POLYGAMY
_Rarity of monogamy.--Taste for change in animals.--
Rôles of monogamy and polygamy in the stability or
instability of specific types.--Strife of the couple
against polygamy.--Couples among insects.--Among
fish, batrachians, saurians.--Monogamy of pigeons, of
nightingales.--Monogamy in carnivora, in rodents.--
Habits of the rabbit.--The ichneumon.--Unknown
causes of polygamy.--Rarity and superabundance
of males.--Polygamy in insects.--In fish.--In
gallinaceæ, in web-footed birds.--In herbivora.--The
antelopes harem.--Human polygamy.--How it tempers the
couple among civilized races._
There are no monogamous animals save those which love only once during
their lifetime. Exceptions to this rule have not sufficient constancy
to be erected into a counter-rule. There are monogamists in fact, there
are none of necessity, from the time an animal lives long enough to
commit the reproductive act several times. Free female mammals nearly
always flee the male who has once served them, they need a new one.
A bitch does not receive last season's dog save in direst extremity.
This appears to me to be the struggle of the specie against variety.
The couple is the maker of varieties. Polygamy drags them back to the
general type of the specie. Individuals of a specie frankly polygamous
should present a very great similarity; if the species incline toward
a certain monogamy, the dissemblances become more numerous. It is not
an illusion which makes us recognize in human races almost monogamous,
a lesser uniformity of type than in polygamous societies or those
given over to promiscuity, or among animal species. The example of
the dog seems the worst that one could have chosen. It isn't, it is
the best, considering that in receiving successively individuals of
different variety, the bitch tends to produce individuals not of a
specialized breed, but on the contrary of a type where several breeds
will be mixed, individuals which in crossing and recrossing in their
turn, will end, if the dogs live in a free state, in forming one
single specie. Sexual liberty tends to establish uniformity of type;
monogamy strives against this tendency and maintains diversity.[1]
Another consequence of this manner of seeing is that one must consider
monogamy as favourable to intellectual development, intelligence being
a differentiation which accomplishes itself more often, in proportion
as there are individuals and groups who differ physically. Physical
uniformity engenders uniformity of sensibility, thence of intelligence;
this does not need to be explained; now intelligences count, and mark
only their differences; uniform, they are as if they were not; impotent
to hook themselves one onto the other, to react against each other,
lacking asperities, lacking contrary currents. This is the flock, in
which each member makes the same gesture of flight, of biting, or of
roaring.
Neither the conditions of absolute monogamy, nor those of absolute
promiscuity seem to be found at present in humanity, nor among animals;
but one sees the couple, in several animal and human species, either
in state of tendency, or in state of habit. More often, especially
among insects, the father, even if he survives it a little while,
remains indifferent, to the consequences of the genital act. At other
times, the fights between males so reduce their number that a sole male
remains the master and servant of a great number of females. So one
must distinguish between true, and successive polygamy; between the
monogamy of one season, and that of an entire lifetime; and finally
one must set apart those animals who make love only once, or during
one season which is followed by death. These different varieties and
nuances demand methodic classification. It would be a long work, and
would perhaps not attain true exactitude, for in animals, as in man,
one must count with caprice in sexual matters: when a faithful dove is
tired of her lover, she takes flight, and soon forms a new couple with
an adulterous male. The couple is natural, but the permanent couple is
not. Man has never bent to it, save with difficulty, even though it be
one of the principal conditions of his superiority.
The breasts of the male do not seem to prove the primordiality of
the couple in mammals. Although there are veridic examples of the
male's having given suck, it is difficult to consider the male udder
as destined for a real rôle, or for an emergency milking.[2] This
replacement has been too rarely observed for one to use it as a basis
of argument. Embryology gives a good explanation of the existence
of this useless organ. An useless instrument is, moreover, quite as
frequent in nature as the absence of a useful instrument. Perfect
concordance of organ and act is rare. In the case of insects who
live but for one love-season, sometimes for two real seasons if they
can benumb themselves for the winter, polygamy is nearly always the
consequence of the rarity of males, or the superabundance of females.
