animals with those which inhabit our forests, we make the same observation.”[1578] The accuracy of this statement has been confirmed by later writers;[1579] and we may say with M. Godron, “C’est —aujourd’hui un fait parfaitement acquis à la science, que plus un peuple se rapproche de l’état de nature, plus les hommes qui le composent se ressemblent entre eux.”[1580] This likeness does not refer to the physiognomy only, but to the body as a whole. The variations of stature, for instance, are known to be least considerable among the peoples least advanced in civilization.[1581]

It cannot be doubted that this greater similarity is due partly to the greater uniformity of the conditions of life to which uncivilized peoples are subject. According to Villermé and Quetelet, an inequality of stature is observed not only between the inhabitants of towns on the one hand and those of the country on the other, but also, in the interior of towns, between individuals of different professions.[1582] There is, however, another factor, which is, I think, of still greater importance.

The deviations from the national type, which occur sporadically, have been considered the result of disease, and can, as Professor Waitz observes, “but rarely become permanent, as the national type is always that which harmonizes with the soil and the climate, and the external relations in which the respective peoples live.”[1583] We must assume that a certain kind of constitution is best suited for certain conditions of life, and that every considerable deviation from this must perish in the struggle for existence in a state in which natural selection is constantly at work and physical qualities are of the first importance. We know from Isidore Geoffroy’s investigations that persons who deviate much, with regard to the length of body, from the common standard—they may be dwarfs or giants—are, as a rule, abnormal in other respects also, being deficient in intelligence as well as in the power of reproduction, and being especially liable to premature death.[1584] Sir W. Lawrence, too, remarks that the strength of men who have considerably exceeded the ordinary standard has by no means corresponded to their size, and that “there are very few instances of what we can deem healthy, well-made men, with all the proper attributes of the race, much below the general standard.”[1585] If, among civilized peoples, such deviations indicate some disturbance of the vital functions, and, as a consequence, are unfavourable to existence, this must be even more the case with savage tribes, all the members of which are subject to nearly the same conditions of life. Abnormal characteristics may sometimes flourish in a highly civilized society, but they are doomed to perish in communities among whom the struggle for existence is far more severe.

It may at first sight seem strange that all the characteristics, however slight, in which the various races of men differ from each other, should harmonize with particular conditions of life to the exclusion of others. But it must be remembered that, if we had fuller knowledge, characteristics which seem to us useless, or even hurtful, might be seen to be useful. We know the utility of some special characteristics, and that of others may, at least provisionally, be assumed. It is certain that the physiological functions of most persons who quit their native land and settle in a wholly different region, must undergo a considerable change if the new conditions are not to have injurious effects. Moreover, many bodily structures are so intimately related, that when one part varies others vary also, though, in most instances, we are quite unable to assign any reason why this should be the case.

Savage men are generally distinguished for relatively large jaws, which, no doubt, are of use in a state of nature, where food is often hard and tough, where the jaws have to perform the functions of knife and fork, and where the teeth occasionally serve as implements. This racial peculiarity, being in fact only a mark of low civilization, is thus easily accounted for by the law of natural selection. The less man, with advancing civilization, was in want of large and strong jaws, the greater was the chance for individuals born with smaller jaws to survive; hence a race with comparatively small jaws gradually arose. Indeed, Professor Virchow has shown that the prognathous type of face is inconsistent with the full development of the brain.[1586]

Another peculiarity which characterizes the lower races of men is the lateral jutting-out of the cheek-bones. But, as Mr. Spencer observes, this excessive size of the cheek-bones is only an accompaniment of large jaws. Other peculiarities of feature—depression of the bridge of the nose, forward opening of the nostrils, wide-spread alæ, and a long and large mouth—constantly coexist with large and protuberant jaws and great cheek-bones, alike in uncivilized races and in the young of civilized races;[1587] hence we cannot believe that the connection is merely accidental.

Professor Schaaffhausen has noticed that many peculiarities of the skull are coincident with arrested cerebral development and correlated to each other:—“The characters observed in the skulls of the lower races, namely, a narrow and low frontal bone, a short sagittal suture, a low temporal squama, a short occipital squama, the upper margin of which forms a flat arch, are therefore to be considered as approximations to the animal form, and they stand to each other in organic connection.”[1588] It seems as if stature and muscular force were in some way connected with the dolichocephalic and the brachycephalic forms of the skull, for Welcker found that short men and short races incline more to the latter, tall men and tall races to the former. Again, according to Fick, the muscles exercise a remarkable influence on the form of the bones in general, and particularly upon some cranial bones.[1589]

The process of acclimatization affords opportunities for the study of the connection between organic structures and functions on the one hand, and surrounding nature on the other. At present, however, our knowledge of the subject is exceedingly scanty. It has been asserted that the curly hair of the European becomes straight in America,—like the hair of an Indian; that in North America, as in New South Wales, children of European parents are apt to become tall and lean, whilst there is a tendency among European colonists at the Cape to grow fat,—which reminds us of the steatopygy of the native women.[1590] Almost all that we know with certainty is that, in the process of acclimatization, man has to undergo a change, and that this change is often too great to be endurable. As Dr. Felkin observes, Europeans are almost incapable of forming colonies in the tropics;[1591] and, with few exceptions, they have been unable to rear a sound progeny there in marriage with white women.[1592] Colonel Hadden, who has spent sixteen years in India, informs me that it is a prevalent opinion among British officers in that country that an English regiment of a thousand men would, within thirteen years, from climate, disease, or other casualties, almost wholly die out. This statement well agrees with Professor Sprenger’s, that a regiment consisting of eight hundred men loses within ten years more than seven hundred.[1593] It is also, according to Colonel Hadden, a common report that, of a third generation of pure Europeans in India, children only are, occasionally, met with, and that they never reach the age of puberty.[1594] English parents, as a rule, send their children to Europe when five or six years old, as otherwise they would succumb.[1595] According to Mr. Squier, it is the concurrent testimony of all intelligent and observing men in Central America that the pure whites are there not only relatively but absolutely decreasing in numbers, whilst the pure Indians are rapidly increasing, and the Ladinos more and more approximating to the aboriginal type.[1596]

The colour of the skin is justly considered one of the chief characteristics of race. Now it is quite impossible to assign any definite reason why one race is white, another black, brown, or yellow. Nobody has yet been able to prove that the colour of the skin is of any direct use to man, and it certainly is not the immediate result of long exposure to a certain climate. But we know that there exists an intimate connection between the colour of the skin and bodily constitution. “Les colorations diverses,” says M. Godron, “qui distinguent les différentes variétés de l’espèce humaine, tiennent beaucoup moins aux agents physiques, qu’aux phénomènes les plus intimes de l’organisation qui dans l’état actuel de la science, nous échappent et resteront peut-être toujours couverts d’un voile impénétrable.”[1597] Thus the alteration in the customary physiological functions called acclimatization, seems often to be connected with some change of colour not directly depending upon the influence of the sun. Dr. Mayer observed that a European at the tropics loses his rosy complexion, the difference in colour between arterial and venous blood being strikingly diminished on account of the smaller absorption of oxygen, which results from the feebler process of combustion.[1598] According to Dr. Tylor, it is asserted that the pure negro in the United States has undergone a change which has left him a shade lighter in complexion;[1599] whilst a long medical experience at New Orleans showed Dr. Visinié that the blood of the American negro has lost the excess of plasticity which it possessed in Africa.[1600] A negro boy brought to Germany by Gerhard Rohlfs, changed his colour after a residence of two years, from deep black to light brown.[1601] Klinkosch mentions the case of a negro who lost his blackness and became yellow; and Caldani declares that a negro, who was a shoemaker at Venice, was black when brought, during infancy, to that city, but became gradually lighter, and had the hue of a person suffering from a slight jaundice.[1602] In the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ there is even a record of a negro who became as white as a European.[1603] On the other hand, we are told of an English gentleman Macnaughten by name, who long lived the life of a native in the jungle of Southern India, and acquired, even on the clothed portions of his body, a skin as brown as that of a Brahman.[1604] These statements, if true, certainly refer to exceedingly exceptional cases, but their accuracy cannot be à priori denied. We know that certain organisms are much better able than others to undergo the change which constitutes acclimatization, and we have no positive reason to doubt that this power may, in abnormal cases, be extraordinarily great. At any rate, it is beyond doubt that a close connection exists between the colour of the skin and the physiological functions of the body, on the one hand, and between these and the conditions of life on the other. Disease is commonly accompanied by a change of colour. Mr. Wallace observes that, in many islands of the Malay Archipelago, species of widely different genera of butterflies differ in precisely the same way as to colour or form from allied species in other islands.[1605] The same thing occurs to a less degree in other parts of the world also. And Agassiz has pointed out that, in Asia and Africa, the large apes and the human races have the same colour of the skin.[1606]

We may thus take for granted that racial peculiarities stand in some connection with the external circumstances in which the various races live. It may perhaps be objected that we meet with native tribes of various types on the same degree of latitude, and under the same climatic conditions.[1607] But we must remember that it is often impossible to decide whether the conditions of life are exactly the same; that intermixture of blood has caused a great confusion of racial types; and that all peoples have arrived at their present localities after more or less extensive migrations. We may be sure that some characters have been preserved from earlier times when the race lived in other circumstances, and that the higher its degree of civilization the less likely it would be to lose the stamp impressed upon it.[1608]

