[Footnote 55: Griffis, _Religions of Japan_, p. 85.]

[Footnote 56: Herodotus, ii. 37. _Cf._ Wiedemann, _Herodots

zweites Buch_, p. 154.]

[Footnote 57: _Iliad_, i. 449; iii. 270; vi. 266; ix. 171, 174;

xvi. 229 _sq._; xxiii. 41; xxiv. 302 _sqq._ _Odyssey_, ii. 261;

iv. 750; xvii. 58. Keller, _Homeric Society_, p. 141. Stengel,

_Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer_, p. 106.]

[Footnote 58: Cicero, _De legibus_, ii. 10.]

[Footnote 59: Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_, iv.

p. lxxii. _sqq._]

[Footnote 60: Ward, _View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos_,

ii. 61 _sq._ Colebrooke, _Miscellaneous Essays_, ii. 142 _sqq._

Dubois, _People of India_, p. 113 _sq._]

[Footnote 61: Wilkins, _Modern Hinduism_, p. 201.]

[Footnote 62: Waddell, _Buddhism of Tibet_, p. 423.]

[Footnote 63: Chwolsohn, _Die Ssabier_, ii. 71.]

[Footnote 64: Tertullian, _De Oratione_, 13 (Migne, _Patrologiæ

cursus_, ii. 1167 _sq._).]

[Footnote 65: Sell, _Faith of Islam_, p. 252 _sqq._ Lane, _Modern

Egyptians_, i. 84 _sqq._]

These practices and rules spring from the idea that the contact

of a polluting substance with anything holy is followed by

injurious consequences--an idea which will be more fully

discussed in connection with sexual abstinences. Such contact is

supposed to deprive a deity or holy being of its holiness, or

otherwise be detrimental to it, and therefore to excite its anger

against him who causes the defilement. So also a sacred act is

believed to lose its sacredness by being performed by an unclean

individual. Moreover, as a polluting substance is itself held to

contain mysterious energy of a baneful kind, it is looked upon as

a direct danger even to persons who are not engaged in religious

worship. We have previously noticed the rites of purification

which a manslayer has to undergo in order to get rid of the

blood-pollution.[66] We have also seen that ablutions and other

purificatory ceremonies {354} are performed for the purpose of

removing sins and misfortunes.[67] And bathing or sprinkling with

water is a common method of clearing mourners or persons who have

come in contact with a corpse from the contagion of death.[68]

[Footnote 66: _Supra_, i. 375 _sqq._]

[Footnote 67: _Supra_, i. 54 _sqq._]

[Footnote 68: Teit, 'Thompson Indians of British Columbia,' in

_Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History_,

'Anthropology,' i. 331. Cruickshank, _op. cit._ ii. 218 (Negroes

of the Gold Coast). Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave

Coast_, p. 160. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 145; _Idem_, _Nineteen Years

in Polynesia_, p. 228 (Samoans). Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_,

i. 403 (Society Islanders). Kloss, _In the Andamans and

Nicobars_, p. 305 (Kar Nicobarese). Joinville, 'Religion and

Manners of the People of Ceylon,' in _Asiatick Researches_, vii.

437 (Sinhalese). Iyer, 'Nay[=a]dis of Malabar,' in the Madras

Government Museum's _Bulletin_, iv. 71; Thurston, _ibid._ iv. 76

_sq._ (Nay[=a]dis). Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the

North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, i. 83 (Arakh, a tribe in

Oudh). Ward, _View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos_, ii. 147,

iii. 275; Dubois, _Manners and Customs of the People of India_,

p. 108 _sq._; Bose, _Hindoos as they are_, p. 257. Caland, _Die

Altindischen Todten- und Bestattungsgebräuche_, p. 79 _sq._]

