XL. MARRIAGE…

XL. MARRIAGE

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

In a previous work I have endeavoured to show that in all probability there has been no stage in the social history of mankind where marriage has not existed, human marriage apparently being an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor.[1] I then defined marriage as a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. This is marriage in the natural history sense of the term. As a social institution, on the other hand, it has a somewhat different meaning: it is a union regulated by custom or law.[2] Society lays down rules relating to the selection of partners, to the mode of contracting marriage, to its form, and to its duration. These rules are essentially expressions of moral feelings.

[Footnote 1: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, ch. iii. sqq.]

[Footnote 2: The best definition of marriage as a social institution which I have met with is the following one given by Dr. Friedrichs ('Einzeluntersuchungen zur vergleichenden Rechtswissenschaft,' in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. x. 255):--"Eine von der Rechtsordnung anerkannte und privilegirte Vereinigung geschlechtsdifferenter Personen, entweder zur Führung eines gemeinsamen Hausstandes und zum Geschlechtsverkehr, oder zum ausschliesslichen Geschlechtsverkehr."]

There is, first, a circle of persons within which marriage is prohibited. It seems that the horror of incest is well-nigh universal in the human race, and that the few cases in which this feeling is said to be absent can only be regarded {365} as abnormalities. But the degrees of kinship within which marriage is forbidden are by no means the same everywhere. It is most, and almost universally, abominated between parents and children. It is also held in general abhorrence between brothers and sisters who are children of the same mother as well as of the same father. Most of the exceptions to this rule refer to royal persons, for whom it is considered improper to contract marriage with individuals of less exalted birth; but among a few peoples incestuous unions are practised on a larger scale on account of extreme isolation or as a result of vitiated instincts.[3] It seems, however, that habitual marriages between brothers and sisters have been imputed to certain peoples without sufficient reason.[4] This is obviously true of the Veddahs of Ceylon, who have long been supposed to regard the marriage of a man with his younger sister as the proper marriage.[5] "Such incest," says Mr. Nevill, "never was allowed, and never could be, while the Vaedda {366} customs lingered. Incest is regarded as worse than murder. So positive is this feeling, that the Tamils have based a legend upon the instant murder of his sister by a Vaedda to whom she had made undue advances. The mistake arose from gross ignorance of Vaedda usages. The title of a cousin with whom marriage ought to be contracted, that is, mother's brother's daughter, or father's sister's daughter, is nagâ or nangî. This, in Sinhalese, is applied to a younger sister. Hence if you ask a Vaedda, 'Do you marry your sisters?' the Sinhalese interpreter is apt to say, 'Do you marry your nagâ?' The reply is (I have often tested it), 'Yes--we always did formerly, but now it is not always observed.' You say then, 'What? marry your own-sister-nagâ?' and the reply is an angry and insulted denial, the very question appearing a gross insult." The same writer adds:--"In no case did a person marry one of the same family, even though the relationship was lost in remote antiquity. Such a marriage is incest. The penalty for incest was death."[6]

[Footnote 3: Westermarck, op. cit. ch. xiv. sq.]

[Footnote 4: This is apparently the case with various peoples mentioned by Sir J. G. Frazer (Pausanias's Description of Greece, ii. 84 sq.) as being addicted to incestuous unions. Mr. Turner's short statement (Samoa, p. 341) that among the New Caledonians no laws of consanguinity were observed in their marriages, and that even the nearest relatives united, radically differs from M. de Rochas' description of the same people. "Les Néo-Calédoniens," he says (Nouvelle Calédonie, p. 232), "ne se marient pas entre proches parents du côté paternel; mais du côté maternel, ils se marient à tous les degrés de cousinage." Brothers and sisters, after they have reached years of maturity, are no longer permitted to entertain any social intercourse with each other; they are prohibited from keeping each other company even in the presence of a third person; and if they casually meet they must instantly go out of the way or, if that is impossible, the sister must throw herself on the ground with her face downwards. "Cet éloignement," M. de Rochas adds (ibid. p. 239), "qui n'est certes l'effet ni du mépris ni de l'inimitié, me parait né d'une exagération déraisonnable d'un sentiment naturel, l'horreur de l'inceste." Sir J. G. Frazer says that, according to Mr. Thomson, the marriage of brothers with sisters has been practised among the Masai; but a later and, as it seems, better informed authority tells us that "the Masai do not marry their near relations" and that "incest is unknown among them" (Hinde, The Last of the Masai, p. 76). Again, the statement that among the Obongos, a dwarf race in West Africa, sisters marry with brothers, is only based on information derived from another people, the Ashangos, who have a strong antipathy to them (Du Chaillu, Journey to Ashango-Land, p. 320). Liebich's assertion (Die Zigeuner, p. 49) that the Gypsies allow a brother to marry his sister is certainly not true of the Gypsies of Finland, who greatly abhor incest (Thesleff, 'Zigenarlif i Finland,' in Nya Pressen, 1897, no. 331 B).]

[Footnote 5: Bailey, 'Wild Tribes of the Veddahs of Ceylon,' in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S. ii. 294 sq.]

[Footnote 6: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 178.]

As a rule, the prohibited degrees are more numerous among peoples unaffected by modern civilisation than they are in more advanced communities, the prohibitions in a great many cases referring even to all the members of the tribe or clan; and the violation of these rules is regarded as a most heinous crime.[7]

[Footnote 7: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 297 sqq.]

The Algonquins speak of cases where men have been put to death by their nearest kinsfolk for marrying women of their own clan.[8] Among the Asiniboin, a Siouan tribe, a chief can commit murder with impunity if the murdered person be without friends, but if he married within his gens he would be dismissed, on account of the general disgust which such a union would arouse.[9] The Hottentots used to punish alliances between first or second cousins with death.[10] A Bantu of the coast region considers similar unions to be "something horrible, something unutterably disgraceful."[11] The Busoga of the Uganda {367} Protectorate held in great abhorrence anything like incest even amongst domestic animals.[12] Among the Kandhs of India "intermarriage between persons of the same tribe, however large or scattered, is considered incestuous and punishable with death."[13] In the Malay Archipelago submersion is a common punishment for incest,[14] but among certain tribes the guilty parties are killed and eaten[15] or buried alive.[16] In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it would be a crime punishable with death for a man or woman to marry a person belonging to his or her mother's clan;[17] and the Mortlock Islanders are said to inflict the same punishment upon anybody who has sexual intercourse with a relative belonging to his own "tribe."[18] Nowhere has marriage been bound by more severe laws than among the Australian aborigines. Their tribes are grouped in exogamous subdivisions, the number of which varies; and at least before the occupation of the country by the whites the regular punishment for marriage or sexual intercourse with a person belonging to a forbidden division was death.[19]

[Footnote 8: Frazer, Totemism, p. 59.]

[Footnote 9: Dorsey, 'Siouan Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xv. 224.]

[Footnote 10: Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 155 sq.]

[Footnote 11: Theal, History of the Boers in South Africa, p. 16.]

[Footnote 12: Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, ii. 719.]

[Footnote 13: Macpherson, quoted by Percival, Land of the Veda, p. 345. Cf. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, iii. 81.]

[Footnote 14: Wilken, Huwelijken tusschen bloedverwanten, p. 26 sq. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 460.]

[Footnote 15: Wilken, Over de verwantschap en het huwelijks- en erfrecht bij de volken van het maleische ras, p. 18.]

[Footnote 16: Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 105.]

[Footnote 17: Macdonald, Oceania, p. 181 sq.]

[Footnote 18: Kubary, 'Die Bewohner der Mortlock Inseln,' in Mittheil. d. Geogr. Gesellsch. in Hamburg, 1878-9, p. 251.]

[Footnote 19: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 299 sq. See, besides the authorities quoted there, Roth, Ethnol. Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 182; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 15.]

Not less intense is the horror of incest among nations that have passed beyond savagery and barbarism. Among the Chinese incest with a grand-uncle, a father's first cousin, a brother, or a nephew, is punishable by death, and a man who marries his mother's sister is strangled; nay, punishment is inflicted even on him who marries a person with the same surname as his own, sixty blows being the penalty.[20] So also incest was held in the utmost horror by the so-called Aryan peoples in ancient times.[21] In the 'Institutes of Vishnu' it is said that sexual intercourse {368} with one's mother or daughter or daughter-in-law is a crime of the highest degree, for which there is no other atonement than to proceed into the flames.[22]

[Footnote 20: Medhurst, 'Marriage, Affinity, and Inheritance in China,' in Trans. Roy. Asiatic Soc. China Branch, iv. 21 sqq.]

[Footnote 21: Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 394 sq.]

[Footnote 22: Institutes of Vishnu, xxxiv. 1 sq.]

Various theories have been set forth to account for the prohibition of marriage between near kin. I criticised some of them in my book on the 'History of Human Marriage,' and ventured at the same time on an explanation of my own.[23] I pointed out that there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as such persons are in most cases related by blood, this feeling would naturally display itself in custom and law as a horror of intercourse between near kin. Indeed, an abundance of ethnographical facts seem to indicate that it is not in the first place by the degree of consanguinity, but by the close living together, that prohibitory laws against intermarriage are determined. Thus many peoples have a rule of "exogamy" which does not depend on kinship at all, but on purely local considerations, all the members of a horde or village, though not related by blood, being forbidden to intermarry.[24] The prohibited degrees are very differently defined in the customs or laws of different nations, and it appears that the extent to which relatives are prohibited from intermarrying is nearly connected with their close living together. Very often the prohibitions against incest are more or less one-sided, applying more extensively either to the relatives on the father's side or to those on the mother's, according as descent is reckoned through men or women. Now, since {369} the line of descent is largely connected with local relationships, we may reasonably infer that the same local relationships exercise a considerable influence on the table of prohibited degrees. However, in a large number of cases prohibitions of intermarriage are only indirectly influenced by the close living together.[25] Aversion to the intermarriage of persons who live in intimate connection with one another has called forth prohibitions of the intermarriage of relations; and, as kinship is traced by means of a system of names, the name comes to be considered identical with relationship. This system is necessarily one-sided. Though it will keep up the record of descent either on the male or female side, it cannot do both at once;[26] and the line which has not been kept up by such means of record, even where it is recognised as a line of relationship, is naturally more or less neglected and soon forgotten. Hence the prohibited degrees frequently extend very far on the one side--to the whole clan--but not on the other. It should also be remembered that, according to primitive ideas, the name itself constitutes a mystic link between those who have it in common. "In Greenland, as everywhere else," says Dr. Nansen, "the name is of great importance; it is believed that there is a spiritual affinity between two people of the same name."[27] Generally speaking, the feeling that two persons are intimately connected in some way or other may, through an association of ideas, give rise to the notion that marriage or sexual intercourse between them is incestuous. Hence the prohibitions of marriage between relations by alliance and by adoption. Hence, too, the prohibitions of the Roman and Greek Churches on the ground of what is called "spiritual relationship."

[Footnote 23: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 310 sqq.]

[Footnote 24: Herr Cunow (Die Verwandtschafts-Organisationen der Australneger, p. 187) finds this argument "rather peculiar," and offers himself a different explanation of the rule in question. He writes:--"In der Wirklichkeit erklärt sich das Verbot einfach daraus, dass sehr oft die Lokalgruppe mit dem Geschlechtsverband beziehungsweise dem Totemverband kongruirt, und demnach das was für die Gens gilt, zugleich auch für die Lokalgruppe Geltung hat." This, however, is only Herr Cunow's own inference. And it may be asked why it is more "peculiar" to suppose that the prohibition of marriage between near kin has sprung from aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together, than to assume that the rule which forbids marriage between unrelated persons living in the same community has sprung from the prohibition of marriage between kindred.]

[Footnote 25: I do not understand how any reader of my book can, like Herr Cunow (op. cit. p. 186 sqq.), attribute to me the statement that the group within which intermarriage is prohibited is identical with the group of people who live closely together. If he had read a little more carefully what I have said, he might have saved himself the trouble he has taken to prove my great ignorance of early social organisations.]

[Footnote 26: Cf. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 285 sq.]

[Footnote 27: Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 230.]

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

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

This attempt to explain the prohibition of marriage between kindred and exogamy has not lacked sympathetic support,[28] but more commonly, I think, it has been rejected. Yet after a careful consideration of the various objections raised against it I find no reason to alter my opinion. Some of my opponents have evidently failed to grasp the {372} argument on which the theory is based. Thus Professor Robertson Smith argued that it begins by presupposing the very custom which it professes to explain, the custom of exogamy; that "it postulates the existence of groups which through many generations (for the survival of the fittest implies this) avoided wiving within the group."[29] But what my theory postulates is not the existence of exogamous groups, but the spontaneous appearance of individual sentiments of aversion. And if, as Mr. Andrew Lang maintains, my whole argument is a "vicious circle,"[30] then the theory of natural selection itself is a vicious circle, since there never could be a selection of qualities that did not exist before.

[Footnote 28: A. R. Wallace, in his 'Introductory Note' to my History of Human Marriage, p. vi. Giddings, _Principles of Sociology_, p. 267. Howard, _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, i. 125 sqq. Sir E. B. Tylor (in Academy, xl. 289) says with regard to my theory that, at any rate, I am "well on the track." See also Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, i. pp. clxxix, clxxx, ccii.]

[Footnote 29: Robertson Smith, in Nature, xliv. 271.]

[Footnote 30: Lang, Social Origins, p. 33.]