It is, however, exceedingly doubtful whether racial differences are so directly the result of external influences as anthropologists generally believe,—that is, whether they are the inherited effects of conditions of life to which previous generations have been subject. Professor Weismann, as is well known, thinks that acquired characters are not transmitted from parent to offspring. “It has never been proved,” he says, “that acquired characters are transmitted, and it has never been demonstrated that, without the aid of such transmission, the evolution of the organic world becomes unintelligible.”[1609] Man has from time immemorial mutilated his body in various ways, and there is not a single well-founded case of these mutilations having been inherited by the offspring.[1610] The children of accomplished pianists do not inherit the art of playing the piano. Facts show that children of highly civilized nations have no trace of a language, when they have grown up in a wild condition and in complete isolation.[1611] Change in colour influenced by sun and air is obviously temporary. The children of the husbandman, or of the sailor, are just as fair as those of the most delicate and pale inhabitant of a city; and, although the Moors, who have lived in Africa since the seventh century, are generally in mature life very sunburnt, their children are as white as those born in Europe, and “restent blancs toute leur vie, quand leurs travaux ne les exposent pas aux ardeurs du soleil.”[1612]

Such facts are certainly not in favour of the prevalent theory that the differences of race are due to direct adaptation. Whether Professor Weismann’s theory proves to be well founded or not, we manifestly cannot assume that the heredity of acquired characters suffices to explain the origin of the human races. It seems most probable that, at the very earliest stages of human evolution, mankind was restricted to a comparatively small area, and was then homogeneous, as every animal and vegetable species is under similar conditions. In the struggle for existence the intellectual faculties of man were developed, and before the breaking away of isolated groups he may have invented the art of making fire, and of fabricating the simplest implements and weapons. This mental superiority made it possible for man to disperse, enabling him to exist even under conditions somewhat different from those to which he was originally adapted. His organism had to undergo certain changes, but we are not aware that these modifications were transmitted to descendants. All that we know is, that the children born were not exactly like each other, and that those who happened to vary most in accordance with the new conditions of life as a rule survived, and became the ancestors of following generations. The congenital characters which enabled them to survive were of course transmitted to their offspring, and thus, through natural selection,[1613] races would gradually arise, the members of each of which would have as hereditary dispositions the same peculiarities as those which, to a certain extent, may be acquired through acclimatization, but then only for the individual himself, not for his descendants. We can thus understand how the children of a negro are black[1614]—even if they are born in Europe[1615]—as the black colour is the correlative of certain physiological processes favourable to existence in the country of their race. They survive, whilst the children of Europeans who have emigrated to the tropics are carried off in great numbers, even though their parents have succeeded in undergoing the functional modifications which accompanied the change of abode.

This explanation of racial differences seems the more acceptable, when we take into consideration the immense period which has elapsed since man began to spread over the earth, and the slow and gradual change of abodes. He was not at once moved from the tropics to the polar zones, or from the polar zones to the tropics, but had to undergo an indefinitely long chain of adaptive processes. Thus were gradually established such radical differences as those which distinguish a European from a negro, an Australian from a Red-skin.

* * * * *

We have now found an answer to our question, why man, in the choice of mate, gives the preference to the best representatives of his race. The full development of racial characters indicates health, a deviation from them indicates disease. Physical beauty is thus in every respect the outward manifestation of physical perfection, or healthiness, and the development of the instinct which prefers beauty to ugliness is evidently within the power of natural selection.

This explanation of the connection between love and beauty, as also of the origin of the races of men, is very different from that given by Mr. Darwin. “The men of each race,” he says, “prefer what they are accustomed to; they cannot endure any great change; but they like variety, and admire each characteristic carried to a moderate extreme.... As the great anatomist Bichat long ago said, if every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety, and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.”[1616]

In the fashions of our own dress, says Mr. Darwin, we see exactly the same principle and the same desire to carry every point to an extreme.[1617] Man prefers, to a certain extent, what he is accustomed to see. Thus the Maoris, who are in the habit of dyeing their lips blue, consider it “a reproach to a woman to have red lips;”[1618] and we ourselves dislike, on the whole, any great deviation from the leading fashions. But, on the other hand, man wants variety. Now in one, now in another way, he changes his dress in order to attract attention, or to charm. The fashions of savages are certainly more permanent than ours;[1619] but the extreme diversity of ornaments with which many uncivilized peoples bedeck themselves, shows their emulation to make themselves attractive by means of new enticements. “Each of the Outanatas (New Guinea),” says Mr. Earl, “seemed desirous of ornamenting himself in some way different from his neighbour;”[1620] and, with regard to the Pacific Islanders, Mr. John Williams remarks that “the inhabitants of almost every group ... have their peculiar ideas as to what constitutes an addition to beauty.”[1621] But it is impossible to believe that the different races’ ideal of personal beauty are in any way connected with this capriciousness of taste. Were this the case, as Mr. Darwin suggests, the men of each race would admire variations and piquant peculiarities in the appearance of their women, and not only each characteristic point “carried to a moderate extreme.”

According to Mr. Darwin, racial differences are due to the different standards of beauty, whereas, according to the theory here indicated, the different standards of beauty are due to racial differences. “Let us suppose,” says Mr. Darwin, “the members of a tribe, practising some form of marriage, to spread over an unoccupied continent, they would soon split up into distinct hordes, separated from each other by various barriers, and still more effectually by the incessant wars between all barbarous nations. The hordes would thus be exposed to slightly different conditions and habits of life, and would sooner or later come to differ in some small degree. As soon as this occurred, each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard of beauty; and then unconscious selection would come into action through the more powerful and leading men preferring certain women to others. Thus the differences between the tribes, at first very slight, would gradually and inevitably be more or less increased.”[1622] This theory—that racial differences are due to sexual selection—obviously presupposes either that the human organism is alike well fitted to any climate and natural conditions; or that no correlation exists between the visible parts of the body and its functions. Otherwise, of course, little effect could be produced through the preference given to certain individuals; for in a savage state, where celibacy is an exception, those men and women whose constitution was best suited to the conditions of life would, in any case, in the end, determine the racial type. It is also difficult to see how those slight variations from the original human type, which, according to Mr. Darwin, characterized the distinct hordes or tribes into which mankind was split up, could have developed into such enormous differences as we find in the colour of the skin of, for example, a negro and a European—only through the selection of the best representatives of these tribal peculiarities, these slight variations. Finally, it seems doubtful whether Mr. Darwin would have ascribed racial differences in colour to the influence of sexual selection, had he considered the important fact, already mentioned, that the larger apes have the same colour of the skin as the human races living in the same country.

Mr. Darwin also thinks that the differences in external appearance between man and the lower animals are, to a certain extent, due to sexual selection. The chief character of the human race which he proposes to account for in this way is the general hairlessness of the body. “No one supposes,” he says, “that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man; his body therefore cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection.”[1623] It is curious that the hairlessness of man has puzzled so many anthropologists,[1624] as it may very easily be explained by the law of variation. When man had invented the art of making fire, and the idea of covering himself to secure protection from cold had occurred to his mind, hairlessness was no serious disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Hence natural selection ceased to operate in the matter, and a hairless race gradually arose. We find the same principle at work in various other ways. Civilized man does not need such keen vision as savages;[1625] consequently many of us are short-sighted and few Europeans could match a Red Indian in his power of detecting the symptoms of a trail. For the same reason we are generally inferior to savages in the capacity for discriminating odours, and our teeth are apt to be very much less sound and vigorous than theirs.

That sexual selection has had some influence on the physical aspect of mankind is probable. Accurate observers in different parts of the world have remarked that personal deformities are very rare in savage races unaffected by European influence.[1626] This chiefly depends upon the fact that deformed individuals seldom survive the hardships of early life, but, as Sir W. Lawrence says, if they do survive, they are prevented by the kind of aversion they inspire from propagating their deformities.[1627] It is not unlikely that the selection of the best representatives of the race contributes to keep the racial type pure. Sexual selection, too, may be the cause why, among savages, the men are so often handsomer than the women—that is, better specimens of their sex and their race;[1628] whilst, in civilized society, the reverse is true. We have seen that savage women have great liberty of disposing of their own hand, and that, at lower stages of civilization, celibacy occurs almost exclusively among the men. Among us, on the contrary, the unmarried women outnumber the unmarried men, and, whilst a man’s ability to marry depends only to a small extent upon his personal appearance, the like may certainly not be said of women.

XIII. THE LAW OF SIMILARITY

A powerful instinct keeps animals from pairing with individuals belonging to another species than their own. “L’animal,” says M. Duvernoy, “a l’instinct de se rapprocher de son espèce et de s’éloigner des autres, comme il a celui de choisir ses aliments et d’éviter les poisons.”[1629] Among Birds, there are found a small number of wild hybrids, nearly all of which are in the order of Gallinae, and most of which belong to the genus Tetrao.[1630] But among Insects, Fishes, and Mammals, living in a state of nature, hybridism is unknown or almost so.[1631] And, even among domesticated mammals, some tricks are often required to deceive the male, and so to conquer its aversion to a female of a different species. The stallion, for instance, who is to cover a she-ass, is frequently first excited by the presence of a mare, for which, at the proper moment, the she-ass is substituted.[1632]

We may be sure that, were it not for this instinctive feeling, many more animal hybrids would be naturally produced than is the case. In the vegetable kingdom, where the play of instincts is altogether out of the question, bastards occur much more frequently;[1633] and in captivity a considerable number of animal hybrid forms are produced that are never met with in a state of nature.[1634] Yet, according to Mr. Darwin, there are good grounds for the doctrine of Pallas, that the conditions to which domesticated animals and cultivated plants have been subjected, generally eliminate the tendency towards mutual sterility, so that the domesticated descendants of species which in their natural state would have been in some degree sterile when crossed, become perfectly fertile.[1635]

The origin of this instinct, which helps to keep even closely allied species in a state of nature distinct, seems to be sufficiently clear. The number of species which have proved fertile together are very limited, and the fertility of the hybrid offspring is almost constantly diminished, often even to a very great extent. Of course, no one now talks of the sterility of hybrids as a moral necessity—hybrids being animalia adulterina,—or as the result of a special divine decree, that new species should not be multiplied indefinitely.[1636] M. Isidore Geoffroy has shown not only that hybrids may be fertile, but that “infertile” hybrids are, properly speaking, merely the hybrids which are most rarely fertile, their sterility never being absolute.[1637] Moreover, as has been pointed out by Mr. Wallace, in almost all the experiments that have hitherto been made in crossing distinct species, no care has been taken to avoid close interbreeding; hence these experiments cannot be held to prove that hybrids are in all cases infertile inter se.[1638] But looking to all the ascertained facts on the intercrossing of plants and animals, we may with Mr. Darwin conclude that some degree of sterility in hybrids is an extremely general result.[1639] This being the case with the hybrids of our domesticated animals, it must be so all the more with animals in a state of nature, which generally live under conditions less favourable to mutual fertility. It is easy to understand, then, that instincts leading to intercrossing of different species, even if appearing occasionally, never could be long-lived, as only those animals which preferred pairing with individuals of their own species, gave birth to an offspring endowed with a normal power of reproduction, and thus became the founders of numerous generations that inherited their instincts.

