XV. PROHIBITION OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN KINDRED…

XV. PROHIBITION OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN KINDRED

(Concluded)

It has been asserted that, if there be really an innate horror of incest, it ought to show itself intuitively when persons are ignorant of any relationship. But ancient writers state that, in Rome, incestuous unions often resulted from the exposure of infants who were reared by slave-dealers. Not long ago Selim Pasha unwittingly married his sister, who, like himself, had been a Circassian slave. The story told in the ‘Heptameron’ of a double incest was probably true, and became widely spread; and so on. Man has thus no horror of marriage with even the nearest kindred if he is unaware of their consanguinity; consequently, Mr. Huth concludes, there is no innate feeling against incest.[1903]

Of course I agree with Mr. Huth in thinking that there is no innate aversion to marriage with near relations. What I maintain is, that there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as such persons are in most cases related, this feeling displays itself chiefly as a horror of intercourse between near kin.

The existence of an innate aversion of this kind has been taken by various writers as a psychological fact proved by common experience;[1904] and it seems impossible otherwise to explain the feeling which makes the relationships between parents and children, and brothers and sisters, so free from all sexual excitement. But the chief evidence is afforded by an abundance of ethnographical facts which prove that it is not, in the first place, by the degrees of consanguinity, but by the close living together that prohibitory laws against intermarriage are determined.

Egede asserts that, among the Greenlanders, it would be reckoned uncouth and blamable, if a lad and a girl who had served and been educated in one family, desired to be married to one another;[1905] and, according to Dr. Nansen, it is preferred that the contracting parties should belong to different settlements.[1906] Colonel Macpherson states that, among the Kandhs, marriage cannot take place even with strangers who have been long adopted into, or domesticated with, a tribe.[1907] And Mr. Cousins writes to me that the Cis-Natalian Kafirs dislike marriage between persons who live very closely together, whether related or not. In the Northern New Hebrides, a girl betrothed in childhood is sometimes taken to her future father-in-law’s house and brought up there. Dr. Codrington says that “the boy often thinks she is his sister, and is much ashamed when he comes to know the relation in which he stands.”[1908]

Many peoples have a rule of exogamy that does not depend on kinship at all. Piedrahita relates of the Panches of Bogota that the men and women of one town did not intermarry, as they held themselves to be brothers and sisters, and the impediment of kinship was sacred to them; but such was their ignorance that, if a sister were born in a different town from her brother, he was not prevented from marrying her.[1909] The Yaméos, on the river Amazons, will not suffer an intermarriage between members of the same community, “as being friends in blood, though no real affinity between them can be proved.”[1910] The Uaupés, according to Mr. Wallace, “do not often marry with relations, or even neighbours, preferring those from a distance, or even from other tribes.”[1911] The Australian tribe, as Mr. Howitt points out, is organized in two ways. On the one hand, it is divided socially into phratries and clans; and, on the other hand, it is divided geographically into hordes. The two organizations are co-existent, but the divisions of the one do not correspond with those of the other. For while all the people who belong to any given local group are found in one locality alone, those who belong to any given social group are to be found distributed among many, if not among all, of the local groups. Now, in many tribes, local proximity by birth is quite an insuperable obstacle to marriage, a man being absolutely forbidden to marry, or have sexual intercourse with, a woman of the same horde or sub-horde. “However eligible she may be in other respects,” says Mr. Howitt, “the fact that both parties belong to the same locality is held by certain tribes, the Kurnai, for example, to make them ‘too near each other.’” It is chiefly in tribes where the clan-system has been weakened, or has become almost extinct, that the local organization has assumed such overwhelming preponderance, but even in some of the tribes which have a vigorous clan-system, local restraints upon marriage are strictly enforced.[1912] In Sumatra, according to Mr. Forbes, the country was originally divided into native districts called “margas,” each marga, as a rule, having its several villages. Each of these village communities is a collection of families, either related or not to each other by the ties of blood;[1913] and we know that, at least among certain tribes, marriage between members of the same village or village cluster, and in some districts even between those of the same marga, is prohibited.[1914] The Kotars of the Neilgherries,[1915] Galela,[1916] Fijians,[1917] Zulus,[1918] Wakamba,[1919] and Kamchadales[1920] avoid, as a rule, marriage with members of the same village. So also do the Nogai, who consider it most honest for a man to marry a woman whom he has never seen before.[1921] In various of the smaller islands belonging to the Indian Archipelago, according to Riedel, women prefer marriage with strangers.[1922] The Assamese have a national festival named the “Baisakh Bihu,” which is as gay as a carnival, the women, and especially the maidens, enjoying unusual liberty as long as it lasts. “For many days before the actual festival,” says Colonel Dalton, “the young people in the villages may be seen moving about in groups gaily dressed or forming circles, in the midst of which the prettiest girls dance with their long hair loose on their shoulders.” But on these occasions the girls “do not like to dance before the men of their own village.”[1923] Professor Kovalevsky observes that, in some parts of Russia, the bride is always taken from another village than the bridegroom’s; and, even in provinces in which no similar custom is known to exist, “the bridegroom is constantly spoken of as a foreigner (‘choujoy,’ ‘choujaninin’), and his friends and attendants are represented as coming with him from a distant country, in order to take away the future spouse.”[1924] Sir Richard Burton says, “As a general rule Somali women prefer amourettes with strangers, following the well-known Arab proverb, ‘The new comer filleth the eye.’”[1925]

We have seen how variously defined the prohibited degrees are in the laws of nations. Facts show that the extent to which relatives are not allowed to intermarry is nearly connected with their close living together. Generally speaking, the prohibited degrees are extended much farther among savage and barbarous peoples than in civilized societies. As a rule, the former, if they have not remained in the most primitive social condition of man, live, not in separate families, but in large households or communities, all the members of which dwell in very close contact with each other.

The communism in the family life of the exogamous Indians of North America has been exhaustively illustrated by Mr. Morgan in his work on ‘Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.’ “The household of the Mandans,” he says, “consisting of from twenty to forty persons, the households of the Columbian tribes of about the same number, the Soshonee household of seven families, the households of the Sauks, of the Iroquois, and of the Creeks, each composed of several families, are fair types of the households of the Northern Indians at the epoch of their discovery. The fact is also established that these tribes constructed, as a rule, large joint tenement houses, each of which was occupied by a large household composed of several families, among whom provisions were in common, and who practised communism in living in the household.”[1926] Among the Iroquois, each household was made up on the principle of kinship through females, so that the married women, usually sisters, own or collateral, being of the same gens or clan, together with their children made a family circle, within which, as we have seen, intermarriage was entirely prohibited.[1927] The Senel in California live sometimes from twenty to thirty together in the same immense dome-shaped or oblong lodge of willow-poles, including all who are blood relations.[1928] According to Egede, the Greenlanders, who prohibit marriage between cousins, continue after marriage to live in their parents’ house together with other kindred; and what they get they all enjoy in common.[1929] The Chippewas, who consider cousins german in the same light as brothers and sisters, but do not recognize relationship beyond this degree, are divided into small bands consisting of but few families each.[1930] Among the exogamous Uaupés, the houses are the abode of numerous families, and sometimes of a whole horde.[1931] Among the Yahgans, who regard marriage between first and second cousins as incestuous, “occasionally as many as five families are to be found living in a wigwam, but generally two families.”[1932]

The Australian aborigines live mostly in small hordes, often consisting of from thirty to fifty men, women, and children. Such a horde, according to Mr. Brough Smyth, “is in fact but an enlargement of a family circle, and none within it can intermarry.”[1933] Among the Efatese, in whose clan-system the prohibition of incest is a fundamental law, each clan is regarded as one family. “A child of a,” says Mr. Macdonald, “calls her own mother mother, and all her mother’s tribe (clan) sisters mother; and calls by the name of father not only her own father but all his tribe (clan) brothers; and they all call the child their child.”[1934] The Malays, according to Professor Wilken, live, as a rule, in large houses containing a great number of differently related persons.[1935] “In Nanusa,” Dr. Hickson remarks, “I understood that marriage was not permitted between members of the same household. The enormous households of the Nanusa archipelago are probably the remnants of a much more complete system of intra-tribal clanships, which has become almost obliterated in the more highly developed races of Sangir and Siauw.”[1936] Among the Nairs, a household, the members of which are strictly prohibited from sexual relation with each other, includes, as a rule, many allied men, women, and children, who not only live together in large common houses, but possess everything in common.[1937] Among the Kafirs, the dimensions of a kraal are determined by the number of a man’s family and dependants, the family consisting of the father together with his children, including married sons.[1938]

The South Slavonians live in house-communities, each consisting of a body of from fifteen to sixty members or even more, who are blood-relations to the second or third degree, of course only on the male side.[1939] These related families associate in a common dwelling or group of dwellings, governed by a common chief. “At the present moment,” Sir Henry Maine remarks, “the common residence of so many persons of both sexes in the same household may be said to be only possible through their belief that any union of kinsmen and kinswomen would be incestuous. The South Slavonian table of prohibited degrees is extremely wide.”[1940] Again, Professor Kohler points out the connection between the extensive prohibitions of the Hindus and their large households.[1941] In Wales there existed, as a national institution, a joint-family called “trev,” consisting of four generations. Marriage, says Mr. Lewis, was to be “outside the trev, or kindred who lived together within one enclosure.”[1942]

Montesquieu, indeed, observed long ago that marriage between cousins was prohibited by peoples among whom brothers and their children used to live in the same house. “Chez ces peuples,” he says, “le mariage entre cousins germains doit être regardé comme contraire à la nature; chez les autres, non.” According to him, this prohibition has the same origin as the aversion to sexual relations between brothers and sisters, i.e., “les pères et les mères ayent voulu conserver les mœurs de leurs enfans et leurs maisons pures.”[1943] Holding a similar opinion, Dr. Bertillon maintains that, properly speaking, it was not consanguinity, but the purity of home, that the ancient legislators were thinking of when they forbade close intermarriage.[1944] It is scarcely necessary to say how far I am from thinking that these prohibitions are, in the first place, due to the providence of parents or legislators.

On the other hand, where the families live more separately such extensive prohibitions to close intermarrying do not generally exist. Among the Isánna Indians of Brazil, who prefer marriage with relations, cousins with cousins, uncles with nieces, and nephews with aunts, each family has a separate house.[1945] The endogamous Maoris, who frequently marry near relations, have their villages generally scattered over a large plot of ground, the personal rights of possession being held most sacred.[1946] “There is no national bond of union amongst them,” says Mr. Yate; “each one is jealous of the authority and power of his neighbour; the hand of each individual is against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”[1947] Among the Todas, who live in strict endogamy, families reside in permanent villages having each a certain tract of grazing ground around it, and containing from two to three huts. Most of these huts consist of only one room or cabin, and each room holds one entire subdivision of a family.[1948] The Bushmans, among whom no degree of consanguinity prevents a matrimonial connection, except between brothers and sisters, parents and children,[1949] live a solitary life in small family huts, not high enough to admit even of a Bushman standing upright within it.[1950] As regards the Wanyoro, whose table of prohibited degrees is unusually small, Emin Pasha states, “Brother, sister, brother-in-law, and son-in-law, are the recognized grades of relationship. I have never noticed any intimate connection between more distant relations.”[1951]

The Sinhalese, who frequently marry their cousins on the paternal side, have from time immemorial lived either in very small villages, consisting of a few houses, or in detached habitations, separated from each other. Each dwelling is a little establishment in itself, and each little village, so far as its wants are concerned, may be considered independent. “They seldom visit each other, except it be to beg or borrow something. Even near relations manifest no affection to each other in their visits, but sit with the gravity of strangers.”[1952]

It is easy to explain, says Ewald, why, among the Hebrews, marriage between brothers and sisters in the widest sense was forbidden, while that between cousins was permitted:—“The latter did not form one united household, and the more each house stood strictly by itself in the ancient fashion, the wider seemed the separation between cousins.”[1953] Tacitus states that the ancient Germans, whose prohibitions against incest seem to have included only the nearest relations, lived in scattered families at some distance from each other.[1954] And a comparison between the forbidden degrees of the Greeks and Romans clearly shows where we have to seek the real cause of the prohibitions. Among the former, even very close relationship was no hindrance to intermarriage, whereas, among the latter, it was not allowed between rather distantly related persons. This difference, as Rossbach justly points out, was due to the fact that the family feeling of the Greeks was much weaker than that of the Romans, among whom, in early times, a son used to remain in his father’s house even after marriage, so that cousins on the father’s side were brought up as brothers and sisters. Later on, the several families separated from the common household, and the prohibited degrees were considerably retrenched.[1955]

The reader may perhaps be disposed to reproach me for selecting only such instances as are in favour of my theory; but statistical data will show that such an imputation would be groundless. In speaking of the “classificatory system of relationship,” I pointed out that this system springs, to a great extent, from the close living together of considerable numbers of kinsfolk. Now it is most interesting to note that Dr. Tylor, by his method of adhesions, has found the two institutions, exogamy and classificatory relationship, to be in fact two sides of one institution. “In reckoning,” he says, “from the present schedules the number of peoples who use relationship names more or less corresponding to the classificatory systems here considered, they are found to be fifty-three, and the estimated number of these which might coincide accidentally with exogamy, were there no close connection between them, would be about twelve. But in fact the number of peoples who have both exogamy and classification is thirty-three, this strong coincidence being the measure of the close casual connection subsisting between the two institutions. The adherence is even stronger as to cross-cousin marriage (i.e., that the children of two brothers may not marry, nor the children of two sisters, though the child of the brother may marry the child of the sister), of which twenty-one cases appear in the schedules, no less than fifteen of the peoples practising it being also known as exogamous.”[1956] Among the Reddies, a father’s elder brother and a mother’s elder sister are called, respectively, “great-father” and “great mother,” and a father’s younger brother and a mother’s younger sister, respectively, “lesser-father” and “lesser mother”; whereas the father’s sisters and the mother’s brothers are denoted by quite different terms. Mr. Kearns remarks that they consider the difference as well as the distance of relationship between these two groups of relations to be so great that they think it unlawful and incestuous to marry the daughter of a father’s brother or of a mother’s sister, she being equal to a sister, whilst it is perfectly legal to marry the daughter of a father’s sister or of a mother’s brother.[1957]

We have seen that the prohibitions against incest are very often more or less one-sided, applying more extensively either to the relations on the father’s side or to those on the mother’s, according as descent is reckoned through men or women. We have also seen that the line of descent is intimately connected with local relationships; and we may now fairly infer that the same local relationships exercise a considerable influence on the table of prohibited degrees. Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, says Marsden, a marriage must not take place between relations within the third degree; “but there are exceptions for the descendants of females who, passing into other families, become as strangers.”[1958] A Chinese woman, on marriage, alienates herself from her own family to be incorporated into that of her husband; hence, as Mr. Medhurst observes, children of brothers and sisters may marry at pleasure, while those of brothers cannot be united on pain of death.[1959]

In a large number of cases, prohibitions of intermarriage are only indirectly influenced by the close living together. Aversion to the intermarriage of persons who live in intimate connection with each other has provoked prohibitions of the intermarriage of relations; and, as kinship is traced by means of a system of names, the name comes to be considered identical with relationship. This system, as Dr. Tylor remarks,[1960] is necessarily one-sided. Though it will keep up the record of descent either on the male or female side, it cannot do both at once. The other line, not having been kept up by such means of record, even where it is recognized as a line of relationship, is more or less neglected, and is soon forgotten; hence the prohibited degrees often extend very far on the one side, but not on the other. We have seen many instances of a common surname being a bar to intermarriage. This is especially the case with peoples among whom the clannish feeling is highly developed. Thus even the commonest Chinese are often able to trace their descent through lines of ancestry more remote than any that England’s most ancient families can claim.[1961] And, among the Ossetes, a man is bound to take blood-revenge for a cousin a hundred times removed who bears his name, whereas relationship on the mother’s side is not recognized.[1962]

Generally speaking, the feeling that two persons are intimately connected in some way or other may, through an association of ideas, give rise to the notion that marriage or intercourse between them is incestuous. Hence the prohibitions of marriage between relations by alliance and by adoption. Hence, too, the prohibitions on the ground of what is called “spiritual relationship.” The Emperor Justinian passed a law forbidding any man to marry a woman for whom he had stood as godfather in baptism, the tie of the godfather and godchild being so analogous to that of the father and child as to make such a marriage appear improper.[1963] In the Roman Church sponsorship creates a bar to the marriage even of co-sponsors, and the restriction can be removed only by a dispensation.[1964] In Eastern Europe, the groomsman at a wedding comes under a set of rules which forbids intermarriage with the family of the bride to exactly the same extent as if he were naturally the brother of the bridegroom.[1965] A similar cognatio spiritualis, according to the old law-books of India, occurs between a pupil and his “guru,” that is, the teacher who instructs him in the Veda. The pupil lived in his guru’s house for several years, and regarded him almost as a father.[1966] Hence adultery with a guru’s wife was considered a mortal sin.[1967]

But how, then, are we to explain the exceptions, apparent or real, to the rule that close living together inspires an aversion to intermarriage? How are we to explain the fact that, besides tribes that are exogamous, there are others that are endogamous, and that, besides peoples with very extensive laws against intermarriage, there are others among whom unions take place between very near relations, such as brothers and sisters, and even parents and children.

In the next chapter we shall examine the psychological principle which underlies the endogamous marriage. For the present it is sufficient to say that endogamy never, except in cases of extreme isolation, seems to occur among peoples living in very small communities with close connections between their members. Concerning the Australians, Mr. Curr expressly states that those tribes which are endogamous are, as a rule, stronger in numbers than those in which exogamous marriage obtains.[1968]

The marriage of brother and sister means, as we have seen, in most cases, marriage between a half-brother and a half-sister, having the same father but different mothers. Such marriages are not necessarily contrary to the principle here laid down. Polygyny breaks up the one family into as many sub-families as there are wives who have children, and it is not possible for the father of these sub-families to be a member of each of them in the same sense as the father is a member of the monogamous family. Nor are the children of the different mothers brought into such close contact as the children of one mother, every wife with her own family forming a little separate group, and generally living in a separate hut.[1969] On the contrary, hatred and rivalry are of no rare occurrence among the members of the various sub-families. In the Pelew Islands, according to Herr Kubary, it very seldom happens that the several wives of the same man even see each other.[1970] After speaking of the marriage of half-brother and half-sister allowed among the ancient Arabs, Professor Robertson Smith remarks, “Whatever is the origin of bars to marriage, they certainly are early associated with the feeling that it is indecent for housemates to intermarry.”[1971]

Most of the recorded instances of intermarriage of brother and sister refer to royal families, to the exclusion of others; and there is no difficulty in accounting for incestuous unions of this sort. Among lower races, as well as in Europe, it is considered improper for royal persons to contract marriage with persons of less exalted birth. But whilst European princes may go to some friendly Court for their consorts, a similar course is not open to African or Asiatic potentates.

Incestuous unions may also take place on account of necessity, as among the Wa-taïta, or on account of extreme isolation, as among the Karens of the Tenasserim Provinces,[1972] several of the small tribes of Brazil, and especially the Veddahs of Ceylon. Among the wild Veddahs, the different families are separated from each other by great distances, and it is only accidentally or occasionally that any others besides the members of one family are brought together.[1973] The reason for the practice of marrying a sister, says Professor Virchow, “was probably the same everywhere, in the royal families as with the naked Veddahs, the lack of suitable women or of women altogether.”[1974]

Certain instances of incestuous connection are evidently the results of vitiated instincts, the origin of which we are not able to trace. It is a remarkable fact that several of the peoples among whom incestuous intercourse is said to be practised are, at the same time, expressly stated to indulge in bestiality or other unnatural vices.[1975] This shows that their sexual feelings are altogether in a perverted state.

Much stress has been laid by anthropologists on the few instances of peoples who habitually or occasionally contract unions which we should consider criminal. They have been taken for surviving types of the primitive condition of man, proving that “sentiments such as those which among ourselves restrain the sexual instincts are not innate.”[1976] But it is obvious that they prove nothing of the kind. Students of early history have often paid too much regard to exceptions, and too little to rules, overlooking the fact that there is no rule which has no exceptions.

It may be objected that no feeling of incest exists among the lower animals.[1977] According to Mr. Huth, incest “is constantly practised by animals, and habitually by those which are polygamous.”[1978] But, as we have previously seen, among species that live in families, the young, without exception, leave the family as soon as they are able to shift for themselves; and Mr. Huth has adduced not the slightest evidence for his statement that “polygamy among animals means the closest incest.”[1979]

The hypothesis here advocated can, I think, account for all the facts given in the last chapter. It explains how the horror of incest may be independent of experience as well as of education; why the horror of incest refers not only to relations by blood, but very frequently to persons not at all so related; why the prohibitions of consanguineous marriages vary so considerably with regard to the prohibited degrees, applying, however, almost universally to persons who live in the closest contact with each other; and why these prohibitions are so commonly extended much farther on the one side, the paternal or the maternal, than on the other. The question now arises:—How has this instinctive aversion to marriage between persons living closely together originated?

* * * * *

We have seen that a certain degree of similarity as regards the reproductive system of two individuals is required to make their union fertile and the progeny resulting from this union fully capable of propagation. It might, then, be supposed that the highest degree of similarity must be the most beneficial; but in all probability this is not the case. It seems to be necessary not only that the sexual elements which unite shall be somewhat like, but that they shall be in some way different. The similarity must not be too great.

Mr. Darwin, by his careful studies on the effects of cross- and self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom, contributed more largely than any one else to the discovery of this law. He watched, from germination to maturity, more than a thousand individual plants, produced by crossing and self-fertilization, belonging to fifty-seven species, fifty-two genera, and thirty large families, and including natives of the most various countries.[1980] The result established by this research was, that cross-fertilization is generally beneficial, and self-fertilization injurious; which is shown by the difference in height, weight, constitutional vigour, and fertility of the offspring from crossed and self-fertilized flowers, and in the number of seeds produced by the parent-plants.[1981] Hence, whenever plants which are the offspring of self-fertilization are opposed in the struggle for existence to the offspring of cross-fertilization, the latter have the advantage. And this follows, according to Mr. Darwin, from individuals of two distinct kinds having been subjected during previous generations to different conditions, or to their having varied from some unknown cause in a manner commonly called spontaneous, because of that innate tendency to vary and to advance in organization which exists in all beings; so that in either case their sexual elements have been in some degree differentiated.[1982]

As for the animal kingdom, Mr. Darwin remarks that almost all who have bred many kinds of animals, and have written on the subject, have expressed the strongest conviction on the evil effects of close interbreeding.[1983] “Indeed,” says Sir J. Sebright, “I have no doubt but that, by this practice being continued, animals would, in course of time, degenerate to such a degree as to become incapable of breeding at all.... I have tried many experiments by breeding in-and-in upon dogs, fowls, and pigeons; the dogs became, from strong spaniels, weak and diminutive lap-dogs, the fowls became long in the legs, small in the body, and bad breeders.”[1984] Mr. Huth, on the other hand, denies that breeding in-and-in, however close, has proved to be in itself hurtful, and quotes the evidence of numerous breeders whose choicest stocks have always been so bred. But in these cases, as Mr. Wallace remarks, “there has been rigid selection by which the weak or the infertile have been eliminated, and with such selection there is no doubt that the ill effects of close interbreeding can be prevented for a long time; but this by no means proves that no ill effects are produced.”[1985] The consensus of opinion on this point among eminent breeders is indeed overwhelming, and cannot be reasoned away. According to Crampe’s experiment with the brown rat (Mus decumanus), thirty-nine animals out of 153 born by related parents, i.e., 25·5 per cent., died soon after birth, whereas of 299 animals of parents not related this was the case with twenty-eight only, i.e., 8·4 per cent. The animals of incestuous broods were much smaller and lighter than others, and their fecundity was diminished.[1986] Mr. Huth himself observed, when breeding rabbits in-and-in, that “after the fourth generation there was a diminution of fecundity analogous to the disgust that the stomach would feel at the same diet long continued,” though he found no evil effect in any other way. On the contrary, the in-and-in bred offspring were somewhat heavier than the non-related parent animals.[1987] Professor Preyer has made a similar observation with regard to guinea-pigs: breeding in-and-in produced a considerable loss of fertility, but was accompanied with an increase of weight.[1988] This seems to indicate that the effects of close interbreeding are not always the same.