It has been argued that if close living together calls forth aversion to sexual intercourse, such aversion ought to display itself between husband and wife as well as between near relatives.[31] But these cases are certainly not identical. The feeling of which I have spoken is aversion associated with the idea of sexual intercourse between persons who have lived in a long-continued intimate relationship from a period of life when the action of sexual desire is naturally out of the question.[32] On the other hand, when a man marries a woman his feeling towards her is of a very different kind, and his love impulse may remain, nay increase, during the conjugal union; though even in this case long living together has undoubtedly a tendency to lead to sexual indifference and sometimes to positive aversion. The opinion that the home is kept free from incestuous intercourse only by law, custom, and education,[33]{373} shows lack of discrimination. Law may forbid a son to marry his mother, a brother to marry his sister, but it could not prevent him from desiring such a union. Have the most draconic codes ever been able to suppress, say, homosexual love? As Plato observed, an unwritten law defends as sufficiently as possible parents from incestuous intercourse with their children, brothers from intercourse with their sisters; "nor does the thought of such a thing ever enter at all into the minds of most of them."[34] Considering the extreme variability to which the sexual impulse is subject, it is not astonishing that cases of what we consider incestuous intercourse sometimes do occur. It seems to me more remarkable that the abhorrence of incest should be so general, and the exceptions to the rule so few.

[Footnote 31: Durkheim, 'La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines,' in L'année sociologique, i. 64. Professor Durkheim refers in this connection to an article by Dr. Simmel, 'Die Verwandtenehe,' in Vossische Zeitung, June 3rd and 10th, 1894. But I cannot find that Dr. Simmel is really opposed to my view. He only says, "Das intime Beisammenleben wirkt keineswegs nur abstumpfend, sondern in vielen Fällen gerade anreizend, sonst würde die alte Erfahrung nicht gelten, dass die Liebe, wo sie beim Eingehen der Ehe fehlte, oft im Laufe derselben entsteht."]

[Footnote 32: Cf. Bentham, Theory of Legislation, p. 220:--"Individuals accustomed to see each other and to know each other, from an age which is neither capable of conceiving the desire nor of inspiring it, will see each other with the same eyes to the end of life."]

[Footnote 33: For advocates of such a view see Westermarck, op. cit. p. 310 sqq. More recently it has been expressed by Krauss, in Am Ur-Quell, iv. 151, and Finck, Primitive Love, p. 49.]

[Footnote 34: Plato, Leges, viii. 838. Among the Maoris of New Zealand, according to Mr. Colenso (Maori Races, p. 47 sq.), adult brothers and sisters slept together, as they had always done from their birth, "not only without sin, but without thought of it."]

Dr. Havelock Ellis, again, objects that my theory assumes the existence of a kind of instinct which can with difficulty be accepted. "An innate tendency," he says, "at once so specific and so merely negative, involving at the same time deliberate intellectual processes, can only with a certain force be introduced into the accepted class of instincts. It is as awkward and artificial an instinct as would be, let us say, an instinct to avoid eating the apples that grew in one's own orchard. The explanation of the abhorrence of incest is really, however, exceedingly simple. . . . The normal failure of the pairing instinct to manifest itself in the case of brothers and sisters, or of boys and girls brought up together from infancy, is a merely negative phenomenon due to the inevitable absence under those circumstances of the conditions which evoke the pairing impulse. . . . Between those who have been brought up together from childhood all the sensory stimuli of vision, hearing, and touch have been dulled by use, trained to the calm level of affection, and deprived of their potency to {374} arouse the erethistic excitement which produces sexual tumescence."[35] I think that Dr. Ellis has considerably exaggerated the difference between my theory and his own. The "instinct" of which I have spoken is simply aversion to sexual intercourse with certain persons, and this is a no more complicated mental phenomenon than, for instance, an animal's aversion to eating certain kinds of substances. Indeed, Dr. Ellis himself, in his excellent 'Studies in the Psychology of Sex,' gives us many instances not only of sexual indifference, but of sexual aversion, quite instinctive in character.[36] Thus the largest proportion of male inverts described by him experience what is called horror feminæ, that is to say, "woman as an object of sexual desire is disgusting" (not merely indifferent) to them.[37] And Dr. Ellis also repeatedly speaks of the "abhorrence" of incest.

[Footnote 35: Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 'Sexual Selection in Man,' p. 205 sq.]

[Footnote 36: I have been blamed for making an illegitimate use of the word "instinct" (Crawley, The Mystic Rose p. 446). But if, as Dr. Ellis says, "an instinct is fundamentally a more or less complicated series of reflexes set in action by a definite stimulus," or as Mr. Crawley puts it (op. cit. p. 446), instinct "has nothing in its content except response of function to environment," then the aversion I speak of may certainly be called an instinct.]

[Footnote 37: Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 164.]

The objection has been raised that, if my explanation of the prohibition of incest were correct, connections between unrelated persons who have been brought up together should be as repulsive as connections between near kin; whereas, as a matter of fact, the two cases are regarded in a very different light, the latter, only, being held incestuous.[38] Much, of course, depends on the closeness of the union, and Dr. Steinmetz's argument that "the very sensual Frenchmen often seem to marry the lady friends of their earliest youth,"[39] is certainly not to the point. I believe that sexual love between a man and his foster-daughter is almost as great an abnormality as sexual love between a father and his daughter; and among some peoples marriages between persons who have been brought up together in the same family or who {375} belong to the same local group, without being related to each other by blood, are held blamable or are actually prohibited.[40] Even between lads and girls who have been educated in the same school there is a remarkable absence of erotic feelings, as appears from an interesting communication by a person who has for many years been the head-mistress of such a school in Finland. One youth assured her that neither he nor any of his friends would ever think of marrying a girl who had been their school fellow;[41] and I heard of a lad who made a great distinction between girls of his own school and other, "real," girls, as he called them. Yet however objectionable and unnatural unions between foster-parents and foster-children or between foster-brothers and foster-sisters may appear to us, I do not deny that unions between the nearest blood-relatives inspire a horror of their own; and it seems natural that they should do so considering that from earliest times the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together has been expressed in prohibitions against unions between kindred. Such unions have been stigmatised by custom, law, and religion, whilst much less notice has been taken of intercourse between unrelated persons who may occasionally have grown up in the same household. The belief in the supernatural, especially, has played a very important part in the ideas referring to incest, as in other points of sexual morality, owing to the mystery which surrounds everything connected with the function of reproduction.[42] The Aleuts in early times believed that incest, which they considered the gravest crime, was always followed by the birth of monsters with walrus tusks, beards, and other disfigurations.[43] The Kafirs {376} likewise maintain that the offspring of an incestuous union will be a monster, as "a punishment inflicted by the ancestral spirit."[44] The Bataks of Sumatra regard a long drought as a decisive proof that two cousins have had criminal intercourse with each other.[45] The Galelarese think that incest calls forth alarming natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, the eruption of a volcano, or torrents of rain.[46] So also the higher religions have branded incest as a heinous sin. As for Christianity's views on the subject, it is sufficient to notice that the prohibited degrees were extended by the Church,[47] and that the jurisdiction over incest, as over all sexual offences, was exercised by the ecclesiastical courts.[48]

[Footnote 38: Steinmetz, 'Die neueren Forschungen zur Geschichte der menschlichen Familie,' in Zeitschr. f. Socialwiss. ii. 818 sq.]

[Footnote 39: Ibid. ii. 818.]

[Footnote 40: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 321 sqq. Among the Western Islanders of Torres Straits marriage was forbidden, "with a remarkable delicacy of feeling, to the sister of a man's particular friend" (Haddon, 'Ethnology of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xix. 315).]

[Footnote 41: Lucina Hagman, 'Från samskolan,' in Humanitas, ii. 188 sq.]

[Footnote 42: For the connection between religious feelings and the sexual impulse, see Vallon and Marie, 'Des psychoses religieuses,' in Archives de Neurologie, ser. ii. vol. iii. 184 sq.; Gadelius, Om tvångstankar, p. 120 sq.; Starbuck, Psychology of Religion, p. 401 sqq.]

[Footnote 43: Veniammof, quoted by Petroff, Report on Alaska, p. 155.]

[Footnote 44: Shooter, Kafirs of Natal, p. 45.]

[Footnote 45: von Brenner, Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 212.]

[Footnote 46: van Baarda, 'Fabelen, verhalen en overleveringen der Galelareezen,' in Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xlv. (ser. vi. vol. 1.) p. 514. See also Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 212 sq.]

[Footnote 47: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 308. Katz, Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts, p. 116 sq.]

[Footnote 48: Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, ii. 411.]

It has, finally, been argued that my theory utterly fails to explain the fact that prohibitions of intermarriage frequently refer to all the members of a clan, even those who live in different localities.[49] In addition to what I have previously observed on this point, I desire to emphasise that every hypothesis pretending to give a full explanation of prohibitions of incest must assume the operation of the very same mental law--that of association--which in my opinion accounts for clan-exogamy. Thus Professor Durkheim, while maintaining that my theory as regards the horror of incest could not apply to exogamy because the members of the same totem do not live together, is himself quite ready to resort to analogy to explain prohibitions extending outside the totem clan. He tries to show that clan-exogamy is the source of all other prohibitions against incest, and that clan-exogamy itself springs from totemism.[50] According {377} to him the rule of clan-exogamy has been extended to near relatives belonging to different clans, because they are in no less intimate contact with each other than are the members of the same clan. According to my own theory, again, the prohibition of marriage between near relatives living closely together has been extended to all the members of the clan on account of the notion of intimacy connected with the idea of a common descent and with a common name. If I consider Professor Durkheim's hypothesis extremely unsatisfactory,[51] it is certainly not because he has called in the law of association to explain the rules against incest. How could anybody deny the operation of this law for instance in the Roman Catholic prohibition of marriage between co-sponsors, or in the rule prevalent in Eastern Europe according to which the groomsman at the wedding is forbidden to intermarry with the family of the bride,[52] or in laws prohibiting marriage between relatives by alliance? And why might not the {378} same law be applied to other relationships also, such as those constituted by a common descent or a common name?

[Footnote 49: Cunow, op. cit. p. 185. Durkheim, in L'année sociologique, i. 39, n. 2. Steinmetz, in Zeitschr. f. Socialwiss. ii. 819.]

[Footnote 50: Prof. Durkheim says (L'année sociologique, i. 50):--"Le sang est tabou d'une manière générale et il taboue tout ce qui entre en rapports avec lui. . . . La femme est, d'une manière chronique, le théâtre de manifestations sanglantes. . . . La femme est donc, elle aussi, et d'une manière également chronique, tabou pour les autres membres du clan." However, the taboo is not restricted to the members of the clan, but refers also to near relatives belonging to different clans, and this has to be explained. M. Durkheim writes (ibid. p. 19):--"Quand on a pris l'habitude de regarder comme incestueux et abominables les rapports conjugaux de sujets qui sont nominalement du même clan, les rapports similaires d'individus qui, tout en ressortissant verbalement à des clans différents, sont pourtant en contact aussi ou plus intime que les précédents, ne peuvent manquer de prendre le même caractère." And further (ibid. p. 58):--"Quand le totémisme disparaît, et avec lui la parenté spéciale au clan, l'exogamie devient solidaire des nouveaux types de famille qui se constituent et qui reposent sur d'autres bases, et comme ces families sont plus restreintes que n'était le clan, elle se circonscrit, elle aussi, dans un cercle moins étendu; le nombre des individus entre lesquels le mariage est prohibé diminue. C'est ainsi que, par une évolution graduelle, elle en est arrivée à l'état actuel où les mariages entre ascendants et descendants, entre frères et s[oe]urs, sont à peu près les seuls qui soient radicalement interdits."]

[Footnote 51: Professor Durkheim tries to explain a phenomenon of universal prevalence through an institution which has been proved to exist among certain peoples only. How does Professor Durkheim know that totem clans once prevailed among all peoples who now prohibit the intermarriage of near relatives? If the rules which prevent parents from marrying their children and brothers from marrying their sisters are survivals of ancient totemism, how shall we explain the normal aversion to such unions? Ancient totemism can certainly not account for this. But then the coincidence between these two facts--the legal prohibition of incest and the psychical aversion to it--is merely accidental; and this seems to me a preposterous supposition. See infra, Additional Notes.]

[Footnote 52: Maine, Dissertations, p. 257 sq.]

* * * * *

There is not only an inner circle within which no marriage is allowed, but also an outer circle outside of which marriage is either prohibited or at least disapproved of. Like the inner circle, the outer one varies greatly in extent.[53] Probably every people considers it a disgrace, if not a crime, for its men, and even more so for its women, to marry within a race very different from its own, especially if it be an inferior race. The Romans were prohibited from marrying barbarians--the emperor Valentinian inflicted the penalty of death for such unions;[54] and a modern European girl who married an Australian native would no doubt be regarded as an outcast by her own society. Among many peoples marriage very seldom or never takes place outside the limits of the tribe or community. In India there are several instances of this. The Tipperahs and Abors view with abhorrence the idea of their girls marrying out of their clan;[55] and Colonel Dalton was gravely assured that, "when one of the daughters of Pádam so demeans herself, the sun and moon refuse to shine, and there is such a strife in the elements that all labour is necessarily suspended, till by sacrifice and oblation the stain is washed away."[56] In ancient Peru it was not lawful for the natives of one province or village to intermarry with those of another.[57] Marriage with foreign women was unlawful at Sparta and Athens.[58] At Rome any marriage of a citizen with a woman who was not herself a Roman citizen, or did not belong to a community possessing the privilege of connubium with Rome, was invalid, and no legitimate children could be born of such a union.[59]

[Footnote 53: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 363 sqq.]