The relative or absolute sterility characterizing first crosses and hybrids depends upon a biological law which might be called the “Law of Similarity.” The degree of sterility, in either case,[1640] runs, at least to a certain extent, parallel with the general affinity of the forms that are united. Thus, most animal hybrids are produced by individuals belonging to the same genus, whilst species belonging to distinct genera can rarely, and those belonging to distinct families perhaps never, be crossed.[1641] The parallelism, however, is not complete, for a multitude of closely allied species will not unite, or unite only with great difficulty, though other species, widely different from each other, can be crossed with facility. Hence Mr. Darwin infers that the difficulty or facility in crossing “apparently depends exclusively on the sexual constitution of the species which are crossed, or on their sexual elective affinity, i.e., the ‘Wahlverwandtschaft’ of Gärtner.” But as species rarely, or never, become modified in one character, without being at the same time modified in many, and as systematic affinity includes all visible resemblances and dissimilarities, any difference in sexual constitution between two species would naturally stand in more or less close relation with their systematic position.[1642]

With regard to the instinct in question, man follows the general rule in the animal kingdom. Our notions of morality are closely connected with the instinctive feelings engraved in our nature; and bestiality is commonly looked upon as one of the most heinous crimes of which man can make himself guilty. Several passages both in ancient[1643] and modern writers[1644] prove the occasional occurrence of this crime, but always under circumstances analogous to those under which single birds sometimes form connections against nature,[1645] i.e., either because of isolation, or on account of vitiated instincts.[1646]

* * * * *

Supporters of the hypothesis that the several races of man are distinct species of the genus Homo, assert that an instinctive aversion similar to that which keeps different animal species from intermingling, exists also between the various human races.[1647] It may be noted by the way that, even if this were true, the idea that mankind consists of various species might be controverted; for certain races of domestic or semi-domesticated animals seem to prefer breeding with their own kind and refuse to mingle with others. Thus Mr. Bennett states that the dark and pale coloured herds of fallow deer, which have long been kept together in the Forest of Dean and two other places, have never been known to mingle. On one of the Faroe Islands, the half-wild native black sheep are said not to have readily mixed with the imported white sheep. And in Circassia, where six sub-races of the horse are known and have received distinct names, horses of three of these races, whilst living a free life, almost always refuse to mingle and cross, and will even attack each other.[1648] As for man, there are many races who dislike marrying persons of another race, but the motives are various. The different ideas of beauty no doubt play an important part. Mr. Winwoode Reade does not think it probable that negroes would prefer even the most beautiful European woman, on the mere grounds of physical admiration, to a good-looking negress.[1649] A civilized race does not readily intermingle with one less advanced in civilization, from the same motives as those which prevent a lord from marrying a peasant girl. And more than anything else, I think, the enmity, or at least, want of sympathy, due to difference of interests, ideas, and habits, which so often exist between distinct peoples or tribes, helps to keep races separate. But such reasons as these have nothing in common with the instinctive feeling which deters animals of distinct species from pairing with each other. Hence, when two races come into very close mutual contact, especially if they are at about the same stage of civilization, their dislike to intermarriage commonly disappears.

Mongrels form, indeed, a large proportion of the inhabitants of the world. It is doubtful whether there are any pure races in Europe; not even the Basques can pretend to purity of blood.[1650] M. Broca found, when investigating the subject of stature, that nineteen-twentieths of the whole population of France presented, in various degrees, the characters of mixed races.[1651] In North America, different races intermingle more and more every day. In Greenland, according to Dr. Nansen, in the course of a century and a half there has been such an intermixture of races that it would now be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a true Eskimo throughout the whole of the west coast; and the Europeans, far from being disliked by the native women have succeeded in inspiring them with so much respect that the “simplest European sailor is preferred to the best Eskimo seal catcher.”[1652] In Mexico, the Spanish mixed breeds constitute two-thirds or three-fourths of the whole population;[1653] and South America, to quote a French writer, is “le grand laboratoire des nations hybrides ou métisses modernes.”[1654] Of twelve millions of mongrels, which is the estimated number of mongrels on the face of the globe, no fewer than eleven millions are found there.[1655] Even in remote Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr. Bridges, some mongrels of European fathers and indigenous mothers have appeared during the last few years.

In Asia there are numberless instances of intermixture of breed between the Tartars, Mongols, and Tunguses, and the Russians and Chinese, &c.[1656] In India there are many Eurasians; in the Indian Archipelago Chinese and Malays intermarry;[1657] and, in the Islands of the South Sea, the mongrels of European fathers amount to a considerable number. In Africa, the eastern Soudan is a great centre of mixed breeds between races much removed from one another. And, in Southern Africa, the Griquas—the offspring of Dutch colonists and Hottentot women—form a very distinct race.

As far as we know, there are no human races who, when intermingled, are entirely sterile. But as regards the degree of fertility of first crosses and of mongrels, the opinions of different anthropologists vary considerably. Those who do not believe in the unity of the human race have been especially solicitous to prove that crosses are almost inevitably followed by bad results in that respect. Thus Dr. Knox thinks that the half-breeds, if they were abandoned to themselves and no longer had access to pure races, would rapidly disappear, the “hybrid” being rejected by nature as a degradation of humanity.[1658] Dr. Nott asserts that, when two proximate species of mankind, two races bearing a general resemblance to each other in type, are bred together, they produce offspring perfectly prolific; but that, when species the most widely separated, such as the Anglo-Saxon and the negro, are crossed, the mulatto offspring are but partially prolific, and acquire an inherent tendency to run out, and become eventually extinct, when kept apart from the parent stocks.[1659] The same opinion is entertained by M. Broca, and by M. Pouchet, who thinks that the crossed race will exist only if it continues to be supported by the two creating types remaining in the midst of it.[1660]

On the other hand, Dr. Prichard believes it may be asserted, without the least chance of valid contradiction, that mankind, of all races and varieties, are equally capable of having offspring by intermarriage, and that such connections are equally prolific whether contracted between individuals of the same variety or of the most dissimilar varieties. “If there is any difference,” he says, “it is probably in favour of the latter.”[1661] According to M. Godron, the mongrels have generally shown a higher degree of fertility than their parent races;[1662] and M. Quatrefages asserts that mulattoes are as fruitful as pure breeds.[1663]

It is to be regretted that so little attention has for some time been paid to this most important question. The result is that the effects of the intermixture of races are not much better known now, than they were twenty or thirty years ago. The only thing which may be considered certain is, that the hypothesis of the depressing influence of crossing upon fertility, as the theory has generally been propounded, involves a great deal of exaggeration. It is chiefly owing to M. Broca’s celebrated essay, ‘Sur l’hybridité,’ that this doctrine has been so widely accepted. He asserts that the connections of Europeans with Australian women have proved very slightly prolific, and that the mongrels resulting from them are almost sterile. “No statistical writer,” he says, “nor any historian, enumerates cross-breeds among the Australian population.”[1664] Yet, this land has for a considerable time been inhabited by European colonists, many of whom have not had opportunities of marrying wives of their own race. It has also been shown that the cohabitation of whites and native women is very common in Australia. But the number of mongrels there is, nevertheless, exceedingly small, so small that in the native dialects there does not exist a single word to designate them.[1665]

Supposing that these remarkable statements referred chiefly to the eastern and southern parts of the Australian continent, I asked Bishop R. Salvado and the Rev. Joseph Johnston, living in West Australia, to inform me whether, in that country, any mixed race exists, and, if so, whether it is fruitful or not. From the former, who has lived among the West Australian aborigines for more than forty years, and through an excellent work on their life and customs has gained the reputation of a first-rate authority, I had the pleasure of receiving the following answer, dated New Norcia, October 17, 1888:—“With regard to the sterility of the half-caste natives, of which I had no experience when I wrote my book, I am able now to deny it altogether, except in cases similar to those among the Europeans. I know several cases of husband and wife, half-caste natives, having at present six and seven and even eight children, and they may in time have more; and I know a good many Europeans who, having married native women, have several children. In fact, in the case of one of those marriages there were six children, and in another seven, and I could give the name of each of them.” The Rev. J. Johnston writes, “There is a school for half-caste boys and girls at Perth, and they seem bright and intelligent children, not unlike Polynesian children. As they grow up, they go out to service, and some of the youths are employed as post and telegraph messengers.... At the New Norcia mission, there are several half-caste families, as well as blacks, and they all have children.” The following statement of Mr. Taplin referring to the aborigines of the Lower Murray, goes in the same direction:—“The pure blacks,” he says, “are not so healthy as the half-castes. Always the children of two half-castes will be healthier and stronger than either the children of blacks or the children of a black and a half-caste. When a half-caste man and woman marry, they generally have a large and vigorous family. I could point to half a dozen such.”[1666]