There are certainly breeders who prefer connecting together the animals nearest allied in blood to one another. But, as Dr. Mitchell observes, “when breeding in-and-in has been practised with so-called good results, the issue is nothing but the development of a saleable defect, which, from the animal’s point of view, must be regarded as wholly unnatural and artificial, and not calculated to promote its well-being or natural usefulness.”[1989]

Many writers suppose that all the evils from close interbreeding depend upon the combination and consequent increase of morbid tendencies common to both parents, the state of whose health decides whether union would be favourable or not to the offspring. “If the parents are perfectly healthy,” says M. Pouchet, “and exempt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children at least as healthy as themselves.... But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire disappearance.”[1990] The same opinion is held by Sir John Sebright. But being, as an experienced breeder, well aware of the injurious results which almost always follow from interbreeding animals too closely, he adds that, according to his belief, there never did exist an animal without some defect, in constitution, in form, or in some other essential quality, or that at least a tendency to the same imperfection generally prevails in the same family.[1991]

Mr. Darwin, however, has shown it to be highly probable that, though the injury has often partly resulted from the combination of morbid tendencies, the general cause is different. Considering the number of self-fertilized plants that were tried, he thinks it is nothing less than absurd to suppose that in all these cases the mother-plants, though not appearing in any way diseased, were weak or unhealthy in so peculiar a manner that their self-fertilized seedlings, many hundreds in number, were rendered inferior in height, weight, constitutional vigour, and fertility to their crossed offspring.[1992] Moreover, self-fertilization and close interbreeding induce sterility, and this indicates something quite different from the augmentation of morbid tendencies common to both parents.[1993] Hence it seems to be almost beyond doubt that, just as the sterility of distinct species when first crossed, and of their hybrid offspring, depends on their sexual elements having been differentiated in too great a degree, the evils of close interbreeding, or self-fertilization in plants, result chiefly from their sexual elements not having been sufficiently differentiated. But we do not know why a certain amount of differentiation is necessary or favourable for the fertilization or union of two organisms, any more than for the chemical affinity or union of two substances.[1994] It must, however, be observed that no case of complete sterility is met with in self-fertilized seedlings, as is so common with hybrids,[1995] and that interbreeding even of the nearest relations may sometimes, under very favourable circumstances, be continued through several generations without any evil results making their appearance.

It is impossible to believe that a law which holds good for the rest of the animal kingdom, as well as for plants, does not apply to man also. But it is difficult to adduce direct evidence for the evil effects of consanguineous marriages. We cannot expect very conspicuous results from other alliances than those between the nearest relations—between brothers and sisters, parents and children. And the injurious results even of such unions would not necessarily appear at once. Sir J. Sebright remarks that there may be families of domestic animals which go through several generations without sustaining much injury from having been bred in-and-in,[1996] and the offspring of self-fertilized plants do not always show any loss of vigour in the first generations. Man cannot, in this respect, be subjected to experiments like those tried in the case of other animals, and habitual intermarriage of the very nearest relations is, as we have seen, exceedingly rare. Mr. Adam argues that there is no proof of the physical deterioration of those divisions of mankind amongst whom incestuous unions are known more or less to have prevailed—as the Egyptians and Persians.[1997] But among these nations marriage certainly did not always take place between closely related persons; and breeders of domestic animals inform us that the mixing-in even of a drop of unrelated blood is sufficient almost to neutralize the injurious effects of long continued close interbreeding. Again, Mr. Huth asserts that, though the Ptolemies habitually married their sisters, nieces, and cousins, they were neither sterile nor particularly short-lived.[1998] Mr. Galton, on the contrary, sees in Ptolemaic experience a proof that close intermarriage is followed by sterility.[1999] In ten marriages between brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, or between first-cousins, the average number of children was not quite two, and three of the unions were entirely sterile.[2000]

The Veddahs of Ceylon are probably the most in-and-in bred people that ever existed. Among them, the practice of a man marrying his younger sister did not occur only occasionally; according to Mr. Bailey, it was the proper marriage. Among the Bintenne Veddahs, it may be said to have been, for perhaps two generations or so, extinct, whilst among those of Nilgala, it is at most only disappearing. Mr. Bailey believes that this practice is quite sufficient to account for the short stature as well as the weak and vacant expression of this people. He did not find many traces of insanity, idiocy, and epilepsy—maladies which such marriages, according to a common belief, might be supposed to produce. “But in other respects,” he says, “the injurious effects of this custom would seem to be plainly discernible. The race is rapidly becoming extinct; large families are all but unknown, and longevity is very rare. I have been at some pains to obtain reliable data to elucidate these points. Out of seventy-two Veddahs in Nilgala, fifty were adults, and twenty-two children. In one small sept, or family, there were nine adults and one child; in another, one child and eight adults; and so on. In Bintenne, out of three hundred and eight Veddahs, a hundred and seventy-five were adults and a hundred and thirty-three children. Here the disproportion is not so marked; but in one of the smaller tribes, more isolated than the rest, there were twenty adults, and but four children. The paucity of children, I think, must be ascribed to the degeneracy produced by such close intermarriages, for I have never heard a suspicion of infanticide existing among them. Out of fifty adults in Nilgala, only one appeared to have numbered seventy years, and but eight to have exceeded fifty. In Bintenne, of a hundred and seventy-five adults, two only seemed to have reached their seventieth, and but fourteen to have exceeded their fiftieth year. Such statistics seem to show the practical results of such connections. The Nilgala Veddahs, who still maintain an almost total isolation from other people, are rapidly disappearing. The Veddahs of Bintenne, who have abandoned the pernicious custom which I have described, and still intermarry among themselves, are becoming extinct, though more gradually.”[2001]

With the exception of this case, the closest kind of intermarriage which we have opportunities of studying is that between first cousins. Unfortunately, the observations hitherto made on the subject are far from decisive. Several writers, as M. Périer, Dr. Voisin, and Mr. Huth, believe that there are no injurious results at all from those marriages, unless the parents are afflicted with the same hereditary morbid tendencies,[2002] whilst others, as M. Devay and M. Boudin, express the most alarming opinions as to the bad effects of consanguineous marriages. Such alliances are supposed to bring evils of many different kinds upon a population, as sterility, idiocy, epilepsy, insanity, deaf-muteism, congenital malformations in the offspring, cretinism, albinoism,[2003] &c. But how little the statements of the various writers agree with each other appears, for instance, from the fact that M. Boudin found the proportion of deaf-mutes born in consanguineous marriages, in the Imperial Institution of Deaf-Mutes at Paris, to be 28·35 per cent., whereas, according to Dr. Mitchell, it amounts to 5·17 per cent. in Scotch and English institutions.[2004]

As it is impossible to dwell here upon the investigations of the several writers, of which Mr. Huth has given so complete an account, I shall confine myself to a statement of the general results attained by those investigators who have founded their inquiries on a more trustworthy statistical basis.

Adopting a method different from that of his predecessors, Professor G. H. Darwin has endeavoured first to discover the proportion of consanguineous marriages in the whole population, and then to find out whether the offspring of those marriages exhibit a greater percentage of individuals, defective in one way or another, than the offspring of non-consanguineous marriages. His investigations tend decidedly to invalidate the exaggerated conclusions of many previous writers, but he thinks that “there are nevertheless grounds for asserting that various maladies take an easy hold of the offspring of consanguineous marriages.”[2005] He did not find evidence that the marriage of first cousins had any effect in the production of infertility, deaf-muteism, insanity, or idiocy, but he observed a slightly lowered vitality amongst the offspring of first cousins, and a somewhat higher death-rate than amongst the families of non-consanguineous marriages.[2006] Moreover, the numbers of boating men belonging to the twenty boats at Oxford and thirty at Cambridge, in the first and second division, and those of selected athletes from some schools in England, justified, to some extent, the belief “that offspring of first cousins are deficient physically, whilst at the same time they negative the views of alarmist writers on the subject.”[2007] It is curious that, in spite of such unambiguous statements, Mr. Darwin’s paper has generally been quoted as an evidence of the perfect harmlessness of first cousin marriages.

M. Stieda has found that, in the departments of France, the number of bodily or mentally infirm people increases almost constantly in proportion to the number of consanguineous marriages, as will be seen from the following table:—

Number of Number of consanguineous Number of Group. departments. marriages in infirm people in each thousand each thousand marriages. inhabitants.

I. 10 5·4 2·3 II. 10 8·3 2·8 III. 14 9·95 3 IV. 10 11·2 2·4 V. 13 12·5 2·8 VI. 8 13·8 3 VII. 14 15·8 3·5 VIII. 10 19·2 3·25 —————————————————————————————————-———————————-———————————-—————-— I.—IV. 44 9·2 2·65 V.—VIII. 45 14·8 3·1[2008]

The Danish physician, Dr. Mygge, published in 1879 a book on ‘Marriage between Blood-Relations,’ which unfortunately has received much less attention than it deserves.[2009] Thanks to the trustworthiness of the method, the number of cases considered, and the author’s impartiality, it is probably the most important statistical contribution hitherto issued on this subject. Dr. Mygge found, from the information he received from various parts of Denmark, that in that country, or at least in the parishes of it which came under his observation, there occur, among the children of related persons, comparatively more idiots, lunatics, epileptics, and deaf-mutes than among others. He considers it probable, too, though not proved, that such children die in a higher ratio and are more liable to certain diseases. But, on the other hand, he did not notice any perceptible difference in fertility between consanguineous and crossed marriages.[2010]

In these inquiries, Dr. Mygge followed the method applied by the Norwegian physician Ludvig Dahl twenty years earlier. Through careful investigation of 246 marriages, eighty-five of which were between first cousins and four between still nearer relations, this inquirer was led to the conclusions that consanguineous marriages are somewhat less fertile than crossed marriages; that they produce comparatively many more still-born and sickly children; and that insanity, idiocy, deaf-dumbness, and epilepsy occur about eleven times as often among the offspring of relations, as among the offspring of unrelated parents. But he admitted that the numbers compared were too small to make his conclusions decisive.[2011]

These results are of course to a great extent conjectural. But it is noteworthy that, of all the writers who have discussed the subject, the majority, and certainly not the least able of them, have expressed their belief in marriages between first cousins being more or less unfavourable to the offspring.[2012] And no evidence which can stand the test of scientific investigation has hitherto been adduced against this view.

Some writers have, indeed, cited instances of communities where consanguineous marriages have occurred constantly without any evil effects having appeared. Thus the Pitcairn Island, uninhabited till the year 1790, was at that time peopled by nine white men, and six men and twelve women of Tahiti. In 1800 the population consisted of one man, five women, and nineteen children; and the descendants of these persons are stated by later travellers to be strong and healthy without any traces of degeneration. Omitting whatever else may be said against this case as evidence for the harmlessness of consanguineous marriages, I need only call attention to the facts that, since the colonization of this island, a few strangers have joined the little colony; that it was once removed to Norfolk Island, and that, of those who returned, one was a Norfolk Islander who had married a Pitcairn girl; that the island has frequently been visited by ships with their crews;[2013] and that, as Beechey expressly states, the same restrictions with regard to intermarriage of relations exist here as in England.[2014]

There are several isolated communities—in Java, Peru, Great Britain, France, Scandinavia, &c.—which intermarry solely among themselves without any evil effects being discernible. An often-quoted case is the community of Batz (3,300 persons), situated near Croisic on a peninsula. The inhabitants of this community have been in the habit of closely intermarrying among themselves from time immemorial. Nevertheless, they are almost all very well in health without any hereditary affection. But Dr. Voisin observes, “Les conditions climatériques de la commune de Batz, son voisinage de la mer, l’hygiène et les habitudes de ses habitants, semblent s’accorder pour empêcher la dégénérescence de l’espèce et paraissent expliquer l’innocuité des mariages entre consanguins qui s’y pratiquent depuis plusieurs siècles.”[2015] In other isolated communities the population is not so numerous, and the sanitary conditions are not perhaps so favourable: but in any case we may say that this local endogamy is generally something quite different from marriage with near relations. Dr. Mitchell found that, in almost all the isolated communities along the coasts of Scotland, which had been given as instances of close interbreeding, such marriages were comparatively rare. According to Dr. Mygge, the like is true of the population of Lyø and Strynø in Denmark.[2016] And Dr. Andrew Wood states, of the fisher-folk of Newhaven, that, though they keep themselves much segregated, they are very careful regarding intermarriage, and look upon the union of relatives as an infringement of the laws of morality.[2017]

Moreover, even if it could be proved that, in particular cases, close intermarrying, though continued for a long time, has been followed by no bad consequences, this would be no evidence that consanguineous marriages are as a rule innocuous. In some parishes of Denmark Dr. Mygge found no evil effects of such marriages, whilst in others they were very conspicuous.[2018] And from the investigations of Mr. Darwin it appears that, notwithstanding the injury which most plants suffer from self-fertilization, a few have almost certainly been propagated in a state of nature for thousands of generations without having been once intercrossed. It is impossible to understand, he says, why some individuals even of the same species are sterile, whilst others are quite fertile, with their own pollen.[2019]

There is evidence that the bad consequences of self-fertilization and close interbreeding may almost fail to appear under favourable conditions of life. In-and-in bred plants, when allowed enough space and good soil, frequently show little or no deterioration: whereas, when placed in competition with another plant, they often perish or are much stunted.[2020] Crampe’s experiments with brown rats proved that the breeding in-and-in was much less injurious, if the offspring of the related parents were well fed and taken care of, than if it was otherwise.[2021] And this is in striking accordance with Dr. Mitchell’s observations as to consanguineous marriages in Scotland. The results there appear to be least grave, and are frequently almost nil, if the parents and children live in tolerable comfort, without anxiety or much thought for the morrow, and easily earning enough to procure good food and clothing—in short, when they work, but do not struggle for existence. On the other hand, when they are “poor, pinched for food, scrimp of clothing, badly housed, and exposed to misery; when they have to toil and struggle for the bare necessaries of life—never having enough for to-day and being always fearful of to-morrow,”—the evil may become very marked.[2022]

If this is the case, we must expect to find that consanguineous marriages are much more injurious in savage regions, where the struggle for existence is often very severe, than they have proved to be in civilized society, especially as it is among the well-off classes that such marriages occur most frequently.[2023] In England, according to Mr. G. H. Darwin, cousin-marriages among the aristocracy are probably 4½ per cent.; among the middle and upper middle class, or among the landed gentry, 3½ per cent.; but in London, comprising all classes, they are probably only 1½ per cent.[2024] He thinks that the slightness of the evils which he found to result from first-cousin marriages perhaps depends upon the fact that a large majority of Englishmen live under what are on the whole very favourable circumstances.[2025] We must also, however, remember that there has been a great mixture of races in Europe, and that this necessarily makes marriage of kinsfolk less injurious, so far as the evil results of such unions depend upon too great a likeness between the sexual elements.

The conclusion that closely related marriages produce more destructive effects among savage than civilized peoples, derives perhaps, some additional probability from certain ethnological facts. These facts may, at least, serve to show that such marriages, and the experience of isolated communities, are not everywhere in favour of Mr. Huth’s conclusions. Several statements on the subject have, indeed, scarcely any value as direct evidence for the harmfulness of consanguineous marriages, but to two or three considerable weight must be attached.

According to v. Martius, who is a great authority on Brazilian ethnography, it is a well-established fact, observed everywhere, that the smaller and more isolated of the Indian communities, scarcely any members of which marry members of other communities, are much more liable to every kind of deterioration than the larger groups.[2026] “It is probable,” Mr. Bates, another most capable judge, remarks with reference to the savage tribes on the Upper Amazons, “that the strange inflexibility of the Indian organization, both bodily and mental, is owing to the isolation in which each small tribe has lived, and to the narrow round of life and thought, and close intermarriages for countless generations, which are the necessary results. Their fecundity is of a low degree, for it is very rare to find an Indian family having so many as four children, and we have seen how great is their liability to sickness and death on removal from place to place.”[2027] Touching the Isánna Indians, Mr. Wallace asserts that they are said not to be nearly so numerous, nor to increase so rapidly, as the Uaupés; which may perhaps be owing to their marrying with relations, while the latter prefer strangers.[2028] And v. Tschudi supposes that the low fecundity of the Botocudos is caused by their endogamous habits; for when their women marry out of their own horde, especially with whites or negroes, they are generally very fertile.[2029]

The Calidonian Indians of the Isthmus of Darien, according to Mr. Gisborne, are bound never to cross the breed with foreigners; hence intermarriage is very constant, and, as he remarks, the race degenerates.[2030] The Pueblos in New Mexico, too, are said to deteriorate because of their constant intermarriage in the same village.[2031] As regards the Hottentots, Barrow remarks, “The impolitic custom of hording together in families, and of not marrying out of their own kraals, has no doubt tended to enervate this race of men, and reduced them to their present degenerated condition, which is that of a languid, listless phlegmatic people, in whom the prolific powers of nature seem to be almost exhausted.” Few of the women have more than two or three children, and many of them are barren. But this is not the case when a Hottentot woman is connected with a white man. “The fruit of such an alliance,” says Barrow, “is not only in general numerous, but they are beings of a very different nature from the Hottentot.”[2032]

In too early marriages, the licentious habits of both sexes, and the intermarriage of near relatives, the Rev. J. Sibree finds the causes of the infertility of the women of Madagascar.[2033] Among the Garos, the chiefs have, in comparison with the lower classes, degenerated physically, and Colonel Dalton is inclined to think that this degeneration is a result of close interbreeding.[2034] The Lundu Sea Dyaks, according to Sir Spenser St. John, have decreased greatly in numbers—from a thousand families to ten. “They complain bitterly,” he says, “that they have no families, that their women are not fertile; indeed, there were but three or four children in the whole place. The men were fine-looking and the women well-favoured and healthy—remarkably clean and free from disease. We could only account for their decreasing numbers by their constant intermarriages.”[2035] Mr. Foreman thinks that the low intellect and mental debility perceptible in many families among the domesticated natives of the Philippines are due to consanguineous marriages.[2036] Mr. Bachelor connects the rapid decrease of the Ainos with their endogamous habits.[2037] And Mr. Meade remarks, with regard to the Maoris, that one of the principal causes of the diminishing population is said to be their intermarriages, which cause barrenness among the women.[2038]

Of no little interest to us are the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills. Mr. Marshall remarks that, among them, relationship is intimate far beyond that witnessed in any country approaching civilization—“intimate to such a degree, that the whole tribe, where not parents and children, brothers and sisters, are all first cousins, descended from lines of first cousins prolonged for centuries.”[2039] As regards the general appearance of the people, a large proportion of both sexes and of all ages are doubtless in excellent health, and their fecundity, according to Dr. Shortt, is by no means of a low degree.[2040] Nevertheless, the Todas are dying out. In infancy the mortality is so great that, as a rule, there is in each family only a small number of children.[2041] “It is rarely that there are more than two or three children,” says the missionary Metz, “and it is not at all an uncommon thing to find only a single child, while many families have none at all.” The numbers of the Todas have, consequently, for years past been gradually declining, and probably the time is not far distant when they will have passed away.[2042] Of course, we do not know whether this depends upon their close intermarriages, but there is, at any rate, some reason to suspect that this is the case. That the intermarrying has not produced more evil effects on the population, may possibly be owing to the wealth for which the Neilgherry Hills are remarkable, and to their climate, which, for mildly invigorating properties and equable seasonal changes throughout the year, is perhaps unrivalled anywhere within the tropics.[2043]

Another very much in-and-in bred people are the Persians. Among them, husband and wife are generally of the same family, and very often cousins. Yet Dr. Polak who has lived in Persia for nine years, partly as a teacher in the medical school of Teheran, partly as physician to the Shah, and during this residence has had excellent opportunities of acquainting himself with the conditions of the people, has not observed that the diseases which are supposed to result from consanguineous marriages prevail more frequently there than elsewhere. Nor has he found that the Persian women are generally less fertile than others. Yet the families are exceedingly small, as the mortality among children is enormous. Of six, perhaps two as a rule survive, but very often none at all, most of them dying in their second year. Dr. Polak believes, indeed, that, on an average, scarcely more than one living child comes to each woman. A princess in Teheran was looked upon quite as a wonder because she had eight children alive, and the European physician was asked if he ever before, in his own country, had seen a similar case.[2044]

More important than any of these statements is the following testimony concerning the Karens of Burma, for which I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Bunker, who has been a resident among that people during more than twenty years. He says that, in some of their villages, exogamy prevails, in others endogamy, but marriages between parents and children, brothers and sisters, are prohibited everywhere, and even first cousins very seldom marry, though there is no law against such connections. There is a striking difference with regard to stature, health, strength and fecundity, between the inhabitants of the exogamous and those of the endogamous villages, the latter being much inferior in all these respects. Dr. Bunker has no doubt that this inferiority is owing to the intermarriage of kinsfolk, and he asserts that even the natives themselves ascribe it to this cause, though they obstinately keep up the old custom, regarding marriages out of their own village as highly unbecoming. In cases in which missionaries have been able to persuade young men to choose wives from another village, Dr. Bunker assures me that the good effects of a cross appeared at once.[2045]

There are some other peoples who ascribe evil results to close intermarriage. Mr. Cousins informs me that the Cis-Natalian Kafirs believe “that their offspring would be of a more sickly nature if such were allowed”; and Mr. Eyles writes that the Zulus, on the border of Pondoland, regard sterility and deformity as consequences of consanguineous unions. The Australian Dieyerie, according to Mr. Gason, have a tradition that, after the creation, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and others of the closest kin intermarried promiscuously, until the bad effects of these marriages became manifest. A council of the chiefs was then assembled to consider in what way the evil might be averted, and the result of their deliberations was a petition to the Muramura, or Good Spirit. In answer to this he ordered that the tribe should be divided into branches, and distinguished one from the other by different names, after objects animate and inanimate, such as dogs, mice, emu, rain, and so forth, and that the members of any such branch should be forbidden to marry other members of the same branch.[2046] Again, touching the Kenai, in the north-western part of North America, Richardson states, “It was the custom that the men of one stock should choose their wives from another, and the offspring belonged to the race of the mother. This custom has fallen into disuse, and marriages in the same tribe occur; but the old people say that mortality among the Kenai has arisen from the neglect of the ancient usage.”[2047]

In a Greenland Eskimo tale, the father of Kakamak, finding that all his grandchildren have died before reaching the age of puberty, suggests to his son-in-law, “Perhaps we are too near akin.”[2048] Two Mohammedan travellers of the ninth century tell us that the Hindus never married a relation, because they thought alliances between unrelated persons improved the offspring.[2049] In Hadîth, the collection of Mohammedan traditions, it is said, “Marry among strangers; thus you will not have feeble posterity.” “This view,” says Goldziher, “coincides with the opinion of the ancient Arabs that the children of endogamous marriages are weakly and lean. To this class also belongs the proverb of Al-Meydânî, ‘ ... Marry the distant, marry not the near’ (in relationship).” A poet, praising a hero, says, “He is a hero, not borne by the cousin (of his father), he is not weakly; for the seed of relations brings forth feeble fruit.”[2050]

In opposition to the view that these opinions are the results of experience, it may be urged that any infraction of the customs or laws of ancestors is commonly thought to call down divine vengeance. Father Veniaminof tells us that, among the early Aleuts, incest, which was considered the gravest crime, was believed to be always followed by the birth of monsters with walrus-tusks, beard, and other disfiguration;[2051] and among the Kafirs, according to Mr. Fynn, it is a general belief that the offspring of an incestuous union will be a monster—“a punishment inflicted by the ancestral spirit.”[2052] But whatever may be said of the other cases referred to, no such explanation can possibly hold good for the Arabs. Among them, marriage with a near relation involved no infringement of their marriage regulations. On the contrary, in spite of the opinions in favour of exogamy, the preference for marriage with a cousin was dominant among them, and a man had even a right to the hand of his “bint ‘amm,” the daughter of a paternal uncle.[2053]

Taking all these facts into consideration, I cannot but believe that consanguineous marriages, in some way or other, are more or less detrimental to the species. And here, I think, we may find a quite sufficient explanation of the horror of incest; not because man at an early stage recognized the injurious influence of close intermarriage, but because the law of natural selection must inevitably have operated. Among the ancestors of man, as among other animals, there was no doubt a time when blood-relationship was no bar to sexual intercourse. But variations, here as elsewhere, would naturally present themselves; and those of our ancestors who avoided in-and-in breeding would survive, while the others would gradually decay and ultimately perish. Thus an instinct would be developed which would be powerful enough, as a rule, to prevent injurious unions. Of course it would display itself simply as an aversion on the part of individuals to union with others with whom they lived; but these, as a matter of fact, would be blood-relations, so that the result would be the survival of the fittest.