But whilst religious or superstitious beliefs have thus led to

ablutions and cleanliness, they have in other instances had the

very opposite effect. Among Arabs young children are often left

dirty and ill-dressed purposely, to preserve them from the evil

eye.[69] The Obbo natives in Central Africa declare that if they

do not wash their hands with cow's urine before milking, the cow

will lose her milk; and with the same fluid they wash the

milk-bowl, and even mix some of it with the milk.[70] The Jakuts

"never wash any of their eating or drinking utensils; but, as

soon as a dish is emptied, they clean it with the fore and middle

finger; for they think it a great sin to wash away any part of

their food, and apprehend that the consequence will be a

scarcity."[71] A similar custom prevails among the Kirghiz[72]

and Kalmucks. The latter "are forbidden by the laws of their

faith" to wash their vessels in river-water, and therefore "do no

more than wipe them with a piece of an old sheep-skin shube,

which they use also for cleaning their hands upon when

dirty."[73] They, moreover, abstain from washing their {355}

clothes; and so did the Huns and Mongols.[74] The ancient Turks

never washed themselves, because they believed that their gods

punished ablutions with thunder and lightning; and the same

belief still prevails among kindred peoples in Central Asia.[75]

Among the Bahima of Enkole, in the Uganda Protectorate, a man may

smear his body with butter or clay as often as he wishes, but "to

wash with water is bad for him, and is a sure way of bringing

sickness into his family and amongst his cattle."[76] The dread

of water may be due partly to ill effects experienced after using

it, partly to superstition. The Moors dare not wash their bodies

with cold water in the afternoon and evening after the

_[(]â[s.]ar_, because all such water is then supposed to be

haunted by _jnûn_, or evil spirits. In various religions the

odour of sanctity is associated with filth. Muhammedan dervishes

are recognised by their appearance of untidiness and uncleanness.

Among the rules laid down for Buddhist monks there is one which

prescribes that their dress shall be made of rags taken from a

dust or refuse heap.[77] In the early days of Christian

monasticism "the cleanliness of the body was regarded as a

pollution of the soul." The saints who were most admired were

those who had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St.

Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch

of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of

washing his feet. A famous virgin, though bodily sickness was a

consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious

principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. And

St. Simeon Stylites, who was generally pronounced to be the

highest model of a Christian saint, bound a rope round himself so

that it became imbedded in his flesh and caused putrefaction; and

it is said that "a horrible stench, intolerable {356} to the

bystanders, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from him

whenever he moved, and they filled his bed."[78] In mediæval

Christianity abstinence from every species of cleanliness was

also enjoined as a penance, the penitent being required to go

with foul mouth, filthy hands and neck, undressed hair and beard,

unpared nails, and clothes as dirty as his person. In these cases

uncleanliness is a form of asceticism, a subject which we have

already touched upon in dealing with industry and fasting, but

the principles of which still call for our consideration.

[Footnote 69: Blunt, _Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates_, ii. 214.

Klunzinger, _Upper Egypt_, p. 391.]

[Footnote 70: Baker, _Albert N'yanza_, i. 381.]

[Footnote 71: Sauer, _op. cit._ p. 125.]

[Footnote 72: Valikhanof, &c., _Russians in Central Asia_, p. 80.]

[Footnote 73: Georgi, _op. cit._ iv. 37. Bergmann, _op. cit._

ii. 123.]

[Footnote 74: Neumann, _Die Völker des südlichen Russlands_, p.

27. For the excessive dirtiness of the present Mongols, see

Prejevalsky, _Mongolia_, i. 51 _sq._]

[Footnote 75: Castrén, _op. cit._ iv. 61.]

[Footnote 76: Roscoe, 'Bahima,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._

xxxvii. 111.]

[Footnote 77: Kern, _Manual of Indian Buddhism_, p. 75.]