These statements of highly competent persons are, I think, quite sufficient to disprove M. Broca’s hypothesis. They show that, if a mixed race is almost wanting in certain parts of Australia, this does not depend upon physiological conditions of the kind suggested. It should be remembered that the sexual intercourse of Europeans with savage women is most commonly transitory and accidental, and frequently takes place with prostitutes or licentious women, who are generally known to be sterile. And, even when the white settler takes a native’s daughter to live with him under his own roof as a wife or a concubine, and accustoms her to a half-civilized manner of living, her unfruitfulness[1667] may be owing to quite another cause than the mixture of blood. Mr. Darwin has shown that changed conditions of life have an especial power of acting injuriously on the reproductive system. Thus animals, as also plants, when removed from their natural conditions, are often rendered in some degree infertile or completely barren, even when the conditions have not been greatly changed. And this failure of animals to breed under confinement cannot, at least to any considerable extent, depend upon a failure in their sexual instincts. “Numerous cases,” says Mr. Darwin, “have been given of various animals which couple freely under confinement, but never conceive; or, if they conceive and produce young, these are fewer in number than is natural to the species.”[1668] It is reasonable to suppose that savage man, when he moves into more civilized conditions, is subject to the same law. Indeed, statements have been reported to me, which tend to show that the indigenous women at the Polynesian missionary stations have become less fruitful than they were in their native state. As to the alleged sterility of crosses between the European and Australian races, it should be observed that the rarity of mongrels in certain parts of Australia is more or less owing to the natives themselves habitually destroying the half-castes.[1669] The Rev. A. Meyer states that, in the Encounter Bay tribe, “nearly all the children of European fathers used to be put to death;”[1670] whilst, among the Narrinyeri, about one-half of the half-caste infants fell victims to the jealousy of their mothers’ husbands.[1671] But with regard to the West Australian aborigines in the neighbourhood of Fremantle, the Rev. J. Johnston writes that he does not think it has been the custom there to destroy the half-caste illegitimate offspring of black women, as he never heard of such a thing,—a fact which may account for the comparatively large number of mongrels in that part of the continent.

Other statements also, adduced as evidence for the hypothesis of M. Broca, have proved more or less untrustworthy. Thus the alleged sterility of the mulattoes of Jamaica[1672] has been disputed by other writers.[1673] So also v. Görtz’s statement that the children of the Dutch and Malay women in Java (Lipplapps) are only productive to the third generation,[1674] has been called in question.[1675]

Yet, although we may consider it certain that the diversities even between the races which least resemble each other are not so great but that, under favourable conditions, a mixed race may easily be produced, I do not deny the possibility of crossing being, to a certain extent, unfavourable to fertility. The statements as to the rapid increase of some mixed races do not prove the reverse. For the bad result of crossing would not necessarily appear at once; and a drop of pure blood would be sufficient to increase fertility, just as, when a hybrid is crossed with either pure parent species, sterility is usually much lessened.[1676] It is a remarkable fact that mixed marriages between Jews and persons of other races are comparatively infertile. In Prussia, these marriages have been separately registered since 1875, and between that year and 1881 there was an average of 1·63 to a marriage, whereas, during the same period, pure Jewish marriages resulted in an average of 4·41 children or very nearly three times as many. In Bavaria, between 1876 and 1880, the numbers were only 1·1 per marriage against 4·7 children to purely Jewish marriages. And this conspicuous infertility implies greater sterility. Among fifty-six such marriages, with regard to which Mr. Jacobs ascertained the results, no fewer than nine were sterile, i.e., 18 per cent.,—a striking contrast to the number of sterile marriages which he found in seventy-one marriages between Jewish cousins, where the percentage of sterility was only 5·4 per cent.[1677] Mr. Jacobs, however, informs me that it has been suggested that this infertility may be due rather to the higher age at which such marriages are likely to take place. There is still a strong feeling against them among Jews, which is only likely to be overcome after independence of thought and position has been reached. At the same time Mr. Jacobs does not consider this sufficient to account for the very great discrepancy. But we must not, of course, take for granted that the crossing of any two races has the same effects as the crossing of Jewish and non-Jewish Europeans seems to have.

Even if it could be proved, however, that mixture of races produces lessened fertility of first crosses and of mongrels, this would not make it necessary for us to reject the doctrine of the unity of mankind. It is true that the domesticated varieties both of animals and of plants, when crossed, are as a general rule prolific, in some cases even more so than the purely bred parent varieties; whereas species, when crossed, and their hybrid offspring, are almost invariably in some degree sterile. But this rule is not altogether without exceptions. Even Agassiz condemned the employment of fertility of union as a limiting principle. He considered this a fallacy, “or at least a petitio principii, not admissible in a philosophical discussion of what truly constitutes the characteristics of species.”[1678] Thus the red and yellow varieties of maize are in some degree infertile when crossed, and the blue-and the red-flowered forms of the pimpernel, considered by most botanists to be the same species, as they present no differences of form or structure, are, according to Gärtner, mutually sterile. Moreover, Mr. Darwin’s investigations on dimorphic and trimorphic plants have shown that the physiological test of lessened fertility, both in first crosses and in hybrids, is no safe criterion of specific distinction.[1679] As for animals, Professor Vogt asserts that, in the opinion of experienced breeders, certain races can with difficulty be made to pair, and the fertility of the mongrels soon diminishes, whilst other races pair readily and are prolific.[1680] Sir J. Sebright says, “Although I believe the occasional intermixture of different families to be necessary, I do not, by any means, approve of mixing two distinct breeds, with the view of uniting the valuable properties of both: this experiment has been frequently tried by others as well as by myself, but has, I believe, never succeeded. The first cross frequently produces a tolerable animal, but it is a breed that cannot be continued.”[1681]

XIV. PROHIBITION OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN KINDRED

The horror of incest is 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.

Yet the degrees of kinship within which intercourse is forbidden, are by no means everywhere the same. It is most, and almost universally, abominated between parents and children, especially mother and son. As an exception to this rule, v. Langsdorf states that, among the Kaniagmuts, not only do brothers and sisters cohabit with each other, but even parents and children.[1682] The Eastern Tinneh, or Chippewyans, occasionally marry their mothers, sisters, or daughters, but such alliances are not considered correct by general opinion.[1683] In the Indian Archipelago, according to Schwaner, Wilken, and Riedel, marriages between brothers and sisters, and parents and children, are permitted among certain tribes;[1684] and similar unions, it is said, took place among the ancient Persians.[1685] Again, in Nukahiva, as we are told by Lisiansky, although near kinsfolk are forbidden to intermarry, it sometimes happens that a father lives with his daughter, and a brother with his sister; but on one occasion it was looked upon as a horrible crime when a mother cohabited with her son.[1686] Among the Kukis, as described by Rennel, marriages were generally contracted without regard to blood-relationship; only a mother might not wed her child.[1687] Among the Karens of Tenasserim, “matrimonial alliances between brother and sister, or father and daughter, are not uncommon.”[1688] Speaking of the King of the Warua, Mr. Cameron states that in his harem are to be found his stepmothers, aunts, sisters, nieces, cousins, as also his own daughters.[1689] Among the Wanyoro, brothers may marry their sisters, and even fathers their daughters; but a son does not marry his own mother, although the other widows of his father become his property.[1690]

Unions between brothers and sisters, who are children of the same mother as well as the same father, are likewise held in general abhorrence. The primitive feeling against such connections is strongly expressed in the Finnish Kullervo Myth. The unfortunate Kullervo, after discovering that he had committed incest with his sister, wails—

“Woe is me, my life hard-fated! I have slain my virgin-sister, Shamed the daughter of my mother; Woe to thee my ancient father! Woe to thee, my gray-haired mother! Wherefore was I born and nurtured, Why this hapless child’s existence?”[1691]

The dishonoured sister threw herself into the river, and Kullervo fell by his own sword.

The Californian Nishinam believe that, for the prevention of incest, at the beginning of the world, not one but two pairs were created from whom sprang all the Nishinam.[1692] When the missionary Jellinghaus once asked some Munda Kols whether animals knew what is right and wrong, the answer was, “No, because they do not know mother, sister, and daughter.”[1693] Yet, as we have seen, there are exceptions to the rule; and certain peoples who consider intercourse between parents and children incestuous, allow unions between brothers and sisters. Among the Kamchadales, says Krasheninnikoff, “marriage is forbidden only between father and daughter, mother and son.”[1694] Not long ago, the wild Veddahs of Ceylon regarded the marriage of a man with his younger sister as not only proper and natural, but, in fact, as the proper marriage, though marriage with an elder sister or aunt would have been as incestuous and revolting to them as to us.[1695] Among the Annamese, according to a missionary who has lived among them for forty years, no girl who is twelve years old and has a brother is a virgin.[1696] Liebich tells us that the Gypsies allow a brother to marry his sister, though such marriages are generally avoided by them.[1697] Among the Wa-taïta, says Mr. Thomson, “very few of the young men are able to marry for want of the proper number of cows—a state of affairs which not unfrequently leads to marriage with sisters, though this practice is highly reprobated.”[1698] Among the aborigines of Brazil, union with a sister, or a brother’s daughter, is almost universally held to be infamous. Such practices are not uncommon in small isolated hordes; “but the ancient Tupinambases (ancestors of the Tupis) allowed nothing of the kind openly.”[1699] In a song of the ‘Rig-Veda,’ Yamí appears in support of the marriage of brother and sister, while the opposition is personified in Yama.[1700] Buddhist legends mention various cases of such unions;[1701] and it is stated in the ‘Ynglinga Saga’ that “while Niord was with the Vans he had taken his own sister in marriage, for that he was allowed by their law.”[1702] But we have no evidence whatever that such unions were commonly allowed by the ancient Scandinavians. “Among the Asas,” the ‘Ynglinga Saga’ adds, “it was forbidden for such near relatives to come together.”[1703] In Scandinavia, according to Nordström, as also among the ancient Germans, according to Grimm, marriages between parents and children, brothers and sisters, were prohibited.[1704]