[Footnote 54: Rossbach, Römische Ehe, p. 465.]

[Footnote 55: Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 201.]

[Footnote 56: Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 28.]

[Footnote 57: Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 308.]

[Footnote 58: Müller, History of the Doric Race, ii. 302. Hearn, The Aryan Household, p. 156 sq.]

[Footnote 59: Gaius, Institutiones, i. 56.]

{379} Prohibitions of intermarriage also very often relate to persons belonging to different classes or castes of the same community.[60] To mention a few instances. The wild tribes of Brazil consider alliances between slaves and freemen highly disgraceful.[61] In Tahiti, if a woman of condition chose an inferior person as her husband, the children he had by her were killed.[62] In the Malay Archipelago marriages between persons of different rank are, as a rule, disapproved of, and in some places prohibited.[63] In India intermarriage between different castes, though formerly permissible, is now altogether prohibited.[64] In Rome plebeians and patricians could not intermarry till the year 445 B.C., nor were marriages allowed between patricians and clients; and Cicero himself disapproved of intermarriages of ingenui and freedmen.[65] Among the Teutonic peoples in ancient times any freeman who married a slave became a slave himself.[66] As late as the thirteenth century a German woman who had intercourse with a serf lost her liberty;[67] and both in Germany and Scandinavia, when the nobility emerged as a distinct order from the class of freemen, marriages between persons of noble birth and persons who, although free, were not noble came to be considered misalliances.[68] Even in modern Europe there survive traces of the former class endogamy. According to German Civil Law, the marriage of a man belonging to the high nobility with a woman of inferior birth is still regarded as a disparagium, and the woman is not entitled to the rank of her husband, nor is the full right of inheritance possessed by her or her children.[69] Although in no way prevented by law, marriages out of {380} the class are generally avoided by custom. As Sir Henry Maine observes, "the outer or endogamous limit, within which a man or woman must marry, has been mostly taken under the shelter of fashion or prejudice. It is but faintly traced in England, though not wholly obscured. It is (or perhaps was) rather more distinctly marked in the United States, through prejudices against the blending of white and coloured blood. But in Germany certain hereditary dignities are still forfeited by a marriage beyond the forbidden limits; and in France, in spite of all formal institutions, marriages between a person belonging to the noblesse and a person belonging to the bourgeoisie (distinguished roughly from one another by the particle 'de') are wonderfully rare, though they are not unknown."[70]

[Footnote 60: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 368 sqq.]

[Footnote 61: von Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's, i. 71. von Spix and von Martius, Travels in Brazil, ii. 74.]

[Footnote 62: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 256. Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, ii. 171 sq.]

[Footnote 63: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 371.]

[Footnote 64: Monier-Williams, Hinduism, p. 155.]

[Footnote 65: Mommsen, History of Rome, i. 371. Rossbach, op. cit. pp. 249, 456 sq.]

[Footnote 66: Winroth, Äktenskapshindren, p. 227.]

[Footnote 67: Ibid. p. 230 sq. Weinhold, Deutsche Frauen in dem Mittelalter, i. 349, 353 sq.]

[Footnote 68: Weinhold, op. cit. i. 349 sq.]

[Footnote 69: Behrend, in von Holtzendorff, Encyclopädie der Rechtswissenschaft, i. 478.]

[Footnote 70: Maine, Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, p. 224 sq.]

Religion, also, has formed a great bar to intermarriage. Among Muhammedans a marriage between a Christian man and a Muhammedan woman is not permitted under any circumstances, whereas it is held lawful for a Muhammedan to marry a Christian or a Jewish, but not a heathen, woman, if induced to do so by excessive love of her, or if he cannot obtain a wife of his own religion.[71] The Jewish law does not recognise marriage with a person of another belief;[72] and during the Middle Ages marriage between Jews and Christians was prohibited by the Christians also.[73] St. Paul indicates that a Christian was not allowed to marry a heathen.[74] Tertullian calls such an alliance fornication;[75] and in the fourth century the Council of Elvira forbade Christian parents to give their daughters in marriage to heathens.[76] Even the adherents of different Christian confessions have been prohibited from intermarrying. In {381} the Roman Catholic Church the prohibition of marriage with heathens and Jews was soon followed by the prohibition of "mixed marriages," and Protestants likewise forbade such unions.[77] Mixed marriages are not now contrary to the civil law either among Roman Catholic or Protestant nations, but in countries belonging to the Orthodox Greek Church ecclesiastical restrictions have been adopted, and are still recognised, by the State.[78]

[Footnote 71: Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_, i. 123. d'Escayrac de Lauture, _Die afrikanische Wüste_, p. 68.]

[Footnote 72: Frankel, Grundlinien des mosaisch-talmudischen Eherechts, p. xx. Ritter, Philo und die Halacha, p. 71.]

[Footnote 73: Andree, Zur Volkskunde der Juden, p. 48. Neubauer, 'Notes on the Race-Types of the Jews,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv. 19.]

[Footnote 74: 1 Corinthians, vii. 39.]

[Footnote 75: Tertullian, Ad uxorem, ii. 3 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, i. 1292 sq.).]

[Footnote 76: Concilium Eliberitanum, cap. 15 sq. (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, ii. 8). See also Müller, Das sexuelle Leben der christlichen Kulturvölker, p. 54.]

[Footnote 77: Winroth, op. cit. p. 213 sqq.]

[Footnote 78: Ibid. p. 220 sq.]

The endogamous rules are in the first place due to the proud antipathy people feel to races, nations, classes, or religions different from their own. He who breaks such a rule is regarded as an offender against the circle to which he belongs. He hurts its feelings, he disgraces it at the same time as he disgraces himself. Irregular connections outside the endogamous circle are often looked upon with less intolerance than marriage, which places the parties on a more equal footing. A traveller relates that at Djidda, where sexual morality is held in little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or European, but would think herself for ever dishonoured if she were joined to him in lawful wedlock.[79] In Rome contubernium, but not marriage, could take place between freemen and slaves.[80] And among ourselves public opinion regards it as a much more lenient offence if a royal person keeps a woman of inferior rank as his concubine than if he marries her.

[Footnote 79: de Gobineau, Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, p. 174, n. 1. Cf. d'Escayrac de Lauture, op. cit. p. 155.]

[Footnote 80: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 372.]

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

Like the rules referring to the choice of partners, so the modes of contracting marriage and the ideas as to what in this respect is right and proper have undergone successive changes. The practice of capturing wives prevails in certain parts of the world, and traces of it are met with in the marriage ceremonies of several peoples, indicating that it occurred more frequently in past ages.[81] This practice, as it seems to me, has chiefly sprung from the aversion to close intermarriage, together with the difficulty a savage man may have in procuring a wife in a friendly manner, without giving compensation for the loss he inflicts on her family. We may imagine that it chiefly occurred at a stage of social growth where family ties had become stronger, and man lived in small groups of nearly related persons, but where the idea of barter had scarcely presented itself to his mind. Yet there is no reason to think that capture was at any period the exclusive form of contracting marriage; its prevalence seems to have been much exaggerated by McLennan and his school.[82] It is impossible to believe that there ever was a time when friendly negotiations between families who could intermarry were altogether unknown. The custom prevalent among many savage tribes of a husband taking up his abode in his wife's family seems to have arisen very early in man's history.

[Footnote 81: Westermarck, op. cit. ch. xvii.]

[Footnote 82: Dr. Grosse (Die Formen der Familie, p. 105) goes so far as to believe that marriage by capture has never been a form of marriage recognised by custom or law, but only an occasional and punishable act of violence. But, as Dr. Havelock Ellis justly observes (Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 'Analysis of the Sexual Impulse,' p. 62, n. 2), this position is too extreme.]

Among most uncivilised peoples now existing a man has, in some way or other, to give compensation for his bride.[83] The simplest way of purchasing a wife is to give a kinswoman in exchange for her--a practice prevalent among {383} Australian tribes. Much more common is the custom of obtaining a wife by services rendered to her father, the man taking up his abode with the family of the girl for a certain time, during which he works as a servant. But the ordinary compensation for a girl is property paid to her father, or in some cases to her uncle, or to some other relatives as well as to the father. Marriage by exchange or purchase is not only general among existing lower races; it occurs, or formerly occurred, among semi-civilised nations of a higher culture as well--in Central America and Peru, in China and Japan, in the various branches of the Semitic race, in the past history of all so-called Aryan peoples. We have no evidence that it is a stage through which every race has passed; we notice its absence among some of the rudest races with whom we are acquainted. Yet with much more reason than marriage by capture, purchase of wives may be said to form a general stage in the social history of mankind. Although the two practices may occur simultaneously, the former seems more often to have succeeded the latter, as barter in general has followed upon robbery. It has been suggested that the transition from marriage by capture to marriage by purchase was brought about in the following way: abduction, in spite of parents, was the primary form; then there came the offering of compensation to escape vengeance; and this grew eventually into the making of presents or paying a sum beforehand.[84] The price was a compensation for the loss sustained in the giving up of the girl and a remuneration for the expenses incurred in her maintenance till the time of her marriage. The girl was regarded more or less in the light of property, to take her away from her owner without his consent was theft. To claim a compensation for her was his right, or even his duty. The Indians in Columbia consider it in the highest degree disgraceful to the girl's family if she is given away without a price;[85] and in certain tribes of California {384}"the children of a woman for whom no money was paid are accounted no better than bastards, and the whole family are condemned."[86]

[Footnote 83: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 390 sqq.]

[Footnote 84: Koenigswarter, Études historiques sur le developpement de la société humaine, p. 53. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 625.]

[Footnote 85: Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 277. Cf. von Weber, Vier Jahre in Afrika, ii. 215 sq. (Kafirs).]

[Footnote 86: Powers, Tribes of California, pp. 22, 56.]

With progressing civilisation, however, the practice of purchasing wives has been gradually abandoned, and come to be looked upon as infamous. The wealthier classes took the first step, and poorer and ruder persons subsequently followed their examples. Thus in India, in ancient times, the Âsura form, or marriage by purchase, was lawful for all the four castes. Afterwards it fell into disrepute, and was prohibited among the Brâhmanas and Kshatriyas, whereas it was still approved of in the case of a Vaisya and a Sûdra. But in the 'Laws of Manu' it is forbidden altogether.[87] It is said there, "No father who knows the law must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring."[88] The Greeks of the historical age had ceased to buy their wives. In Rome confarreatio, which suggested no idea of purchase, was in the very earliest known time the form of marriage in force among the patricians; and among clients and plebeians, also, the purchase of wives came to an end in remote antiquity, surviving as a mere symbol in their coëmptio.[89] Among the Germans marriage by purchase was abolished only after their conversion to Christianity.[90] In the Talmudic law the purchase of wives appears as merely symbolical, the bride-price being fixed at a nominal amount.[91] 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";[92] which shows that here, too, some feeling of shame is attached to the idea of selling a daughter.

[Footnote 87: Laws of Manu, iii. 23 sqq.]

[Footnote 88: Ibid. iii. 51. Cf. ibid. ix. 93, 98.]

[Footnote 89: Rossbach, op. cit. pp. 92, 146, 248, 250, &c.]

[Footnote 90: Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 424.]

[Footnote 91: Gans, Erbrecht, i. 138.]

[Footnote 92: Jamieson, 'Marriage Laws,' in China Review, x. 78 n.*]

We may discern two different ways in which this {385} gradual disappearance of marriage by purchase has taken place. On the one hand, the purchase became a symbol, appearing as a sham sale in the marriage ceremonies or as an exchange of presents; on the other hand, the purchase sum was transformed into the morning gift and the dotal portion, a part--afterwards the whole--being given to the bride either directly by the bridegroom or by her father. These transformations of marriage by purchase have taken place not only in the history of the civilised nations, but among several peoples who are still in a savage or semi-civilised state; and of a few of them it is expressly stated that they consider marriage by purchase a disgraceful practice.[93]

[Footnote 93: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 405 sqq.]

From marriage by purchase we have thus come to the practice of dower, which is apparently the very reverse of it. But whilst the marriage portion partly derives its origin from the purchase of wives, it does not do so in every case. It serves different ends, often indissolubly mixed up together. It may have the meaning of a return gift. It may imply that the wife as well as the husband is expected to contribute to the expenses of the joint household. It is also very often intended to be a settlement for the wife in case the marriage be dissolved through the husband's death or otherwise.[94] In the social history of the civilised races the marriage portion has played so prominent a part, that, as we have spoken of a stage of marriage by purchase, we may speak of another and later stage where fathers are bound by custom or law to portion their daughters. The Jews[95] and Muhammedans[96] 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.[97] Isaeus says that no decent man would give his legitimate daughter less than a tenth of his {386} property;[98] 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.[99] In Rome, even more than in Greece, the marriage portion became a mark of distinction for a legitimate wife;[100] and though later on Justinian in several of his constitutions declares that dos is obligatory for persons of high rank only,[101] the old custom did not fall into desuetude.[102] 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.[103] According to the 'Code Napoléon,' on the other hand, parents are not bound to give a dower to their daughters,[104] and the same principle is generally adopted by modern legislation. It is true that especially in the so-called Latin countries there is still a strong tendency to dotation,[105] but another feeling, in some measure opposed to it, is gaining ground everywhere. In a society where monogamy is prescribed by law, where the adult women outnumber the adult men, where many men never marry, and where married women too often lead an indolent life--in such a society the marriage portion in many cases becomes a purchase-sum by means of which a father buys a husband for his daughter, as formerly a man bought a wife from her father. But, as Mr. Sutherland observes, "that pecuniary interests, either on one side or on the other, should conspicuously enter into the motives which lead to marriage, becomes repulsive to the increasing delicacy of feeling; and so we find that in cultured communities the dowry dies out, just as the purchase-money declined in the civilised stages."[106]

[Footnote 94: Ibid. p. 411 sqq.]