Whether man inherited the feeling from the predecessors from whom he sprang, or whether it was developed after the evolution of distinctly human qualities, we do not know. It must necessarily have arisen at a stage when family ties became comparatively strong, and children remained with their parents until the age of puberty, or even longer. Exogamy, as a natural extension of this instinct, would arise when single families united in small hordes. It could not but grow up if the idea of union between persons intimately associated with one another was an object of innate repugnance. There is no real reason why we should assume, as so many anthropologists have done,[2054] that primitive men lived in small endogamous communities, practising incest in every degree. The theory does not accord with what is known of the customs of existing savages; and it accounts for no facts which may not be otherwise far more satisfactorily explained.

The objection will perhaps be made that the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth is too complicated a mental phenomenon to be a true instinct, acquired through spontaneous variations intensified by natural selection. But there are instincts just as complicated as this feeling, which, in fact, only implies that disgust is associated with the idea of sexual intercourse between persons who have lived in a long-continued, intimate relationship from a period of life at which the action of desire is naturally out of the question. This association is no matter of course, and certainly cannot be explained by the mere liking for novelty. It has all the characteristics of a real, powerful instinct, and bears evidently a close resemblance to the aversion to sexual intercourse with individuals belonging to another species.

* * * * *

Besides the horror of incest, there is another feeling to which reference may here be made. “L’amour,” says Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, “ ... ne résulte que des contrastes; et plus ils sont grands, plus il a d’énergie. C’est ce que je pourrois prouver par mille traits d’histoire.... L’influence des contrastes en amour est si certaine, qu’en voyant l’amant on peut faire le portrait de l’objet aimé sans l’avoir vu, pourvu qu’on sache seulement qu’il est affecté d’une forte passion.”[2055] Schopenhauer likewise observes that every person requires from the individual of the opposite sex a one-sidedness which is the opposite of his or her own. The most manly man will seek the most womanly woman, and vice versa. Weak or little men have a decided inclination for strong or big women, and strong or big women for weak or little men. Blondes prefer dark persons, or brunettes; snub-nosed persons, hook-nosed; persons with excessively slim, long bodies and limbs, those who are stumpy and short; and so on.[2056] A similar view is held by M. Prosper Lucas, Mr. Alexander Walker, Professor Mantegazza, Mr. Grant Allen, and other writers.[2057] “In the love of the sexes,” says Professor Bain, “the charm of disparity goes beyond the standing differences of sex; as in contrasts of complexion, and of stature.”[2058]

Some writers have suggested that love thus excited by differences is favourable to fecundity, those marriages in which it exists being more prolific than others.[2059] Thus Mr. Andrew Knight, a most experienced breeder, remarks, “I am disposed to think that the most powerful human minds will be found offspring of parents of different hereditary constitutions. I prefer a male of a different colour from the breed of the female, where that can be obtained, and I think that I have seen fine children produced in more than one instance, where one family has been dark and the other fair. I am sure that I have witnessed the bad effects of marriages between two individuals very similar to each other in character and colour, and springing from ancestry of similar character. Such have appeared to me to be like marriages between brothers and sisters.”[2060]

These statements, of course, prove nothing, but they may perhaps derive some value from the fact that they are made by so many different observers. The statistical investigation of Professor Alphonse de Candolle, bearing upon the same question, rests on firmer ground. He has found, from facts collected in Switzerland, North Germany, and Belgium, that marriages are most commonly contracted between persons with different colours of the eye, except in the case of brown-eyed women, who are generally considered more attractive than others.[2061] He has noted, further, that the number of children is considerably smaller in families where the parents have the same colour of the eye than where the reverse is the case.[2062] But Professor Wittrock could not, in Sweden, find any such difference in fecundity between the two categories of marriages;[2063] and Mr. Galton observes, “Whatever may be the sexual preferences for similarity or for contrast, I find little indication in the average results obtained from a fairly large number of cases, of any single measurable personal peculiarity, whether it be stature, temper, eye-colour or artistic tastes, influencing marriage selection to a notable degree.”[2064]

If contrasts instinctively seek each other, this may partly account for the readiness with which love awakens love. Every one knows some unhappy lover who has never been able to win the heart of the person he adores; but in most cases, I should say, love is mutual. And this, perhaps, is owing not only to the contagiousness of the passion, but also to the attractive power of contrasts, which acts equally upon both parties. Thus we might explain, to some extent, the extreme variation of tastes, and the fact that, besides the general standard of beauty common to the whole race, there exists a more detailed ideal special to each individual.

Chapter XVI

SEXUAL SELECTION AS INFLUENCED BY AFFECTION AND SYMPATHY, AND BY CALCULATION

Sexual love is the passion which unites the sexes. The stimulating impressions produced by health, youth, and beauty, and ornaments and other artificial means of attraction, are all elements of this feeling. The antipathy to sexual intercourse with individuals of another species, and the horror of incest, belong to the same phenomenon. But the psychology of love is by no means exhausted by this. “Simple et primitif comme toutes les forces colossales,” says Professor Mantegazza, “l’amour paraît pourtant formé des éléments de toutes les passions humaines.”[2065] Around the sexual appetite as the leading element there are aggregated many different feelings, such as admiration, pleasure of possession, love of freedom, self-esteem, and love of approbation.[2066] A complete analysis of love would fill a volume. Here I shall discuss only one of the most important elements of this highly compound feeling, the sentiment of affection.

In the lower stages of human development sexual affection is much inferior in intensity to the tender feelings with which parents embrace their children; and among several peoples it seems to be almost unknown. Thus, speaking of the Hovas in Madagascar, Mr. Sibree says that, among them, until the spread of Christianity, there was “no lack of strong affection between blood-relations—parents and children, brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren;” but the idea of love between husband and wife was hardly thought of.[2067] On the Gold Coast, says Major Ellis, “love, as understood by the people of Europe, has no existence.”[2068] At Winnebah, according to Mr. Duncan, “not even the appearance of affection exists between husband and wife;” and almost the same is asserted by M. Sabatier with reference to the Kabyles, by Signor Bonfanti with reference to the Bantu race.[2069] Munzinger says that, among the Beni-Amer, it is considered even disgraceful for a wife to show any affection for her husband.[2070] The Chittagong Hill tribes, according to Captain Lewin, have “no idea of tenderness, nor of chivalrous devotion.” Marriage is among them regarded as merely a convenient and animal connection.[2071] In the Island of Ponapé, according to Dr. Finsch, love in our sense of the term is entirely unknown.[2072] As regards the Eskimo of Newfoundland, Heriot asserts, “Like all other men in the savage state, they treat their wives with great coldness and neglect, but their affection towards their offspring is lively and tender.”[2073] In Greenland, a man thought nothing of beating his wife, but it was an heinous offence for a mother to chastise her children.[2074] Almost the same is said of the Kutchin by Mr. Jones, and of the Eskimo of Norton Sound by Mr. Dall.[2075] According to Mr. Morgan, the refined passion of love is unknown to the North American Indians in general.[2076]

Such statements, however, may easily be misleading. The love of a savage is certainly very different from the love of a civilized man; nevertheless, we may discover in it traces of the same ingredients. There are facts which tend to show that even very rude savages may have conjugal affection; nay, that among certain uncivilized peoples it has reached a remarkably high degree of development.

Among the wretched Bushmans, according to Mr. Chapman, there is love in all their marriages.[2077] Among the races of the Upper Congo, love is ennobled by a certain poetry;[2078] and with the Touaregs, there is a touch of almost chivalrous sentiment in the relations between men and women.[2079] Regarding the man-eating Niam-Niam, Dr. Schweinfurth asserts that they display an affection for their wives which is unparalleled among other natives of an equally low grade.[2080]

The Hos are good husbands and wives, and although they have no terms in their own language to express the higher emotions, “they feel them all the same.”[2081] The missionary Jellinghaus found tokens of affectionate love between married people among the Munda Kols, Mr. Fawcett among the Savaras, Sir Spenser St. John among the Sea Dyaks, Mr. Man among the Andamanese.[2082] In New Caledonia, says M. Moncelon, “l’amour existe, et j’ai vu des suicides par amour.”[2083] In Samoa, stories of affectionate love between husband and wife are preserved in song.[2084] In Tonga, according to Mariner, most of the women were much attached to their husbands;[2085] and in Fiji, says Dr. Seemann, “even widowers, in the depth of their grief, have frequently terminated their existence, when deprived of a dearly beloved wife.”[2086] In several of the Australian tribes, married people are often much attached to each other, and continue to be so even when they grow old.[2087] Concerning the aborigines of Victoria, Daniel Bunce says it is an error to suppose that there exists no settled love or lasting affection between the sexes; among the Narrinyeri, Mr. Taplin has known as well-matched and loving couples as he has among Europeans; and, according to Mr. Bonney, husband and wife among the natives of the River Darling, rarely quarrel, and “they show much affection for each other in their own way.”[2088]

Among the Eskimo of the north-east coast of North America, visited by Lyon, “young couples are frequently seen rubbing noses, their favourite mark of affection, with an air of tenderness.”[2089] The Tacullies, as Harman informs us, are remarkably fond of their wives.[2090] And Mr. Catlin goes even so far as to deny that the North American Indians are “in the least behind us in conjugal, in filial, and in paternal affection,”[2091]—a statement with which Mr. Morgan does not agree. Mr. Brett asserts that, among the natives of Guiana, instances of conjugal attachment are very frequent.[2092] Azara and Mantegazza found tokens of it among some other South American tribes;[2093] and the rude Fuegians are said to “show a good deal of affection for their wives.”[2094]

It is, indeed, impossible to believe that there ever was a time when conjugal affection was entirely wanting in the human race. Though originally of far less intensity than parental love, especially on the mother’s side, as being of less importance for the existence of the species, yet it seems, in its most primitive form, to have been as old as marriage itself. It must be a certain degree of affection that induces the male to defend the female during her period of pregnancy; but often it is the joint care of the offspring, more than anything else, that makes the married couple attached to each other. With reference to the Dacotahs, Mr. Prescott remarks that “as children increase, the parents appear to be more affectionate.”[2095]

Of course it is impossible to suppose that mutual love can generally be the motive which leads to marriage when the wife is captured or purchased from a foreign tribe. In the main, Mr. Hall’s assertion as to the Eskimo visited by him, that “love—if it come at all—comes after the marriage,”[2096] holds good for many savage peoples. Among the Australians, for instance, according to Mr. Brough Smyth, love has often no part in the preparations for marriage. “The bride is dragged from her home—she is unwilling to leave it; and if fears are entertained that she will endeavour to escape, a spear is thrust through her foot or her leg. A kind husband will, however, ultimately evoke affection, and fidelity and true love are not rare in Australian families.”[2097]

The affection accompanying the union of the sexes has gradually developed in proportion as altruism in general has increased. Thus love has only slowly become the refined feeling it is in the heart of a highly civilized European. In Eastern countries with their ancient civilization there exists even now but little of that tenderness towards the woman which is the principal charm of our own family life. In China, up to recent times, it was considered “good form” for a man to beat his wife, and, if the Chinaman of humble rank spared her a little, he did so only in order not to come under the necessity of buying a successor.[2098] In Hindu families, according to Dubois, sincere mutual friendship is rarely met with. “It is in vain,” he says, “to expect, between husband and wife, that reciprocal confidence and kindness which constitute the happiness of a family. The object for which a Hindu marries is not to gain a companion to aid him in enduring the evils of life, but a slave to bear children and be subservient to his rule.”[2099] The love of which the Persian poets sing has either a symbolic or a very profane meaning.[2100] Among the Arabs, says Burckhardt, “the passion of love is, indeed, much talked of by the inhabitants of towns; but I doubt whether anything is meant by them more than the grossest animal desire.”[2101] Mr. Finck remarks that in the whole of the Bible there is not a single reference to romantic love.[2102] And even in Greece, according to some authorities, the love of the sexes was little more than sexual instinct.[2103]

It is also obvious that marriage cannot be contracted from affection where the young women before marriage are kept quite apart from the men, as is done in Eastern countries. In China it often happens that the parties have not even seen each other till the wedding-day; and, in Greece, custom was scarcely less rigorous in this respect.[2104] In vain Plato urged that young men and women should be more frequently permitted to meet one another, so that there should be less enmity and indifference in the married life.[2105] Plutarch hopes that love will come after marriage.[2106]

The feeling which makes husband and wife true companions for better and worse can grow up only in societies where the altruistic sentiments of man are strong enough to make him recognize woman as his equal, and where she is not shut up as an exotic plant in a green-house, but is allowed to associate freely with men. In this direction European civilization has been advancing for centuries, and there can be no reason to fear that it will ever be permanently diverted from the path by which alone some of the most important of its ends can be attained.

When affection came to play a more prominent part in human sexual selection, higher regard was paid to intellectual, emotional, and moral qualities, through which the feeling is chiefly provoked. Later on, we shall see how great are the consequences which spring from this fact. For the present it may be enough to say that the preference given to higher qualities by civilized men contributes much to the mental improvement of the race. Dr. Stark observes that the intemperate, profligate, and criminal classes do not commonly marry; and the like is to a large extent true of persons who are very inferior in intellect, emotions, and will.[2107]

Affection depends in a very high degree upon sympathy. Though distinct aptitudes, these two classes of emotions are most intimately connected: affection is strengthened by sympathy, and sympathy is strengthened by affection. Community of interests, opinions, sentiments, culture, and mode of life, as being essential to close sympathy,[2108] is therefore favourable to warm affection. If love is excited by contrast, it is so only within certain limits. The contrast must not be so great as to exclude sympathy.

Great difference of age is fatal to close sympathy. Wieland noted that most people who fall in love do so with persons of about their own age;[2109] and statistics prove the observation to be correct. Men who marry comparatively late in life usually avoid too great difference in age.[2110] The foundation of this admiration and preference, modified by age, says Mr. Walker, “appears to be the similarity of objects and interests which are inseparable from similar periods of life, the association of these with a similar intensity of sexual desire, the consequent production of similar sympathy, and the resolve that it shall be permanent.”[2111]

A very important factor is similarity in the degree of cultivation. It seldom happens that a “gentleman” falls in love with a peasant-girl, or an artizan with a “lady.” This does more than almost anything else to maintain the separation of the different classes, and to preserve the existing distribution of wealth among the various groups of society.

Want of sympathy prevents great divisions of human beings—such as different races or nations, hereditary castes, classes, and adherents of different religions—from intermarrying, even where personal affection plays no part in the choice of the mate. Thus many uncivilized peoples carefully avoid marrying out of their own tribe, the chief reason being, I think, the strong dislike which distinct savage and barbarous nations have for one another. Mr. McLennan called such peoples “endogamous,” in contradistinction to peoples who are “exogamous,” i.e., do not marry within their own tribe or clan. But this classification has caused much confusion, “exogamy” and “endogamy” not being real contraries. For there exists among every people an outer circle—to use Sir Henry Maine’s very appropriate terminology—out of which marriage is either prohibited, or generally avoided; as well as an inner circle, including the clan, or, at any rate, the very nearest kinsfolk, within which no marriage is allowed.

Like the inner circle, the outer circle varies considerably in extent. Rengger states that many of the Indian races of Paraguay are too proud to intermarry with any race of a different colour, or even of a different stock.[2112] In Guiana and elsewhere, Indians do not readily intermix with negroes, whom they despise.[2113] Among the Isthmians of Central America, “marriage was not contracted with strangers or people speaking a different language”;[2114] and in San Salvador, according to Palacio, a man who had intercourse with a foreign woman was killed.[2115] Mr. Powers informs us of a Californian tribe who would put to death a woman for committing adultery with or marrying a white man;[2116] and among the Barolongs, a Bechuana tribe, the same punishment was formerly inflicted on any one who had intercourse with a European.[2117] Among the Kabyles, “le mariage avec une négresse n’est pas défendu en principe; mais la famille s’opposerait à une pareille union.”[2118]

The Chinese, according to Mr. Jamieson, refuse marriage with the surrounding barbarous tribes, with whom, as a rule, they have no dealings, either friendly or hostile.[2119] The black and fairer people of the Philippines have from time immemorial dwelt in the same country without producing an intermediate race;[2120] the Bugis of Perak have kept themselves very distinct from the people among whom they live;[2121] and, in Sumatra, it is a rare thing for a Malay man to marry a Kubu woman.[2122] The Munda Kols severely punish a girl who is seduced by a Hindu, whereas intercourse with a man of their own people is regarded by most of them as quite a matter of course.[2123] And, in Ceylon, even those Veddahs who live in settlements, although they have long associated with their neighbours, the Sinhalese, have not yet intermarried with them.[2124]

Count de Gobineau remarks that not even a common religion and country can extinguish the hereditary aversion of the Arab to the Turk, of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria, of the Magyar to the Slav.[2125] Indeed, so strong, among the Arabs, is the instinct of ethnical isolation, that, as a traveller relates, at Djidda, where sexual morality is held in little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or European, but would think herself for ever dishonoured if she were joined to him in lawful wedlock.[2126]

Marriages between Lapps and Swedes very rarely occur, being looked upon as dishonourable by both peoples. They are equally uncommon between Lapps and Norwegians, and it hardly ever happens that a Lapp marries a Russian.[2127] At various times, Spaniards in Central America, Englishmen in Mauritius, Frenchmen in Réunion and the Antilles, and Danish traders in Greenland, have been prevented by law from marrying natives.[2128] Among the Hebrews, during the early days of their power and dominion, marriages with aliens seem to have been rare exceptions.[2129] The Romans were prohibited from marrying barbarians; Valentinian inflicted the penalty of death for such unions.[2130] Tacitus was of opinion that the Germans refused marriage with foreign nations,[2131] and the like seems to have been the case with the Slavs.[2132]

Among several peoples marriage very seldom, or never, takes place even outside the territory of the tribe or community. This is the case with many tribes of Guatemala,[2133] the Ahts,[2134] Navajos,[2135] and Pueblos.[2136] In the village of Schawill, in Southern Mexico, according to Mr. Stephens, “every member must marry within the rancho, and no such thing as a marriage out of it had ever occurred. They said it was impossible, it could not happen.... This was a thing so little apprehended that the punishment for it was not defined in their penal code; but being questioned, after some consultations, they said that the offender, whether man or woman, would be expelled.”[2137] Speaking of the Chaymas in New Andalusia, among whom marriages are contracted between the inhabitants of the same hamlet only,[2138] v. Humboldt says, “Savage nations are subdivided into an infinity of tribes, which, bearing a cruel hatred toward each other, form no intermarriages, even when their languages spring from the same root, and when only a small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates their habitations.”[2139] This holds good especially for several of the Brazilian tribes.[2140] In ancient Peru it was not lawful for the natives of one province or village to marry those of another.[2141]

In Equatorial Africa, according to Mr. Du Chaillu, the non-cannibal tribes do not intermarry with their cannibal neighbours, whose peculiar practices are held in abhorrence.[2142] Barrow states that the Hottentots always marry within their own kraal;[2143] and a Bushman woman would regard intercourse with any one out of the tribe, no matter how superior, as a degradation.[2144] Among the Hovas, the different tribes, clans, and even families as a rule do not intermarry, as Mr. Sibree says, “in order to keep landed property together, as well as from a strong clannish feeling.”[2145] Mr. Swann informs me that, among the Waguha, of West Tanganyika, marriages out of the tribe are avoided, though not prohibited; and Archdeacon Hodgson writes that this is very often the case in Eastern Central Africa.