Unions with sisters, or probably, in most cases, half-sisters, occur in the royal families of Baghirmi,[1705] Siam,[1706] Burma,[1707] Ceylon,[1708] and Polynesia.[1709] In the Sandwich Islands, brothers and sisters of the reigning family intermarried, but this incestuous intercourse was in other cases contrary to the customs, habits, and feelings of the people.[1710] And, in Iboína of Madagascar, where the kings were occasionally united with their sisters, such marriages were preceded by a ceremony in which the woman was sprinkled with consecrated water, and prayers were recited asking for her happiness and fecundity, as if there was a fear that the union might call down divine anger upon the parties.[1711] Cambyses and other Persian kings married their sisters,[1712] and so did the Ptolemies of Egypt.[1713] According to Sir Gardner Wilkinson, it is not only noticed by Diodorus, but is fully authenticated by the inscriptions both of Upper and Lower Egypt, that the same custom was in force among the Egyptians, from the earliest times;[1714] but, except in the case of the Ptolemies, I have seen no clear evidence that marriage took place between brothers and sisters who had both the same father and the same mother. Garcilasso de la Vega states that the Incas of Peru, from the first, established it as a very stringent law that the heir to the kingdom should marry his eldest sister, legitimate both on the side of the father and on that of the mother;[1715] whereas, according to Acosta and Ondegardo, it had always been held unlawful by the Peruvians to contract marriage in the first degree, until Tupac Inca Yupanqui, at the close of the fifteenth century, married his sister on the fathers side, and decreed “that the Incas might marry with their sisters by the father’s side, and no other.”[1716]

It has been asserted that, where the system of exogamy prevails, a man is allowed to marry his sister either on the father’s or on the mother’s side, according as descent is reckoned in the female or in the male line.[1717] But it will be shown directly that, besides the rules relating to exogamy, there are commonly others prohibiting intermarriage of near relations belonging to different tribes or clans. Yet the marriage of half-brother and half-sister is not rare. Among the Ostyaks, for instance, union with a half-sister bearing another family name is in great repute;[1718] and the South Slavonian Mohammedans allow marriages between half-brothers and half-sisters who have different mothers, though seducing a sister is regarded in their songs as a crime punishable with death, or rather as something which cannot occur.[1719] From the Book of Genesis we know that Abraham married his half-sister, and looked upon the union as lawful, because she had not the same mother.[1720] Among the Phœnicians at Tyre, down to the time of Achilles Tatius, a man might marry his father’s daughter: and the same thing appears at Mecca.[1721] Marriage with half-sisters on the father’s side, not on the mother’s, was also allowed among the Assyrians[1722] and the Athenians.[1723] In Guatemala and Yucatan, on the other hand, no relationship on the mother’s side was a bar to marriage: hence a man could marry his sister, provided she was by another father.[1724]

Among certain peoples the relationships of uncle and niece, and of aunt and nephew, are the remotest degrees of consanguinity which are a hindrance to intermarriage. This is the case, for instance, with some of the Dyak tribes;[1725] and among the Copper Indians, according to Franklin, there is no prohibition of the intermarriage of cousins, but a man is forbidden to marry his niece.[1726] On the whole, we may say that marriage within these degrees of relationship is even more commonly prohibited than intermarriage of cousins, and that, probably in most cases, the prohibitions refer to persons so related either on the father’s or mother’s side.[1727] Yet there are many instances to the contrary.[1728] The Ossetes consider a marriage with a mother’s sister quite a proper thing, though a marriage with a father’s sister would be punished as highly incestuous.[1729] Among the Reddies of the South of India, a man marries his sister’s daughter, but a nephew must not marry his aunt;[1730] and, among the Brazilian Tupis, an uncle had even a right to his niece’s hand.[1731] By the Prussian law, marriage between uncle and niece is permitted; whilst, in France, such marriages may be sanctioned by the Government, in Italy by the King.[1732]

In Europe, first cousins are not restricted from intermarriage, except in Spain, where the old canonical prohibitions are still in force; and in Russia, where third cousins are allowed to marry, but no parties more nearly related.[1733] Among the Mohammedans[1734] and several uncivilized peoples, marriages between cousins, both on the paternal and maternal side, are permitted. So, apparently, among the Aleuts,[1735] Eskimo at Igloolik,[1736] Apalachites,[1737] Maoris, Bushmans[1738] and Ainos,[1739]—besides the people just referred to. More commonly, however, the permission is one-sided, referring either to the kinsfolk on the father’s, or to those on the mother’s side. Among the Arabs, a man has even a right to the hand of his paternal cousin, who cannot without his consent, become the wife of any other person.[1740] Concerning the Moors of Ceylon, Mr. Ahamadu Bawa states that in all cases where eligible sons of mothers’ brothers or fathers’ sisters were available for the girls, preference was accorded to them, “almost as a matter of right.”[1741] Among the savage Miao of China, the girls are obliged to marry the mother’s brothers’ sons.[1742] The Gonds consider it correct for the brother’s daughter to marry the sister’s son, whilst not so much stress is laid on the marriage of the cousins, if the sister’s child happens to be a girl and the brother’s a boy.[1743] Among the Yerkalas of Southern India, “the first two daughters of a family may be claimed by the maternal uncle as wives for his sons.”[1744]

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.

The Greenlanders, according to Egede, refrained from marrying their nearest kin, even in the third degree, considering such matches to be “unwarrantable and quite unnatural;”[1745] whilst Dr. Rink asserts that “the Eskimo disapproves of marriages between cousins.”[1746] The same is the case with the Ingaliks,[1747] the Chippewas,[1748] and, as a rule, the Indians of Oregon.[1749] 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.[1750] “By the old custom of the Aht tribes,” Mr. Sproat remarks, “no marriage was permitted within the degree of second cousin;”[1751] and among the Mahlemuts, “cousins, however remote, do not marry.”[1752] Commonly a man and woman belonging to the same clan are prohibited from intermarrying. The Algonquins tell of cases where men, for breaking this rule, have been put to death by their nearest kinsfolk;[1753] and, among the Loucheux Indians, if a man marries within the clan, he is said to have married his sister, though there be not the slightest connection by blood between the two.[1754] In some tribes, as Mr. Frazer points out, the marriage prohibition only extends to a man’s own clan: he may marry a woman of any clan but his own. But oftener the prohibition includes several clans, in none of which is a man allowed to marry.[1755] Thus, for instance, the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois was divided into two “phratries,” or divisions intermediate between the tribe and the clan, each including four clans; the Bear, Wolf, Beaver, and Turtle clans forming one phratry, and the Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk clans forming the other. Originally marriage was prohibited within the phratry, but was permitted with any of the clans of the other phratry; but the prohibition was long since removed, and a Seneca may marry a woman of any clan but his own.[1756] A like exogamous division existed among the other four tribes of the Iroquois,[1757] as also among the Creeks, Moquis, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Thlinkets, &c.[1758]

Among the Pipiles of Salvador, an ancestral tree, with seven main branches, denoting degrees of kindred, was painted upon cloth, and within these seven branches or degrees, no one was allowed to marry, except as a recompense for some great public or warlike service rendered. But within four degrees of consanguinity none, under any pretext, might marry.[1759] In Yucatan, there was a strong prejudice against a man wedding a woman who bore the same name as his own, and so far was this fancy carried, that he who broke the rule was looked upon as a renegade and an outcast. Nor could a man marry his mother’s sister.[1760] Among the Azteks, too, marriages between blood-relations or those descended from a common ancestor were not allowed.[1761]

Among the tribes of Guiana, according to Mr. Im Thurn, marriage is now almost always, as formerly it was always, contracted between members of different families, and, descent being traced through females, no intermarriage with relations on the mother’s side is permitted.[1762] The Mundrucûs are divided into clans, the members of which are strictly prohibited from forming alliances with others of the same clan. “A Mundrucû Indian,” says Professor Agassiz, “treats a woman of the same order (clan) with himself as a sister, any nearer relation between them is impossible.”[1763] The Indians of Peru are restricted from marriage within the first four degrees.[1764] The Guaranies and Abipones abhor alliances with even the remotest relations.[1765] And as to the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, Mr. Bridges writes to me that “no marriage, no intercourse ever takes place among blood-relations even to second cousins.” Such intercourse is held in utter abomination and is never heard of. Also between half-brothers and half-sisters marriages do not occur.