Space is too vast, their food too abundant for there to be truly deadly
combats between males. Moreover, their love accomplished, the minuscule
folk ask only to die, the couple is formed only for the actual time
of fecundation, the two animals at once resume their liberty, that is
for the female to deliver her eggs, and for the male to languish, and
sometimes to cast a final song to the winds. There are exceptions to
this rule, but if one looks upon the exceptions with the same gaze as
on the rule, one would see in nature only what one sees on the surface
of a river, vague movements and passing shadows. To conceive some
reality, one must conceive a rule, first, as an instrument of vision
and of measure. With most insects the male does nothing but live; he
deposits his seed in the female receptacle, flies on, vanishes. He does
not share any of the labours preparatory to laying. Alone the female
sphex engages in her terrible and clever strife with the cricket, whom
she paralyzes with three stabs of her dagger in his three moto-nervous
centres; alone she hollows the oblique burrow at the bottom of which
live her larvæ; alone she adorns it, fills it with provisions, closes
it. Alone the female cerceris heaps up in the deep gallery the stunned
weevils and burn-cows, fruit of her excavations, larder for her
progeny. Alone the she-osmie, she-wasp, she-philanthe--one would have
to cite nearly all the hymenoptera. One understands better, when the
insect deposits her eggs by chance, without prefatory manœuvres, or by
special instruments, that the male co-operation is lacking; only the
female cicada can sink her clever burrow in the olive bark.
There are however couples among insects. Among coleoptera there
are the "purse-maker," the necrophore. Stercorian geotrupes, lunar
copris, onitis bison, sisyphus, work soberly side by side preparing
the larder for their coming families. In these cases, the male seems
master, he directs the manœuvres in the complicated operations of
the necrophores. A couple get busy about a corpse, say of a field
mouse; nearly always one or two isolated males join them, the troop
is organized, one sees the chief engineer explore the territory and
give orders. The female awaits them, motionless, ready to obey, to
follow the movement. As soon as there is a couple the male necrophore
commands. The male assists the female during the work of arranging the
cell and the laying. Most purse-makers, sisyphus or copris make and
transport together the pill which serves as food for the larvæ; their
couple is just like that of birds. One might believe that in this
case monogamy is necessitated by the nature of the work; not at all:
the male in other quite closely related species, sacred scarab, for
example, leaves the female alone to build the excremental ball in which
she encloses her eggs.
Coming up to vertebrata one finds also certain examples of a sort
of monogamy: when the male fish serves as hatcher for his own eggs,
either carrying them in a special pouch, or heroicly sheltering them
in his mouth. This is rare, since, usually, the two sexes of fish do
not approach each other, do not even know each other. Batrachians,
on the contrary, are monogamous; the female does not lay save under
male pressure, and it is so slow an operation, preceded by such long
manœuvres that the whole season is filled with it. The male of the
common land toad rolls the long chaplet of eggs about his feet as
soon as it is divided, and goes in the evening to place it in the
neighbouring pool. Nearly all saurians seem also to be monogamous.
The he and she lizard form a couple said to last several years. Their
amours are ardent, they clasp each other closely belly to belly.
Birds are generally considered monogamous, save gallinaceæ and
web-footed birds; but exceptions appear so numerous that one would have
to name the species one by one. The fidelity of pigeons is legendary,
and is perhaps only a legend. The male pigeon certainly has tendencies
to infidelity and even to polygamy. He deceives his companion; he goes
so far as to inflict upon her the shame of having a concubine under
the conjugal roof! And these two spouses, he tyrannizes over them, he
enslaves them by beating. The female, it is true, is not always of an
easy disposition. She has her caprices. Sometimes, refusing her mate,
she deserts him and gives herself to the first comer. One will not find
here any of the zoölogical anecdotes on the industry of birds, their
union in devotion to the specie. The habits of these new-comers in the
world, are very unstable; yet among certain gallinaceæ, monogamous
for exception, like the partridge, the males seem pulled by contrary
desires, they undergo the couple rather than choose it, and their share
in the rearing of young is often very slight. One has seen the male
red partridge, after mating, abandon his female and rejoin a troop of
male vagabonds. The nightingales, perfect pair, sit on the eggs turn
by turn. The male, when the female comes to relieve him, remains near
by and sings until she is comfortably settled on the eggs. Still more
devoted is the male talegalle, a sort of Australian turkey. He makes
the nest, an enormous heap of dead leaves; when the female has laid, he
watches the eggs, comes from time to time to uncover them for exposure
to the sun. He takes his share of watching the young, sheltering them
under leaves until they are able to fly.