[Footnote 95: Mayer, Rechte der Israeliten, ii. 344.]

[Footnote 96: Koran, iv. 3.]

[Footnote 97: Cauvet, 'L'organisation de la famille à Athènes,' in Revue de législation et de jurisprudence, xxiv. 152. Potter, Archæologia Græca, ii. 268. Cf. Meier and Schömann, Der attische Process, p. 513 sq.]

[Footnote 98: Isaeus, Oratio de Pyrrhi hereditate, 51, p. 43.]

[Footnote 99: Aristotle, Politica, ii. 9, p. 1270 a.]

[Footnote 100: Laboulaye, Recherches sur la condition civile et politique des femmes, p. 38 sq. Ginoulhiac, Histoire du régime dotal, p. 66. Meier and Schömann, op. cit. p. 513 sq.]

[Footnote 101: Ginoulhiac, op. cit. p. 103.]

[Footnote 102: For dos necessaria in Germany during the Middle Ages, see Mittermaier, _Grundsätze des gemeinen deutschen Privatrechts_, ii. 3.]

[Footnote 103: Eccius, in von Holtzendorff, Encyclopädie der Rechtswissenschaft, ii. 414.]

[Footnote 104: Code Napoléon, art. 204.]

[Footnote 105: See Maine, Early History of Institutions, p. 339.]

[Footnote 106: Sutherland, _Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, i. 243.]

{387} Whilst most of the lower animal species are by instinct either monogamous or polygynous, with man every possible form of marriage occurs. There are marriages of one man with one woman (monogamy), of one man with many women (polygyny), of many men with one woman (polyandry), and, in a few exceptional cases, of many men with many women.[107]

[Footnote 107: Westermarck, op. cit. ch. xx.]

Among the causes by which the forms of marriage are influenced the numerical proportion between the sexes plays an important part. Polyandry seems to be due chiefly to a surplus of men, though it prevails only where the circumstances are otherwise in favour of it.[108] It presupposes an abnormally feeble disposition to jealousy, and has probably at all times been exceptional in the human race. There is no solid evidence for the theory set forth by McLennan that it was the rule in early times.[109] On the contrary, this form of marriage seems to require a certain degree of civilisation; we have no trustworthy account of its occurrence among the lowest savages. In polyandrous families the husbands are most frequently brothers, and the eldest brother, at least in many cases, has the superiority. It seems a fair conclusion that in such instances polyandry was originally an expression of fraternal benevolence on the part of the eldest brother, or of urgent demands on the part of the younger ones, who otherwise, on account of the scarcity of women, would have to live unmarried. If additional wives were afterwards acquired, they would naturally be considered the common property of all the brothers; and in this way the group marriage of the Toda type seems to have evolved.[110] Polygyny, also, is to some extent dependent upon the proportion between the sexes. It has been observed in India that polyandry occurs in those parts of the country where the males outnumber the females, polygyny in those {388} where the reverse is the case.[111] Indeed, in countries unaffected by European civilisation polygyny is likely to prevail wherever there is a majority of women. But the proportion between the sexes is only one cause out of many to which polygyny is due.

[Footnote 108: Ibid. p. 482.]

[Footnote 109: McLennan, 'The Levirate and Polyandry,' in Fortnightly Review, N.S. xxi. 703 sqq. Idem, _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 112 sq.]

[Footnote 110: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 510 sqq. See also Rivers, Todas, pp. 515, 519, 521.]

[Footnote 111: Goehlert, 'Die Geschlechtsverschiedenheit der Kinder in den Ehen,' in Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie, xiii. 127.]

There are several reasons why a man may desire to possess more than one wife.[112] Monogamy requires from him periodical continence, not only for a certain time every month, but among many peoples during the pregnancy of his wife, and as long as she suckles her child. One of the chief causes of polygyny is the attraction which female youth and beauty exercise upon a man; and at the lower stages of civilisation women generally become old much sooner than in more advanced communities. The liking of men for variety is also a potent factor; the Negroes of Angola asserted that they "were not able to eat always of the same dish."[113] We must further take into account men's desire for offspring, wealth, and authority. The barrenness of a wife is a very common reason for the choice of a new partner; the polygyny of the ancient Hindus seems to have been due chiefly to the fact that men dreaded the idea of dying childless, and even now in the East the desire for offspring is one of the principal causes of polygyny.[114] The more wives, the more children; and the more children, the greater power. In early civilisation a man's relations and connections are often his only friends; and where slavery does not prevail, next to a man's wives the real servant, the only to be counted upon, is the child. Moreover, a man's fortune is increased by a multitude of wives not only through their children, but through their work. Manual labour among savages is undertaken largely by women; and when neither slaves nor persons who will work for hire can be procured, {389} it becomes necessary for any man who requires many servants to have many wives.

[Footnote 112: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 483 sqq.]

[Footnote 113: Merolla da Sorrento, 'Voyage to Congo,' in Pinkerton, Collection of Voyages, xvi. 299.]

[Footnote 114: Wallin, Reseanteckningar från Orienten, iii. 267. Le Bon, La civilisation des Arabes, p. 424. Gray, China, i. 184.]

Nevertheless, however desirable polygyny may be from the man's point of view, it is altogether prohibited among many peoples, and in countries where it is an established institution it is practised--as a rule to which there are few exceptions--only by a comparatively small class.[115] The proportion between the sexes partly accounts for this, but there are other causes of no less importance.[116] Where the amount of female labour is limited and no accumulated property exists, it may be very difficult for a man to keep a plurality of wives. Again, where female labour is of considerable value, the necessity of paying the purchase-sum for a wife is a hindrance to polygyny which can be overcome only by the wealthier men. There are, moreover, certain factors of a psychical character which are unfavourable to polygyny. When love depends on external attractions only, it is necessarily fickle; but when it implies sympathy arising from mental qualities, there is a tie between husband and wife which lasts long after youth and beauty are gone. As another obstacle to polygyny we have to note the true monogamous sentiment, the absorbing passion for one, which is not unknown even among savage races. Polygyny is finally checked by the respect in which women are held by men. Jealousy is not exclusively a masculine passion, and it is the ambition of every wife to be the mistress of her husband's house. Hence where women have succeeded in obtaining some power over their husbands, or where the altruistic feelings of men have become refined enough to lead them to respect the feelings of those weaker than themselves, monogamy is frequently the result.

[Footnote 115: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 435 sqq.]

[Footnote 116: Ibid. p. 493 sqq.]

It is certain that polygyny has been less prevalent at the lowest stages of civilisation--where wars do not seriously disturb the proportion of the sexes, where life is chiefly supported by hunting and female labour is consequently of slight value, and where there is no accumulation of wealth {390} and no distinction of class--than it is at somewhat higher stages.[117] The more advanced savages and barbarians seem to indulge in this practice to a greater extent than the lower ones, many, or most, of whom are either little addicted to polygyny or strictly monogamous. Various forest tribes in Brazil are monogamous,[118] and so are several of the Californian tribes--"a humble and a lowly race, . . . one of the lowest on earth."[119] Thus the Karok do not allow bigamy even to a chief; and though a man may own as many women for slaves as he can purchase, he brings obloquy on himself if he cohabits with more than one.[120] Among the Veddahs[121] and Andaman Islanders[122] monogamy is as rigidly insisted upon as any where in Europe. The natives of Kar Nicobar "have but one wife, and look upon unchastity as a very deadly sin."[123] Among the Koch and Old Kukis polygyny and concubinage are forbidden;[124] whilst among some other aboriginal tribes in India a man, though not expressly forbidden to have many wives, is blamed if he has more than one.[125] Among the Karens of Burma[126] and certain tribes of Indo-China, the Malay Peninsula, and the Indian Archipelago, polygyny is said either to be prohibited or unknown.[127] The Hill Dyaks marry but one wife, and a chief who once broke through this custom lost all his influence.[128] In Australia there are said to be some truly monogamous tribes;[129] in the Birria tribe, for instance, "the possession of more than one wife is absolutely forbidden, or was so before the coming of the whites."[130] {391} Monogamy is all the more likely to have been the general rule among our earliest human ancestors as it seems to be so among the man-like apes. Darwin certainly mentions the gorilla as a polygamist;[131] but the majority of statements we have regarding this animal are to the opposite effect. Relying on the most trustworthy authorities, Professor Hartmann says, "The gorilla lives in a society consisting of male and female and their young of varying ages."[132]

[Footnote 117: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 505 sqq.]

[Footnote 118: von Martius, op. cit. i. 274, 298. Wallace, Travels on the Amazon, pp. 509, 515 sqq. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 472.]

[Footnote 119: Powers, op. cit. pp. 5, 56, 406. Wilkes, U. S. Exploring Expedition, v. 188.]

[Footnote 120: Powers, op. cit. p. 22.]

[Footnote 121: Bailey, in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S. ii. 291 sq. Hartshorne, in Indian Antiquary, viii. 320.]

[Footnote 122: Man, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 135.]

[Footnote 123: Distant, ibid. iii. 4.]

[Footnote 124: Dalton, op. cit. p. 91. Stewart, 'Notes on Northern Cachar,' in Jour. As. Soc. Bengal, xxiv. 621.]

[Footnote 125: Dalton, op. cit. pp. 28, 54. Jellinghaus, 'Munda-Kolhs in Chota Nagpore,' in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. iii. 370.]

[Footnote 126: Smeaton, Loyal Karens of Burma, p. 81.]

[Footnote 127: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 436 sq.]

[Footnote 128: Low, Sarawak, p. 300.]

[Footnote 129: Curr, Australian Race, i. 402; ii. 371.]

[Footnote 130: Ibid. ii. 378.]

[Footnote 131: Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 217, 590 sq.]

[Footnote 132: Hartmann, Die menschenähnlichen Affen, p. 214.]

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

{392} As for the moral valuation of the various forms of marriage, it should be noticed that even among polygynous and polyandrous peoples monogamy is permitted by custom or law, although in some instances it is associated with poverty and considered mean, whereas polygyny, as associated with greatness, is thought praiseworthy.[133] Again, the notion that monogamy is the only proper form of marriage, and that any other form is immoral, is due either to the mere force of habit; or, possibly, to the notion that it is wrong of some men to appropriate a plurality of wives when others in consequence can get none; or to the feeling that polygyny is an offence against the female sex; or to the condemnation of lust. As regards the obligatory monogamy of Christian nations, we have to remember that monogamy was the only recognised form of marriage in the societies on which Christianity was first engrafted, and that it was the only form that could be tolerated by a religion which regarded every gratification of the sexual impulse with suspicion and incontinence as the gravest sin. In its early days the Church showed little respect for women but its horror of sensuality was immense.

[Footnote 133: Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 657.]

A few words still remain to be said of a form of marriage which has of late been the subject of much discussion in connection with Australian ethnology. Many years ago attention was drawn to the fact that the Kamilaroi tribes in South Australia are divided into four classes, in which brothers and sisters are respectively Ipai and Ip[=a]tha, K[)u]bi and Kub[)i]tha, M[)u]ri and M[=a]tha, Kumbu and B[=u]tha; and that the members of one class are forbidden to marry among themselves, but bound to marry into a certain other class. Thus Ipai may only marry Kub[)i]tha; K[)u]bi, Ip[=a]tha; Kumbu, M[=a]tha; and M[)u]ri, B[=u]tha. In a certain sense, we were told, every Ipai is regarded as married, not by any individual contract, but by organic law, to every Kub[)i]tha; every K[)u]bi to every Ip[=a]tha, and so forth. If, for instance, a K[)u]bi meet a stranger Ip[=a]tha, they address {393} each other as "spouse"; and "a K[)u]bi thus meeting an Ip[=a]tha, though she were of another tribe, would treat her as his wife, and his right to do so would be recognised by her tribe."[134] The institution according to which the men of one division have as wives the women of another division, the Rev. L. Fison called "group marriage." He contends that among the natives of South Australia it has given way in later times, in some measure, to individual marriage. But theoretically, he says, marriage is still communal: "it is based upon the marriage of all the males in one division of a tribe to all the females of the same generation in another division." The chief argument advanced by Mr. Fison in support of his theory is grounded on the terms of relationship in use in the tribes. These terms belong to the "classificatory system" of Mr. Morgan;[135] but he admits that he is not aware of any tribe in which the actual practice is to its full extent what the terms of relationship imply. "Present usage," he says, "is everywhere in advance of the system so implied, and the terms are survivals of an ancient right, not precise indications of custom as it is."[136] The same is granted by Mr. Howitt.[137] Yet I have pointed out, in my criticism of the classificatory system, to what absurd results we must be led if, guided by such terms, we begin to speculate upon early marriage.[138] Moreover, as I have said, "if a K[)u]bi and an Ip[=a]tha address each other as spouse, this does not imply that in former times every K[)u]bi was married to every Ip[=a]tha indiscriminately. On the contrary, the application of such a familiar term might be explained from the fact that the women who may be a man's wives, and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him."[139] This suggestion derives support from the following statement made by Dr. Codrington with reference to the Melanesians:--"Speaking {394} generally, it may be said that to a Melanesian man all women, of his own generation at least, are either sisters or wives, to the Melanesian woman all men are either brothers or husbands. . . . It must not be understood that a Melanesian regards all women who are not of his own division as, in fact, his wives, or conceives himself to have rights which he may exercise in regard to those women of them who are unmarried; but the women who may be his wives by marriage and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him."[140]

[Footnote 134: Ridley, Kámilarói, p. 161 sq. (edit. 1866, p. 35 sqq.). Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 36, 51, 53.]