Nowhere is marriage bound by more severe laws than among the Australian aborigines. Their tribes are, as a rule—and probably as a rule without exceptions[1766]—grouped in exogamous subdivisions, the number of which varies considerably. There are tribes in which members of any clan are free to marry members of any clan but their own; but such tribes are exceptional.[1767] “Often,” says Mr. Frazer, “an Australian tribe is divided into two (exogamous) phratries, each of which includes under it a number of totem clans; and oftener still there are sub-phratries interposed between the phratry and the clans, each phratry including two sub-phratries, and the sub-phratries including totem clans.”[1768] Most of Mr. Curr’s very numerous correspondents who have touched on this question have, however, given the number of subdivisions in their neighbourhood as four only.[1769] Before the occupation of the country by the whites, which quickly breaks down aboriginal customs, any departure from the marriage system founded on this division was looked on with absolute horror, and even spoken of with reluctance. Indeed, when marriage or sexual intercourse with a person of a forbidden clan did occur, the regular penalty inflicted on the parties implicated was death.[1770] And it is a noteworthy fact, generally overlooked by anthropologists, that besides these prohibitions arising from the clan-system and, naturally, applying only to the father’s or, more generally, only to the mother’s relations, there is, as it seems everywhere, a law which forbids the marriage of persons near of kin.[1771] “A man,” says Mr. Curr, “may not marry his mother, sister, half-sister, daughter, granddaughter, aunt, niece, first or second cousin.”[1772] Among the Kurnai of Gippsland, according to Mr. Bulmer, even third cousins are within the prohibited degrees of relationship.[1773] Moreover, certain tribes, besides having the clan-system, are entirely exogamous;[1774] and, among the tribes of Western Victoria described by Mr. Dawson, the laws also forbid a man to marry into his mother’s tribe, or his grandmother’s tribe or into an adjoining tribe, or one that speaks his own dialect.[1775]

In Tasmania, a man was not permitted to marry a woman of his own tribe (clan?);[1776] and in Polynesia, marriages with blood-relations were everywhere avoided except in royal families.[1777] Thus in Samoa, according to Mr. Turner, so much care was taken to prevent incest that a list of what they deemed improper marriages would almost compare with the ‘Table of Kindred and Affinity.’ They say that, of old, custom and the gods frowned upon the union of those in whom consanguinity could be closely traced.[1778]

Speaking of the aborigines of the Melanesian islands, Dr. Codrington observes, “In the native view of mankind, almost everywhere in the islands which are here under consideration, nothing seems more fundamental than the division of the people into two or more classes, which are exogamous, and in which descent is counted through the mother.” Yet “the blood connection with the father and the father’s near relations is never out of sight. Consequently the marriage of those who are near in blood, though they are not ‘sogoi’ (i.e., kindred), and may lawfully marry, is discountenanced.”[1779] In New Britain, if a man were accused of adultery or fornication with a woman, he would at once be acquitted by the public voice if he could say, “She is one of us,” i.e., she belongs to my totem, which in itself precludes the possibility of any sexual intercourse between us.[1780] In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it would be a crime punishable with death for a man or woman to marry a person belonging to his or her mother’s clan, “though they may have no recent relation of consanguinity to each other, and though neither they nor their parents may have even seen each other before.”[1781] In Lifu, as I am informed by Mr. Radfield, who is a resident of this island, marriages are forbidden between first, but not second cousins, both on the mother’s and father’s side, as well as between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews. Matrimonial alliances between first cousins are also prohibited in the Caroline Islands;[1782] whilst, in the Pelew Group, intermarriage between any relations on the mother’s side is unlawful.[1783]

Among the Sea Dyaks, it is contrary to custom for a man to wed a first cousin, who is looked upon as a sister, and no marriage is allowed with aunt or niece. The Land Dyaks permit marriage between second cousins only after the payment of a fine of two jars, one being given by the woman to the relations of her lover, the other by the lover to her relation.[1784] In other tribes of the Malay Archipelago, according to Mr. Crawfurd, the union of near relatives is prohibited by the native laws, and, when such a marriage does take place, the parties are fined if within the third degree of consanguinity collaterally. In the ascending and descending line marriage is strictly forbidden.[1785] Among the Minahassers of Celebes, marriage was not permitted between ascendants and descendants, brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and cousins, or between kinsfolk connected by combinations of these relationships.[1786] The Malays of the uplands of Padang are forbidden to marry within the mother’s tribe; the Bataks of Sumatra, Alfura of Ceram and Buru, Niasians, and Timorese, within the father’s.[1787] Among the Italones of the Philippines, marriage between blood-relations is not allowed.[1788] The Bugis[1789] and Watubela Islanders[1790] prohibit the intermarriage of cousins, paternal and maternal; whilst, among the Orang-Banûwa of Malacca,[1791] the Macassars,[1792] and the natives of Aru, near New Guinea,[1793] children of brothers cannot intermarry, though children of sisters, or of brothers and sisters, can. Again, among the Lettis of the Serwatty Islands, marriage may take place between brothers’ children, and between brothers’ and sisters’ children, but not between children of two sisters;[1794] and, among the Bataks, Rejangs, and natives of Amboina, a sister’s son is allowed to marry a brother’s daughter, whereas a brother’s son must not marry a sister’s daughter.[1795] The penalty inflicted on incest is generally very severe in the Archipelago. Submersion is a common punishment;[1796] and, among the Bataka, the parties were killed and eaten.[1797]

With reference to the Karens of Burma, Dr. Bunker informs me that, though they never marry outside their own tribe, they avoid marrying with near relations, their prohibited degrees being nearly the same as those of the ancient Hebrews. Among the Kukis, according to Lieutenant Stewart, “the most strict rules exist forbidding too close intermarriage in families; cousins cannot be so allied.”[1798] The Nagas never permit marriage within the same family;[1799] and, among the Chukmas, if near relatives, within certain prohibited degrees, fall in love with each other, it is usual for both of them to pay a fine of fifty rupees, corporal punishment being also administered.[1800] Among the Kandhs, “intermarriage between persons of the same tribe, however large or scattered, is considered incestuous and punishable with death.”[1801] The Santals make it a rule not to intermarry into the same tribe;[1802] and, among the Sakais, a man goes to a considerable distance for a wife, generally to a tribe speaking quite a different dialect.[1803] The Juángs, Hos, Mundas, and other peoples in India are divided into clans, and a man is not allowed to marry a girl of his own clan.[1804] Among the Garos, no one may take to wife a woman of the same “mahári,” or motherhood.[1805]

According to Lieutenant-Colonel Tod, no Rajput can marry in his own clan.[1806] “In all pure Hindu society,” Sir Alfred Lyall states, “the law which regulates the degrees within which marriage is interdicted, proceeds upon the theory that between agnatic relatives connubium is impossible.”[1807] Hence it is unlawful for a Brahman to wed a woman whose clan-name is the same as his own, a prohibition which bars marriage among relatives in the male line indefinitely. But besides this, connections on the female side are also forbidden to take place within certain wide limits.[1808] In the ‘Laws of Manu’ we read that a damsel “who is neither a Sapindâ[1809] on the mother’s side, nor belongs to the same family on the father’s side, is recommended to twice-born men for wedlock and conjugal union.”[1810] Yet in the older literature marriage with the daughters of the mother’s brother, and sons of the father’s sister, is permitted.[1811] This still holds good among the Reddies of Southern India, and, as it seems, among other tribes belonging to the Hindu stock; whereas children of fathers’ brothers and mothers’ sisters are considered equal to brothers and sisters, and marriage with them is looked upon as highly incestuous.[1812]

Speaking of the Andamanese, Mr. Man says that “their customs do not permit of the union of any who are known to be even distantly related; the fact of our allowing first cousins to marry seems to them highly objectionable and immoral.”[1813] The Sinhalese consider a marriage between the father’s sister’s son and the mother’s brother’s daughter the most proper that they can contract; but they would regard a marriage with the father’s brother’s daughter as incestuous, first cousins so related being considered sisters.[1814]

As regards the prohibited degrees of the Chinese Penal Code, a very minute account is given by Mr. Medhurst in his interesting paper on ‘Marriage, Affinity, and Inheritance in China.’[1815] Large bodies of persons in that country bear the same surname; among the entire Chinese population of the Empire, indeed, there are hardly more than 530 surnames. A penalty of sixty blows is inflicted on any one who marries a person with the same surname.[1816] The punishment attached to the intermarriage of nearer relations on the father’s side is much more severe. Thus, marriage or incestuous intercourse with a grand-uncle, a father’s first cousin, a brother, or a nephew, is punishable by death.[1817] Besides these prohibitions there are others applying within a narrower range to relatives on the female side. A man who marries his mother’s sister or his sister’s daughter is strangled. Less severe punishment is inflicted on a person who marries a uterine half-sister, and still less severe—eighty blows—on any one who marries his father’s sister’s daughter, mother’s brother’s daughter, or mother’s sister’s daughter. An after-clause abrogates this prohibition, and permits intermarriage between children of brothers and sisters, or of sisters, but intermarriage between those of brothers is of course inadmissible.[1818] The Chinese Code also interdicts occasional intercourse with any of those relatives with whom marriage is prohibited, the punishment in both cases being the same.[1819]

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.[1820] The Yakuts,[1821] Samoyedes,[1822] Cheremises,[1823] &c., also avoid marriage within the paternal clan, and the ancient Finns did not marry kinsfolk.[1824] Among the Ostyaks[1825] and Ossetes,[1826] marriage with a person of one’s own family name, however distant the relationship, is entirely prohibited. And in Circassia, according to Bell, not only are cousins, or the members of the same fraternity restricted from intermarrying, but even their serfs must wed with the serfs of another fraternity.[1827]

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.[1828] Some of the clans of the Somals, as we are informed by Sir R. F. Burton, refuse maidens of the same or even a consanguineous family.[1829] In Western Equatorial Africa and Uganda, marriages cannot take place within the clans, however remote the relationship may be.[1830] Among the Mpongwé, “every care is taken to avoid marriages of consanguinity.”[1831] With the Bateke, as Dr. Sims writes from Stanley Pool, marriages are prohibited between brothers and sisters of the same mother or father; between first cousins; between uncle and niece, or aunt and nephew. The Bakongo also, according to Mr. Ingham, hold all unions between near relatives, either on the father’s or mother’s side, in utter abomination.