Of mammals, the carnivora and rodents often practice a certain, at
least temporary, monogamy. Foxes live in couples, and educate the
young foxes. One finds their real habits in the old "Roman du Renart":
Renard the fox goes vagabond, hunting for prey and windfalls, while
Madame Hermaline, his wife, waits at home, in her bower at Maupertuis.
The vixen teaches her children the art of killing and dividing; their
apprenticeship is made on the still living game which the male purveyor
has brought to the house. The rabbit is very rough in love; the
hamster, another rodent, often becomes carnivorous during the rutting
season; they say that he is quite ready to eat his young, and that
the female, fearing his ferocity, leaves him before delivery. These
aberrations are exaggerated in captivity, and affect even the female.
One knows that the she-rabbit sometimes eats her young; this happens
especially when one has the imprudence to touch or even to look too
closely at the young rabbits. This is enough to bring on a violent
disturbance of maternal sentiment. The same dementia has been observed
in a vixen who had kittened in a cage; one day someone passed, and
looked steadily at the young foxes, a quarter of an hour later they
were throttled.
Various explanations are given for this practice among she-rabbits,
the simplest being that they are driven by thirst to kill the young in
order to drink the blood. This is rather Dantescan for she-rabbits.
They say also, regarding both wild and tame rabbits, that the female
when surprised kills the young because she has not industry like the
doe-hare, cat, or bitch, to transport them to some other place or to
save at least one, by the scruff of its neck. The third explanation is
that, devouring the afterbirth, like nearly all mammals, and this from
physiological motive, the doe-rabbit acquires a taste, and continues
the meal, absorbing the young as well. Without rejecting any of these
explanations one may present several others. First, it is not only the
females who eat the young, the males are equally given to it. Being
very lascivious, the male rabbit tries to get rid of his young, in
order to stop suckling, and have his female again. On the other hand,
it is a regular fact, that as soon as she has retaken the habit of
having the male, the mother rabbit, even if she is still giving suck,
at once ceases to recognize her offspring, her brief ideas already
turned toward her new, coming family. Different causes may engender
identical acts, and different lines of reasoning bring the same
conclusions. There is reasoning in this case of the rabbit; there is
no reasoning save in case of initial error, when there is trouble in
the intellect. This trouble and the final massacre is all that one can
state definitely: the reasoning escapes our analysis.
Is the rabbit really monogamous? Perhaps, with a monogamy for the
season, or from necessity. The male, in any case pays no attention to
the young, unless it be to throttle them; thus the female as soon as
she is gravid, takes refuge in an isolated burrow. Their coupling,
which occurs especially toward evening, is repeated as often as five
or six times an hour, the female crouching in a particular manner; the
break away is very sudden, the male throwing himself back, sidewise and
uttering a short cry. What really makes one doubt the monogamy of the
rabbit is that one male is enough for eight or ten females, that he is
a great runner, that the males have murderous fights among themselves.
Doubtless one must take each specie separately. Buffon pretends that
in a warren the oldest buck rabbits have authority over the young. An
observer of rabbit habits, M. Mariot-Didieux, admits this trait of
superior sociability in angoras, which is just the specie Buffon had
studied.
Buck rabbits have still other aberrations, hunters pretend that they
pursue doe-hares, tire them and wear them out by their lustiness; it is
certain that these couplings give no result.
The Egyptian ichneumon lives in families. It seems that it is very
interesting to see them on a hunting expedition, first the male, then
the female, then the young in Indian file. Female and young do not take
their eyes off father, and imitate all his gestures with care: one
might think the train was a large serpent moving in reeds. The wolf who
like the fox lives in pairs, helps his female and feeds her, but he
does not know his young and will eat them if they come to hand. Certain
great apes, gibbon and orang are temporarily monogamous.