[Footnote 135: Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 60.]

[Footnote 136: Ibid. p. 159 sq.]

[Footnote 137: Howitt, 'Australian Group Relations,' in Smithsonian Report, 1883, p. 817.]

[Footnote 138: Westermarck, op. cit. ch. v.]

[Footnote 139: Ibid. p. 56.]

[Footnote 140: Codrington, Melanesians, p. 22 sq.]

More recently Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have shown that a marriage system essentially similar to that of the South Australian natives prevails in Central Australia; and they, also, regard it as a later modification of genuine group marriage. Nowadays, they say, the system of individual wives prevails--"modified, however, by the practice of customs according to which, at certain times, much wider marital relations are allowed." But to this rule there is one exception:--"In the Urabunna tribe group marriage actually exists at the present day, a group of men of a certain designation having, not merely nominally but in actual reality, and under normal conditions, marital relations with a group of women of another special designation"; here "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice."[141] But, after all, it appears that even among the Urabunna every woman is the special Nupa of one man, and that certain other men, her Piraungaru only have a secondary right to her. Thus, if the Nupa man (the real, or at all events the chief, husband) be present, the Piraungaru (accessory husbands) are allowed to have intercourse with her only in case the Nupa man consents.[142] Is this modification of the Urabunna group marriage a later development from a previous system according to which all the men of a certain group had an equal right to all the {395} women of another group? Here we are on dangerous ground; nothing is more difficult than to decide whether certain customs are survivals or not. We find modifications resembling those connected with the group marriage of the Urabunna both in polyandry and in polygyny; the first husband in a polyandrous family is usually the chief husband, and the first wife in a polygynous family is very frequently the chief wife. We must certainly not conclude that these restrictions have been preceded by an earlier custom which gave equal rights to all the husbands or all the wives; on the contrary, it is more likely that the higher position granted to the first husband or to the first wife is due to the fact that monogamy was the usual form of marriage.[143] Similarly the Urabunna custom may very well have developed out of ordinary individual marriage,[144] and the cause of it may perhaps be, as Mr. N. W. Thomas has suggested,[145] the difficulties which an Australian native often experiences in getting a wife.[146] As for other facts which have been adduced as evidence of Australian group marriage in the past, such as the jus primæ noctis, &c., I only desire to emphasise the circumstance that extra-matrimonial intercourse is practised by the Australian natives in a variety of cases the real meaning of which seems obscure. In some instances at least, a magic significance appears to be attributed to it;[147] and that it is a survival of group marriage, in the strict sense of the term, is again only a conjecture.

[Footnote 141: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 140. Iidem, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 62 sq.]

[Footnote 142: Iidem, Native Tribes, p. 110.]

[Footnote 143: Westermarck, op. cit. pp. 443-448, 457, 458, 508.]

[Footnote 144: Cf. Crawley, op. cit. p. 482; Lang, Social Origins, p. 105 sq.]

[Footnote 145: Thomas, in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute in 1905. Cf. Idem, _Kinship and Marriage in Australia_, p. 138.]

[Footnote 146: See Westermarck, op. cit. p. 132 sq.; infra, p. 460.]

[Footnote 147: See, e.g., Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, p. 137 sq.]

I must admit, therefore, that the facts produced by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and the severe criticism which they have passed on my sceptical attitude towards Mr. Fison's group marriage theory have not been able to convince me that among the Australian aborigines individual marriage has evolved out of a previous system of marriage between groups of men and women. Nor has Mr. Howitt, {396} in his recent work on the 'Native Tribes of South-East Australia,' in my opinion, sufficiently proved that such an evolution has taken place.[148] He blames certain "ethnologists of the study" for not being willing "to take the opinion of men who have first-hand knowledge of the natives";[149] but I think we do well in distinguishing between statements based on direct observation and the observer's interpretation of the stated facts. Even suppose, however, that group marriage really was once common in Australia, would that prove that it was once common among mankind at large? Mr. Hewitt's supposition that the practice of group marriage "will be ultimately accepted as one of the primitive conditions of mankind"[150] is no doubt shared by a host of anthropologists. The group marriage theory will probably for some time to come remain the residuary legatee of the old theory of promiscuity; the important works which have lately been published on the Australian aborigines have made people inclined to view the early history of mankind through Australian spectacles. But even the most ardent advocate of Australian group marriage should remember that the existence of kangurus in Australia does not prove that there were once kangurus in England.

[Footnote 148: Mr. Thomas has come to the same result in his book on 'Kinship and Marriage in Australia,' which appeared when the present chapter was already in type. A detailed examination of the facts which have been adduced as evidence of Australian group marriage (p. 127 sqq.) has led him to the conclusion (p. 147) that prevailing customs in Australia, far from proving the present or former existence of group marriage in that continent, do not even render it probable, and that on the terms of relationship no argument of any sort can be founded which assumes them to refer to consanguinity, kinship, or affinity. "It is therefore not rash to say that the case for group marriage, so far as Australia is concerned, falls to the ground." See infra, Addit. Notes.]

[Footnote 149: Howitt, 'Native Tribes of South-East Australia,' in Folk-Lore, xvii. 185.]

[Footnote 150: Idem, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 281.]

* * * * *

The time during which marriage lasts varies extremely in the human race.[151] There are unions which, though legally recognised as marriages, do not endure long enough to deserve to be so called in the natural history sense of the term; there are others which are dissolved only by {397} death. As has already been pointed out, it is probable that among primitive men the union of the sexes lasted till after the birth of the offspring, and we have perhaps some reason to believe that the connection lasted for years. On the whole, progress in civilisation has tended to make marriage more durable. It is evident that at the early stage of development at which women first became valuable as labourers, a wife was united with her husband by a new bond more lasting than youth and beauty. The tie was strengthened by the bride-price and the marriage portion. And a higher development of the paternal feeling, better forethought for the children's welfare, in some instances greater consideration for women, and a more refined love passion have gradually made it stronger, until it has become in many cases indissoluble. Yet we must not conclude that divorce will in the future be less frequent and more restricted by law than it is now in European countries. It should be remembered that the laws of divorce in Christian Europe owe their origin to an idealistic religious commandment which, interpreted in its literal sense, gave rise to legal prescriptions far from harmonising with the mental and social life of the mass of the people. The powerful authority of the Roman Church was necessary to enforce the dogma that marriage is indissoluble. The Reformation introduced somewhat greater liberty in this respect, and modern legislation has gone further in the same direction. In those Christian states of Europe where absolute divorce is permitted the grounds on which it may be sued for are nearly the same for the man and the woman, except in England, where the husband must be accused of one or other of several offences besides adultery. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal, a judicial separation may always be decreed on the ground of the adultery of the wife, but, on the ground of the adultery of the husband, only if it has been committed under certain aggravating circumstances.[152] These laws imply that marriage is not yet a contract on the footing of perfect equality between the sexes; but there is {398} a growing opinion that, where it is not, it ought to be so. Again, when both husband and wife desire to separate, it seems to many enlightened minds that the State has no right to prevent them from dissolving the marriage contract, provided the children are properly cared for; and that for the children, also, it is better to have the supervision of one parent only than of two who cannot agree.

[Footnote 151: Westermarck, op. cit. ch. xxiii.]

[Footnote 152: Glasson, Le mariage civil et le divorce, pp. 291, 298, 304.]

XLI. CELIBACY

AMONG savage and barbarous races of men nearly every individual endeavours to marry as soon as he, or she, reaches the age of puberty.[1] Marriage seems to them indispensable, and a person who abstains from it is looked upon as an unnatural being and is disdained. Among the Santals a man who remains single "is at once despised by both sexes, and is classed next to a thief, or a witch: they term the unhappy wretch 'No man.'"[2] Among the Kafirs a bachelor has no voice in the kraal.[3] In the Tupi tribes of Brazil no man was suffered to partake in the drinking-feast while he remained single.[4] The natives of Futuna in the Western Pacific maintained that it was necessary to be married in order to hold a part in the happy future life, and that the celibates, both men and women, had to submit to a chastisement of their own before entering the fale-mate, or "home of the dead."[5] According to Fijian beliefs, he who died wifeless was stopped by the god Nangganangga on the road to Paradise, and smashed to atoms.[6]

[Footnote 1: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 134 sqq.]

[Footnote 2: Man, Sonthalia, p. 101.]

[Footnote 3: von Weber, Vier Jahre in Afrika, ii. 215.]

[Footnote 4: Southey, History of Brazil, i. 240.]

[Footnote 5: Percy Smith, 'Futuna.' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. i. 39 sq.]

[Footnote 6: Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, pp. 368, 372. Seemann, Viti, p. 399 sq. Fison, 'Fijian Burial Customs,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. x. 139. Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 206. For other instances see Westermarck, op. cit. p. 136, n. 10.]

Among peoples of archaic culture celibacy is likewise a great exception and marriage regarded as a duty. In {400} ancient Peru marriage was compulsory at a certain age.[7] Among the Aztecs no young man lived single till his twenty-second year, unless he intended to become a priest, and for girls the customary marrying-age was from eleven to eighteen. In Tlascala, we are told, the unmarried state was so despised that a grown-up man who would not marry had his hair cut off for shame.[8]

[Footnote 7: Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 306 sq.]

[Footnote 8: Klemm, _Allgemeine Cultur-Geschichte der Menschheit_, v. 46 sq. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 251 sq.]

"Almost all Chinese," says Dr. Gray, "robust or infirm, well-formed or deformed, are called upon by their parents to marry as soon as they have attained the age of puberty. Were a grown-up son or daughter to die unmarried, the parents would regard it as most deplorable." Hence a young man of marriageable age, whom consumption or any other lingering disease had marked for its own, would be compelled by his parents or guardians to marry at once.[9] So indispensable is marriage considered by the Chinese, that even the dead are married, the spirits of all males who die in infancy or in boyhood being in due time married to the spirits of females who have been cut off at a like early age.[10] There is a maxim by Mencius, re-echoed by the whole nation, that it is a heavy sin to have no sons, as this would doom father, mother, and the whole ancestry in the Nether-world to a pitiable existence without descendants enough to serve them properly, to worship at the ancestral tombs, to take care of the ancestral tablets, and duly to perform all rites and ceremonies connected with the departed dead. For a man whose wife has reached her fortieth year without bringing him a son, it is an imperative duty to take a concubine.[11] In Corea "the male human being who is unmarried is never called a man, whatever his age, but goes by the name of 'yatow,' a name given by the Chinese to unmarriageable young girls; and the man of thirteen or fourteen has a {401} perfect right to strike, abuse, order about the 'yatow' of thirty, who dares not as much as open his lips to complain."[12]

[Footnote 9: Gray, China, i. 186.]

[Footnote 10: Ibid. i. 216 sq.]

[Footnote 11: Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, i. 64, n. 10. de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 617. Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 58.]

[Footnote 12: Ross, History of Corea, p. 313.]

Among the Semites, also, we meet with the idea that a dead man who has no children will miss something in Sh[)e]ol through not receiving that kind of worship which ancestors in early times appear to have received.[13] The Hebrews looked upon marriage as a religious duty.[14] According to the Shulchan Aruch, he who abstains from marrying is guilty of bloodshed, diminishes the image of God, and causes the divine presence to withdraw from Israel; hence a single man past twenty may be compelled by the court to take a wife.[15] Muhammedanism likewise regards marriage as a duty for men and women; to neglect it without a sufficient excuse subjects a man to severe reproach.[16] "When a servant [of God] marries," said the Prophet, "verily he perfects half his religion."[17]

[Footnote 13: Cheyne, 'Harlot,' in Cheyne and Black, Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1964.]

[Footnote 14: Mayer, Rechte der Israeliten, pp. 286, 353. Lichtschein, Ehe nach mosaisch-talmudischer Auffassung, p. 5 sqq. Klugmann, Die Frau im Talmud, p. 39 sq.]

[Footnote 15: Schulchan Aruch, iv. ('Eben haezer') i. 1, 3. See also Yebamoth, fol. 63 b sq., quoted by Margolis, 'Celibacy,' in Jewish Encyclopedia, iii. 636.]

[Footnote 16: Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_, i. 197.]

[Footnote 17: Idem, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 221.]

The so-called Aryan nations in ancient times, as M. Fustel de Coulanges and others have pointed out, regarded celibacy as an impiety and a misfortune: "an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because he himself would receive no worship after his death." A man's happiness in the next world depended upon his having a continuous line of male descendants, whose duty it would be to make the periodical offerings for the repose of his soul.[18] According to the 'Laws of Manu,' marriage is the twelfth Sansk[=a]ra, and as such a religious duty incumbent upon all.[19] Among the Hindus of the present day a {402} man who is not married is generally considered to be almost a useless member of the community, and is indeed looked upon as beyond the pale of nature;[20] and the spirits of young men who have died without becoming fathers are believed to wander about in a restless miserable manner, like people burdened with an enormous debt which they are quite unable to discharge.[21] Similar views are expressed in Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda said to Zoroaster:--"The man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man."[22] The greatest misfortune which could befall an ancient Persian was to be childless.[23] To him who has no child the bridge of Paradise shall be barred; the first question the angels there will ask him is, whether he has left in this world a substitute for himself, and if the answer be "No" they will pass by and he will stay at the head of the bridge, full of grief. The primitive meaning of this is plain: the man without a son cannot enter Paradise because there is nobody to pay him the family worship.[24] Ashi Vanguhi, a feminine impersonification of piety, and the source of all the good and riches that are connected with piety, rejects the offerings of barren people--old men, courtesans, and children.[25] It is said in the Yasts, "This is the worst deed that men and tyrants do, namely, when they deprive maids that have been barren for a long time of marrying and bringing forth children."[26] And in the eyes of all good Parsis of the present day, as in the time of king Darius and the contemporaries of Herodotus, the two greatest merits of a citizen are the begetting and rearing of a numerous family, and the fruitful tilling of the soil.[27]

[Footnote 18: Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique, p. 54 sq. Hearn, The Aryan Household, pp. 69, 71. Mayne, _Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage_, p. 68 sq.]