Mr. Cousins, to whom I am indebted for a valuable paper on the Cis-Natalian Kafirs, writes that, among them, marriages often take place within the tribe and village. But this is avoided, if possible; like their chiefs they generally endeavour to marry out of their own tribe. Among this people, however, there is some kind of class (clan?) division, which Mr. Cousins is not fully acquainted with, and members of the same class (clan?) do not seem to intermarry. At any rate, near relations, paternal and maternal, avoid marriage with each other. No penalty is attached to such a marriage, but custom is so strong on the point that the general rule is seldom broken.[1832] According to Mr. Shooter[1833] and Mr. Dugmore,[1834] a marriage is considered incestuous if the man and woman are of any known or remembered degree of relationship by common descent; and, if a man were to take a wife within the degrees prohibited by custom, he would be denounced as an “evildoer.”[1835] According to Mr. Brownlee, intercourse in such cases is punished, whether it be by marriage or without marriage.[1836] Again, with regard to the Zulus, Mr. Eyles states that there is no intermarriage between the inhabitants of the village, the members of which are, as a rule, related. All intermarrying with relations is prohibited by custom, and such a thing is neither heard of nor thought of. Even if the relationship is only traditional, the custom holds good.

A somewhat different account of the Bantu race is given by Mr. McCall Theal. “A native of the coast region,” he says, “will not marry a girl whose relationship by blood to himself can be traced, no matter how distantly connected they may be. So scrupulous is he in this respect that he will not marry even a girl who belongs to another tribe, if she has the same family name as himself, though the relationship cannot be traced. He regards himself as the protector of those females whom he would term his cousins and second cousins, but for whom he has only the same name as for the daughters of his own parents, the endearing name of sister. In his opinion, union with one of them would be incestuous, something horrible, something unutterably disgraceful. The native of the mountains, almost as a rule, marries the daughter of his father’s brother.”[1837]

Mr. Conder states that, among the Bechuanas, marrying out of their own tribe seems to be the common practice;[1838] whereas, according to Mr. Casalis, the Basutos frequently marry cousins. Yet, among them also, there are some tribes who consider such marriages incestuous.[1839] The Hottentots are said by Kolben to punish alliances between first and second cousins with death.[1840] In Madagascar, though marriage between brothers’ children is looked upon as the most proper kind of connection, and brothers’ and sisters’ children can marry on the performance of a slight but prescribed ceremony, supposed to remove any impediment or disqualification arising out of consanguinity, the descendants of sisters are not allowed to intermarry down to the fifth or seventh generation, and a marriage of sisters’ children, when the sisters have the same mother, is regarded with horror.[1841]

Among the Romans, alliances between persons under the same patria potestas—i.e., cognati related within the sixth degree—were nefariæ et incestuæ nuptiæ; but these prohibitions were gradually relaxed. From the time of the Second Punic War, according to Livy, even first cousins were allowed to intermarry; and in 49 A.D. the Emperor Claudius, wishing to marry his niece Agrippina, obtained from the Senate a decree that marriage with a brother’s daughter should be legal, though marriage with a sister’s daughter remained illegal.[1842] In the fourth century, however, Constantius again forbade such unions, on pain of death.[1843] Afterwards, under the influence of the ascetic ideas prevalent in the Church, the prohibited degrees were gradually extended. Theodosius the Great forbade under the severest penalties the union of first cousins, paternal and maternal; and at the end of the sixth century the prohibition was extended even to the seventh degree. This prohibition continued in force until in the Western Church it was once more reduced to the fourth degree by the Lateran Council under Innocent III. in the year 1215; that is, marriage was permitted beyond the degree of third cousins.[1844] Such is the nominal law at the present time wherever the canon law prevails.[1845]

Besides the prohibitions relating to actual kinship, there are, among several peoples, others applying to marriage between relatives by alliance. Among the Andamanese, a man or woman may not marry into the family of a brother-in-law or sister-in-law.[1846] The Eastern Greenlanders and the Eskimo of the north-east coast of America forbid or disapprove of marriage with two sisters;[1847] and, according to Dr. Daniell, the same rule prevails among the natives of Accra at the Gold Coast, who even prohibit a man from marrying two cousins of the same parentage.[1848] Again, several tribes in Western Victoria do not permit marriage with a deceased wife’s daughter by a former husband.[1849] But prohibitions of this sort do not seem to be very common among savage and barbarous races. In many of the Indian tribes of North America, all the daughters of a family are, as a rule, married to the same man. A brother very frequently marries his deceased brother’s widow; and, in Africa, a son often weds all his father’s widows except his own mother.

Among civilized peoples, on the other hand, relations by affinity are frequently regarded in the same light as relations by blood. In Yucatan, a man was not allowed to marry his sister-in-law.[1850] According to the Chinese Code, marriage with a deceased brother’s widow is punished with strangulation, whilst marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is exceedingly common, and has always been regarded as particularly honourable.[1851] In Japan, intercourse with a father’s or a grandfather’s concubine, or a son’s or grandson’s wife, involves the same punishment as intercourse with a paternal aunt or a sister.[1852] The ‘Institutes of Vishnu’ declare that “sexual connection with one’s mother, or daughter, or daughter-in-law, are crimes in the highest degree,” there being no other way to atone for these crimes than to proceed into the flames.[1853] According to the laws of Moses[1854] and Mohammed[1855] and the Roman Law[1856] marriage was prohibited with mother-in-law, step-mother, daughter-in-law, and step-daughter—according to Mohammed, however, so far as the step-daughter was concerned, only if she were under the guardianship of her mother’s husband. Moses also forbade marriage with the sister of a wife who was still living,[1857] and with a brother’s wife, if she were widowed and had children by the brother; and Mohammed prohibited marriage with two sisters at the same time.

* * * * *

From very early times thinkers have tried to account for the prohibition of marriage between near kin. Some, says Mr. Huth, ascribe them to a fear lest relationship may become too involved; others to a fear lest affection may become concentrated within too narrow a circle; because marriage would take place too early; because people would be induced to marry each other in order that property might be kept in the family; because such marriages are prohibited by “God’s law”; because they outrage “natural modesty”; and, only in modern times, because they are supposed to prove injurious to the offspring.[1858]

Comparative ethnography has changed the aspect of the question. The horror of incest has been found to prevail among peoples who neither know anything of “God’s law,” nor possess property to keep in the family. New hypotheses have therefore been suggested more worthy of consideration, as being founded on a much firmer basis of facts.

The late Mr. McLennan was the first to call attention to the general prevalence of the rule which forbids the members of a tribe (or clan) to intermarry with members of their own tribe (or clan). This rule he called “exogamy,” in contradistinction to “endogamy,” or the rule which forbids the members of a tribe to intermarry with members of other tribes. In his celebrated essay on ‘Primitive Marriage’ he made an attempt to show that exogamy had arisen from female infanticide, “common among savages everywhere.” He assumes that to tribes surrounded by enemies, and unaided by art, contending with the difficulties of subsistence, sons were a source of strength, both for defence and in the quest for food, whilst daughters were a source of weakness. Hence the cruel custom which left the primitive human hordes with very few young women, thus seriously disturbing the balance of the sexes within the hordes, and forcing them to prey upon one another for wives. Usage, induced by necessity, would then in time establish a prejudice among the tribes observing it—a prejudice strong as a principle of religion, as every prejudice relating to marriage is apt to be—against marrying women of their own tribe.[1859]

Mr. Herbert Spencer has subjected this hypothesis to a searching criticism,[1860] and from an article in the ‘Fortnightly Review’ it appears as if Mr. McLennan himself had in the end some doubts as to its correctness.[1861] To Mr. Spencer’s objections others might be added.

A minute investigation of the extent to which female infanticide is practised has convinced me that Mr. McLennan has much exaggerated the importance of this custom. It certainly prevails in many parts of the world; and it is true that, as a rule, female children are killed rather than male. But there is nothing to indicate that infanticide has ever been so nearly universal, or has anywhere been practised on so large a scale as Mr. McLennan’s hypothesis presupposes. Among a great many existing savage peoples it is almost unheard of—as, for instance, among the Tuski,[1862] Ahts,[1863] Western Eskimo,[1864] Botocudos,[1865] and in certain tribes of California.[1866] Among some of these peoples new-born children are killed now and then—in case of the birth of twins, if the children are weak and deformed, or for some other reason—but always, it is said, without distinction of sex. Among the Dacotahs and Crees, female infanticide is only occasionally committed.[1867] The Blackfeet, according to Richardson, believe that women who have been guilty of this crime will never reach the happy mountain after death, but are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes, with branches of trees tied to their legs;[1868] and the Aleuts think that a child-murder brings misfortune on the whole village.[1869] Among the Abipones, the women often practised infanticide, but it was the boy who was generally thus sacrificed, for when a son grew up it was necessary to buy a wife for him, while a grown-up daughter would always command her price.[1870]

In Africa I do not know of a single district where the people are in the habit of destroying new-born children. Herr Valdau tells us of a Bakundu woman who, accused of such a deed, was condemned to death.[1871]

Until the introduction of Christianity, the South Sea Islanders practised infanticide probably to a greater extent than any other people with whose history we are acquainted. But as the motive was often want of food for the infant, or interference with the personal charms of the wife, or the disagreeableness of baby life, boys as well as girls were killed. Moreover, in Samoa, in the Mitchell’s and Hervey Groups, and in part of New Guinea, infanticide was quite unheard of;[1872] whilst, in most of the islands belonging to the Solomon Group, it occurs only in extreme cases, such as that of the child being a bastard.[1873] In the Caroline Islands, according to Chamisso, “the prince would have the unnatural mother punished with death.”[1874] And even in Australia, where, according to Mr. Curr’s belief, the women reared as a rule, only two boys and one girl, the rest being destroyed,[1875] there seem to be tribes in which the killing of children rarely happens.[1876]