In India there are several instances of tribe-or clan-endogamy.[2146] The Tipperahs and Abors, for example, view with abhorrence the idea of their girls marrying out of their own clan,[2147] and Colonel Dalton was gravely assured that, “when one of the daughters of Pádam so demeans herself, the sun and the moon refuse to shine, and there is such a strife in the elements that all labour is necessarily suspended, till by sacrifice and oblation the stain is washed away.”[2148] The Ainos not only despise the Japanese as much as the Japanese despise them, but are not very sociable even among themselves: one village does not like to marry into another.[2149] The same may be said of the Sermatta Islanders;[2150] whilst the Minahassers,[2151] the Dyaks,[2152] and the natives of New Guinea[2153] and New Britain,[2154] as a general rule, marry within their own tribe. Among the New Zealanders, according to Mr. Yate, “great opposition is made to any one taking, except for some political purpose, a wife from another tribe,” and marriage generally takes place between relatives.[2155] In Australia there are groups of tribes, so-called associated tribes, generally speaking the same dialect, who are in the habit of uniting for common defence and other purposes. Marriage between the members of associated tribes is the rule,[2156] but many tribes are mostly endogamous.[2157]

In ancient Wales, according to Mr. Lewis, marriage was to be within the clan.[2158] At Athens, at least in its later history, if an alien lived as a husband with an Athenian woman, he was liable to be sold as a slave, and to have his property confiscated; and, if an Athenian lived with a foreign woman, she was liable to like consequences, and he to a penalty of a thousand drachmæ.[2159] Marriage with foreign women was unlawful for all Spartans, and was made unlawful for the Heraclidæ by a separate rhetra.[2160] At Rome, any marriage of a citizen with a woman who was not herself a Roman citizen, or did not belong to a community possessing the privilege of connubium with Rome—which was always expressly conferred—was invalid; no legitimate children could be born of such a marriage.[2161] In early times it was even customary for a father to seek, for his daughter, a husband from his own gens, marriage out of it being mentioned as an extraordinary thing.[2162]

Prohibitions of intermarriage do not refer only to persons belonging to different nations or tribes; very often they relate also to persons belonging to different classes or castes of the same community. Yet in many, perhaps most, cases these prohibitions originally coincided. Castes are frequently, if not always, the consequences of foreign conquest and subjugation, the conquerors becoming the nobility, and the subjugated the commonalty or slaves. Thus, before the Norman conquest, the English aristocracy was Saxon; after it, Norman. The descendants of the German conquerors of Gaul were, for a thousand years, the dominant race in France; and until the fifteenth century all the higher nobility were of Frankish or Burgundian origin.[2163] The Sanskrit word for caste is “varna,” i.e., colour, which shows how the distinction of high and low caste arose in India. That country was inhabited by dark races before the fairer Aryans took possession of it; and the bitter contempt of the Aryans for foreign tribes, their domineering spirit, and their strong antipathies of race and of religion, found vent in the pride of class and caste distinctions. Even to this day a careful observer can distinguish the descendants of conquerors and conquered. “No sojourner in India,” says Dr. Stevenson, “can have paid any attention to the physiognomy of the higher and lower orders of natives without being struck with the remarkable difference that exists in the shape of the head, the build of the body, and the colour of the skin between the higher and the lower castes into which the Hindu population is divided.”[2164] This explanation of the origin of Indian castes is supported by the fact that it is in some of the latest Vedic hymns that we find the earliest references to those four classes—the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, the Vaiśyas, and the Śudras—to which all the later castes have been traced back.[2165] The Incas of Peru were known as a conquering race; and the ancient Mexicans represented the culture-heroes of the Toltecs as white.[2166] Among the Beni-Amer, the nobles are mostly light coloured, while the commoners are blackish.[2167] The Polynesian nobility have a comparatively fair complexion,[2168] and seem to be the descendants of a conquering or superior race. “The chiefs, and persons of hereditary rank and influence in the islands,” says Ellis, “are, almost without exception, as much superior to the peasantry or common people, in stateliness, dignified deportment, and physical strength, as they are in rank and circumstances; although they are not elected to their station on account of their personal endowments, but derive their rank and elevation from their ancestry. This is the case with most of the groups of the Pacific, but particularly so in Tahiti and the adjacent islands.”[2169] Among the Shans, according to Dr. Anderson, “the majority of the higher classes seemed to be distinguished from the common people by more elongated oval faces and a decidedly Tartar type of countenance.”[2170] In America, at the time of the earliest European immigration, a kind of caste distinction arose, white blood being synonymous with nobility; and, in La Plata, Spaniards, Mestizoes, and Indians were separated from each other even in church.[2171]

As descendants of different ancestors, members of noble families keep up their separate position, and remain almost as foreigners to the people among whom they live. Speculating on the want of sympathy among the various classes in societies in which such distinctions are recognized, Count de Tocqueville says, “Each caste has its own opinions, feelings, rights, manners, and modes of living. Thus the men of whom each caste is composed do not resemble the mass of their fellow-citizens; they do not think or feel in the same manner, and they scarcely believe that they belong to the same human race.... When the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, who all belonged to the aristocracy by birth or education, relate the tragical end of a noble, their grief flows apace; whereas they tell you at a breath, and without wincing, of massacres and tortures inflicted on the common sort of people. Not that these writers felt habitual hatred or systematic disdain for the people; war between the several classes of the community was not yet declared. They were impelled by an instinct rather than by a passion; as they had formed no clear notion of a poor man’s sufferings, they cared but little for his fate.” Then, in proof of this, the writer gives extracts from Madame de Sévigné’s letters, displaying a cruel jocularity which, in our day, “the harshest man writing to the most insensible person of his acquaintance” would not venture wantonly to indulge in; and yet Madame de Sévigné was not selfish or cruel: she was passionately attached to her children, and ever ready to sympathize with her friends, and she treated her servants and vassals with kindness and indulgence.[2172]

It is to this want of affection and sympathy between the different layers of society, together with the vain desire of keeping the blood pure, that the prohibition of marriage out of the class, or the general avoidance of such marriages, owes its origin. Among the Ahts, for instance, who take great pride in honourable birth, a patrician loses caste unless he marries a woman of corresponding rank, in his own or another tribe.[2173] Among the Isthmians of Central America, the lords married only the daughters of noble blood; and, in Guatemala, marriage with a slave reduced the freeman to a slave’s condition.[2174] The tribes of Brazil also consider such alliances highly disgraceful.[2175]

Nowhere are the different orders of society more distinctly separated from each other than in the South Sea Islands. In the Marianne group, it was the common belief that only the nobles were endowed with an immortal soul; and a nobleman who married a girl of the people was punished with death.[2176] In Polynesia also, the commoners were looked upon by the nobility almost as a different species of beings.[2177] Hence in the higher ranks marriage was concluded only between persons of corresponding position; and if, in Tahiti, a woman of condition chose an inferior person as a husband, the children he had by her were killed.[2178] In the Indian Archipelago, marriages between persons of different rank are, as a rule, disapproved, and in some places they are prohibited.[2179] Among the Hovas of Madagascar, the three great divisions—the nobles, the commoners, and the slaves,—with few exceptions, cannot intermarry; neither do the three different classes of slaves marry each other.[2180] Almost the same rule holds good for the different orders of the Beni-Amer and Marea;[2181] whilst, among the Tedâ, the smiths form an hereditary and utterly despised caste by themselves, being obliged to marry solely with members of their own caste.[2182] By several African peoples, however, slaves and freemen are allowed to intermarry.[2183]

The Aenezes of Arabia never intermarry with the “szona,” handicraftsmen or artizans; nor do they ever marry their daughters to Fellahs, or to inhabitants of towns.[2184] In India, intermarriage between different castes was in Manu’s time permissible, but is now altogether prohibited. Of the original four castes, the Brahmans alone have retained their purity to any extent, but there is an almost endless number of trade-castes, resulting chiefly from associations of men engaged in the same occupation.[2185] Moreover, as Sir Monier Williams remarks, “we find castes within castes, so that even the Brahmans are broken up and divided into numerous races, which again are subdivided into numerous tribes, families, or sub-castes ... which do not intermarry.”[2186] Class-endogamy prevails in Ceylon,[2187] Siam,[2188] and Corea;[2189] and in the Chittagong district, when a slave marries, the person chosen must be a slave.[2190] In China, play-actors, policemen, boatmen, and slaves are not allowed to marry women of any other class than that to which they respectively belong.[2191] And in Japan, before the year 1868, when a new order of things was introduced, the different classes of nobles were not permitted to intermarry with each other or with common people.[2192]

In Europe there have been similar prohibitions. In Rome, plebeians and patricians could not intermarry till the year 455 B.C., nor were marriages allowed between patricians and clients. Cicero himself disapproved of intermarriages of ingenui and freedmen, and, though such alliances were generally permitted under the Emperors, yet a senator could not marry a freed-woman, nor a patroness her liberated slave. Between freemen and slaves contubernium could take place, but not marriage.[2193] Among the Teutonic peoples, in ancient times, any freeman who had intercourse with a slave was punished with slavery, and a woman guilty of such a crime might be killed. In the Scandinavian countries, slavery came to an end at a comparatively early period, but in Germany it was succeeded by serfdom; and equality of birth continued to be regarded as an indispensable condition of lawful marriage. As late as the thirteenth century any German woman who had intercourse with a serf lost her liberty.[2194] From the class of freemen, both in Germany and in Scandinavia, the nobility gradually emerged as a distinct order, and marriages between persons of noble birth and persons who, although free, were not noble, came to be considered misalliances.[2195] In Sweden, in the seventeenth century, such marriages were punished.[2196]

Modern civilization tends to pull down the barriers which separate the various classes of society, just as it tends to diminish the differences in interests, habits, sentiments, and knowledge. Birth no longer determines to the same extent as before a man’s social position, and nobility has become a shadow of what it was. Thus there survive but few traces of the former class-endogamy. According to German Civil Law, the marriage of a man belonging to the high nobility with a woman of inferior birth is still regarded as a disparagium; and the woman is not entitled to the rank of her husband, nor is the full right of inheritance possessed by her or by her children.[2197] Although in no way prevented by law, marriages out of the class are generally avoided by custom. “The outer or endogamous limit, within which a man or woman must marry,” says Sir Henry Maine, “has been mostly taken under the shelter of fashion or prejudice. It is but faintly traced in England, though not wholly obscured. It is (or perhaps was) rather more distinctly marked in the United States, through prejudices against the blending of white and coloured blood. But in Germany certain hereditary dignities are still forfeited by a marriage beyond the forbidden limits; and in France, in spite of all formal institutions, marriages between a person belonging to the noblesse and a person belonging to the bourgeoisie (distinguished roughly from one another by the particle ‘de’) are wonderfully rare, though they are not unknown.[2198]

Different nations, like the different classes of society, have been gradually drawing nearer to each other. National prejudices have diminished, and international sympathy has increased. During the Middle Ages a foreigner was called in Germany “ein Elender,” because he stood outside the law;[2199] to-day he enjoys the protection of the law in all civilized countries, and is not as a foreigner an object of prejudice. This widening of sympathy, and improved means of communication, have of course made intermarriages between the several nations much more common than they used to be.

Religion, finally, has formed a great bar to intermarriage. In British India, the descendants of all the Mohammedan races—Arab, Iranian, Turanian, Mongol, and Hindu converts—intermarry, but there are few unions between Christian men and Mohammedan women.[2200] Indeed, according to Mr. Lane, such a marriage is not permitted under any circumstances, and cannot take place otherwise than by force. On the other hand, it is held lawful for a Mohammedan to marry a Christian or a Jewish woman, if induced to do so by excessive love of her, or if he cannot obtain a wife of his own religion. In this case, however, the offspring must follow the father’s faith, and the wife does not inherit when the husband dies.[2201] Marriage with a heathen woman is never permitted to a Mussulman.[2202]

It is mainly religion that has kept the Jews a relatively pure race. “The Jew,” says Dr. Neubauer, “has no preference for, or any aversion from, one race or another, provided he can marry a woman of his religion, and vice versa.”[2203] Indeed, the Jewish law does not recognize marriage with a person of another belief,[2204] though there are instances of such marriages in the early days of Israel.[2205] During the Middle Ages, marriage between Jews and Christians was prohibited by the Christians also, and universally avoided.[2206] “The folk-lore of Europe,” Mr. Jacobs remarks, “regarded the Jews as something infra-human, and it would require an almost impossible amount of large toleration for a Christian maiden of the Middle Ages to regard union with a Jew as anything other than unnatural.” Mr. Jacobs thinks it may be doubted whether even at the present day there is one mixed marriage to five hundred pure Jewish marriages.[2207]

St. Paul indicates that a Christian was not allowed to marry a heathen,[2208] and Tertullian calls such an alliance fornication.[2209] In early times, the Church often encouraged marriages of this sort as a means of propagating Christianity, and it was only when its success was beyond doubt that it actually prohibited them.[2210] The Council of Elvira expressly forbade Christian parents to give their daughters in marriage to heathens, ordering that those who did so should be excommunicated.[2211]

Even the adherents of different Christian confessions have been prohibited from intermarrying. In the Roman Church the prohibition of marriage with heathens and Jews (impedimentum cultus disparitatis) was soon followed by the prohibition of “mixed marriages” (impedimentum mixtae religionis); and the Protestants also originally forbade such unions. The Greek Church, on the other hand, made in this respect a distinction between schismatici, or those who dissent from the Church in non-essential points only, and haeretici, or those who dissent from its fundamental doctrines.[2212] Mixed marriages are not now contrary to the civil law either in Roman Catholic or in Protestant countries; but in countries belonging to the Orthodox Greek Church the ecclesiastical restrictions have been adopted by the State. In Russia, Greece, and Servia, Roman Catholics and Protestants are regarded as schismatici but in the Turkish countries as haeretici.[2213] It is noteworthy that, in countries which are partly Roman Catholic, partly Protestant, mixed marriages form only a comparatively small percentage of the whole number of marriages.[2214]

In no respect has modern civilization acted more beneficently than as a promoter of religious toleration. In our time difference of faith discourages sympathy to a much less extent than it did in former ages. Hence the number of mixed marriages everywhere tends to increase. In Bavaria, for instance, they amounted in 1835-1850 to 2·8 per cent. of the whole number of marriages, in 1850-1860 to 3·6 per cent., in 1860-1870 to 4·4 per cent., in 1870-1875 to 5·6 per cent., and in 1876-1877 to 6·6 per cent.[2215]

While, therefore, civilization has narrowed the inner limit, within which a man or woman must not marry, it has widened the outer limit within which a man or woman may marry, and generally marries. The latter of these processes has been one of vast importance in man’s history. Originating in race-or caste-pride, or in religious intolerance, the endogamous rules have, in their turn, helped to keep up and strengthen these feelings. Law is by nature conservative, maintaining sentiments developed under past conditions. It is only by slow degrees that the ideas of a new time become strong enough to release mankind from ancient prejudices.

* * * * *

We have hitherto dealt only with the poetry of sexual selection—love; now something is to be said of its prose—dry calculation. And we may conveniently begin with man’s appreciation of woman’s fertility, as this has some of the characteristics of an instinct. Desire for offspring is universal in mankind. Abortion, indeed, is practised now and then, and infanticide frequently takes place among many savage peoples; but these facts do not disprove the general rule.

Speaking of the Crees, Chippewyans, and other Indians on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, Harmon says that “all Indians are very desirous of having a numerous offspring.”[2216] Among the Ingaliks, “children are anxiously desired, even when women have no husbands.”[2217] Among the Mayas, disappointed couples prayed earnestly, and brought many offerings to propitiate the god whose anger was supposed to have deferred their hopes.[2218] “Be numerous in offspring and descendants,” is a frequent marriage benediction or salutation in Madagascar; for to die without posterity is looked upon as a great calamity, and is termed “dead as regards the eye.”[2219] A negro considers childlessness the greatest disaster which can happen to him;[2220] Bosman once asked one of the king’s captains in Fida how many children he had, and he answered, sighing, that he was so unhappy as not to have many—he could not pretend to have had above seventy, including those who were dead. Among the Waganda and Wanyoro, great rejoicings take place in the case of the birth of twins.[2221] The Shaman heathens of Siberia regarded an abundance of children and cattle as the most essential condition of a man’s happiness.[2222] “Honest people have many children,” a Japanese proverb says;[2223] the Chinese regard a large family of sons as a mark of the divine favour;[2224] and to become the father of a son is described in Indian poems as the greatest happiness which may fall to the share of a mortal.[2225] In Persia, childlessness is considered the most horrible calamity.[2226] One of the chief blessings that Moses in the name of God promised the Israelites was a numerous progeny; and the ancient Romans regarded the procreation of legitimate children as the real end of marriage.[2227] “He who has no children, has no happiness either,” the South Slavonians say;[2228] and German folk-lore compares a marriage without offspring with a world without sun.[2229]

A woman therefore is valued not only as a wife but as a mother. Nowhere has greater stress been laid on this idea than in ancient Lacedaemon. A husband, if he considered that the unfruitfulness of the marriage was owing to himself, gave his matrimonial rights to a younger man, whose child then belonged to the husband’s family; and to the wives of men who, for example, fell in battle before having children, other men, probably slaves, were assigned, that there might be heirs and successors to the deceased husband.[2230] Among many peoples the respect in which a woman is held is proportionate to her fecundity,[2231] and a barren wife is frequently despised as an unnatural and useless being.[2232] In Angola, according to Livingstone, in the native dances, “when any one may wish to deride another, in the accompanying song a line is introduced, 'So and so has no children, and never will get any.’” The offended woman feels the insult so keenly that it is not uncommon for her to rush away and commit suicide.[2233] Among the Creeks, a man always calls his wife his son’s mother;[2234] and, among the Todas, in addressing a man with the casual question, “Are you married?” the ordinary way of putting it would be to say, “Is there a son?”[2235]

It is obvious, then, that fecundity must be one of the qualities which a man most eagerly requires from his bride. Mr. Reade tells us that, in certain parts of Africa, especially in malarious localities, where women are so frequently sterile, no one cares to marry a girl till she has borne a child; and among the Votyaks, according to Dr. Buch, a girl gets married sooner if she is a mother.[2236]

We have seen several instances of husband and wife not living together as married people before the birth of a child. Among the Creeks, marriages were contracted for a year, but if they proved fruitful, they were, as a rule, renewed.[2237] Again, with regard to an order of the Essenes, Josephus states that, considering succession to be the principal part of human life, they tried their spouses for three years, and then married them only if there was a prospect of the union being fruitful.[2238] Among many peoples it is the practice for a man to repudiate a barren wife.

The desire for offspring, with its consequence, the appreciation of female fecundity, is due to various causes. First, there is in man an instinct for reproduction. Mr. Marshall remarks, “Of this desire for progeny I have seen many examples amongst the Todas, so strongly marked, but to all appearances apart from the sense of personal ambition, and separate from any demands of religion or requirements for support in old age, as to give the impression that it was the primitive faculty of Philoprogenitiveness, acting so insensibly, naturally, as to have the character more of a plain instinct, than of an intelligent human feeling.”[2239] With this instinct a feeling of parental pride is associated. “Children,” says Hobbes, “are a man’s power and his honour.”[2240]

Among the Hebrews and the ancient Aryan nations, the desire for offspring, particularly sons, had its root chiefly in religious belief, being a natural outcome of the idea that the spirits of the dead were made happy by homage received at the hands of their male posterity. The same is the case with the Chinese[2241] and Japanese,[2242] and perhaps, to a certain extent, with some peoples at a lower stage of civilization. The savage believes that the life which goes on after death, differs in nothing from this life, that wants and pursuits remain as before, that consequently the dead man’s spirit eats and drinks, and needs fire for warmth and cooking. It is, of course, his surviving descendants who have to see that he is well provided for in these respects. Hence the offerings to deceased ancestors for various periods after death and the feasts for the dead.[2243] Among the Thlinkets according to Holmberg, it sometimes happens that a man spends his whole fortune as well as his wife’s marriage portion on such a feast, and has to live as a poor man for the rest of his life.[2244]

But no doubt children are most eagerly longed for by savage men because they are of use to him in his lifetime. They are easily supported when young, and in times of want they may be left to die or be sold. When a few years old, the sons become able to hunt, fish, and paddle, and later on they are their father’s companions in war. The daughters help their mother to provide food, and, when grown up, they are lucrative objects of trade. Finally, when old, the parents would often suffer want had they not their children to support them.[2245] Hence, in a savage condition of life, children are the chief wealth of the family. And the same is the case at somewhat higher stages of social development. Mr. Lane remarks that, in Egypt, “at the age of five or six years, the children become of use to tend the flocks and herds; and at a more advanced age, until they marry, they assist their fathers in the operations of agriculture. The poor in Egypt have often to depend entirely upon their sons for support in their old age; but many parents are deprived of these aids, and consequently reduced to beggary, or almost to starvation.”[2246] To a certain extent, this holds good for the uneducated classes in Europe also.

With the progress of civilization the desire for offspring has become less intense. The religious motive has of course died out in the Christian world, and, in proportion as social life becomes more complicated, and a professional education becomes more necessary for success in the struggle for existence, children, at least in “the upper classes” and among towns-people, put their parents to expense instead of being a source of wealth. A childless couple may indeed, deplore the absence of children; but a woman is no longer held in respect only, or principally, as a mother; and marriage, according to modern ideas, is something more than an institution for the procreation of legitimate offspring. Yet it is remarkable that, in Switzerland, although barrenness is no sufficient reason for a man to repudiate his wife, two-fifths of the total number of divorces take place between married people who have no children whilst the sterile marriages amount only to one-fifth of the number of marriages.[2247]

A wife is of use to her husband not merely because she gives him labourers, but also because she herself is a labourer. Drying and preparing fish and meat, lighting and attending to the fire, transporting baggage, picking berries, dressing hides and making clothes, cooking food and taking care of the children—these are, in the savage state, the chief pursuits of a wife. Among agricultural and cattle-farming peoples, she has besides, to cultivate the soil and to tend the cattle. A wife, therefore, is chosen partly because of her ability to perform such duties. Thus, among the Greenlanders, cleverness in sewing and skill in the management of household affairs are the most attractive qualities of a woman.[2248] Among other Eskimo tribes and in Tierra del Fuego, middle-aged men will connect themselves with old women who are best able to take care of their common comforts.[2249] The Inland Columbians, according to Mr. Bancroft, make “capacity for work the standard of female excellence;”[2250] and, among the Turkomans, young widows fetch double the price of spinsters, because they are more accustomed to hard labour, and more experienced in household concerns.[2251]

A husband’s function is to protect his family from enemies and to prevent them falling into distress. A woman, as we have already seen, even instinctively prefers a courageous and strong man to one who is cowardly and feeble. But reflection also makes her choose a man who is well able to defend her and to provide food. Among the Comanches, says Mr. Parker, “young girls are not averse to marry very old men, particularly if they are chiefs, as they are always sure of something to eat.”[2252]

At more advanced stages of civilization, money and inherited property often take the place of skill, strength, and working ability. Thus, wife-purchase and husband-purchase, still persist in modern society, though in disguised forms.

XVII. MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE AND MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE

The practice of capturing wives prevails in various parts of the world, and traces of it are met with in the marriage ceremonies of several peoples, indicating that it occurred much more frequently in past ages.