[Footnote 19: Laws of Manu, ii. 66 sq. Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 246. Cf. Mayne, op. cit. p. 69.]

[Footnote 20: Dubois, _Description of the Character, &c. of the People of India_, p. 132.]

[Footnote 21: Monier-Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, p. 243 sq.]

[Footnote 22: Vendîdâd, iv. 47.]

[Footnote 23: Rawlinson, in his translation of Herodotus, i. 262, n. 1. Cf. Herodotus, i. 133, 136; Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xxxv. 19.]

[Footnote 24: Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. 47. Cf. Idem, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 294.]

[Footnote 25: Yasts, xvii. 54.]

[Footnote 26: Ibid. xvii. 59.]

[Footnote 27: Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxii. Cf. Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib, i. 173.]

{403} The ancient Greeks regarded marriage as a matter both of public and private importance.[28] In various places criminal proceedings might be taken against celibates.[29] Plato remarks that every individual is bound to provide for a continuance of representatives to succeed himself as ministers of the Divinity;[30] and Isaeus says, "All those who think their end approaching look forward with a prudent care that their houses may not become desolate, but that there may be some person to attend to their funeral rites and to perform the legal ceremonies at their tombs."[31] So also the conviction that the founding of a house and the begetting of children constituted a moral necessity and a public duty had a deep hold of the Roman mind in early times.[32] Cicero's treatise 'De Legibus'--which generally reproduces in a philosophical form the ancient laws of Rome--contains a law according to which the Censors had to impose a tax upon unmarried men.[33] But in later periods, when sexual morality reached a very low ebb in Rome, celibacy--as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520 B.C.--naturally increased in proportion, especially among the upper classes. Among these marriage came to be regarded as a burden which people took upon themselves at the best in the public interest. Indeed, how it fared with marriage and the rearing of children is shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium thereon;[34] and later the Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea imposed various penalties on those who lived in a state of celibacy after a certain age,[35] though with little or no result.[36]

[Footnote 28: Müller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, ii. 300 sq. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 55. Hearn, op. cit. p. 72. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 234 sq.]

[Footnote 29: Pollux, Onomasticum, iii. 48.]

[Footnote 30: Plato, Leges, vi. 773.]

[Footnote 31: Isaeus, Oratio de Apollodori hereditate, 30, p. 66. Rohde observes (Psyche, p. 228), however, that such a belief did not exist in the Homeric age, when the departed souls in Hades were supposed to be in no way dependent upon the survivors.]

[Footnote 32: Mommsen, History of Rome, i. 74.]

[Footnote 33: Cicero, De legibus, iii. 3. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 55.]

[Footnote 34: Mommsen, op. cit. iii. 121; iv. 186 sq.]

[Footnote 35: Rossbach, Römische Ehe, p. 418.]

[Footnote 36: Mackenzie, Studies in Roman Law, p. 104.]

Celibacy is thus disapproved of for various reasons. It {404} appears unnatural. It is taken as an indication of licentious habits. Where ancestors are worshipped after their death it inspires religious horror: the man who leaves himself without offspring shows reckless indifference to the religion of his people, to his own fate after death, and to the duties he owes the dead, whose spirits depend upon the offerings of their descendants for their comfort. The last point of view, as we have seen, is particularly prominent among peoples of archaic culture, but it is not unknown at a lower stage of civilisation. Thus the Eskimo about Behring Strait "appear to have great dread of dying without being assured that their shades will be remembered during the festivals, fearing if neglected that they would thereby suffer destitution in the future life"; hence a pair of childless Eskimo frequently adopt a child, so that when they die there will be some one left whose duty it will be to make the customary feast and offerings to their shades at the festival of the dead.[37] Finally, in communities with a keen public spirit, especially in ambitious states frequently engaged in war, celibacy is regarded as a wrong committed against the State.

[Footnote 37: Nelson, 'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xviii. 290.]

Modern civilisation looks upon celibacy in a different light. The religious motive for marriage has ceased to exist, the lot of the dead being no longer supposed to depend upon the devotion of the living. It is said, in a general way, that marriage is a duty to the nation or the race, but this argument is hardly applied to individual cases. According to modern ideas the union between man and woman is too much a matter of sentiment to be properly classified among civic duties. Nor does the unmarried state strike us as particularly unnatural. The proportion of unmarried people is gradually growing larger and the age at which people marry is rising.[38] The chief causes of this increasing celibacy are the difficulty of supporting a family under present conditions of life, and the luxurious {405} habits of living in the upper classes of society. Another reason is that the domestic circle does not fill so large a place in life as it did formerly; the married state has in some measure lost its advantage over the single state, and there are many more pleasures now that can be enjoyed as well or even better in celibacy. Moreover, by the diffusion of a finer culture throughout the community, men and women can less easily find any one whom they are willing to take as a partner for life; their requirements are more exacting, they have a livelier sense of the serious character of the marriage union, and they are less willing to contract it from any lower motives.[39]

[Footnote 38: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 146.]

[Footnote 39: Ibid. p. 147 sqq. 'Why is Single Life becoming more General?' in The Nation, vi. 190 sq.]

Nay, far from enjoining marriage as a duty incumbent upon all, enlightened opinion seems to agree that it is a duty for many people never to marry. In some European countries the marriages of persons in receipt of poor-law relief have been legally prohibited, and in certain cases the legislators have gone further still and prohibited all marriages until the contracting parties can prove that they possess the means of supporting a family.[40] The opinion has also been expressed that the State ought to forbid the unions of persons suffering from certain kinds of disease, which in all probability would be transmitted to the offspring. People are beginning to feel that it entails a heavy responsibility to bring a new being into existence, and that many persons are wholly unfit for such a task.[41] Future generations will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and lust.

[Footnote 40: Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, ii. 181.]

[Footnote 41: See Mr. Galton's papers on "Eugenics" and the discussions of the subject in Sociological Papers, vols. i. and ii.]

* * * * *

Side by side with the opinion that marriage is a duty for all ordinary men and women we find among many peoples {406} the notion that persons whose function it is to perform religious or magical rites must be celibates.[42] The Thlinkets believe that if a shaman does not observe continuous chastity his own guardian spirits will kill him.[43] In Patagonia the male wizards were not allowed to marry.[44] In some tribes of the Guaranies of Paraguay "the female Payes were bound to chastity, or they no longer obtained credit."[45] Celibacy was compulsory on the priests of the Chibchas in Bogota.[46] The Tohil priests in Guatemala were vowed to perpetual continence.[47] In Ichcatlan the high-priest was obliged to live constantly within the temple, and to abstain from commerce with any woman whatsoever; and if he failed in this duty he was cut in pieces, and the bloody limbs were given as a warning to his successor.[48] Of the women who held positions in the temples of ancient Mexico we are told that their chastity was most zealously guarded; during the performance of their duties they were required to keep at a proper distance from the male assistants, at whom they did not even dare to glance. The punishment to be inflicted upon those who violated their vow of chastity was death; whilst, if their trespass remained entirely secret, they endeavoured to appease the anger of the gods by fasting and austerity of life, dreading that in punishment of their crime their flesh would rot.[49] In Yucatan there was, connected with the worship of the sun, an order of vestals the members of which generally enrolled themselves for a certain time, but were afterwards allowed to leave and enter the married state. Some of them, however, remained for ever in the service of the temple and were apotheosised. Their duty was to attend to the sacred fire, and to keep strictly chaste, {407} those who broke their vows being shot to death with arrows.[50] In Peru there were likewise virgins dedicated to the sun, who lived in perpetual seclusion to the end of their lives, who preserved their virginity and were forbidden to converse or have sexual intercourse with or to see any man, or even any woman who was not one of themselves.[51] And besides the virgins who thus professed perpetual virginity in the monasteries, there were other women, of the blood royal, who led the same life in their own houses, having taken a vow of continence. These women "were held in great veneration for their chastity and purity, and, as a mark of worship and respect, they were called Ocllo, which was a name held sacred in their idolatry"; but if they lost their virtue, they were burnt alive or cast into "the lake of lions."[52]

[Footnote 42: Some instances of this are stated by Landtman, Origin of Priesthood, p. 156 sq.]

[Footnote 43: Veniaminof, quoted by Landtman, op. cit. p. 156.]

[Footnote 44: Falkner, Description of Patagonia, p. 117.]

[Footnote 45: Southey, History of Brazil, ii. 371.]

[Footnote 46: Simon, quoted by Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 384.]

[Footnote 47: Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 489.]

[Footnote 48: Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 274.]

[Footnote 49: Ibid. i. 275 sq. Torquemada, _Monarchia Indiana_, ii. 188 sqq. Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 435 sq. Cf. Acosta, History of the Indies, ii. 333 sq.]

[Footnote 50: Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 473. Lopez Cogolludo, Historia de Yucathan, p. 198.]

[Footnote 51: Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 291 sqq.]

[Footnote 52: Ibid. i. 305.]

Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands there were virgins, called Magades or Harimagades, who presided over the cult under the direction of the high-priest, and there were other virgins, highly respected, whose function was to pour water over the heads of newborn children, and who could abandon their office and marry whenever they pleased.[53] The priestesses of the Tshi- and E[(w]e-speaking peoples on the West Coast of Africa are forbidden to marry.[54] In a wood near Cape Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives a priestly king who is allowed neither to leave his house nor to touch a woman.[55]

[Footnote 53: Bory de St. Vincent, _Essais sur les Isles Fortunées_, p. 96 sq.]

[Footnote 54: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 121. Idem, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples, p. 142.]

[Footnote 55: Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 287 sq.]

In ancient Persia there were sun priestesses who were obliged to refrain from intercourse with men.[56] The nine priestesses of the oracle of a Gallic deity in Sena were devoted to perpetual virginity.[57] The Romans had their Vestal virgins, whose office, according to tradition, was instituted by Numa. They were compelled to continue {408} unmarried during thirty years, which time they employed in offering sacrifices and performing other rites ordained by the law; and if they suffered themselves to be debauched they were delivered up to the most miserable death, being placed in a subterraneous cell, in their funeral attire, without any sepulchral column, funeral rites, or other customary solemnities.[58] After the expiration of the term of thirty years they might marry on quitting the ensigns of their priesthood; but we are told that very few did this, as those who did suffered calamities which were regarded as ominous by the rest, and induced them to remain virgins in the temple of the goddess till their death.[59] In Greece priestesses were not infrequently required to be virgins, if not for their whole life, at any rate for the duration of their priesthood.[60] Tertullian writes:--"To the Achaean Juno, at the town Aegium, a virgin is allotted; and the priestesses who rave at Delphi know not marriage. We know that widows minister to the African Ceres; they not only withdraw from their still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in their own room, all contact with males, even as far as the kiss of their sons, being forbidden them. . . . We have heard, too, of continent men, and among others the priests of the famous Egyptian bull."[61] There were eunuch priests connected with the cults of the Ephesian Artemis,[62] the Phrygian Cybele,[63] and the Syrian Astarte.[64]

[Footnote 56: Justin, quoted by Justi, 'Die Weltgeschichte des Tabari,' in Das Ausland, 1875, p. 307.]

[Footnote 57: Pomponius Mela, De situ orbis, iii. 6.]

[Footnote 58: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanæ, ii. 64 sqq. Plutarch, Numa, x. 7 sqq.]

[Footnote 59: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ii. 67.]

[Footnote 60: Strabo, xiv. i. 23. Müller, Das sexuelle Leben der alten Kulturvölker, p. 44 sqq. Blümner, Home Life of the Ancient Greeks, p. 325. Götte, Das Delphische Orakel, p. 78 sq.]

[Footnote 61: Tertullian, Ad uxorem, i. 6 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, i. 1284). Idem, De exhortatione castitatis, 13 (Migne, ii. 928 sq.). Cf. Idem, De monogamia, 17 (Migne, ii. 953).]

[Footnote 62: Strabo, xiv. 1. 23.]

[Footnote 63: Arnobius, Adversus gentes, v. 7 (Migne, op. cit. v. 1095 sqq.). Farnell, 'Sociological Hypotheses concerning the Position of Women in Ancient Religion,' in Archiv f. Religionswiss. vii. 78.]

[Footnote 64: Lucian, De dea Syria, 15, 27, 50 sqq.]