Polygamy would be explained by the rarity of males; which is not the
case with most mammals, among whom the males are almost constantly
more numerous. Buffon was the first to note this predominance, neither
has he nor has anyone since, given a satisfactory explanation. People
have said that in man, at least, the elder parent gives the sex to the
offspring, and the more surely as the difference in age is greater,
but, by this reckoning one would have almost nothing but males. People
have also said that the younger the woman, the more likely the child
to be male. The early marriages of the past are supposed to have
yielded more males than the late marriages of the present. None of
these statements is serious. What remains past doubt is that European
humanity, to consider only that, gives an excess of males. The general
average is about 105, with extremes of 101 in Russia, and 113 in
Greece; the French average is the same as the general average. One has
not been able to make out, in these variations, either influence of
race, or of climate, or of taxes, or of nationality, or anything else
in particular. There are more male humans, more male sheep: it is a
fact, which being regular, will be difficult to explain.
We find here superabundance, there penury of males, but neither does
the abundance determine the customs, nor is it likely the lack of males
would do so. There are so few males among gnats that Fabre was the
first to recognize them, the proportion about one male to ten females.
This in no way produces polygamy, for the male dies the instant after
coupling. Nine out of ten gnat females die virgin, and even without
having seen a male, without knowing that males exist: perhaps celibacy
augments their ferocity, for it is the female gnat and she alone who
sucks our gore. One supposes also that female spiders outnumber the
males ten or twenty to one: perhaps the buck who has escaped the
jaws of one mistress has the courage to risk his life yet again? It
is possible, the male spider who survives his amours may live on for
several years. Polygamy seems to exist, and in its most refined form,
with one sort of spider, the ctenize, whose males are peculiarly rare.
The female digs a nest in the earth, into which the male descends; he
lives there some time, then he leaves, comes back: there are several
houses between which he divides his time equitably.
The polygamy of a curious little fish, the stickleback, is of the same
sort, although more naive. The male builds a grass nest, then goes in
search of a female, brings her back to the nest, invites her to lay;
scarcely has his first companion departed when he brings in another.
He only stops when there is a satisfactory treasure of eggs, then he
fecundates them in the usual manner. Thence on he guards the nest
against malefactors, and watches the hatching. In the odd reversal of
rôles, the young recognize their father; their mother may be the fish
passing between them, or the one gliding off like a shadow, or the one
chewing a grass blade. When the stickleback world becomes reasonable,
that is to say absurd, it will perhaps give itself up to the "recherche
de la maternité"? Their philosophers will demand "Why should the
father alone be charged with the education of his offspring?" Up to
the present one knows nothing except that he educates them with joy
and affection. Among sticklebacks and among men there is no answer to
such question save the answer given by facts. One might as well ask why
humanity is not hermaphrodite, like the snails, who strictly divide the
pleasures and burdens of love, for all snails commit the male act, and
all lay. Why has the female ovaries, and the male testicles: and this
flower pistils, and this one stamens? One ends in baby-talk. The wish
to correct nature is unnecessary. It is hard enough to understand her,
even a little, as she is. When she wishes to establish the absolute
responsibility of the father, she establishes the strict couple, and
especially, absolute polygamy. The pigeon is no longer certain of
being the father of his young; the cock can not doubt it, he being the
sole male among all his hens. But nature has no secondary intentions,
she keeps watch that, temporary or durable, fugitive or permanent the
couples are fecund; that is all.
Gallinaceæ and web-feet present certain birds best known and most
useful to us. They are nearly all polygamous. The cock needs about
a dozen hens, he can do with a much larger number, but in that case
his ardour wears itself out. The duck, very licentious, is accused of
sodomy. Not only is he polygamous, but anything will serve him. He
might better be a natural example of promiscuity. A gander is good
for ten or twelve geese, the cock-pheasant for eight or ten hens. The
lyrure tetras needs many more, he leads a sultan's harem behind him. At
dawn, in the season of amours, the male starts whistling with a noise
like steel on a grindstone, simultaneously stretching himself up, and
spreading the fan of his tail, opening and puffing his wings. When the
sun clears the horizon he rejoins his females, dances before them,
while they devour him with their eyes, then he mounts them, according
to his caprice, and with great vivacity.
Polygamy is the rule among herbivora; bulls, bucks, stallions, bison
are made to reign over a troop of females. Domesticity changes their
permanent polygamy into successive polygamy. Stags go from female
to female without tying up to any; the females follow this example.
A specie immediately akin gives, on the contrary, an example of the
couple; the roebuck and his doe live in family, and bring up their
young until these are ready to mate. The male of a certain Asian
antelope needs more than a hundred docile females. Naturally, these
harems can only be formed by the destruction of other males. This
hundred females represents possibly more than a hundred males put out
of business, males being always the more numerous sex, among mammals.