Speaking of the inhabitants of Unimak, Coxe says that they invaded the other Aleutian islands, and carried off women—the chief object of their incursions.[2253] Among the Ahts, a man occasionally steals a wife from the women of his own tribe;[2254] whilst the Bonaks of California usually take women in battle from other tribes, and the Macas Indians of Ecuador acquire wives by purchase, if the woman belongs to the same tribe, but otherwise by force.[2255] All the Carib tribes used to capture women from different peoples and tribes, so that the men and women nowhere spoke the same tongue;[2256] and v. Martius states that, in Brazil, “some tribes habitually steal their neighbours’ daughters.”[2257]

Among the Mosquito Indians, after the wedding is all arranged and the presents paid, the bridegroom seizes his bride and carries her off, followed by her female relatives, who pretend to try to rescue her.[2258] The Araucanians considered the carrying off of the bride by pretended violence an essential prerequisite to the nuptials, and, according to Mr. E. R. Smith, it is even “a point of honour with the bride to resist and struggle, however willing she may be.”[2259] The Uaupés “have no particular ceremony at their marriages, except that of always carrying away the girl by force, or making a show of doing so, even when she and her parents are quite willing.”[2260] Almost the same is said of the Fuegians, though among them the capture is sometimes more than a ceremony.[2261]

Andersson remarks that, among the Bushmans, woman is only too often belli teterrima causa.[2262] Speaking of the Bechuanas, Mr. Conder says, “As regards wedding ceremonies, there is one of casting an arrow into the hut by the bridegroom, which is worthy of notice as symbolic.”[2263] Among the Wakamba, marriage is an affair of purchase, but the bridegroom “must then carry off the bride by force or stratagem.”[2264] The Wa-taïta and Wa-chaga of Eastern Equatorial Africa have also a marriage ceremony of capture;[2265] and the like is the case with the Inland Negroes mentioned by Lord Kames,[2266] and the Abyssinians.[2267] Among the tribes of Eastern Central Africa described by Mr. Macdonald, marriage by capture occurs not as a symbol only.[2268]

According to a common belief, the Australian method of obtaining wives is capture in its most brutal form.[2269] But contrary to Mr. Howitt,[2270] Mr. Curr informs us that only on rare occasions is a wife captured from another tribe, and carried off.[2271] The possession of a stolen woman would lead to constant attacks, hence the tribes set themselves very generally against the practice.[2272] Even elopements, according to Mr. Mathew, are now usually more fictitious than real;[2273] but there are strong reasons for believing that formerly, when the continent was only partially occupied, elopements from within the tribe frequently occurred.[2274]

In Tasmania the capture of women for wives from hostile and alien tribes was generally prevalent.[2275] Among the Maoris, the ancient and most general way of obtaining a wife was for the man to get together a party of his friends and carry off the woman by force, apparent or actual.[2276] A similar practice occurs on the larger islands of the Fiji Group,[2277] in Samoa,[2278] Tukopia,[2279] New Guinea,[2280] and extremely frequently in the Indian Archipelago,[2281] and among the wild tribes of India.[2282] Among the Arabs,[2283] Tartars,[2284] and other peoples of Central Asia, as also in European Russia,[2285] traces of capture occur in the marriage ceremony, whilst the Tangutans,[2286] Samoyedes,[2287] Votyaks,[2288] &c.,[2289] are still in the habit of stealing wives, or elope with their sweethearts, if the bridegroom cannot afford to pay the fixed purchase-sum. Among the Laplanders,[2290] Esthonians,[2291] and Finns,[2292] marriage by capture occurred in former days, and in some parts of Finland symbolical traces of it in the marriage ceremony have been found in modern times.[2293]

The same practice prevailed among the peoples of the Aryan race. According to the ‘Laws of Manu,’ one of the eight legal forms of the marriage ceremony was the Râkshasa rite, i.e., “the forcible abduction of a maiden from her home, while she cries out and weeps, after her kinsmen have been slain or wounded, and their houses broken open.” This rite was permitted for the Kshatriyas by the sacred tradition.[2294] According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, marriage by capture was at one time customary throughout ancient Greece;[2295] and, as Plutarch informs us, it was retained by the Spartans as an important symbol in the marriage ceremony.[2296] Even now, according to Sakellarios, capture of wives occasionally occurs in Greece.[2297] Among the Romans, the bride fled to the lap of her mother, and was carried off by force by the bridegroom and his friends.[2298] In the historical age this was a ceremony only, but at an earlier time the capture seems to have been a reality. “Les premiers Romains,” says M. Ortolan, “d’après leurs traditions héroïques, ont été obligés de recourir à la surprise et à la force pour enlever leurs premières femmes.”[2299] The ancient Teutons frequently captured women for wives.[2300] Speaking of the Scandinavian nations, Olaus Magnus says that they were continually at war with one another, “propter raptas virgines aut arripiendas.”[2301] Among the Welsh, on the morning of the wedding-day, the bridegroom, accompanied by his friends on horseback, carried off the bride.[2302] The Slavs in early times, according to Nestor, practised marriage by capture;[2303] and in the marriage ceremonies of the Russians and other Slavonian nations, reminiscences of this custom still survive.[2304] Indeed, among the South Slavonians, capture de facto was in full force no longer ago than the beginning of the present century.[2305] According to Olaus Magnus, it prevailed in Muscovy, Lithuania, and Livonia;[2306] and, according to Seignior de Gaya, the symbol of it occurred in his time in Poland, Prussia, and Samogithia.[2307]

The list of peoples among whom marriage by capture occurs, either as a reality or as a symbol, might easily be enlarged.[2308] There are peoples, however, who seem to have nothing of the kind. As regards the Chinese, Mr. Jamieson says, “Of the capture of wives there is, as far as I am aware, historically no trace, nor is the form to be found among any of the ceremonies of marriage with which I am acquainted.”[2309] Moreover, it is doubtful whether the ceremonies given as instances of symbolical capture are, in every case, survivals of capture de facto, in the real sense of the term, that is, taking the woman against not only her own will, but that of her parents. Mr. Spencer suggests that one origin of the form of capture may be the resistance of the pursued woman, due to coyness, partly real and partly assumed;[2310] and, though this suggestion has been much attacked, it can scarcely be disproved. On the East Coast of Greenland, according to Dr. Nansen, the only method of contracting a marriage is still for the man to go to the girl’s tent, catch her by the hair or anything else which offers a hold, and drag her off to his dwelling without further ado. Violent scenes are often the result, as single women always affect the utmost bashfulness and aversion to any proposal of marriage, lest they should lose their reputation for modesty. But “the woman’s relations meanwhile stand quietly looking on, as the struggle is considered a purely private affair, and the natural desire of the Greenlander to stand on a good footing with his neighbour prevents him from attempting any interference with another’s business.”[2311] Again, according to Mr. Abercromby, marriage with capture—by which he understands capture of a bride, associated with some other form of marriage, such as that by purchase—may be regarded rather as a result of the innate universal desire to display courage, than as a survival of a still older practice of taking women captive in time of war.[2312]

Mr. McLennan thinks that marriage by capture arose from the rule of exogamy. But there are peoples—the Maoris, Ahts, &c.—among whom this practice occurs or has remained as a symbol, who are, nevertheless, what Mr. McLennan would call endogamous. We are not entitled to say that, “wherever exogamy can be found, we may confidently expect to find, after due investigation, at least traces of a system of capture.”[2313] On reckoning up the peoples among whom the combination of capture and exogamy is met with, Dr. Tylor observes that the number, “though enough to show that they coexist freely, falls short of what would justify the inference that they are cause and effect.”[2314]

It seems to me extremely probable that the practice of capturing women for wives is due chiefly to the aversion to close intermarriage—existing, as we have seen, among endogamous tribes also,—together with the difficulty a savage man has in procuring a wife in a friendly manner, without giving compensation for the loss he inflicts on her father. Being something quite different from the wrestling for wives, already mentioned as the most primitive method of courtship, marriage by capture flourished at that stage of social growth when family ties had become stronger, and man lived in small groups of nearly related persons, but when the idea of barter had scarcely occurred to his mind.[2315] From the universality of the horror of incest, and from the fact that primitive hordes were in a chronic state of warfare with one another, the general prevalence of this custom may be easily explained. But as it is impossible to believe that there ever was a time when friendly negotiations between families who could intermarry were altogether unknown, we cannot suppose that capture was at any period the exclusive form of contracting marriage, although it may have been the normal form. In Australia, where marriage by capture takes place between members of hostile communities only,[2316] we are aware of no tribe—exogamous or endogamous—living in a state of absolute isolation. On the contrary, every tribe entertains constant relations, for the most part amicable, with one, two, or more tribes; and marriages between their members are the rule.[2317] Moreover, the custom, prevalent among many savage tribes, of a husband taking up his abode in his wife’s family seems to have arisen very early in man’s history. And Dr. Tylor’s schedules show that there are in different parts of the world even twelve or thirteen well-marked exogamous peoples among whom this habit occurs.[2318]

* * * * *

As appears from the instances quoted, the practice of capturing wives is, in the main, a thing of the past. Among most existing uncivilized peoples a man has, in some way or other, to give compensation for his bride.[2319] Marriage by capture has been succeeded by marriage by purchase.

The simplest way of purchasing a wife is no doubt to give a kinswoman in exchange for her. “The Australian male,” says Mr. Curr, “almost invariably obtains his wife or wives, either as a survivor of a married brother, or in exchange for his sisters, or later on in life for his daughters.”[2320] A similar exchange is sometimes effected in Sumatra.[2321]

Much more common is the custom of obtaining a wife by services rendered to her father. The man goes to live with the family of the girl for a certain time, during which he works as a servant. This practice, with which Hebrew tradition has familiarized us, is widely diffused among the uncivilized races of America,[2322] Africa,[2323] Asia,[2324] and the Indian Archipelago.[2325] Often it is only those men who are too poor to pay cash that serve in the father-in-law’s house till they have given an equivalent in labour; but sometimes not even money can save the bridegroom from this sort of servitude.[2326] In some cases he has to serve his time before he is allowed to marry the girl; in others he gets her in advance. Again, among several peoples, already mentioned, the man goes over to the woman’s family or tribe to live there for ever; but Dr. Starcke suggests that this custom has a different origin from the other, being an expression of the strong clan sentiment, and not a question of gain.[2327]

According to Mr. Spencer, the obtaining of wives by services rendered, instead of by property paid, constitutes a higher form of marriage, and is developed along with the industrial type of society. “This modification,” he says, “practicable with difficulty among rude predatory tribes becomes more practicable as there arise established industries affording spheres in which services may be rendered.”[2328] But it should be noticed that, even at a very low stage of civilization, a man may help his father-in-law in fishing and hunting, whilst industrial work promotes accumulation of property, and consequently makes it easier for the man to acquire his wife by real purchase. We find also the practice of serving for wives prevalent among such rude races as the Fuegians and the Bushmans; and, in the ‘Eyrbyggja Saga,’ Vîgstyr says to the berserk Halli, who asked for the hand of his daughter Âsdî, “As you are a poor man, I shall do as the ancients did and let you deserve your marriage by hard work.”[2329] It seems then, almost probable that marriage by services is a more archaic form than marriage by purchase; but generally they occur simultaneously.

The most common compensation for a bride is property paid to her owner. Her price varies indefinitely. A pretty, healthy, and able-bodied girl commands of course a better price than one who is ugly and weak;[2330] a girl of rank, a better price than one who is mean and poor;[2331] a virgin, generally a better than a widow or a repudiated wife.[2332] Among the Californian Karok, for instance, a wife is seldom purchased for less than half a string of dentalium shell, but “when she belongs to an aristocratic family, is pretty, and skillful in making acorn-bread and weaving baskets, she sometimes costs as high as two strings.”[2333] The bride-price however, varies most according to the circumstances of the parties, and according to the value set on female labour. In British Columbia and Vancouver Island, the value of the articles given for the bride ranges from £20 to £40 sterling.[2334] The Indians of Oregon buy their wives for horses, blankets, or buffalo robes.[2335] Among the Shastika in California, “a wife is purchased of her father for shell-money or horses, ten or twelve cayuse ponies being paid for a maid of great attractions.”[2336] Again, the Navajos of New Mexico consider twelve horses so exorbitant a price for a wife, that it is paid only for “one possessing unusual qualifications, such as beauty, industry, and skill in their necessary employments”;[2337] and the Patagonians give mares, horses, or silver ornaments for the bride.[2338]

In Africa, not horses but cattle are considered the most proper equivalent for a good wife. Among the Kaffirs, three, five, or ten cows are a low price, twenty or thirty a rather high; but, according to Barrow, a man frequently obtained a wife for an ox or a couple of cows.[2339] The Damaras are so poor a people that they are often glad to take one cow for a daughter.[2340] Among the Banyai, many heads of cattle or goats are given to induce the parents of the girl “to give her up,” as it is termed, i.e., to forgo all claim on her offspring, for if nothing is given, the family from which she comes can claim the children as part of itself.[2341] In Uganda, the ordinary price of a wife is either three or four bullocks, six sewing needles, or a small box of percussion caps, but Mr. Wilson was often offered one in exchange for a coat or a pair of shoes.[2342] In the Mangoni country, two skins of a buck are considered a fair price,[2343] and among the Negroes of Bondo, a goat;[2344] whereas, among the Mandingoes, as we are told by Caillié, no wife is to be had otherwise than by the presentation of slaves to the parents of the mistress.[2345]

The Chulims paid from five to fifty roubles for a wife, the Turalinzes usually from five to ten.[2346] Rich Bashkirs pay sometimes even 3,000 roubles, but the poorest may buy a wife for a cart-load of wood or hay.[2347] In Tartary, parents sell a daughter for some horses, oxen, sheep, or pounds of butter; among the Samoyedes and Ostyaks, for a certain number of reindeer.[2348] Among the Indian Kisáns, “two baskets of rice and a rupee in cash constitute the compensatory offering given to the parents of the girl.”[2349] Among the Mishmis, a rich man gives for a wife twenty mithuns (a kind of oxen), but a poor man can get a wife for a pig.[2350] In Timor-laut, according to Mr. Forbes, “no wife can be purchased without elephants’ tusks.”[2351] In the Caroline Islands, “the man makes a present to the father of the girl whom he marries, consisting of fruits, fish, and similar things!”[2352] In Samoa, the bride-price included canoes, pigs, and foreign property of any kind which might fall into their hands;[2353] and, among the Fijians, “the usual price is a whale’s tooth, or a musket.”[2354]

Among some peoples marriage may take place on credit, though, generally, the wife and her children cannot leave the parental home until the price is paid in full.[2355] In Unyoro, according to Emin Pasha, when a poor man is unable to procure the cattle required for his marriage at once, he may, by agreement with the bride’s father, pay them by instalments; the children, however, born in the meantime belong to the wife’s father, and each of them must be redeemed with a cow.[2356]

Marriage by exchange or purchase is not only generally prevalent among existing lower races; it occurs, or formerly occurred, among civilized nations as well. In Central America and Peru, a man had to serve for his bride.[2357] In China, a present is given by the father of the suitor, the amount of which is not left to the goodwill of the parties, as the term “present” would suggest, but is exactly stipulated for by the negotiators of the marriage; hence, as Mr. Jamieson remarks, it is no doubt a survival of the time when the transaction was one of ordinary bargain.[2358] In Japan, the proposed husband sends certain prescribed presents to his future bride, and this sending of presents forms one of the most important parts of the marriage ceremony. In fact, when once the presents have been sent and accepted, the contract is completed, and neither party can retract. Mr. Küchler says he has been unable to find out the exact meaning of these presents: the native books on marriage are silent on the subject, and the Japanese themselves have no other explanation to give than that the custom has been handed down from ancient times.[2359] But from the facts recorded in the next chapter it is evident that the sending of presents is a relic of a previous custom of marrying by purchase.

In all branches of the Semitic race men had to buy or serve for their wives, the “mohar” or “mahr” being originally the same as a purchase-sum.[2360] In the Books of Ruth and Hosea, the bridegroom actually says that he has bought the bride;[2361] and the modern Jews, according to Michaelis, have a sham purchase among their marriage ceremonies, which is called “marrying by the penny.”[2362] In Mohammedan countries marriage differs but little from a real purchase.[2363] The same custom prevailed among the Chaldeans, Babylonians,[2364] and Assyrians.[2365]

Speaking of the ancient Finns, the Finnish philologist and traveller, Castrén, remarks, “There are many reasons for believing that a cap full of silver and gold was one of the best proxies in wooing among our ancestors.”[2366] Evident traces of marriage by purchase are, indeed, found in the ‘Kalevala’ and the ‘Kanteletar’;[2367] and, in parts of Finland, symbols of it are still left in the marriage ceremony.[2368] Among the East Finnish peoples, marriage by purchase exists even now, or did so till quite lately.[2369]

Wife purchase, as Dr. Winternitz remarks, was the basis of Indo-European marriage before the separation of peoples took place.[2370] The Hindu bride, in Vedic times, had to be won by rich presents to the future father-in-law;[2371] and one of the eight forms of marriage mentioned, though disapproved of, by Manu—the Âsura form—was marriage by purchase. According to Dubois, to marry and to buy a wife are in India synonymous terms.[2372] Aristotle tells us that the ancient Greeks were in the habit of purchasing wives,[2373] and in the Homeric age a maid was called “ἀλφεσίβοια,” i.e., one “who yields her parents many oxen as presents from her suitor.” Among the Thracians, according to Herodotus, marriage was contracted by purchase.[2374] So also throughout Teutonic antiquity.[2375] The ancient Scandinavians believed that even the gods had bought their wives.[2376] In Germany, the expression “to purchase a wife” was in use till the end of the Middle Ages, and we find the same term in Christian IV.'s Norwegian Law of 1604.[2377] As late as the middle of the sixteenth century the English preserved in their marriage ritual traces of this ancient legal procedure;[2378] whilst in Thuringia, according to Franz Schmidt, the betrothal ceremony even to this day indicates its former occurrence.[2379]

Purchase, as Dr. Schrader remarks, cannot with equal certainty be established as the oldest form of marriage on Roman soil.[2380] But the symbolical process of coemptio—the form of marriage among the plebeians—preserved a reminiscence of the original custom in force if not at Rome, at least among the ancestors of the Romans.[2381] In Ireland and Wales, in ancient times, the bride-price consisted usually of articles of gold, silver, and bronze, sometimes even of land.[2382] The Slavs, also, used to buy their wives;[2383] and, among the South Slavonians, the custom of purchasing the bride still partially prevails, or recently did so. In Servia, at the beginning of the present century, the price of girls reached such a height that Black George limited it to one ducat.[2384]

In spite of this general prevalence of marriage by purchase, we have no evidence that it is a stage through which every race has passed. It must be observed, first, that in sundry tribes the presents given by the bridegroom are intended not exactly to compensate the parents for the bride, but rather to dispose them favourably to the match. Colonel Dalton says, for example, that, among the Pádams, one of the lowest peoples of India, it is customary for a lover to show his inclinations whilst courting by presenting his sweetheart and her parents with small delicacies, such as field mice and squirrels, though the parents seldom interfere with the young couple’s designs, and it would be regarded as an indelible disgrace to barter a child’s happiness for money.[2385] The Ainos of Yesso, says Mr. Bickmore, “do not buy their wives, but make presents to the parents of saki, tobacco, and fish;”[2386] and the amount of these gifts is never settled beforehand.[2387] The game and fruits given by the bridegroom immediately before marriage, among the Puris, Coroados, and Coropos, seem to v. Martius to be rather a proof of his ability to keep a wife than a means of exchange; whereas the more civilized tribes of the Brazilian aborigines carry on an actual trade in women.[2388]

Speaking of the Yukonikhotana, a tribe of Alaska, Petroff states that the custom of purchasing wives does not exist among them.[2389] The Californian Wintun, who rank among the lower types of the race, generally pay nothing for their brides.[2390] The Niam-Niam and some other African peoples,[2391] most of the Chittagong Hill tribes,[2392] the aboriginal inhabitants of Kola and Kobroor, of the Aru Archipelago, who live in trees or caves,[2393] and apparently also the Andamanese are in the habit of marrying without making any payment for the bride. Among the Veddahs, according to M. Le Mesurier, no marriage presents are given on either side,[2394] but Mr. Hartshorne states that “a marriage is attended with no ceremony beyond the presentation of some food to the parents of the bride.”[2395]

In Ponapé, says Dr. Finsch, marriage is not based on purchase;[2396] but this is contrary to the general custom in the Carolines,[2397] as also in the adjacent Pelew Islands,[2398] where women are bought as wives by means of presents to the father. In the Kingsmill Group, according to Wilkes, “a wife is never bought, but it is generally supposed that each party will contribute something towards the household stock.”[2399] With regard to the Hawaiians, Ellis remarks, “We are not aware that the parents of the woman received anything from the husband, or gave any dowry with the wife.”[2400] And Mr. Angas even asserts that the practice of purchasing wives is not generally adopted in Polynesia.[2401] But the statement is doubtful, as, at least in Samoa,[2402] Tahiti,[2403] and Nukahiva,[2404] the bridegroom gains the bride by presents to her father. And in Melanesia marriage by purchase is certainly universal.[2405] Among the South Australian Kurnai, according to Mr. Howitt, marriages were brought about “most frequently by elopement, less frequently by capture, and least frequently by exchange or by gift.”[2406]

Purchase of wives may, with even more reason than marriage by capture, be said to form a general stage in the social history of man. Although the two practices often occur simultaneously, the former has, as a rule, succeeded the latter, as barter in general has followed upon robbery. The more recent character of marriage by purchase appears clearly from the fact that marriage by capture very frequently occurs as a symbol where marriage by purchase occurs as a reality. Moreover, there can be little doubt that barter and commerce are comparatively late inventions of man.

Dr. Peschel, indeed, contends that barter existed in those ages in which we find the earliest signs of our race. But we have no evidence that it was in this way that the cave-dwellers of Périgord, of the reindeer period, obtained the rock crystals, the Atlantic shells, and the horns of the Polish Saiga antelope, which have been found in their settlements; and we may not in any case, conclude that “commerce has existed in all ages, and among all inhabitants of the world.”[2407] There are even in modern times instances of savage peoples who seem to have a very vague idea of barter, or perhaps none at all. Concerning certain Solomon Islanders, Labillardière states, “We could not learn whether these people are in the habit of making exchanges; but it is very certain that it was impossible for us to obtain anything from them in this way; ... yet they were very eager to receive everything that we gave them.”[2408] For some time after Captain Weddell began to associate with the Fuegians, they gave him any small article he expressed a wish for, without asking any return; but afterwards they “acquired an idea of barter.”[2409] Nor did the Australians whom Cook saw, and the Patagonians visited by Captain Wallis in 1766, understand traffic, though they now understand it.[2410] Again, with regard to the Andamanese Mr. Man remarks, “They set no fixed value on their various properties, and rarely make or procure anything with the express object of disposing of it in barter. Apparently they prefer to regard their transactions as presentations, for their mode of negotiating is to give such objects as are desired by another in the hope of receiving in return something for which they have expressed a wish, it being tacitly understood that unless otherwise mentioned beforehand, no ‘present’ is to be accepted without an equivalent being rendered. The natural consequence of this system is that most of the quarrels which so frequently occur among them originate in failure on the part of the recipient in making such a return as had been confidently expected.”[2411] It must also be noted that those uncivilized peoples among whom marriage by purchase does not occur are, for the most part, exceedingly rude races.

As M. Koenigswarter[2412] and Mr. Spencer[2413] have suggested, the transition from marriage by capture to marriage by purchase was probably brought about in the following way: abduction, in spite of parents, was the primary form; then there came the offering of compensation to escape vengeance; and this grew eventually into the making of presents beforehand. Thus, among the Ahts, according to Mr. Sproat, when a man steals a wife, a purchase follows, “as the friends of the woman must be pacified with presents.”[2414] In New Guinea[2415] and Bali,[2416] as also among the Chukmas[2417] and Araucanians,[2418] it often happens that the bridegroom carries off, or elopes with, his bride, and afterwards pays a compensation-price to her parents. Among the Bodo and Mech, who still preserve the form of forcible abduction in their marriage ceremony, the successful lover, after having captured the girl, gives a feast to the bride’s friends and with a present conciliates the father, who is supposed to be incensed.[2419] The same is reported of the Maoris,[2420] whilst among the Tangutans, according to Prejevalsky, the ravisher who has stolen his neighbour’s wife pays the husband a good sum as compensation, but keeps the wife.[2421]

It is a matter of no importance in this connection that among certain peoples, the price of the bride is paid not to the father, but to some other nearly related person, especially an uncle,[2422] or to some other relatives as well as to the father.[2423] In any case the price is to be regarded as a compensation for the loss sustained in the giving up of the girl, and as a remuneration for the expenses incurred in her maintenance till the time of her marriage.[2424] Sometimes, as among several negro peoples, daughters are trained for the purpose of being disposed of at a profit; but this is a modern invention, irreconcilable with savage ideas. Thus, among the Kafirs, the practice of making an express bargain about women hardly prevailed in the first quarter of this century, and the verb applied to the act of giving cattle for a girl, according to Mr. Shooter, involves not the idea of an actual trade, but rather that of reward for her birth and nurture.[2425]

To most savages there seems nothing objectionable in marriage by purchase. On the contrary, Mr. Bancroft states that the Indians in Columbia consider it in the highest degree disgraceful to the girl’s family, if she is given away without a price;[2426] and, in certain tribes of California, “the children of a woman for whom no money was paid are accounted no better than bastards, and the whole family are contemned.”[2427] It was left for a higher civilization to raise women from this state of debasement. In the next chapter we shall consider the process by which marriage ceased to be a purchase contract, and woman an object of trade.

XVIII. THE DECAY OF MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE. THE MARRIAGE PORTION

It has often been said that the position of women is the surest gauge of a people’s civilization. This assertion, though not absolutely, is approximately true. The evolution of altruism is one of the chief elements in human progress, and consideration for the weaker sex is one of the chief elements in the evolution of altruism.

According as more elevated ideas regarding women grew up among the so-called civilized peoples, the practice of purchasing wives was gradually abandoned, and came to be looked upon as infamous. The wealthier classes took the first step, and poorer and ruder persons followed their example. It is of no little interest to follow the course of this process.

