Perhaps the most puzzling questions which meet the student of early
society are connected with marriage and kinship; and among these
questions the practice of exogamy has provoked a very large number of
ingenious theories. These are, however, I believe, all unsatisfactory,
either because they are too narrow to cover the facts completely,
or because they assume in the situation conditions which do not
exist.[211] But quite aside from the facts and the interpretation
of the facts, all theories in the field have failed to reckon
sufficiently with the natural disposition and habits of man in early
society, particularly with his attitude toward sexual matters; and it
seems entirely feasible to get some light on the question why man went
outside his immediate family and clan for women through an examination
of the nature of his sexual consciousness, and of the operation of
this in connection with the laws of habit and attention.
First of all, it is evident to one who looks carefully into the
question of early sex-habits that the lower races are intensely
interested in sexual life. A large part of their thought, and even of
their inventive ingenuity, is spent in this direction. The pleasures
of life are few and gross, but are pursued with vigor; and, _mutatis
mutandis_, love bears about the same relation to the activities of
the Australian aborigine as it bore to those of Sir Lancelot and the
knights of olden time.
A failure to perceive this is the great defect in Westermarck's great
work, where it is assumed that, if animals were monogamous, primitive
man must have been much the more so. The fact is that in respect
to memory, imagination, clothing, mode of association, and social
restraint man differed radically from the animals, and precisely
through these added qualities he took not only an instinctive,
but an artificial and reasoned, interest in sexual practices; and
this resulted in a state of consciousness which made sexual life
uninterruptedly interesting, in contrast with a pairing season among
animals, and also in a constant tendency toward promiscuity, whether
this state was ever actually reached or not. The widespread and
various unnatural sex practices, the use of aphrodisiacs, the practice
of drawing attention to the girl at puberty, phallic worship, erotic
dances, and periodic orgies, of which the Orient furnishes so many
examples, are all found also among the natural races.[212]
Again, the eagerness of men to obtain girl wives, and even a claim on
infants, thus assuring virginity and marriage at the moment of sexual
maturity;[213] the habit of keeping girls in solitary confinement from
a tender age until the consummation of marriage;[214] and the African
custom of infibulation,[215] are classes of facts indicating that
the sexual element occupied a large place in the consciousness of the
natural races.
We must also consider the fact that sexual life is organically a
utilization of a surplus of nutriment, and that when food and leisure
are abundant there is a tendency on the part of sexual activity to
become a play activity, just as there is a tendency of activities in
general to become play activities under the same conditions. And while
there was no leisure class in early society, primitive man was a man
of leisure in the sense that his work activities were intermittent;
a successful hunt was followed by a period of rest, recuperation, and
surplus energy, and a consequent turning of attention to sexual life,
with the result that the sex interest appears as one of the main play
interests among the natural races.
Under these conditions, and in the absence of any considerably
developed social institutions or altruistic sentiments, we not
unnaturally find that the older and stronger men have the better of
it, both in regard to the food supply and the women, and the younger
men are obstructed in their efforts to satisfy their desires in regard
to both. The following passages from the ethnological literature of
Australia indicate the nature of the Australian male in sexual life,
and the nature of the obstructions encountered by the youth in the
presence of the older men.[216]
It is noticeable, first of all, that among the Australian tribes the
older men have worked out or fallen into such habits regarding the
females that the younger men obtain wives with great difficulty and
usually not before waiting a long time. In fact, Spencer and Gillen,
in their invaluable works on the central Australian tribes state
that usually a man is married to a woman of another generation than
himself:
The most usual method of obtaining a wife is that which is
connected with the well-established custom in accordance with
which every woman of the tribe is made _Tualcha mura_ with
some man. The arrangement, which is often a mutual one, is
made between two men, and it will be seen that owing to a girl
being made _Tualcha mura_ to a boy of her own age the men very
frequently have wives much younger than themselves, as the
husband and the mother of the wife obtained in this way are
usually approximately of the same age. When it has been agreed
upon by two men that the relationship shall be established
between their own children, one a boy and the other a girl,
the two latter, who are generally of a tender age, are taken
to the _Erlukwirra_, or women's camp, and here each mother
takes the other child and rubs it over with a mixture of fat
and red ochre.... This relationship indicates that the man has
the right to take as wife the daughter of the woman; she is in
fact assigned to him, and this, as a rule, many years before
she is born.[217]
It will be noticed that this is in reality a modification of the
system of exchanging women, and has an advantage over capture,
elopement, and charming (all of which are methods in practice among
the same tribes) in the fact that it is of the nature of a business
transaction or social agreement, and provokes no bad feeling or
retaliation. It also shows considerable regard on the part of the
elders for the young; but practically it is a reluctant admission of a
youth to participation in sexual privileges, since marriage is delayed
until a girl of his own age has been married and given birth to a girl
who in turn has become marriageable.