Among the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills the "dairy man" or priest is bound to a celibate existence;[65] and {409} among the Hindus, in spite of the great honour in which marriage is held, celibacy has always commanded respect in instances of extraordinary sanctity.[66] Those of the Sanny[=a]sis who are known to lead their lives in perfect celibacy receive on that account marks of distinguished honour and respect.[67] Already the time-honoured Indian institution of the four [=A]['s]ramas contained the germ of monastic celibacy, the Brahmac[=a]rin, or student, being obliged to observe absolute chastity during the whole course of his study.[68] The idea was further developed in Jainism and Buddhism. The Jain monk was to renounce all sexual pleasures, "either with gods, or men, or animals"; not to give way to sensuality; not to discuss topics relating to women; not to contemplate the forms of women.[69] Buddhism regards sensuality as altogether incompatible with wisdom and holiness; it is said that "a wise man should avoid married life as if it were a burning pit of live coals."[70] According to the legend, Buddha's mother, who was the best and purest of the daughters of men, had no other sons, and her conception was due to supernatural causes.[71] One of the fundamental duties of monastic life, by an infringement of which the guilty person brings about his inevitable expulsion from Buddha's order, is that "an ordained monk may not have sexual intercourse, not even with an animal."[72] In Tibet some sects of the Lamas are allowed to marry, but those who do not are considered more holy; and in every sect the nuns must take a vow of absolute continence.[73] The Buddhist priests of Ceylon are totally debarred from women.[74] Chinese law enjoins celibacy on all priests, Buddhist or Taouist.[75] And among the immortals of {410} Taouism there are some women also, who have led an extraordinarily ascetic life.[76]

[Footnote 65: Thurston, 'Anthropology of the Todas and Kotas,' in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, i. 169, 170, 193. Rivers, Todas, pp. 80, 99, 236.]

[Footnote 66: Monier-Williams, Buddhism, p. 88.]

[Footnote 67: Dubois, op. cit. p. 133. Cf. Monier-Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, p. 261.]

[Footnote 68: Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, p. 73.]

[Footnote 69: Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 294.]

[Footnote 70: Dhammika-Sutta, 21, quoted by Monier-Williams, Buddhism, p. 88.]

[Footnote 71: Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures on Buddhism, p. 148.]

[Footnote 72: Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 350 sq.]

[Footnote 73: Wilson, Abode of Snow, p. 213.]

[Footnote 74: Percival, Account of the Island of Ceylon, p. 202.]

[Footnote 75: Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. cxiv. p. 118. Medhurst, 'Marriage in China,' in Trans. Roy. Asiatic Soc. China Branch, iv. 18. Davis, China, ii. 53.]

[Footnote 76: Réville, La Religion Chinoise, p. 451 sq.]

A small class of Hebrews held the idea that marriage is impure. The Essenes, says Josephus, "reject pleasure as an evil, but esteem continence and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock."[77] This doctrine exercised no influence on Judaism, but probably much upon Christianity. St. Paul considered celibacy to be preferable to marriage. "He that giveth her (his virgin) in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better."[78] "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband."[79] If the unmarried and widows cannot contain let them marry, "for it is better to marry than to burn."[80] These and other passages[81] in the New Testament inspired a general enthusiasm for virginity. Commenting on the words of the Apostle, Tertullian points out that what is better is not necessarily good. It is better to lose one eye than two, but neither is good; so also, though it is better to marry than to burn, it is far better neither to marry nor to burn.[82] Marriage "consists of that which is the essence of fornication";[83] whereas continence "is a means whereby a man will traffic in a mighty substance of sanctity."[84] The body which our Lord wore and in which He carried on the conflict of life in this world He put on from a holy virgin; and John the Baptist, Paul, and all the others "whose names are in the book of life"[85] cherished and loved virginity.[86] Virginity works miracles: Mary, the sister of Moses, leading the female band, passed on {411} foot over the straits of the sea, and by the same grace Thecla was reverenced even by lions, so that the unfed beasts, lying at the feet of their prey, underwent a holy fast, neither with wanton look nor sharp claw venturing to harm the virgin.[87] Virginity is like a spring flower, always softly exhaling immortality from its white petals.[88] The Lord himself opens the kingdoms of the heavens to eunuchs.[89] If Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and some harmless mode of vegetation would have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings.[90] It is true that, though virginity is the shortest way to the camp of the faithful, the way of matrimony also arrives there, by a longer circuit.[91] Tertullian himself opposed the Marcionites, who prohibited marriage among themselves and compelled those who were married to separate before they were received by baptism into the community.[92] And in the earlier part of the fourth century the Council of Gangra expressly condemned anyone who maintained that marriage prevented a Christian from entering the kingdom of God.[93] But, at the end of the same century, a council also excommunicated the monk Jovinian because he denied that virginity was more meritorious than marriage.[94] The use of marriage was permitted to man only as a necessary expedient for the continuance of the human species, and as a restraint, {412} however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire.[95] The procreation of children is the measure of a Christian's indulgence in appetite, just as the husbandman throwing the seed into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing more upon it.[96]

[Footnote 77: Josephus, De bello Judaico, ii. 8. 2. See also Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, xxxv. 9 sq.]

[Footnote 78: 1 Corinthians, vii. 38.]

[Footnote 79: Ibid. vii. 1 sq.]

[Footnote 80: Ibid. vii. 9.]

[Footnote 81: St. Matthew, xix. 12. Revelation, xiv. 4; &c.]

[Footnote 82: Tertullian, Ad uxorem, i. 3 (Migne, op. cit. i. 1278 sq.). Idem, De monogamia, 3 (Migne, ii. 932 sq.).]

[Footnote 83: Idem, De exhortatione castitatis, 9 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 925).]

[Footnote 84: Idem, De exhortatione castitatis, 10 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 925).]

[Footnote 85: Philippians, iv. 3.]

[Footnote 86: St. Clement of Rome, Epistola I. ad virgines, 6 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, i. 392).]

[Footnote 87: St. Ambrose, Epistola LXIII. 34 (Migne, op. cit. xvi. 1198 sq.).]

[Footnote 88: Methodius, Convivium decem virginum, vii. 1 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, xviii. 125).]

[Footnote 89: Tertullian, De monogamia, 3 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 932).]

[Footnote 90: This opinion was held by Gregory of Nyssa and, in a later time, by John of Damascus. It was opposed by Thomas Aquinas, who maintained that the human race was from the beginning propagated by means of sexual intercourse, but that such intercourse was originally free from all carnal desire (von Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 437 sq.; see also Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 186).]

[Footnote 91: St. Ambrose, Epistola LXIII. 40 (Migne, op. cit. xvi. 1200).]

[Footnote 92: Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, i. 1, 29; iv. 11; &c. (Migne, op. cit. ii. 247, 280 sqq., 382). Idem, De monogamia, 1, 15 (Migne, ii. 931, 950). Cf. Irenaeus, Contra Hæreses, i. 28. 1 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, vii. 690 sq.); Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, iii. 3 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, viii. 1113 sqq.).]

[Footnote 93: Concilium Gangrense, can. 1 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, ii. 1106).]

[Footnote 94: Concilium Mediolanense, A.D. 390 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. iii. 689 sq.).]

[Footnote 95: St. Justin, Apologia I. pro Christianis, 29 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, vi. 373). Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, ii. 23 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, viii. 1089). Gibbon, op. cit. ii. 186.]

[Footnote 96: Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 33 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, vi. 966).]

These opinions led by degrees to the obligatory celibacy of the secular and regular clergy. The conviction that a second marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, is unlawful, seems to have existed from the earliest period of the Church;[97] and as early as the beginning of the fourth century a synod held in Elvira in Spain insisted on the absolute continence of the higher ecclesiastics.[98] The celibacy of the clergy in general was prescribed by Gregory VII., who "looked with abhorrence on the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character, even in its lowest degree, by any sexual connection." But in many countries this prescription was so strenuously resisted, that it could not be carried through till late in the thirteenth century.[99]

[Footnote 97: Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, p. 37. Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 328 sq.]

[Footnote 98: Concilium Eliberitanum, A.D. 305, ch. 33 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. ii. 11):--"Placuit in totum prohiberi episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconibus, vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio, abstinere se a conjugibus suis, et non generare filios: quicumque vero fecerit, ab honore clericatus exterminetur."]

[Footnote 99: Gieseler, Text-Book of Ecclesiastical History, ii. 275. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, ii. 150.]

The practice of religious celibacy may be traced to several sources. In many cases the priestess is obviously regarded as married to the god whom she is serving, and is therefore forbidden to marry anybody else. In ancient Peru the Sun was the husband of the virgins dedicated to him.[100] They were obliged to be of the same blood as their consort, that is to say, daughters of the Incas. "For though they imagined that the Sun had children, they considered that they ought not to be bastards, with mixed divine and human blood. So the {413} virgins were of necessity legitimate and of the blood royal, which was the same as being of the family of the Sun."[101] And the crime of violating the virgins dedicated to the Sun was the same and punished in the same severe manner as the crime of violating the women of the Inca.[102] Concerning the priestesses of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, Major Ellis remarks that the reason for their celibacy appears to be that "a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would be the case if she married one."[103] So also the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast regard the women dedicated to a god as his wives.[104] In the great temple of Jupiter Belus, we are told, a single woman used to sleep, whom the god had chosen for himself out of all the women of the land; and it was believed that he came down in person to sleep with her. "This," Herodotus says, "is like the story told by the Egyptians of what takes place in their city of Thebes, where a woman always passes the night in the temple of the Theban Jupiter. In each case the woman is said to be debarred all intercourse with men."[105] In the Egyptian texts there are frequent references to "the divine consort," neter [h.]emt, a position which was generally occupied by the ruling queen, and the king was believed to be the offspring of such a union.[106] As Plutarch states, the Egyptians thought it quite possible for a woman to be impregnated by the approach of some divine spirit, though they denied that a man could have corporeal intercourse with a goddess.[107] Nor was the idea of a nuptial relation between a woman and the deity foreign to the early Christians. St. Cyprian speaks of women who had no husband and lord but Christ, with whom they lived in a spiritual matrimony--who had "dedicated themselves to Christ, and, retiring from carnal {414} lust, vowed themselves to God in flesh and spirit."[108] In the following words he condemns the cohabitation of such virgins with unmarried ecclesiastics, under the pretence of a purely spiritual connection:--"If a husband come and see his wife lying with another man, is he not indignant and maddened, and does he not in the violence of his jealousy perhaps even seize the sword? What? How indignant and angered then must Christ our Lord and Judge be, when He sees a virgin, dedicated to Himself, and consecrated to His holiness, lying with a man! and what punishments does He threaten against such impure connections. . . . She who has been guilty of this crime is an adulteress, not against a husband, but Christ."[109] According to the gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Virgin Mary had in a similar manner dedicated herself as a virgin to God.[110] The idea that the deity is jealous of the chastity of his or her servants may also perhaps be at the bottom of the Greek custom according to which the hierophant and the other priests of Demeter were restrained from conjugal intercourse and washed their bodies with hemlock-juice in order to kill their passions,[111] as also of the rule which required the priests of certain goddesses to be eunuchs.[112]

[Footnote 100: Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 297.]

[Footnote 101: Ibid. i. 292.]

[Footnote 102: Ibid. i. 300.]

[Footnote 103: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 121.]

[Footnote 104: Idem, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples, pp. 140, 142.]

[Footnote 105: Herodotus, i. 181 sq.]

[Footnote 106: Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 268. Cf. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 295 sq.]

[Footnote 107: Plutarch, Numa, iv. 5. Idem, Symposiaca problemata, viii. 1. 6 sq.]

[Footnote 108: St. Cyprian, De habitu virginum, 4, 22 (Migne, op. cit. iv. 443, 462). Cf. Methodius, Convivium decent virginum, vii. 1 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, xviii. 125).]

[Footnote 109: St. Cyprian, Epistola LXII., ad Pomponium de virginibus, 3 sq. (Migne, op. cit. iv. 368 sqq.). See also Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, i. 378. The Council of Elvira decreed that such fallen virgins, if they refused to return back to their former condition, should be denied communion even at the moment of death (Concilium Eliberitanum, A.D. 305, ch. 13 [Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. ii. 8]).]

[Footnote 110: Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, 8 (_Ante-Nicene Christian Library_, xvi. 25). See also _Gospel of the Nativity of Mary_, 7 (ibid. xvi. 57 sq.).]

[Footnote 111: Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, ii. 560.]

[Footnote 112: Cf. Lactantius, Divinæ Institutiones, i. 17 (Migne, op. cit. vi. 206):--"Deum mater et amavit formosum adolescentem, et eumdem cum pellice deprehensum exsectis virilibus semivirum reddidit; et ideo nunc sacra ejus a Gallis sacerdotibus celebrantur."]

Religious celibacy is further connected with the idea that sexual intercourse is defiling. In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it is regarded as something unclean.[113] The Tahitians believed that if a man refrained from all connections with women some months before death, he passed {415} immediately into his eternal mansion without any purification.[114] Herodotus writes:--"As often as a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, he sits down before a censer of burning incense, and the woman sits opposite to him. At dawn of day they wash; for till they are washed they will not touch any of their common vessels. This practice is also observed by the Arabs."[115] Among the Hebrews both the man and woman had to bathe themselves in water, and were "unclean until the even."[116] The idea that sexual intercourse is unclean implies that some degree of supernatural danger is connected with it;[117] and, as Mr. Crawley has pointed out, the notion of danger may develop into that of sinfulness.[118] Where woman is regarded as an unclean being[119] it is obvious that intercourse with her should be considered polluting, but this is not a sufficient explanation of the idea of sexual uncleanness. A polluting effect is ascribed to any discharge of sexual matter[120]--originally no doubt on account of its mysterious propensities and the veil of mystery which surrounds the whole sexual nature of man.

[Footnote 113: Macdonald, Oceania, p. 181.]

[Footnote 114: Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, ii. 164.]

[Footnote 115: Herodotus, i. 198.]