In India, in ancient times, the Âsura form, or marriage by purchase, was lawful for all the four castes. Afterwards it fell into disrepute, and was prohibited among the Brahmans and Kshatriyas, but it was approved of in the case of a Vaiśya and of a Śudra. Manu forbade it altogether.[2428] “No father who knows the law,” he says, “must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring.”[2429] Purchase survived as a symbol only in the Ârsha form, according to which the bridegroom sent a cow and a bull or two pairs to the bride’s father.[2430] Manu expressly condemns those who call this gift a gratuity;[2431] hence the Ârsha form was counted by Manu and other lawgivers as one of the legitimate modes of marriage.[2432] The Greeks of the historical age had ceased to buy their wives; and in Rome, confarreatio, which suggested no idea of purchase, was in the very earliest known time the form of marriage in force among the patricians. Among clients and plebeians also, the purchase of wives came to an end in remote antiquity, surviving as a mere symbol in their coemptio.[2433] Among the Germans, according to Grimm, it was only Christianity that abolished marriage by purchase.[2434] Laferrière and Koenigswarter think it prevailed among the Saxons as late as the reign of Charles the Great, and that in England it was prohibited by Cnut.[2435] In Lex Alamannorum, Lex Ripuariorum, ‘Grâgâs,’ and the Norwegian laws, real purchase money is not spoken of; and there is reason to believe that the “mundr,” mentioned in the elder ‘Gula-lag’ had gradually lost its original meaning of price for a bride.[2436]

In the Talmudic law, the purchase of wives appears as merely symbolic, the bride-price being fixed at a nominal amount.[2437] The Mohammedan “mahr” is also frequently merely nominal.[2438] Among the Finns, the purchase of wives had disappeared in the remote times when their popular songs originated.[2439] Though it still was usual for a bridegroom to give presents to his bride and her parents, passages in the songs indicate that not even the memory of a real purchase survived.[2440] In China, although marriage presents correspond exactly to purchase-money in a contract of sale, the people will not hear of their being called a “price”;[2441] which shows that, among them also, some feeling of shame is attached to the idea of selling a daughter.

We may discern two different ways in which this gradual disappearance of marriage by purchase has taken place. It has been suggested that the sum with which the bridegroom bought the bride became a payment for the guardianship of her.[2442] However this may be, the purchase-money became in time smaller and smaller, and took in many cases the form of more or less arbitrary presents. Only a relic of the ancient custom, as we have seen, was left, often appearing as a sham sale in the marriage ceremonies. Another mode of preserving the symbol of sale was the receipt of a gift of real value, which was immediately returned to the giver. This arrangement is said by Âpastamba to have been prescribed by the Vedas “in order to fulfil the law”—that is, the ancient law by which the binding form of marriage was a sale.[2443] Generally, however, not the same but another gift is presented in return. Thus, at Athens, at some time which cannot be determined, but which was undoubtedly earlier than the age of Solon, the dower in the modern sense arose; and, as has been suggested,[2444] this portioning of the bride by her father or guardian very probably implied originally a return of the price paid. Again, in China, exchange of presents takes place between the guardians of the bridegroom and the guardians of the bride; and this exchange forms the subject of a long section in the penal code, for, “the marriage articles and betrothal presents once exchanged, the parties are considered irrevocably engaged.”[2445] In Japan, the bride gives certain conventional presents to her future husband and his parents and relatives, and, as to the value of these presents, she should always be guided by the value of those brought by the bridegroom.[2446] Among the ancient Germans, according to Tacitus, the wife in her turn presented the husband with some kind of arms, and this mutual exchange of gifts formed the principal bond of their union.[2447] Grimm also suggests that the meaning of the Teutonic dowry was partly that of a return gift.[2448]

On the other hand, the purchase-sum was transformed into the morning gift and the dotal portion. A part—afterwards the whole—was given to the bride either directly by the bridegroom or by her father. Manu says, “When the relatives do not appropriate for their use the gratuity given, it is not a sale; in that case the gift is only a token of respect and of kindness towards the maidens.”[2449] This gift was called “çulka,” or her fee; but its close connection with a previous purchase appears from the fact that it passed in a course of devolution to the woman’s brothers, and one rendering of the text of Gautama which regulates this succession, even allowed the fee to go to her brothers during her life.[2450] In modern India, according to Dubois, men of distinction do not appropriate the money acquired by giving a daughter in marriage, but lay it out in jewels, which they present to the lady on the wedding-day.[2451] Among the Greeks of the Homeric age, the father did not always keep the wedding-presents for his own use, but bestowed them, wholly or in part, on the daughter as her marriage portion. At a later period, the bridegroom himself gave the presents to his wife, when he saw her unveiled for the first time, or after the νὺξ μυστική.[2452] Among the Teutons the same process of development took place. Originally, the purchase-sum went to the guardian of the bride, partly, perhaps, to her whole family; but by-and-by it came to be considered her own property,[2453] as Tacitus says, “Dotem non uxor marito sed uxori maritus offert.”[2454] This was the case among the Scandinavians at the date of the inditing of their laws, and among the Langobardi from the seventh century.[2455] “La dot,” says M. Ginoulhiac, “n’est autre chose que le prix de la coemption en usage dans la loi salique; elle fut donnée à la femme au lieu de l’être à ses parents, qui ne reçurent plus que le solidum et denarium, ou le prix fictif, et après la mort de l’épouse, une partie de la dot.”[2456] In Lex Alamannorum and Lex Ripuariorum, only a dos which the wife receives directly from her husband is spoken of.[2457] And it seems probable that the morning gift, which has survived very long in Europe,[2458] originated in the purchase-sum, or formed a part of it,[2459] though it has often been considered a pretium virginitatis.[2460] According to ancient Irish law, a part of the “coibche,” or bridal gift, went to the bride’s father, or, if he was dead, to the head of her tribe;[2461] but another part was given by the bridegroom to the bride herself after marriage. The same was the case with the Welsh “cowyll”;[2462] and the Slavonic word for bride-price, “vĕno,” came to be frequently used for dos.[2463]

Speaking of the ancient Babylonians, Herodotus says that “the marriage portions were furnished by the money paid for the beautiful damsels.”[2464] Among the Hebrews, as it seems the “mohar,” or a part of it, was given to the bride herself.[2465] We read in the Book of Genesis that Abraham’s servant “brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebecca: he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things.”[2466] Professor Robertson Smith is inclined to believe that, in Arabia, before Mohammed, a custom had established itself by which the husband ordinarily made a gift—under the name of “sadâc”—to his wife upon marriage, or by which a part of the “mahr” was customarily set aside for her use.[2467] But under Islam the difference between “mahr” and “sadâc” disappeared, the price paid to the father becoming the property of the woman.[2468]

But it is not only in the history of the great civilized nations that we find marriage by purchase falling into decay. Among several peoples who are still in a savage or semi-civilized state, the custom of purchasing the wife has been modified, and of a few it is expressly stated that they consider such a traffic disgraceful.[2469] The change has taken place in exactly the same way as we have seen to be the case with higher races.

On the one hand, the purchase has become more or less a symbol. In some cases the gift no longer represents the actual value of the girl, in others it is followed by a return gift. Thus, in Oregon, “the wife’s relations always raise as many horses (or other property) for her dower, as the bridegroom has sent the parents, but scrupulously take care not to turn over the same horses or the same articles.”[2470] The Ahts consider it a point of honour that the purchase-money given for a woman of rank shall, some time or other, be returned in a present of equal value.[2471] Similar statements are made with reference to the Patagonians,[2472] Mishmis,[2473] and certain tribes in the Indian Archipelago.[2474] Among the Bagobos of the Philippines, if the newly-married couple are satisfied with each other, the father of the wife gives the half of the purchase-sum back to the husband;[2475] whilst, in Saraë, the girl’s father, at the wedding, has to return even five times the price which he received from the bridegroom’s father at the espousals, the return gift, however, becoming the common property of the married couple.[2476] Among the Badagas of the Neilgherries also, the return gift is generally greater in value than the sum which has been paid for her.[2477] Several other peoples contract marriages by an exchange of presents.[2478]

On the other hand there are peoples among whom the purchase-sum, or a part of it, is given to the bride either by her father or by the bridegroom himself. But, as this may be an indirect way of compensating the bridegroom for the price he has paid, it is in many cases almost impossible to distinguish between this custom and the one last mentioned. It is equally hard to distinguish between the cases in which the bride receives a part of the price from her father, and those in which she receives a gift from the bridegroom directly. But perhaps the greatest difficulty of all is to make out whether the presents obtained from the bridegroom formed originally a part of the bride-price or were only a means of gaining her own consent. Among the Eskimo, the lover presents clothes to the lady, who puts them on, and is thenceforth his wife.[2479] Among the Dacotahs, men ask for consent to marriage by sending the price of the girl, and in addition often give presents to the object of their esteem.[2480] Speaking of the South American Guanas, Azary says, “Toutes les cérémonies du mariage se réduisent à un petit présent que le mari fait à sa prétendue.”[2481] Again, among the Javanese,[2482] Kalmucks,[2483] and Ahl el Shemál, a Bedouin tribe of Syria,[2484] the money or articles which the father receives for his daughter are generally looked upon as a settlement or provision for the wife; and among the Pelew Islanders,[2485] Mishmis,[2486] Bashkirs,[2487] Votyaks,[2488] &c.,[2489] she receives a larger or smaller part of the bride-price.

* * * * *

From marriage by purchase we have thus reached the practice of dower, which is apparently the very reverse of it. But, as we have seen, the marriage portion derives its origin partly from the purchase of wives. Where, as among the Marea,[2490] the endowment becomes the exclusive property of the husband, it is, no doubt, intended to be a compensation for the bride-price; whilst, among other peoples, money or goods for which the man has bought his wife are handed over to her by the father as a marriage portion which, in a certain way, belongs to her. Yet, as we shall see directly, the dowry does not in every case spring from a previous purchase.

The marriage portion serves different ends, often indissolubly mixed up together. It may have the meaning of a return gift. It may imply that the wife as well as the husband is expected to contribute to the expenses of the joint household. It is also very often intended to be a settlement for the wife in case the marriage be dissolved through the husband’s death or otherwise. But as, in such instances, the husband generally has the usufruct of the portion, as long as the union lasts, it is in many cases impossible to discern whether the original meaning was that of a return gift to the man or of a settlement for the woman.

We read in the ‘Laws of Manu,’ “What was given before the nuptial fire, what was given on the bridal procession, what was given in token of love, and what was received from her brother, mother, or father, that is called the sixfold property of a woman. Such property, as well as a gift subsequent and what was given to her by her affectionate husband, shall go to her offspring, even if she dies in the lifetime of her husband.”[2491] The Hindu law recognizes the dominion of a married woman over this property (her “strîdhan”),[2492] but the husband has nevertheless power to use and consume it in case of distress.[2493] At Athens, the administration of the dower certainly belonged to the husband, who might defray with it the expenses of the marriage, and even had a right to alienate the movable objects forming a part of the marriage portion.[2494] But it did not become his property. If the marriage tie was dissolved through divorce or through the husband’s death, the dower had to be restored to the woman, who, as a security for this restitution, had a mortgage, consisting generally of a piece of real property;[2495] or if, in case of divorce, the husband did not restore the dower, he paid, whilst it was retained, nine oboli every month as interest.[2496] The Roman dos was intended to be the wife’s contribution towards the expenses of the marriage state.[2497] It became the husband’s property, as if it were a patrimony which he had a right not only to administer, but even to dispose of independently of the will of his wife.[2498] This confusion of the dower with the patrimony was tolerable as long as marriage was contracted for life, but became very disastrous during the period when divorces were frequent. At the end of the Republican era, therefore, the husband’s right to dispose of his wife’s marriage portion was limited. It had to be restored in case of divorce, as also in case of the marriage being dissolved through the husband’s death. The Lex Julia de adulteriis prevented him from alienating dotal land without the wife’s consent, or mortgaging it even with her consent; and the legislation of Justinian prevented alienation with the wife’s consent, and declared the law on the subject applicable to provincial land.[2499] The general tradition of the Roman dos was carried on by the Church, the practical object being to secure for the wife a provision of which the husband could not wantonly deprive her, and which would remain to her after his death.[2500] The Roman dotal right, more or less modified in the laws of the different countries, underlies modern European legislation; the husband generally administers and has the use of his wife’s dotation, but it remains her property.[2501]

Among the Germans of early times, the bride-price which was handed over to the woman as her marriage portion became her exclusive property, of which the husband could not dispose.[2502] Besides this dos, she received from her parents an endowment, as a sort of compensation for her inheritance, or as an advance on it. This also was her private property, at least so far that it went to her if the marriage was dissolved.[2503] Among the Slavs, the dower seems originally to have been given to the wife as a security in the event of her needing independent support; and, among the Poles and Bohemians, the husband could make no use of it, unless he left his own goods as a deposit.[2504] In Wales, a woman received not only a part of the bride-price, “cowyll,” but also a marriage portion from her father, called “agweddi” (representing the “tincur” of the Irish), which, during cohabitation, belonged to husband and wife jointly. In case they separated before the end of seven years, the wife was to receive this portion back; and in any case, even if she left her husband for no reason before the seventh year, she had her “cowyll.” If the separation took place after this period, the property which the wife brought with her was divided.[2505]

The Hebrews, in early times, generally gave daughters as a dowry only a part of the “mohar.” Afterwards a woman who married was endowed with a portion called “nedunia,” of which the husband had the usufruct as long as the marriage lasted.[2506] The Mohammedans, as a rule, settle very large dowers on their wives; and it is generally stipulated that two-thirds of the dowry shall be paid immediately before the marriage contract is made, whilst the remaining third is held in reserve, to be paid to the wife in case of her being divorced against her own consent, or in case of the husband’s death.[2507] And whatever property the wife receives from her parents or any other person on the occasion of her marriage, or otherwise, is entirely at her own disposal, and not subject to any claim of her husband or his creditors.[2508] Speaking of newly-married people among the Mexicans, Acosta says, “When they went to house they made an inventory of all the man and wife brought together, of provisions for the house, of land, of iewells and ornaments, which inventories every father kept, for if it chanced they made any devorce (as it was common amongest them when they agree not), they divided their goods according to the portion that every one brought.”[2509]

Among races at a lower stage of civilization[2510] the dowry commonly subserves a similar end—that is, in case of separation or divorce, the wife gets back her marriage portion, though the husband, as it seems in most cases, has the usufruct of it as long as marriage lasts. But, in savage life, the dowry plays no important part. Often nothing of the kind exists,[2511] and, where it does, the portion generally consists of some food, clothes, household goods, or other trifles,[2512] and occasionally of cattle.[2513] Ultimately, as we have seen, the dowry is due to a feeling of respect and sympathy for the weaker sex, which, on the whole, is characteristic of a higher civilization.[2514] And, as we have spoken of a stage of marriage by capture and another stage of marriage by purchase, we may now speak of a third, where fathers are bound by law or custom to portion their daughters.

Thus the Hebrews[2515] and Mahommedans[2516] consider it a religious duty for a man to give a dower to his daughter. In Greece the dowry came to be thought almost necessary to make the distinction between a wife and a concubine παλλακή;[2517] and Isaeus says that no decent man would give his legitimate daughter less than a tenth of his property.[2518] Indeed, so great were the dowers given that, in the time of Aristotle, nearly two-fifths of the whole territory of Sparta were supposed to belong to women.[2519] In Rome, even more than in Greece, the marriage portion became a mark of distinction for a legitimate wife.[2520] It was the duty of the wife to provide her husband with dos, and a woman herself had a legal claim to be provided with a dower by her father or other paternal ascendants.[2521] And, though later on, Justinian in several of his constitutions declares that dos is obligatory for persons of high rank only,[2522] the old custom did not fall into desuetude.[2523] The Prussian ‘Landrecht’ still prescribes that the father, or eventually the mother, shall arrange about the wedding and fit up the house of the newly-married couple.[2524] According to the ‘Code Napoléon,’ on the other hand, parents are not bound to give a dower to their daughters,[2525] and the same principle is generally adopted by modern legislation. Yet there is still a strong feeling, especially in the so-called Latin countries, in favour of dotation. This feeling, as Sir Henry Maine remarks, is the principal source of those habits of saving and hoarding, which characterize the French people, and is probably descended, by a long chain of succession, from the obligatory provisions of the marriage law of the Emperor Augustus.[2526]

In this course of development, the marriage portion has often become something quite different from what it was originally. It has in many cases become a purchase-sum by means of which a father buys a husband for his daughter, as formerly a man bought a wife from her father. Euripides, transferring to the heroic age the practice of his own time, makes Medea complain that her sex had to purchase husbands with great sums of money.[2527] “Pars minima est ipsa puella sui,” the Latin poet sings. And, in our days, a woman without a marriage portion, unless she has some great natural attractions, runs the risk of being a spinster for ever. This state of things naturally grows up in a society where monogamy is prescribed by law, where the adult women outnumber the adult men, where many men never marry, and where married women too often lead an indolent life.

XIX. MARRIAGE CEREMONIES AND RITES

Among primitive men marriage was, of course, contracted without any ceremony whatever; and this is still the case with many uncivilized peoples. Among the Eskimo, visited by Captain Hall, “there is no wedding ceremony at all, nor are there any rejoicings or festivities. The parties simply come together, and live in their own tupic or igloo.”[2528] The Bonaks of California, according to Mr. Johnston, have no marriage ceremony. The man simply speaks to the girl’s parents, and to the girl herself; and, if the couple live together for some time harmoniously, they are considered husband and wife.[2529] Among the Comanches, too, “there is no marriage ceremony of any description;”[2530] and the same is said of several other aboriginal tribes of America,[2531] as also of the Outanatas of New Guinea,[2532] the Solomon Islanders,[2533] and the Tasmanians.[2534] In Australia, wedding ceremonies are unknown in most tribes, but it is said that in some there are a few unimportant ones.[2535] In the Hill Tribes of North Aracan, marriage “is a simple contract unaccompanied by ceremony.”[2536] So also among the Khasias,[2537] Chalikata Mishmis,[2538] Aino,[2539] Negroes of Bondo,[2540] &c.

Marriage ceremonies arose by degrees and in various ways. When the mode of contracting a marriage altered, the earlier mode, from having been a reality, survived as a ceremony. Thus, as we have seen, the custom of capture was transformed into a mere symbol, after purchase was introduced as the legal form of contracting a marriage. In other instances the custom of purchase has survived as a ceremony, after it has ceased to be a reality.

According as marriage was recognized as a matter of some importance, the entering into it came, like many other significant events in human life, to be celebrated with certain ceremonies. Very commonly it is accompanied by a wedding feast. Among the Nufi people, for example, the nuptials consist of the payment of the bride-price followed by eating and drinking.[2541] Among the Wanyoro, the wedding is celebrated by a great deal of feasting, and the bride is taken by a procession of friends to her new lord.[2542] Often the feast continues for several days, a week, or even longer.[2543] In Mykonos, of the Cyclades, according to Mr. Bent, ten or fifteen days of festivity usually accompany a marriage.[2544] Among some peoples, the expenses are defrayed by the bridegroom,[2545] in others by the father of the bride.[2546] Probably, in the former cases, the feast is considered almost a part of the purchase sum, whilst in the latter it is, perhaps, occasionally regarded as a compensation for the bride-price.

The marriage ceremony often indicates in some way the new relation into which the man and woman enter to each other. Sometimes it symbolizes sexual intercourse,[2547] but far more frequently the living together, or the wife’s subjection to her husband. Among the Navajos, the ceremony merely consisted in eating maize pudding from the same platter;[2548] and among the Santals, says Colonel Dalton, “the social meal that the boy and girl eat together is the most important part of the ceremony, as by the act the girl ceases to belong to her father’s tribe, and becomes a member of her husband’s family.”[2549] Eating together is, in the Malay Archipelago, the chief and most wide-spread marriage ceremony.[2550] The same custom occurs among the Hovas, Hindus, Esthonians, in Ermland in Prussia, and in Sardinia.[2551] Again in some Brazilian tribes, marriage is contracted by the husband and wife drinking brandy together.[2552]

In Japan, where the ceremony seems to be regarded as the least important part of the whole proceeding, it consists in the drinking by both parties, after a prescribed fashion, of a fixed number of cups of wine.[2553] In Scandinavia, the couple used to drink the contents of a single beaker—a custom which also occurs in Russia.[2554] The joining of hands, or the bridegroom’s taking the bride by the hand, is, as Dr. Winternitz remarks, one of the most important marriage ceremonies among all Indo-European peoples.[2555] The same custom occurs among the Orang-Banûwa of Malacca;[2556] whilst, among the Orang-Sakai, “the little finger of the right hand of the man is joined to that of the left hand of the woman.”[2557] At Khasia weddings, “the couple about to be married merely sit together in one seat, and receive their friends, to whom they give a dinner or feast.”[2558] Among the Veddahs of Ceylon, the bride ties a thin cord of her own twisting round the bridegroom’s waist, and they are then husband and wife. This string is emblematic of the marriage tie, and, “as he never parts with it, so he clings to his wife through life.”[2559] The Hindu bride and bridegroom, again, have their hands bound together with grass.[2560] Among the Gonds and Korkús, the actual marriage ceremonies consist, in part, of “eating together, tying the garments together, dancing together round a pole, being half drowned together by a douche of water, and the interchange of rings,—all of which may be supposed to symbolize the union of the parties.”[2561] In many parts of India, bride and bridegroom are, for the same reason, marked with one another’s blood,[2562] and Colonel Dalton believes this to be the origin of the custom, now so common, of marking with red-lead. Thus, the Parkheyas use a red powder called “sindúr,” the bridegroom sealing the compact by touching and marking with it the forehead of his bride.[2563]

Among the Australian Narrinyeri, on the other hand, a woman is supposed to signify her consent to the marriage by carrying fire to her husband’s hut, and making his fire for him.[2564] The Negroes of Loango contract their marriages by the bridegroom’s eating from two dishes, which the bride has cooked for him in his own hut.[2565] In Dahomey, according to Mr. Forbes, there is no ceremony in marriage, except where the king confers the wife, “in which instance the maiden presents her future lord with a glass of rum.”[2566] In Croatia, the bridegroom boxes the bride’s ears in order to indicate that henceforth he is her master.[2567] And in ancient Russia, as part of the marriage ceremony, the father took a new whip, and after striking his daughter gently with it, told her that he did so for the last time, and then presented the whip to the bridegroom.[2568]

Many of the ceremonies observed at our own weddings belong to the classes here noticed. The “best man” seems originally to have been the chief abettor of the bridegroom in the act of capture; the nuptials are generally celebrated with a feast in the house of the bride’s father, and the wedding-ring is a symbol of the close union which exists between husband and wife.[2569] Even the religious part of the ceremony has its counterpart among many Pagan nations.