There are other reasons, besides those just given, for doubting whether infanticide can ever have been so common as Mr. McLennan suggests. It may be assumed, as Mr. Darwin remarks, that during the earliest period of human development man did not partially lose one of the strongest of instincts, common to all the lower animals, namely the love of their young, and consequently did not practise infanticide.[1877] Later on, the women, far from being useless to the savage tribe, rendered valuable services as food-providers. Mr. Fison, who has lived among uncivilized races for many years, thinks it will be found that female infanticide is far less common among the lower savages than it is among the more advanced tribes.[1878] And, speaking of one of the very rudest, the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, Mr. Bridges states that it occurred only occasionally among them, and then was almost always the deed of the mother, who acted from “jealousy, or hatred of her husband, or because of desertion and wretchedness.”[1879] Moreover, it is very generally asserted that certain Californians never committed infanticide before the arrival of the whites;[1880] whilst Ellis thinks that there is every reason to suppose that this custom was practised less extensively by the Polynesians during the early periods of their history than it was afterwards.[1881]

But even if Mr. McLennan were right in his assumption that savages everywhere used to kill female infants, this would not explain the origin of exogamy. “In time,” he says, “it came to be considered improper, because it was unusual, for a man to marry a woman of his own group.”[1882] But why should such a marriage ever have become unusual? Why should the men have refrained from marrying those women of their own tribe who were not killed? Why should they have made these beings whom they considered so useless, even more useless than they naturally were, by preventing them from becoming mothers of sons who would have increased the strength of the tribe? That the men may have endeavoured to make up the deficiency of women by capturing wives from foreign tribes is conceivable enough; but it is hard to see why intercourse with women of their own tribe should on this account have been prohibited, sometimes even on pain of death.

That the horror of incest is innate in the human race seems as improbable to Mr. Herbert Spencer as to Mr. McLennan. According to Mr. Spencer, this feeling is a result of evolution gradually acquired. Primitive groups of men, he says, are habitually hostile. In all times and places victory is followed by pillage; whatever portable things of worth the conquerors find they take. And of course they take women as they take other booty, because women are prized as wives, as concubines, or as drudges. A captured woman, besides her intrinsic value, has an extrinsic value: “like a native wife she serves as a slave, but unlike a native wife, she serves also as a trophy.” Hence members of the tribe thus married to foreign women are held to be more honourably married than those married to native women. If the tribe, becoming successful in war, robs adjacent tribes of their women more frequently, there will then grow up the idea that the now considerable class having foreign wives form the honourable class, and non-possession of a foreign wife will come to be regarded as a proof of cowardice. “An increasing ambition to get foreign wives will therefore arise; and as the number of those who are without them decreases, the brand of disgrace attaching to them will grow more decided; until in the most warlike tribes, it becomes an imperative requirement that a wife shall be obtained from another tribe—if not in open war, then by private abduction.”[1883]

This interpretation is open to an objection similar to that which may be brought against Mr. McLennan’s hypothesis. Even if it became customary for a tribe to rob foreign tribes of their women, we have no reason to believe that it therefore became customary not to marry native women. Plurality of wives is for savage man a source of wealth and reputation; even the wretched Fuegian endeavours to procure as many as possible in order to obtain rowers for his canoe. Hence it could scarcely be considered disgraceful to have some native wives besides those of foreign birth. If Mr. Spencer’s explanation is the correct one, what a deplorable lot it must have been for a woman to belong to a tribe always successful in war! She had of course to live unmarried till she was fortunate enough to fall into the hands of some hostile suitor. But this would seldom happen, if the adjacent weaker tribes were habitually worsted in war. In such tribes, according to Mr. Spencer, “marrying within the tribe will not only be habitual, but there will arise a prejudice, and eventually a law, against taking wives from other tribes.”[1884]

Least of all can Mr. Spencer’s hypothesis explain the origin of prohibitions of marriage between the nearest kin. It presupposes that the tribe has been frequently successful in war during so long a period that usage has had time to grow into law. But since such prohibitions are practically common to all mankind, they cannot have originated in the way suggested, because when there is a vanquisher there must also be a vanquished. Moreover, it is impossible to suppose that that powerful feeling which restrains parents from marrying their children, brothers from marrying their sisters, can have been due to man’s vain desire to have a trophy in his wife.[1885]

Sir John Lubbock explains the origin of exogamy in a quite different way. Believing that in man’s primitive state all the men of a tribe were married to all the women, and that no one could appropriate one of them to himself without infringing on the general rights of the tribe, he suggests that women taken in war from a foreign tribe were in a different position. The tribe, as a tribe, had no right to these women, and they would become wives in our sense of the term.[1886]

It is unnecessary to say much about this hypothesis, as it stands or falls with Sir J. Lubbock’s theory of “communal marriage.” Why should women taken in war have been the men’s personal property, if the women of the tribe were not so? As Mr. McLennan justly remarks, war-captives are usually obtained by group-acts, or quasi group-acts; hence capture would be recognized as a regular mode of adding women to the group, subject to the customary rights of its male members; and every man in the group would claim the communal right to women taken by others.[1887]

Again, Professor Kohler has expressed his belief in the explanation that exogamy was an early method of political self-preservation.[1888] That intermarriage is valuable from a political point of view, and has often taken place in order to increase intertribal or international friendship, is beyond doubt.[1889] But it is another question whether the strictly prohibitive exogamous rules, the infringement of which is considered a most heinous crime, can be accounted for in this way. It is worth noticing that not only marriage, but also less regular connections between members of the same exogamous group are held in horror. The Australians, for instance, consider cohabitation between individuals belonging to clans that cannot intermarry not less criminal than marriage, often punishing such unions with death.[1890] Among the Melanesians, says Dr. Codrington, “intercourse within the limit which restrains from marriage, where two members of the same division are concerned, is a crime, is incest.”[1891] Holm makes a similar observation on the prohibited degrees among the Eastern Greenlanders.[1892] Speaking of the Samoans, Mr. Prichard remarks, “Of all their customs, the most strictly observed, perhaps, was that which forbade the remotest reference to anything, even by way of a joke, that conveyed the slightest indelicacy in thought or word or gesture, when brothers and sisters were together. In presence of his sister, the wildest rake was always modest and moral. In presence of her brother, the most accommodating coquette was always chaste and reserved. This custom remains intact to the present day.”[1893] Dr. Tylor remarks that anthropologists have long had before them the problem of determining how far clan-exogamy may have been the origin of the prohibited degrees in matrimony.[1894] But we have seen that it is practically impossible to trace any distinct limit between these two sets of rules; hence they seem to be fundamentally identical—a conclusion in which most anthropologists agree. And the prohibitions of close intermarriage certainly cannot be explained as a “method of political self-preservation.”

Other writers—and among them Mr. Morgan—have suggested that prohibitions of the marriage of near kin have arisen from observation of the injurious results of such unions.[1895] But most investigators who have considered the subject believe that this knowledge could be gained only by lengthened observation, and, to quote Dr. Peschel, is “unattainable by unsettled and childishly heedless races,” among whom, nevertheless, a horror of incest is developed most strongly.[1896] Sir Henry Maine, on the other hand, thinks that the men who discovered the use of fire and selected the wild forms of certain animals for domestication and of vegetables for cultivation, might also have been able to find out that children of unsound constitution were born of nearly related parents.[1897] In the next chapter, I shall have occasion to mention some instances which possibly may point in this direction, but in no case does such knowledge appear to be generally diffused among backward races. Mr. Curr has been unable to discover on what ground consanguineous marriages are held to be objectionable by the Australians, their replies to questions on this head invariably being, “Our tribe always did as we do in this matter.” Yet they are well aware, he says, that the aim of the exogamous restrictions is to prevent the union of nearly related individuals.[1898] Dr. Sims writes that no other reason for the avoidance of marriage between near relations has been stated to him by the indigenous Bateke than that of “shame.” Mr. Bridges informs me that the Yahgans point simply to the fact of relationship as the reason; and, when Azara asked the Charruas why a brother and sister never intermarried, they replied that they did not know why.[1899] It is conceivable that the experience of the injurious results of such marriages, once acquired, might afterwards have fallen into oblivion, although the prohibition continued to exist. But Azara expressly states that the Charruas have no law forbidding incestuous alliances, yet he has never seen nor heard of any among them.

Whatever observations may have been made, the prohibition of incest is in no case founded on experience. Had the savage man discerned that children born of marriage between closely related persons are not so sound and vigorous as others, he would scarcely have allowed this knowledge to check his passions. Considering how seldom a civilised man who has any disease, or tendency to disease, which is likely to be transmitted to his descendants, hesitates to marry an equally unhealthy woman, it would surely be unreasonable to suppose that savages have greater forethought and self-command.[1900] But even if we admit that man originally avoided marriage with near kin from sagacious calculation, and that he did this during so long a period that usage grew into law, we do not advance a step further. All the writers whose hypotheses have been considered in this chapter, assume that men avoid incestuous marriages only because they are taught to do so. “It is probable,” says Mr. Huth, “that, if brothers and sisters were allowed to marry, they would do so while yet too young.”[1901] But though law and custom may prevent passion from passing into action, they cannot wholly destroy its inward power. Law may forbid a son to marry his mother, a brother his sister, but it could not prevent him from desiring such a union if the desire were natural. Where does that appetite exist? The home is kept pure from incestuous defilement 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. An unwritten law, says Plato, defends “as sufficiently as possible,” parents from incestuous intercourse with their children, brothers from intercourse with their sisters: “ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἐπιθυμία ταύτης τῆς συνουσίας τὸ παρ ‘παν εἰσέρχεται τοὺς πολλοὺς”—“nor does even the desire for this intercourse come at all upon the masses.”[1902]