[Footnote 116: Leviticus, xv. 18.]

[Footnote 117: The danger attributed to sexual intercourse has been much emphasised by Mr. Crawley in The Mystic Rose. See also Westermarck, Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco.]

[Footnote 118: Crawley, op. cit. p. 214.]

[Footnote 119: See supra, i. 663 sqq.]

[Footnote 120: Gregory III., Judicia congrua p[oe]nitentibus, ch. 24 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. xii. 293):--"In somno peccans, si ex cogitatione pollutus, viginti duos psalmos cantet: si in somno peccans sine cogitatione, duodecim psalmos cantet." P[oe]nitentiale Pseudo-Theodori, xxviii. 25 (Wasserschleben, Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche, p. 600):--"Qui in somno, non voluntate, pollutus sit, surgat, cantetque vii. psalmos p[oe]nitentiales." Cf. ibid. xxviii. 6, 33 (Wasserschleben, p. 559 sq.).]

The idea of sexual defilement is particularly conspicuous in connection with religious observances. It is a common rule that he who performs a sacred act or enters a holy place must be ceremonially clean,[121] and no kind of uncleanness is to be avoided more carefully than sexual pollution. Among the Chippewyans, "if a chief is anxious to know the disposition of his people towards him, or if he wishes to settle any difference between them, he announces his intention of opening his medicine-bag and smoking in his {416} sacred stem. . . . No one can avoid attending on these occasions; but a person may attend and be excused from assisting at the ceremonies, by acknowledging that he has not undergone the necessary purification. The having cohabited with his wife, or any other woman, within twenty-four hours preceding the ceremony, renders him unclean, and, consequently, disqualifies him from performing any part of it."[122] Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians, like the Greeks, "made it a point of religion to have no converse with women in the sacred places, and not to enter them without washing, after such converse."[123] This statement is corroborated by a passage in the 'Book of the Dead.'[124] In Greece[125] and India[126] those who took part in certain religious festivals were obliged to be continent for some time previously. Before entering the sanctuary of Mên Tyrannos, whose worship was extended over the whole of Asia Minor, the worshipper had to abstain from garlic, pork, and women, and had to wash his head.[127] Among the Hebrews it was a duty incumbent upon all to be ritually clean before entering the temple--to be free from sexual defilement,[128] leprosy,[129] and the pollution produced by the association with corpses of human beings, of all animals not permitted for food, and of those permitted animals which had died a natural death or been killed by wild beasts;[130] and eating of the consecrated bread was interdicted to persons who had not been continent for some time previously.[131] A Muhammedan would remove any defiled garment before he commences his prayer, or otherwise abstain from praying altogether; he would not dare to approach the sanctuary of a saint in a state of sexual uncleanness; and sexual intercourse is forbidden for those who make the pilgrimage to Mecca.[132] {417} The Christians prescribed strict continence as a preparation for baptism[133] and the partaking of the Eucharist.[134] They further enjoined that no married persons should participate in any of the great festivals of the Church if the night before they had lain together;[135] and in the 'Vision' of Alberic, dating from the twelfth century, a special place of torture, consisting of a lake of mingled lead, pitch, and resin, is represented as existing in hell for the punishment of married people who have had intercourse on Sundays, church festivals, or fast-days.[136] They abstained from the marriage-bed at other times also, when they were disposed more freely to give themselves to prayer.[137] Newly married couples were admonished to practise continence during the wedding day and the night following, out of reverence for the sacrament; and in some instances their abstinence lasted even for two or three days.[138]

[Footnote 121: See supra, ii. 294, 295, 352 sq.]

[Footnote 122: Mackenzie, _Voyages to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans_, p. cii. sq.]

[Footnote 123: Herodotus, ii. 64.]

[Footnote 124: Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 269 sq.]

[Footnote 125: Wachsmuth, op. cit. ii. 560.]

[Footnote 126: Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 411.]

[Footnote 127: Foucart, _Des associations religieuses chez les Grecs_, pp. 119, 123 sq.]

[Footnote 128: Leviticus, chs. xii., xv.]

[Footnote 129: Ibid. ch. xiii. sq.]

[Footnote 130: Ibid. xi. 24 sqq.; xvii. 15. Numbers, xix. 14 sqq. Montefiore, _Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews_, p. 476.]

[Footnote 131: 1 Samuel, xxi. 4 sq.]

[Footnote 132: Koran, ii. 193.]

[Footnote 133: St. Augustine, De fide et operibus, vi. 8 (Migne, op. cit. xl. 202).]

[Footnote 134: St. Jerome, Epistola XLVIII. 15 (Migne, op. cit. xxii. 505 sq.).]

[Footnote 135: Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 324. St. Gregory the Great, Dialogi, i. 10 (Migne, op. cit. lxxvii. 200 sq.).]

[Footnote 136: Albericus, Visio, ch. 5, p. 17. Delepierre, L'enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu, p. 57 sq. On this subject see also Müller, Das sexuelle Leben der christlichen Kulturvölker, pp. 52, 53, 120 sq.]

[Footnote 137: St. Jerome, Epistola XLVIII. 15 (Migne, op. cit. xxii. 505). Fleury, Manners and Behaviour of the Christians, p. 75.]

[Footnote 138: Muratori, Dissertazioni sopra le antichità italiane, 20, vol. i. 347.]

Holiness is a delicate quality which is easily destroyed if anything polluting is brought into contact with the holy object or person. The Moors believe that if anybody who is sexually unclean enters a granary the grain will lose its baraka, or holiness. A similar idea probably underlies the belief prevalent among various peoples that incontinence, and especially illicit love, injures the harvest.[139] In Efate, namim, or uncleanness, supposed to be contracted in various emergencies, was especially avoided {418} by the sacred men, because it was believed to destroy their sacredness.[140] The priestly taboos, of which Sir J. G. Frazer has given such an exhaustive account in 'The Golden Bough,' have undoubtedly in a large measure a similar origin. Nay, it seems that pollution not only deprives the holy person of his holiness, but is also supposed to injure him in a more positive way. When the supreme pontiff in the kingdom of Congo left his residence to visit other places within his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict continence the whole time he was out, as it was believed that any act of incontinence would prove fatal to him.[141] In self-defence, therefore, gods and holy persons try to prevent polluted individuals from approaching them, and their worshippers are naturally anxious to do the same. But apart from the resentment which the sacred being would feel against the defiler, it appears that holiness is supposed to react quite mechanically against pollution, to the destruction or discomfort of the polluted individual. All Moors are convinced that anyone who in a state of sexual uncleanness dared to visit a saint's tomb would be struck by the saint; but the Arabs of Dukkâla, in Southern Morocco, also believe that if an unclean person rides a horse some accident will happen to him on account of the baraka with which the horse is endowed. It should further be noticed that, owing to the injurious effect of pollution upon holiness, an act generally regarded as sacred would, if performed by an unclean individual, lack that magic efficacy which otherwise would be ascribed to it. Muhammed represented ceremonial cleanliness as "one-half of the faith and the key of prayer."[142] The Moors say that a scribe is afraid of evil spirits only when he is sexually unclean, because then his reciting of passages of the Koran--the most powerful weapon against such spirits--would be of no avail. The Syrian philosopher Jamblichus {419} speaks of the belief that "the gods do not hear him who invokes them, if he is impure from venereal connections."[143] A similar notion prevailed among the early Christians; with reference to a passage in the First Epistle of the Corinthians,[144] Tertullian remarks that the Apostle added the recommendation of a temporary abstinence for the sake of adding an efficacy to prayers.[145] To the same class of beliefs belongs the notion that a sacrificial victim should be clean and without blemish.[146] The Chibchas of Bogota considered that the most valuable sacrifice they could offer was that of a youth who had never had intercourse with a woman.[147]

[Footnote 139: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 209 sqq. This is in my opinion a more natural explanation than the one suggested by Sir J. G. Frazer, namely, that uncivilised man imagines "that the vigour which he refuses to expend in reproducing his own kind, will form as it were a store of energy whereby other creatures, whether vegetable or animal, will somehow benefit in propagating their species." This theory entirely fails to account for the fact that illicit love, by preference, is supposed to mar the fertility of the earth and to blight the crops--a belief which is in full accordance with my own explanation, in so far as such love is considered particularly polluting.]

[Footnote 140: Macdonald, Oceania, p. 181.]

[Footnote 141: Labat, Relation historique de l'Ethiopie occidentale, i. 259 sq.]

[Footnote 142: Pool, Studies in Mohammedanism, p. 27.]

[Footnote 143: Jamblichus, De mysteriis, iv. 11.]

[Footnote 144: 1 Corinthians, vii. 5.]

[Footnote 145: Tertullian, De exhortatione castitatis, 10 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 926).]

[Footnote 146: See supra, ii. 295 sq.]

[Footnote 147: Simon, quoted by Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iv. 363. See infra, Additional Notes.]

If ceremonial cleanliness is required even of the ordinary worshipper it is all the more indispensable in the case of a priest;[148] and of all kinds of uncleanness none is to be more carefully avoided than sexual pollution. Sometimes admission into the priesthood is to be preceded by a period of continence.[149] In the Marquesas Islands no one could become a priest without having lived chastely for several years previously.[150] Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast men and women, in order to become members of the priesthood, have to pass through a long novitiate, generally from two to three years, during which they live in retirement and are instructed by the priests in the secrets of the craft; and "the people believe that, during this period of retirement and study, the novices must keep their bodies pure, and refrain from all commerce with the other sex."[151] The Huichols of Mexico, again, are of opinion that a man who wishes to become a shaman must be faithful to his wife for five years, and that, if he violates this rule, he is sure to be taken ill and will lose the power of healing.[152] In ancient Mexico the priests, all {420} the time that they were employed in the service of the temple, abstained from all other women but their wives, and "even affected so much modesty and reserve, that when they met a woman they fixed their eyes on the ground that they might not see her. Any incontinence amongst the priests was severely punished. The priest who, at Teohuacan, was convicted of having violated his chastity, was delivered up by the priests to the people, who at night killed him by the bastinado."[153] Among the Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills the priests--who, unlike the "dairymen" of their Toda neighbours are not celibates--are at the great festival in honour of K[=a]matar[=a]ya forbidden to live or hold intercourse with their wives for fear of pollution, and are then even obliged to cook their meals themselves.[154] It seems that, according to the Anatolian religion, married hieroi had to separate from their wives during the period they were serving at the temple.[155] The Hebrew priest should avoid all unchastity; he was not allowed to marry a harlot, or a profane, or a divorced wife,[156] and the high-priest was also forbidden to marry a widow.[157] Nay, even in a priest's daughter unchastity was punished with excessive severity, because she had profaned her father; she was to be burned.[158]

[Footnote 148: Cf. supra, ii. 352 sq.]

[Footnote 149: Cf. Landtman, op. cit. p. 118 sqq.]

[Footnote 150: Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. 387.]

[Footnote 151: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 120.]

[Footnote 152: Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, ii. 236.]

[Footnote 153: Clavigero, op. cit. i. 274.]

[Footnote 154: Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, i. 193.]

[Footnote 155: Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. 136, 137, 150 sq.]

[Footnote 156: Leviticus, xxi. 7.]

[Footnote 157: Ibid. xxi. 14.]

[Footnote 158: Ibid. xxi. 9.]

Carried further, the idea underlying all these rules and practices led to the notions that celibacy is more pleasing to God than marriage,[159] and that it is a religious duty for those members of the community whose special office is to attend to the sacred cult. For a nation like the Jews, whose ambition was to live and to multiply, celibacy could never become an ideal; whereas the Christians, who professed the most perfect indifference to all earthly matters, found no difficulty in glorifying a state which, however opposed it was to the interests of the race and the nation, made men pre-eminently fit to approach their god. Indeed, {421} far from being a benefit to the kingdom of God by propagating the species, sexual intercourse was on the contrary detrimental to it by being the great transmitter of the sin of our first parents. This argument, however, was of a comparatively late origin. Pelagius himself almost rivalled St. Augustine in his praise of virginity, which he considered the great test of that strength of free-will which he asserted to be at most only weakened by the fall of Adam.[160]

[Footnote 159: Cf. supra, ii. 358.]

[Footnote 160: Milman, op. cit. i. 151, 153.]

Religious celibacy is, moreover, enjoined or commended as a means of self-mortification supposed to appease an angry god, or with a view to raising the spiritual nature of man by suppressing one of the strongest of all sensual appetites. Thus we find in various religions celibacy side by side with other ascetic observances practised for similar purposes. Among the early Christians those young women who took a vow of chastity "did not look upon virginity as any thing if it were not attended with great mortification, with silence, retirement, poverty, labour, fastings, watchings, and continual praying. They were not esteemed as virgins who would not deny themselves the common diversions of the world, even the most innocent."[161] Tertullian enumerates virginity, widowhood, and the modest restraint in secret on the marriage-bed among those fragrant offerings acceptable to God which the flesh performs to its own especial suffering.[162] Finally, it was argued that marriage prevents a person from serving God perfectly, because it induces him to occupy himself too much with worldly things.[163] Though not contrary to the act of charity or the love of God, says Thomas Aquinas, it is nevertheless an obstacle to it.[164] This was one, but certainly not the only, cause of the obligatory celibacy which the Christian Church imposed upon her clergy.

[Footnote 161: Fleury, op. cit. p. 128 sq.]

[Footnote 162: Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, 8 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 806).]

[Footnote 163: Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum naturale, xxx. 43. See also von Eicken, op. cit. p. 445.]

[Footnote 164: Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, ii.-ii. 184. 3.]