The utility of such hecatombs to the race is not certain. Doubtless one
may suppose that the surviving male is the strongest, or one of the
strongest of his generation, that is the lucky element, but whatever
his vigour it may be expected to wane at some point or other before
a hundred females desiring satisfaction. Some females are forgotten,
others fecundated in moments of weariness: for a certain number of
good products, there are a number of mediocre creations. True, these
are destined, if male, to perish in future combats; but if they are
female, and if they receive the favours of the chief, this system might
have for consequence the progressive degradation of the specie. It is
however, probable that the necessary equilibrium is re-established;
combats between females, combats of coquetry, incitements of
femininity, doubtless take place, and it is the triumph of the malest
male and of the most female females.
Virey asserts, in Déterville's "Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire
naturelle," that the greater polygamous apes get on very well with
women indigenes. It is possible, but no product has ever been born
of these aberrations, which we must leave to theological works on
bestialitas. Men and women, even of the Aryan race have at times
set out to prove the radical animality of the human specie by the
peculiarity of their tastes. The interest in these matters is chiefly
psychological, and if one can draw no proof of evolution from the
chance relations between woman and dog, man and goat, the coupling
of primates of different orders offers no evidence either. There is
however a relation between man and apes, it is that they are both
divisible into polygamists and monogamists, at least temporary; but
this does not differentiate them from most other animal species.
In most human races there is a radical polygamy, dissimulated under a
show-front of monogamy. Here generalizations are no longer possible,
the individual emerges and with his fantasy upsets all observations,
and annihilates all statistics. The monogamist's brother is polygamous.
A woman has known only one man, and her mother was every one's fancy.
One may assert the universal custom of marriage and deduce monogamy
as a conclusion, and this will be false or true according to the
epoch, milieu, race, moral tendencies of the moment. Moral codes are
essentially unstable, since they represent only a hand-book ideal of
happiness; morality will modify itself according to the mobility of
this ideal.
Physiologically, monogamy is in no way required by the normal
conditions of human life. Children? If the father's help is necessary
it can be exercised over the children of several women as well as over
those of one woman only. The duration of tutelage among civilized
people is, moreover, excessive; it is dragged out, when it is a
matter of certain careers, almost until ripe age. Normally puberty
ought to liberate the young human, as it liberates the young of other
mammals. The couple need then last only ten or fifteen years; but
female fecundity accumulates children at a year's interval, so that,
as long as the father's virility lasts, there might be, always one
feeble creature having right to demand protection. Human polygamy
could then, never be successive polygamy, save by exception, that is,
if man were an obedient animal, submitting to normal sexual rules,
and always fecund; but this successivity is frequent and divorce has
legalized it. The other and true polygamy, polygamy actual, temporary
or permanent, is still less rare among people of European civilization,
but nearly always secret and never legal; it has for corollary a
polyandry exercised under the same conditions. This sort of polygamy is
very different from that of Mormons, Turks, gallinaceæ and antelopes,
it is nothing more than promiscuity. It does not dissolve the couple,
in diminishing its tyranny it renders it more desirable. Nothing so
favours marriage, and consequently, social stability, as the de facto
indulgence in temporary polygamy. The Romans well understood this,
and legalized concubinage. One can not here deal with a question so
remote from, natural questions. To condense one's answer into briefest
possible space, one would say that man, and principally civilized
man, is vowed to the couple, but he only endures it on condition
that he may leave and return to it at will. This solution seems to
conciliate his contradictory tastes, and is more elegant than the one
offered by divorce, which is always the same thing over again; it is
in conformity not only with human, but also with animal tendencies. It
is favourable to the species, in assuring the suitable up-bringing of
children, and also to the complete satisfaction of a need, which, in a
state of civilization is inseparable either from æsthetic pleasure or
sentimental pleasure.
[1] That is to say in the eye of some imaginary divinity who might be
supposed to regard humanity, or even the slower mammals from a timeless
or say five century altitude.--Translator's note.
[2] One believes nevertheless that the male bat suckles one of the two
young that the couple regularly produces. But these animals are so odd
and so heteroclite that this example, if it is authentic, would not be
a decisive argument.