It was natural that a religious character should be given to nuptials, as well as to other events of importance, by the invoking of divine help for the future union. In Hudson’s Island, says Turner, “hardly anything could be done without first making it known to the gods and begging a blessing, protection, or whatever the case might require.”[2570] Among the Dyaks, one of the eldest male members of the assembled party smears at the wedding the hands of the bridegroom and bride with the blood of a pig and a fowl, implores the protection of the male spirit, Baak, and the female spirit, Hiroeh Bakak, and recommends the married couple to their care, wishing them all sorts of earthly blessings.[2571] Among the Gonds, sacrifice to the gods, and unlimited gorging and spirit drinking are usually the wind-up of the wedding.[2572] In Patagonia, the husband, after having brought the bride into his hut, makes a sacrifice to the foul spirit; and the Macatecas, a tribe subject to the Mexican empire “fasted, prayed, and sacrificed to their gods for the space of twenty days after their marriage.”[2573]

Most commonly a priest is called to perform the religious rite. “The marriages of the Fijians,” Wilkes says, “are sanctioned by religious ceremonies.... The Ambati, or priest, takes a seat, having the bridegroom on his right and the bride on the left hand. He then invokes the protection of the god or spirit upon the bride, after which he leads her to the bridegroom, and joins their hands with injunctions to love, honour, and obey, to be faithful and die with each other.”[2574] This, however, happens principally among the chiefs; among the common people, the marriage rites are less ceremonious, the priest of the tribe only coming to the house and invoking happiness upon the union.[2575] The Tahitians, too, considered the sanction of the gods essential to the marriage contract. The preliminaries being adjusted, the parties repaired to the temple, where the priest addressed the bridegroom usually in the following terms:—“Will you not cast away your wife?” to which the bridegroom answered, “No.” Turning to the bride, he proposed to her a like question, and received a similar answer. The priest then addressed them both, saying, “Happy will it be if thus with you two.” He then offered a prayer to the gods on their behalf, imploring that they might live in affection, and realize the happiness marriage was designed to secure.[2576] In the Kingsmill Islands, the priest presses the foreheads of the young couple together, and pours on their heads a little cocoa-nut oil; then he takes a branch of a tree, dips it in water, and sprinkles their faces, at the same time praying for their future happiness and prosperity.[2577] Among the Kukis, the young couple are led before the Thémpoo, or priest, “who presents them with a stoup of liquor out of which they both drink, while he continues muttering some words in his unknown language;”[2578] and, among the Khyoungtha[2579] and Garos,[2580] a priest beseeches the gods to bless the union. Among the Igorrotes of Luzon it is a priestess that performs the marriage ceremony, praying to the spirits of the deceased in the presence of all the kinsfolk of the couple.[2581] The Jakuts require the shaman’s assistance for their nuptials,[2582] and so did formerly the Kalmucks.[2583]

The religious ceremonies connected with marriage are not limited to prayers, sacrifices, and other means of pleasing the gods; efforts are also made to ascertain their will beforehand. In Siam, the parents of the parties solicit the opinion of some fortune-teller on the point whether the year, month, and day of the week when the couple were born, will allow of their living happily together as husband and wife.[2584] Among the Chukmas, “omens are carefully observed, and many a promising match has been put a stop to by unfavourable auguries.”[2585] The same is the case with other peoples of India,[2586] the Mongols,[2587] some Turkish nations,[2588] &c. In several countries it is considered a thing of the utmost importance to find out the right day for the wedding, by consulting the stars or otherwise.[2589]

Among civilized nations marriage is almost universally contracted with religious ceremonies either with or without the assistance of a priest. The ancient Mexicans were married by their priests,[2590] and so were the Chibchas[2591] and Mayas.[2592] In Nicaragua, the priest, in performing the ceremony of marriage, took the parties by the little finger, and led them to a fire which was kindled for the occasion. He instructed them in their duty, and, when the fire became extinguished, the parties were looked upon as husband and wife.[2593]

By Buddhist monks marriage is regarded only as a concession to human frailty, and, in Buddhistic countries, it is therefore a simple civil contract;[2594] nevertheless, it is commonly contracted with some religious ceremony, and often with the assistance of a lama.[2595] In China, the bridal pair are conducted to the ancestral hall, where they prostrate themselves before the altar, on which the ancestral tablets are arranged.[2596] Among the Hebrews, marriage was no religious contract, and there is no trace of a priestly consecration of it either in the Scriptures or in the Talmud. Yet, according to Ewald, it may be taken for granted that a consecration took place on the day of betrothal or wedding, though the particulars have not been preserved in any ancient description.[2597] Among the Mohammedans also, marriage, though a mere civil contract, is concluded with a prayer to Allah.[2598]

“Les lois des peuples de l’antiquité,” M. Glasson says, “avaient un caractère à la fois religieux et civil; il n’est donc pas étonnant qu’elles aient le plus souvent fait du mariage un acte à la fois religieux et civil.”[2599] In Egypt, at least during the Ptolemaic period, the wedding is supposed to have been accompanied by a religious ceremony.[2600] Among the ancient Persians, the betrothal was performed by a priest, who joined the hands of the couple whilst reading some prayers.[2601] The Hindus used by prayers and sacrifices to invoke the help of the gods at their weddings.[2602] According to Sir W. H. Macnaghten, marriage is among them “not merely a civil contract, but a sacrament, forming the last of the ceremonies prescribed to the three regenerate classes, and the only one for Śudras; and an unmarried man has been declared to be incapacitated from the performance of religious duties.”[2603] In Greece, marriages were generally, though not always, contracted at the divine altars and confirmed by oaths, the assistance of a priest, however, not being requisite. Before the marriage was solemnized, the gods were consulted and their assistance implored by prayers and sacrifices, which were usually offered to some of the deities that superintended the union of the sexes, by the parents or other relations of the persons to be married. For marriage, as Musonius says, “stands under the protection of great and powerful gods;” and Plato teaches us that a man shall cohabit only with a woman who has come into his house with holy ceremonies.[2604] From the Homeric age we have no instances of marriages being contracted with sacrifices and religious rites, but we must not therefore take for granted that they were entirely wanting.[2605] The Teutons, according to Weinhold, looked upon marriage as an important and holy undertaking, about which it was necessary that the gods should be consulted; and offerings were probably in use among all peoples of this branch of the Aryan race.[2606] The Romans, at their nuptials, made a sacrifice, named libum farreum, to the gods, and the couple were united with prayer.[2607] In the mode of marriage called confarreatio, the Pontifex Maximus seems to have instructed them in the formulas, and some modern authorities even believe that he performed the marriage ceremony. But Rossbach thinks that this was scarcely the case in early times, when every house-father himself was a priest.[2608] Besides sacrifices and prayers, auspices formed a very important part of a Roman wedding; and, if the gods were found to be opposed to the match, the nuptials were put off or the match was abandoned. Even Cicero considered it wicked to marry without auspices.[2609]

It has been suggested that, among primitive Aryans, religious ceremonies were requisite for the validity of marriage.[2610] This was certainly not the case in historical times either among the Greeks or among the Teutons; and at Rome such ceremonies were obligatory only in confarreatio.[2611] But this form of marriage peculiar to the patricians, derived its origin from a very early period, and Rossbach remarks that the farther back we go in antiquity, the more strictly we find the religious ceremonies attended to.[2612] In confarreatio they were essential even in the eye of the law, whilst in coemptio and usus sacrifices and auspices were merely of secondary importance.[2613] Later on, when indifference to the old faith increased, they became more and more uncommon, till at the end of the period of the Pagan Emperors, they were almost exceptional, being regarded as a matter of no significance.[2614]

Christianity gave back to marriage its religious character. The founder of the Christian Church had not prescribed any ceremonies in connection with it, but in the earliest times the Christians, of their own accord, asked for their pastors’ benediction. This was not, indeed, a necessity, and for widows sacerdotal nuptials were not even allowed.[2615] Yet from St. Paul’s words, “Τὸ μυστήριον τοῦτο μέγα ἐστίν”[2616]—in the Vulgate translated, “Sacramentum hoc magnum est,”—the dogma that marriage is a sacrament was gradually developed. Though this dogma was fully recognized in the twelfth century,[2617] marriage was, nevertheless, considered valid without ecclesiastical benediction till the year 1563, when the Council of Trent made it an essentially religious ceremony.

Luther’s opinion that all matrimonial affairs belong not to the Church, but to the jurists, was not accepted by the legislators of the Protestant countries. Marriage certainly ceased to be thought of as a sacrament, but continued to be regarded by the Protestants as a Divine institution; hence sacerdotal nuptials remained as indispensable as ever.

It was the French Revolution that first gave rise to an alteration in this respect. The constitution of the 3rd September, 1791, declares in its seventh article, title ii., “La loi ne considère le mariage que comme contrat civil. Le pouvoir législatif établira pour tous les habitants, sans distinction, le mode par lequel les naissances, mariages et décès seront constatés et il désignera les officiers publics qui en recevront les actes.”[2618] To this obligatory civil act a sacerdotal benediction may be added, if the parties think proper.

Since then civil marriage has gradually obtained a footing in the legislation of most European countries, in proportion as liberty of conscience has been recognized. The French system has lately been adopted in Germany and Switzerland; whilst other nations have been less radical. “Tantôt,” says M. Glasson, “on a le choix entre le mariage civil ou le mariage religieux, en ce sens que l’union bénie à l’église vaut en même temps, d’après la loi, comme mariage civil: c’est ce qui a lieu en Angleterre et en Espagne. Tantôt le mariage religieux est une condition de la validité du mariage civil, comme en Roumanie. En Italie, on peut indifféremment célébrer l’une ou l’autre des deux unions la première. Enfin, il y a des pays où le mariage civil joue un rôle purement secondaire: en Autriche, en Portugal, en Suède, en Norwége, il est subsidiaire; en Russie il n’a été établi que pour les sectaires.”[2619]

Civil marriage, implying the necessity of the union being sanctioned by secular authority, is not a merely European institution. Among the ancient Peruvians, the king convoked annually, or every two years, at Cuzco all the marriageable young men and maidens of his family. After calling them by name, he joined their hands, and delivered them to their parents. Such marriages among that class were alone denominated lawful; and the governors and chiefs were, by their offices, obliged to marry, after the same formalities, the young men and women of the provinces over which they presided.[2620] In Nicaragua also, marriage was “a civil rite, performed by the cacique.”[2621] And among the savage Pomo of California, who have two chiefs, a “war-chief” and a “peace-chief,” the latter, as being a kind of censor morum, has to perform the marriage ceremonies, so far as they extend, i.e., he causes the parties to enter into a simple covenant in presence of their parents and friends.[2622] Again, among certain tribes no marriage is permitted without the chief’s approval. But such cases seem to be exceptions among non-European peoples, especially those of a lower culture, marriage being generally considered a private matter, with which the authorities or the community have nothing to do, if only it takes place between persons who, by law or custom, are permitted to intermarry.

In this chapter reference has often been made to the validity of marriage. A lawful marriage is, indeed, quite a different thing from a marriage in the natural history sense of the term. The former, which is contracted under the formalities and in accordance with the stipulations prescribed by the written or unwritten laws of the country, implies the recognition by society both of the validity of the union and the legitimacy of the children. Every people is not so happy as the Nukahivans, among whom, according to Lisiansky, no such thing as illegitimacy is known.[2623] The Greeks regarded a union into which the woman entered without dowry as concubinage, rather than as marriage. Among other peoples purchase is the only way of contracting a valid marriage. So it was with the ancient Germans and Scandinavians.[2624] So it is with the Californian Karok, among whom the children of a woman who is not purchased are accounted no better than bastards and constitute a class of social outcasts who can intermarry only among themselves.[2625] Often certain ceremonies are required for a marriage to be legal. Thus the Romans considered an alliance made without sponsalia, nuptiæ, and dos, concubinage.[2626] Among the Nez Percés in Oregon, the consent of the parents is all that is necessary for a marriage to be valid; sometimes, when the parents refuse their consent, a run-away match occurs, “but it is not regarded as a legal marriage, and the woman thereafter is considered a prostitute, and is treated accordingly.”[2627]

XX. THE FORMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE

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

Polygyny was permitted by most of the ancient peoples with whom history acquaints us, and is, in our day, permitted by several civilized nations and the bulk of savage tribes.

The ancient Chibchas practised polygyny to a large extent.[2628] Among the Mexicans[2629] and the Peruvian Incas,[2630] a married man might have, besides his legitimate wife, less legitimate wives or concubines. The same is the case in China and Japan, where the children of a concubine have the same legal rights as the children of a wife.[2631] In Corea, the mandarins are even bound by custom, besides having several wives, to retain several concubines in their “yamen.”[2632]

Tradition shows polygyny and concubinage to have been customary among the Hebrews during the patriarchal age. Esau married Judith and Basemath, Jacob married Leah and Rachel.[2633] Later on, we read of Solomon, who had “seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines;”[2634] and of Rehoboam, who “took eighteen wives and threescore concubines.”[2635] Indeed, polygyny was so much a matter of course that the law did not even criticize it.[2636] According to the Talmudic right also, it was permitted, though the number of legitimate wives was restricted to four.[2637] Among European Jews, it was still practised during the Middle Ages, and, among Jews living in Mohammedan countries, it occurs even to this day.[2638] The Korân allows a man to take four legitimate wives,[2639] and he may take as many concubines as he likes. Between a wife and a concubine the difference is, indeed, not great: the former has her father as her protector, whilst the latter is defenceless against the husband.[2640] A slave, on the other hand, is not permitted to have more than two wives at the same time.[2641]

Diodorus Siculus informs us that the Egyptians were not restricted to any number of wives, but that everyone married as many as he chose, with the exception of the priesthood, who were by law confined to one consort.[2642] The Egyptians had concubines also, most of whom appear to have been foreign women—war-captives or slaves; and these were members of the family, ranking next to the wives and children of their lord, and probably enjoying a share of the property after his death.[2643] With regard to the Assyrians, Professor Rawlinson states that, so far as we have any real evidence, their kings appear as monogamists; but he thinks it is probable that they had a certain number of concubines.[2644] In Media, on the other hand, polygyny was commonly practised among the more wealthy classes;[2645] and the Persian kings, particularly in later times, had a considerable number of wives and concubines.[2646]

None of the Hindu law-books restricts the number of wives whom a man is permitted to marry.[2647] We find undoubted cases of polygyny in the hymns of the ‘Rig-Veda,’[2648] and several passages in the ‘Laws of Manu’ provide for a plurality of wives without any restriction.[2649] Speaking of the modern Hindus, Mr. Balfour says, “By the law a Hindu may marry as many wives, and by custom keep as many concubines, as he may choose.”[2650]

The Greeks of the Homeric age frequently had concubines, who lived in the same house as the man’s family, and were regarded half as wives.[2651] Polygyny, in the fullest sense of the term, appears to be ascribed to Priam, but to no one else.[2652] At a later period a kind of concubinage seems to have been recognized in Greece by law, and scarcely proscribed by public opinion;[2653] and bigamy was practised by the tyrants in some of the Greek colonies.[2654] The Romans were more strictly monogamous. Among them, concubinage was always well distinguished from legal marriage, and, according to Rossbach, was much less common in early times than subsequently.[2655]

Among the Teutons, at the beginning of their history, we come across plurality of wives in the West,[2656] and especially in the North. The Scandinavian kings indulged in polygyny,[2657] and it does not seem to have been restricted to them only.[2658] Nor was it unknown to the pagan Russians.[2659] In the Finnish poems, though polygyny is not mentioned, there are passages which seem to indicate that it was not entirely unheard of among the Finns of early times.[2660]

Even in the Christian world open polygyny has occasionally been permitted, or at least tolerated. It was frequently practised by the Merovingian kings, and one law of Charles the Great seems to imply that it was not unknown even among priests.[2661] Soon after the Peace of Westphalia, bigamy was allowed in some German States where the population had been largely reduced during the Thirty Years’ War. And in modern Europe polygyny, as Mr. Spencer remarks, long survived in the custom which permitted princes to have many mistresses; “polygyny in this qualified form remaining a tolerated privilege of royalty down to late times.”[2662] Moreover, St. Augustin said expressly that he did not condemn polygyny;[2663] and Luther allowed Philip the Magnanimous of Hessen, for political reasons, to marry two women. Indeed, he openly declared that, as Christ is silent about polygyny, he could not forbid the taking of more than one wife.[2664] The Mormons, as all the world knows, regard polygyny as a divine institution.

Among many savage peoples polygyny is developed to an extraordinary extent. In Unyoro, according to Emin Pasha, it would be absolutely improper for even a small chief to have fewer than ten or fifteen wives, and poor men have three or four each.[2665] Serpa Pinto tells us of a minister in the Barôze, who at the time of his visit to that country had more than seventy wives.[2666] In Fiji, the chiefs had from twenty to a hundred wives;[2667] and, among all of the North American tribes visited by Mr. Catlin, “it is no uncommon thing to find a chief with six, eight, or ten, and some with twelve or fourteen wives in his lodge.”[2668] The King of Loango is said to have seven thousand wives.[2669]

It is a more noteworthy fact that among not a few uncivilized peoples, polygyny is almost unknown, or even prohibited. The Wyandots, according to Heriot, restricted themselves to one wife;[2670] and, among the Iroquois, polygyny was not permitted, nor did it ever become a practice.[2671] It is said that, among the Californian Kinkla and Yurok, no man has more than one wife.[2672] The Karok do not allow bigamy even to the chief; and, though a man may own as many women for slaves as he can purchase, he brings obloquy upon himself if he cohabits with more than one.[2673] Nor does polygyny occur among the Simas, the Coco-Maricopas, and several other tribes on the banks of the Gila and the Colorado;[2674] nor among the Moquis in New Mexico, and certain nations who inhabit the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.[2675] And, in several tribes of South America, the men are stated to have but one wife.[2676]

The Guanches of the Canary Islands, except the inhabitants of Lancerote, lived in monogamy;[2677] and the same is the case with the Quissama tribe in Angola, the Touaregs, and the Beni-Mzab.[2678] Among all the Moorish tribes in the Western Sahara, Vincent did not meet a single man who had a plurality of wives.[2679]

In Asia we find many instances of strictly monogamous peoples. The Veddahs in Ceylon are so rigorous in this respect that infidelity never seems to occur among them.[2680] In the Andaman Islands, according to Mr. E. H. Man, “bigamy, polygamy, polyandry, and divorce are unknown;”[2681] and the Nicobar Islanders—at least those on the most northern island, Car Nicobar—“have but one wife, and look upon unchastity as a very deadly sin.”[2682] Among the Koch and Old Kukis, polygyny and concubinage are forbidden;[2683] whilst, among the Pádams, Mikris, and Munda Kols, a man, though not expressly forbidden to have many wives, is blamed if he has more than one.[2684] The Badagas of the Neilgherry Hills, the Nagas of Upper Assam, the Kisáns, and Meches confine themselves to one consort at the same time;[2685] and so do the Mrús and Toungtha, who do not consider it right for a master to take advantage of his position even with regard to the female slaves in his house.[2686] Among the Santals, says Mr. E. G. Man, a woman reigns alone in her husband’s wigwam, “as there is seldom, if ever, a second wife or concubine to divide his affections—polygamy, although not exactly prohibited, being not very popular with the tribe.”[2687] Among the Karens of Burma,[2688] and certain tribes of Indo-China, the Malay Peninsula, and the Indian Archipelago, polygyny is said either to be forbidden[2689] or unknown.[2690] The Igorrotes of Luzon are so strictly monogamous, that, in case of adultery, the guilty party can be compelled to leave the hut and the family for ever.[2691] The Hill Dyaks marry but one wife, and a chief who once broke through this custom lost all his influence; adultery is entirely unknown among them.[2692] The Alfura of Minahassa were formerly monogamists, and the occasional occurrence of polygyny in later times, according to Dr. Hickson, was a degeneration from the old customs, brought about perhaps by Mohammedan influence.[2693]

In Santa Christina or Tauata (Marquesas Islands), monogamy is said to be the exclusive form of marriage.[2694] Among the Papuans of Dorey, not only is polygyny forbidden, but concubinage and adultery are unknown.[2695] In Australia, Mr. Curr has discovered some truly monogamous tribes. In the Eucla tribe, “none of the men have more than one wife;”[2696] among the Karawalla and Tunberri tribes, dwelling on the Lower Diamantina, polygyny is not allowed;[2697] and in the Birria tribe, “the possession of more than one wife is absolutely forbidden, or was so before the coming of the whites.”[2698]

In certain American tribes the chiefs alone are permitted to have a plurality of wives.[2699] A similar exclusive privilege seems to have been granted to the nobility in ancient Peru.[2700] Among the Ainos of Yessy, according to v. Siebold only the chief of the village, and, in some places, the wealthier men are allowed to have more than one wife.[2701]

Even where polygyny is permitted by custom or law, it is by no means so generally practised as is often supposed. Almost everywhere it is confined to the smaller part of the people, the vast majority being monogamous. We are told that, in the New Hebrides, “all the men are polygamists, generally having three or four wives apiece;”[2702] that among certain Kafir tribes, “the average number of wives to each married man amongst the common people is about three;”[2703] that, among the Masai, a poor man has generally two wives.[2704] But there is sufficient evidence that such peoples form exceptions to an almost universal rule.

In a ‘Sociological Study’ on the Lower Congo, Mr. Phillips remarks, “It is a mistaken opinion that in a polygamous society most men have more than one wife: the relative numbers of the sexes forbid the arrangement being extended to the whole population; really only the wealthier can indulge in a plurality of wives, the poorer having to be content with one or often with none.”[2705] Proyart says the same of the people of Loango, adding that the rich, who can use the privilege of having many wives, are far from being numerous;[2706] and like statements are made with reference to several other negro peoples.[2707] Among many Kafir tribes,[2708] the Bechuanas,[2709] Hottentots,[2710] and Eastern Central Africans,[2711] monogamy is the rule; whilst, amongst the Touaregs,[2712] Tedâ,[2713] Marea,[2714] Beni-Amer,[2715] &c.,[2716] polygyny is expressly stated to be confined to a few men only. “La plupart des Kabyles,” say Messrs. Honateau and Letournex, “n’ont ... qu’une femme;”[2717] and in Egypt, according to Mr. Lane, not more than one husband in twenty has two wives.[2718] We may, indeed, say with Munzinger[2719] that even in Africa, the chief centre of polygynous habits, polygyny is an exception.

It is so among all Mohammedan peoples, in Asia and Europe, as well as in Africa.[2720] “In India,” says Syed Amír’ Alí, “more than ninety-five per cent. of Mohammedans are at the present moment, either by conviction or necessity, monogamists. Among the educated classes versed in the history of their ancestors, and able to compare it with the records of other nations, the custom is regarded with disapprobation amounting almost to disgust. In Persia, according to Colonel Macgregor’s statement, only two per cent. of the population enjoy the questionable luxury of a plurality of wives.[2721] Moreover, although polygyny is sanctioned by custom among the Cochin Chinese, the Siamese, the Hindus, and many other races of India, the mass of these peoples are in practice monogamous.[2722] In China, among the labouring classes, it is rare to find more than one woman to one man, and Dr. Gray thinks that, in the earliest ages, concubinage was a privilege of the wealthy classes only.[2723] Among the peoples of Central and Northern Asia and, generally, among all the uncivilized or semi-civilized peoples belonging to the Russian Empire, polygyny is, or, before the introduction of Christianity, was, an exception.[2724]

In the Indian Archipelago, says Mr. Crawfurd, polygyny and concubinage exist only among a few of the higher ranks, and may be looked upon as a kind of vicious luxury of the great, for it would be absurd to regard either one or the other as an institution affecting the whole mass of society.[2725] The truth of this assertion is fully confirmed by Raffles, as regards the Javanese; by Low and Boyle, as regards the Malays of Sarawak; by Marsden, Wilken, and Forbes as regards the Sumatrans; by Schadenberg, as regards the Aëtas of the Philippines; and so on.[2726]

In various parts of the Australian continent monogamy is said to be the rule.[2727] In the Larrakía tribe (Port Darwin), for instance, only about ten per cent. of those who are married have two wives.[2728] In Tasmania, polygyny, if not unknown, was quite exceptional.[2729] Among the Maoris, according to Dieffenbach, it is “very uncommon.”[2730] In the Sandwich Islands, it was practised only by the chiefs, whose means enabled them to maintain a plurality of wives.[2731] Indeed, in almost every group of the Pacific Islands polygyny is expressly stated to be an exception.[2732]

The same is the case with the American aborigines.[2733] Dalager states that, on the west coast of Greenland, in his time, hardly one man in twenty had two wives, and it was still more uncommon for one man to have three or four.[2734] Among the Thlinkets, as a rule, a man had but one wife.[2735] The aborigines of Hispaniola, with the exception of the king or chief, seemed to Columbus to live in monogamy.[2736] And Mr. Bridges writes that, in Tierra del Fuego, polygyny is practised “in some districts very rarely, in others more frequently, but in no part generally.”

All the statements we have from the ancient world seem to indicate that polygyny was an exception. Speaking of the Hebrews, Dr. Scheppig says that, although our information about the marital affairs of common Hebrews is too scanty to entitle us to conclude, from the scarcity of cases of polygyny recorded, that such cases were actually rare, we may assume that keeping up several establishments was too expensive for any but the rich.[2737] In Egypt, as we may infer from the numerous ancient paintings illustrative of domestic life in that country, polygyny was of rare occurrence; and Herodotus expressly affirms that it was customary for the Egyptians to marry only one wife.”[2738] Spiegel thinks that the ancient Persians were as a rule monogamous,[2739] and Sir Henry Maine and Dr. Schrader make a similar suggestion as to the early Indo-Europeans in general.[2740] Among the West Germans, according to Tacitus, only a few persons of noble birth had a plurality of wives;[2741] and, in India, polygyny as a rule was confined to kings and wealthy lords.[2742] In a hymn of the ‘Rig-Veda,’ which dwells upon the duality of the two Aświns, the pairs of deities are compared with pairs of almost everything that runs in couples, including a husband and wife, and two lips uttering sweet sounds.[2743]

Where polygyny occurs, it is modified, as a rule, in ways that tend towards monogamy: first, through the higher position granted to one of the wives, generally the first married; secondly, through the preference given by the husband to his favourite wife as regards sexual intercourse.

Among the Greenlanders,[2744] Thlinkets,[2745] Kaniagmuts,[2746] Crees,[2747] and probably most of the North American tribes who practise polygyny,[2748] the first married wife is the mistress of the house. The Aleuts distinguish the first or real wife from the subsequent wives by a special name.[2749] Among the Ahts, the children of a chief’s extra wives have not the father’s rank.[2750] The Algonquins, says Heriot, permit two wives to one husband, but “the one is considered of a rank superior to the other, and her children alone are accounted legitimate.”[2751] Among the Mexicans,[2752] Mayas,[2753] Chibchas,[2754] and Peruvians,[2755] the first wife took precedence of the subsequent wives, or, strictly speaking, they had only one “true and lawful wife,” though as many concubines as they liked. In Nicaragua, bigamy, in the juridical sense of the term, was punished by exile and confiscation of property;[2756] and, in Mexico, neither the wives of “second rank” nor their children could inherit property.[2757] Among the Mosquitoes, Tamanacs, Uaupés, Mundrucûs,[2758] and other South American peoples,[2759] the first wife generally has superiority in domestic affairs. Among the Brazilian aborigines, however, no difference in rights exist between the children of different wives.[2760]

The first wife is superior in authority to the others among the Western Victorians, Narrinyeri, Maoris,[2761] &c.[2762] In Samoa, a chief had, besides his wife, one, two, or three concubines;[2763] and in Tahiti, according to Ellis, it was rather a system of concubinage than a plurality of wives, that prevailed among the higher chiefs, the woman to whom the chief was first united in marriage, or whose rank was nearest his own, being generally considered his wife in the proper sense of the term, while the others held an inferior position.[2764]

In the Indian Archipelago, according to Mr. Crawfurd, the wife of the first marriage is always the real mistress of the family; the rest are often little better than her hand-maids.[2765] The same holds good for the Burmese, according to Lieutenant-General Fytche; for the Santals, according to Colonel Dalton.[2766] In Siam, “the wife who has been the object of the marriage ceremony ‘khan mak’ takes precedence of all the rest, and she and her descendants are the only legal heirs to the husband’s possessions.”[2767] Among the Khamtis, Samoyedes,[2768] and other Asiatic peoples,[2769] the first wife is always the mistress of the household and the most respected in the family; whilst, among the Ainos,[2770] Mongols, and Tangutans,[2771] one man can take only one lawful wife, though as many concubines as he pleases. But, except among the Ainos, the children of concubines are illegitimate and have no share in the inheritance.

The polygyny of China is a legalized concubinage, and the law actually prohibits the taking of a second wife during the lifetime of the first.[2772] The wife is invested with a certain amount of power over the concubines, who may not even sit in her presence without special permission.[2773] She addresses her partner with a term corresponding to our “husband,” whilst the concubines call him “master.”[2774] These are generally women with large feet and of low origin, not unfrequently slaves or prostitutes; whereas the wife is almost invariably, except of course in the case of Tartar ladies, a woman with small feet.[2775] A wife cannot be degraded to the position of a concubine, nor can a concubine be raised to the position of a wife so long as the wife is alive, under a penalty in the one case of a hundred, in the other of ninety blows.[2776] But the question upon which the legitimacy of the offspring depends, is not whether the woman is wife or concubine, but whether she has been received into the house of the man or not.[2777] In Mohammedan countries, in households where two or more wives belong to one man, the first married generally enjoys the highest rank; she is called “the great lady,” and is commonly united with her husband for life. But all the children of the man are considered equally legitimate, even those born of female slaves.[2778]

Among the negro peoples, the principal wife, to whom the housekeeping and command over all the rest are intrusted, is in most cases the one first married. She has certain privileges, and in many cases can be repudiated only if she has been unfaithful to her husband.[2779] Among the Edeeyahs of Fernando Po, it was for the first wife alone that a man had to serve several years with his father-in-law.[2780] Speaking of the Eastern Central African tribes, Mr. Macdonald says, “As a rule, a man has one wife that is free, while the other three or four are slaves.... The chief wife is generally the woman that was married first.... The chief wife has the superintendence of the domestic and agricultural establishment. She keeps the others at their work, and has power to exercise discipline upon them.” Generally, it is only by inheriting the possessions of an elder brother that a man procures more than one free wife.[2781] Among the Damaras and other South African tribes, the eldest son of the principal or first wife inherits his father’s property.[2782] Speaking of the Basutos, Mr. Casalis observes, “A very marked distinction exists between the first wife and those who succeed her. The choice of the ‘great’ wife (as she is always called) is generally made by the father, and is an event in which all the relations are interested. The others, who are designated by the name of ‘serete’ (heels), because they must on all occasions hold an inferior position to the mistress of the house, are articles of luxury, to which the parents are not obliged to contribute.” The chief of the Basutos, when asked by foreigners how many children he has, alludes in his answer only to those of his first wife; and, if he says he is a widower, this means that he has lost his real wife, and has not raised any of his concubines to the rank she occupied.[2783] Among the Zulus, the chief wife is the one first married,[2784] and this is often, but not always, the case among the Kafirs.[2785] According to Rochon, polygyny in Madagascar is, in fact, a sort of concubinage.[2786]

Eber suggests that the kings of ancient Egypt, although they might have many concubines, had only one real wife, as there is no instance of two consorts given in the inscriptions.[2787] Professor Rawlinson makes a similar remark as to the polygyny of the Persian kings.[2788] Regarding the Hindus, Mr. Mayne says, “A peculiar sanctity ... seems to have been attributed to the first marriage, as being that which was contracted from a sense of duty, and not merely for personal gratification. The first married wife had precedence over the others, and her first-born son over his half-brothers. It is probable that originally the secondary wives were considered as merely a superior class of concubines, like the hand-maids of the Jewish patriarchs.”[2789] It was necessary that the first married wife should be of the same caste as her husband.[2790] She sat by him at marriages and other religious ceremonies, was head of the family, and entitled to adopt a son if she had no sons at the time of her husband’s death.[2791] The modified polygyny of the ancient Assyrians and Greeks has been already noted. The ancient Scandinavians had almost always only one legitimate wife, though as many concubines as they chose.[2792] Touching the Pagan Russians, Ewers says that of the wives of a prince one probably had precedence.[2793] Among the Mormons, Sir R. F. Burton observes, “the first wife, as among polygamists generally, is the wife and assumes the husband’s name and title.”[2794]

The difference in the position held by the several wives belonging to one man, shows itself also in the demand of various peoples that the first wife shall be of the husband’s rank, whilst the succeeding wives may be of lower birth.[2795]

As just mentioned, there is another way in which polygyny is modified. Among certain peoples the husband is bound by custom or law to cohabit with his wives in turn. The Caribs, when they married several sisters at the same time, lived a month with each in her separate hut.[2796] Among the wild Indians of Chili, according to Mr. Darwin, the cazique lives a week in turn with each of his wives.[2797] The Kafirs have an old traditional law requiring a husband who has many wives to devote three succeeding days and nights to each of them.[2798] A Mohammedan is obliged to visit his four legal wives by turns;[2799] and the same custom prevails, according to Krasheninnikoff, in Kamchatka.[2800] The negroes often follow a like rule in order to keep peace in the family.[2801] And, in Samoa, the system adopted when a person has several wives, “is to allow each wife to enjoy three days’ supremacy in rotation.”[2802] But such arrangements are, no doubt, exceptions, and it is doubtful whether, in these cases, theory and practice coincide.[2803] A marriage may, in fact, be monogamous, though, from a juridical point of view, it is polygynous.

“It is not uncommon for an Indian,” says Carver, “although he takes to himself so many wives, to live in a state of continence with many of them for several years,” and those who do not succeed in pleasing the husband may “continue in their virgin state during the whole of their lives.”[2804] Among the Apaches, the chiefs “can have any number of wives they choose, but one only is the favourite.”[2805] In Bokhara, a rich man generally has two, three, or four wives; yet, according to Georgi, one of them, as a rule, holds precedence in the husband’s love.[2806] Speaking of the modern Egyptians, Mr. Lane says, “In general, the most beautiful of a man’s wives or slaves is, of course, for a time his greatest favourite; but in many—if not most—cases, the lasting favourite is not the most handsome.”[2807] Sometimes the wife who has proved most fruitful and given birth to the healthiest children is most favoured by the husband;[2808] and, among the Indians of Western Washington and North-Western Oregon, according to Dr. Gibbs, the man usually lives with his first wife, at least after his interest in subsequent wives has cooled down.[2809] But it is generally the youngest wife who is the favourite. An Arabian Sheik said to Sir S. W. Baker, “I have four wives; as one has become old, I have replaced her with a young one; here they all are (he now marked four strokes upon the sand with his stick). This one carries water; that grinds the corn; this makes the bread; the last does not do much, as she is the youngest, and my favourite.”[2810] In Guiana, “an Indian is never seen with two young wives; the only case in which he takes a second is when the first has become old.” The first wife certainly retains the management of domestic affairs, but she no longer possesses the husband’s love.[2811] Statements to a similar effect are made regarding the Arabs of the Sahara, Tahitians, Central Asiatic Turks, Mormons, &c.[2812]

Bigamy is the most common form of polygyny, and a multitude of wives is the luxury of a few despotic rulers or very wealthy men. The Eskimo, for example, have rarely more than two wives, and a Greenlander who took a third or fourth was blamed by his countrymen, as we are told by Cranz.[2813] The tribes of Oregon generally confine themselves to a couple of wives.[2814] Bishop Salvado never knew a West Australian native with more than two—“à moins peut-être que par générosité un homme ne prenne sous sa protection la femme de son ami ou parent absent; ou bien que par voie d’hérédité il n’adopte les veuves de son frère.”[2815] Rich Kafirs are stated to have commonly two or three wives;[2816] and Colonel Dalton does not recollect that, among the Khamtis, he ever met with a case in which more than two women were married to one husband.[2817] The Hebrews who indulged in polygyny were generally bigamists.[2818]

* * * * *

Polyandry is a much rarer form of marriage than polygyny. In Oonalashka, one of the Aleutian Islands, according to v. Langsdorf, a woman sometimes lived with two husbands who agreed between themselves upon the conditions on which they were to share her.[2819] Among the Kaniagmuts, two or three men occasionally had a wife in common;[2820] and Veniaminoff tells us that in ancient times a Thlinket woman, besides her real husband, could have a legal paramour, who usually was the brother of the husband.[2821] Among the Eskimo also, “two men sometimes marry the same woman.”[2822] Father Lafitau writes, “Par une suite de la Gynécocratie, la polygamie, qui n’est pas permise aux hommes, l’est pourtant aux femmes chez les Iroquois Tsonnontouans, où il en est, lesquelles ont deux maris, qu’on regarde comme légitimes.”[2823] Among the Avanos and Maypurs, along the Orinoco, v. Humboldt found that brothers often had but one wife;[2824] according to Mr. Brett, the Warraus do not consider the practice of one woman having two husbands to be bad; and he mentions an instance of a woman amongst them having even three.[2825]

In Nukahiva, as we are told by Lisiansky, in rich families every woman had two husbands, of whom one might be called the assistant husband.[2826] In New Caledonia, according to M. Moncelon, polyandry does not seem to have been entirely unknown;[2827] and Mr. Radfield writes to me from Lifu that an old man knew of three cases of polyandrous marriage having occurred in that island, but the husbands were despised by the rest of the natives. In two of these cases the husbands were brothers, in the third they were unrelated. It is said that, among the Tasmanians, “polyandry, or something very like it, existed;”[2828] but this statement, if correct, refers to altogether exceptional cases.

Bontier and Le Verrier assert that, in the island of Lancerote, of the Canaries, most women had three husbands.[2829] Thunberg observes that, among the Hottentots, there were women who married two men.[2830] Dr. Fritsch mentions the existence of polyandry among the Damaras, and Mr. Theal among the mountain tribes of the Bantu race.[2831] The Hovas of Madagascar have a word to express the leave given to a wife to have intercourse with another man during a husband’s prolonged absence from home.[2832]

Until prohibited by the governor, Sir Henry Ward, about the year 1860, polyandry prevailed among the Sinhalese throughout the interior of Ceylon, one woman having in many cases three or four husbands, and in others five or six or even seven. It is recorded that the same practice was at one time universal throughout the island, except among the Veddahs,[2833] and even now it occurs in spite of government interdict.[2834] The husbands are usually members of the same family, and most frequently brothers.

Among the Todas, all brothers of one family, be they many or few, live in mixed cohabitation with one or more wives. “If there be four or five brothers,” says Dr. Shortt, “and one of them, being old enough, gets married, his wife claims all the other brothers as her husbands, and, as they successively attain manhood, she consorts with them; or, if the wife has one or more younger sisters, they in turn, on attaining a marriageable age, become the wives of their sister’s husband or husbands.... Owing, however, to the great scarcity of women in this tribe, it more frequently happens that a single woman is wife to several husbands, sometimes as many as six.”[2835] The same practice occurs among the Kurgs of Mysore.[2836] Among the Nairs of Malabar, it is the custom for one woman “to have attached to her two males, or four, or perhaps more, and they cohabit according to rules.”[2837] Polyandry is also found among the Miris, Dophlas, Butlas,[2838] Sissee Abors,[2839] Khasias,[2840] and Santals.[2841] It prevails in the Siwalik mountains, Sirmore,[2842] Ladakh,[2843] the Jounsar and Bawar hill districts attached to the Doon,[2844] Kunawar,[2845] Kotegarh,[2846] and, especially, in Tibet. This custom exists, as Mr. Wilson asserts, “all over the country of the Tibetan-speaking people; that is to say, from China to the dependencies of Kashmir and Afghanistan, with the exception of Sikkim, and some other of the provinces on the Indian side of the Himalaya, where, though the Tibetan language may in part prevail, yet the people are either Aryan in race, or have been much influenced by Aryan ideas.”[2847] Polyandry is said to occur among the Saporogian Cossacks;[2848] and Mr. Ravenstein quotes a statement of a Japanese traveller that it prevails among the Smerenkur Gilyaks in Eastern Siberia.[2849]

With the exception of the Nairs, Khasias, and Saporogian Cossacks, the husbands in almost every one of these cases are stated to be brothers. A colonel who lived among the Kulus of Kotegarh for twenty-five years assures us that, among that people, the husbands are always brothers;[2850] and, so far as Mr. Wilson could learn, the polyandry of Central Asia must be limited to the marriage of one woman to two or more brothers, no other form being found there.[2851]

A very curious kind of polyandry prevails, according to Dr. Shortt, among the Reddies. It often happens that a young woman of sixteen or twenty years of age is married to a boy of five or six years, or even of a tenderer age. After marriage the wife lives with some other man, a near relation on the maternal side, frequently an uncle, and sometimes with her boy-husband’s own father, the progeny so begotten being affiliated to the boy-husband. When he comes of age he finds his wife an old woman, and perhaps past child-bearing. So he, in his turn, takes possession of the wife of some other boy, who will nominally be the father of her children.[2852] A similar custom is said to exist among the Vellalah caste in the Coimbore district,[2853] and prevailed, till the emancipation of the serfs, among the Russian peasants, the father being in the habit of cohabiting with the wife of his son during the son’s minority.[2854] Ahlqvist mentions the occurrence of the same practice among the Ostyaks,[2855] v. Haxthausen among the Ossetes.[2856]

Passing to ancient nations, we find indications of polyandry in a hymn in the ‘Rig-Veda,’ which is addressed to the two Aświns,[2857], and in the Mahâbhârata, where Draupadi is represented as won at an archery match by the eldest of the five Pandava princes, and as then becoming the wife of all. According to Strabo, polyandry occurred in Media, and in Arabia Felix, where all male members of the same family married one woman.[2858] Ma-touan-lin states that, among the Massagetæ, the brothers had one wife in common, and when a man had no brothers he associated with other men, as otherwise he was obliged to live single through the whole of his life.[2859] We have in the Irish Nennius direct evidence of the existence of polyandry among the Picts,[2860] and of the ancient Britons Cæsar says that “by tens and by twelves husbands possessed their wives in common, and especially brothers with brothers, and parents with children.”[2861] Among the ancient Scandinavians we possibly find a trace of this custom in the mythic statement that the goddess Frigg, during the absence of her husband Odin, was married to his brothers Vili and Ve.[2862]

Among the peoples of America, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, just referred to, polyandry, in almost every case, is confined to a very small part of the population; and among the polyandrous nations of India and Central Asia it is by no means the exclusive form of marriage. Sir Emerson Tennent says that, in Ceylon, polyandry prevails chiefly among the wealthier classes, whilst, according to Dr. Davy, it is “more or less general among the high and low, the rich and poor,” other forms of marriage, however, being by no means excluded.[2863] Among the Todas, “any degree of complication in perfectly lawful wedded life may be met with, from the sample of the single man living with the single wife, to that of the group of relatives married to a group of wives.”[2864] Mr. Balfour says that “the practice of polyandry does not seem to have ever prevailed generally amongst the Nairs and many of the Teeyer of North Malabar, from Kurumbranad to Mangalore.”[2865] Among the Miris there are only a few instances of this custom.[2866] Of the Dophlas those who can afford it are polygynists.[2867] Among the Khasias, polyandry “can be said to prevail only among the poorer sort, with whom, too, it would often seem to mean rather facility of divorce than the simultaneous admission of a plurality of husbands.”[2868] Among the Santals, the wife of the eldest brother may be at the same time a wife for the younger brothers also.[2869] The Sissee Abors have often as many wives as they can afford to buy;[2870] and in the Kunawar valley, polyandry is common only in the upper part of the valley, whilst polygyny prevails in the lower part.[2871] In the Kotegarh valley, according to Dr. Stulpnagel, the practice of polyandry is not universal; it can scarcely be said to be even very common. “If diligently searched for,” he observes, “single cases of polyandry will be found in the Kôtgadh parganâ, in Kulu, in the territory of the Rânâs of Komarsen and Kaneti, and in Bussahir.... Though common enough in Kunawar at the present day, it exists side by side with polygamy and monogamy. In one house there may be three brothers with one wife; in the next three brothers with four wives, all alike in common; in the next house there may be a man with three wives to himself; in the next a man with only one wife.”[2872] Among the Butias, or Botis, of Ladakh, according to Sir Alexander Cunningham, polyandry prevails “only among the poorer classes, for the rich, as in all Eastern countries, generally have two or three wives, according to their circumstances.”[2873] In the Jounsar and Bawah pargannahs, polyandry is almost universal, but it is apparently unknown in the hills of Garhwal on the east, or those of the Simla superintendency on the west.[2874] Nowhere, except perhaps in the Neilgherry Hills, has polyandry prevailed more extensively than in Tibet; but it is not the only form of marriage. According to Captain J. D. Cunningham, “even among the Lamaic Tibetans any casual influx of wealth, as from trade or other sources, immediately leads to the formation of separate establishments by the several members of a house.”[2875] We may thus take for granted that polyandry, although frequently practised in certain parts of India and Central Asia,[2876] nowhere excludes the simultaneous occurrence of other forms of marriage. The instances of ancient Aryan polyandry in India evidently form exceptions to the general rule among the people of the Vedic period. The father of Draupadi is represented by the compilers of the epic as shocked at the proposal of the princes to marry his daughter:—“You who know the law,” he says, “must not commit an unlawful act which is contrary to usage and the Vedas.” In the Râmâyana, the giant Virâdha attacks the two divine brothers Râma and Lakshmana and their wife Sítâ, saying, “Why do you two devotees remain with one woman? Why are you, O profligate wretches, corrupting the devout sages?”[2877] And in the ‘Aitareya Brâhmana’ we read that “one man has many wives, but one wife has not many husbands at the same time.”[2878] Indeed, with the exception of the Massagetæ, the account of whom cannot be critically checked, there is no people among whom polyandry is stated to be the only recognized form of marriage.

Like polygyny, polandry is modified in directions tending towards monogamy. As one, usually the first married, wife in polygynous families is the chief wife, one, usually the first, husband in polyandrous families is the chief husband. This was the case with the Aleuts, among whom, according to Erman, the secondary husband was generally a hunter or wandering trader; and with the Kaniagmuts, among whom, as we have already seen, he acted as husband and master of the house during the absence of the true lord. Upon the latter’s return, the deputy not only yielded to him his place, but became in the meantime his servant.[2879] In Nukahiva, the subordinate partner sometimes was chosen after marriage, “but in general,” says Lisiansky, “two men present themselves to the same woman, who, if she approves their addresses, appoints one for the real husband, and the other as his auxiliary; the auxiliary is generally poor, but handsome and well-made.”[2880]

In Ladakh, according to Moorcraft and Trebeck, should there be several brothers in a family, the juniors, if they agree to the arrangement, become inferior husbands to the wife of the elder; all the children, however, are supposed to belong to the head of the family. The younger brothers have, indeed, no authority; they wait upon the elder as his servants, and can be turned out of doors at his pleasure, without its being incumbent upon him to provide for them. On the death of the eldest brother, his property, authority, and widow devolve upon his next brother.[2881] In Kamaon, too, where the brothers of a family all marry one wife, the children are attributed to the eldest brother.[2882] The same is the case in the Jounsar district, as it was formerly with the Massagetæ.[2883] Touching the polyandrous tribes of Arabia Felix, Strabo tells us that the eldest brother was the ruler of the family, and that the common wife spent the nights with him.[2884] Among the ancient Britons, as described by Cæsar, the children were regarded as belonging to him who had first taken the virgin to wife.[2885] In Tibet, the choice of a wife is the right of the elder brother, and the contract he makes is understood to involve a marital contract with all the other brothers, if they choose to avail themselves of it. The children call the eldest husband father, the younger husbands uncles.[2886] Among the Todas also, the eldest brother seems to be the real husband. “If the husband has brothers or very near relatives, all living together,” says Mr. Marshall, “they may each, if both she and he consent, participate in the right to be considered her husband also, on making up a share of the dowry that has been paid.”[2887] Again, in Spiti, where polyandry no longer prevails, the same object is attained by the custom of primogeniture, by which only the eldest son marries, while the younger sons become monks.[2888] Speaking of the Khyoungtha, a Chittagong Hill tribe, Captain Lewin observes, “After marriage a younger brother is allowed to touch the hand, to speak and laugh with his elder brother’s wife; but it is thought improper for an elder even to look at the wife of his younger brother. This is a custom more or less among all hill tribes; it is found carried to even a preposterous extent among the Santals.”[2889] In this custom there is perhaps a trace of ancient polyandry.

* * * * *

Summing up the results reached in this chapter, we may safely say that, although polygyny occurs among most existing peoples, and polyandry among some, monogamy is by far the most common form of human marriage. It was so also among the ancient peoples of whom we have any direct knowledge. Monogamy is the form which is generally recognized as legal and permitted. The great majority of peoples are, as a rule, monogamous, and the other forms of marriage are usually modified in a monogamous direction.

We have still to inquire how the matter stood in early times, and to trace the general development of the forms of human marriage. But, in accordance with our method of investigation, we must first examine the causes by which these forms have been influenced.