[Footnote 78: Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 109

_sqq._]

* * * * *

In various religions we meet with the idea that a person appeases

or gives pleasure to the deity by subjecting himself to suffering

or deprivation. This belief finds expression in all sorts of

ascetic practices. We read of Christian ascetics who lived in

deserted dens of wild beasts, or in dried-up wells, or in tombs;

who disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like animals

covered only by their matted hair; who ate nothing but corn which

had become rotten by remaining for a month in water; who spent

forty days and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for

forty years never lay down.[79] Hindu ascetics remain in

immovable attitudes with their faces or their arms raised to

heaven, until the sinews shrink and the posture assumed stiffens

into rigidity; or they expose themselves to the inclemency of the

weather in a state of absolute nudity, or tear their bodies with

knives, or feed on carrion and excrement.[80] Among the

Muhammedans of India there are fakirs who have been seen dragging

heavy chains or cannon balls, or crawling upon their hands and

knees for years; others have been found lying upon iron spikes

for a bed; and others, again, have been swinging for months

before a slow fire with a {357} tropical sun blazing

overhead.[81] Among modern Jews some of the more sanctimonious

members of the synagogue have been known to undergo the penance

of voluntary flagellation before the commencement of the fast of

atonement, two persons successively inflicting upon each other

thirty-nine stripes or thirteen lashes with a triple scourge.[82]

According to the Zoroastrian Yasts, thirty strokes with the

Sraoshô-karana is an expiation which purges people from their

sins, and makes them fit for offering a sacrifice.[83] Herodotus

tells us that the ancient Egyptians beat themselves while the

things offered by them as sacrifices were being burned, and that

the Carian dwellers in Egypt on such occasions cut their faces

with knives.[84] Among the ancient Mexicans blood-drawing was a

favourite and most common mode of expiating sin and showing

devotion. "It makes one shudder," says Clavigero, "to read the

austerities which they exercised upon themselves, either in

atonement of their transgressions or in preparation for their

festivals. They mangled their flesh as if it had been insensible,

and let their blood run in such profusion, that it appeared to be

a superfluous fluid of the body."[85] Self-mortification also

formed part of the religious cult in many uncivilised tribes in

North America.[86] "The Indian," Colonel Dodge observes,

"believes, with many Christians, that self-torture is an act most

acceptable to God, and the extent of pleasure that he can give

his god is exactly measured by the amount of suffering that he

can bear without flinching."[87]

[Footnote 79: _Ibid._ ii. 108 _sq._]

[Footnote 80: Barth, _Religions of India_, p. 214 _sq._ Hopkins,

_Religions of India_, p. 352. Monier-Williams, _Br[=a]hmanism and

Hind[=u]ism_, p. 395.]

[Footnote 81: Pool, _Studies in Mohammedanism_, p. 305. For

similar practices among the modern Egyptians, see Lane, _Modern

Egyptians_, p. 244.]

[Footnote 82: Allen, _Modern Judaism_, p. 407.]

[Footnote 83: _Yasts_, x. 122. Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of

the East_, xxiii. 151, n. 3.]

[Footnote 84: Herodotus, ii. 40, 61.]

[Footnote 85: Clavigero, _History of Mexico_, i. 284. See also

Bancroft, _op. cit._ iii. 441 _sq._; Réville, _Hibbert Lectures

on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru_, p. 100.]

[Footnote 86: Domenech, _Seven Years Residence in the Great

Deserts of North America_, ii. 380. Catlin, _North American

Indians_, ii. 243. James, _Expedition to the Rocky Mountains_, i.

276 _sqq._ (Omahas). McGee, 'Siouan Indians,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.

Ethn._ xv. 184.]

[Footnote 87: Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, p. 149.]

The idea underlying religious asceticism has no doubt {358} been

derived from several different sources. It should first be

noticed that certain ascetic practices have originally been

performed for another purpose, and only afterwards come to be

regarded as means of propitiating or pleasing the deity through

the suffering involved in them. This, as we have seen, is the

case with certain fasts, and also with sexual asceticism.[88]

When an act is supposed to be connected with supernatural danger,

the evil (real or imaginary) resulting from it is readily

interpreted as a sign of divine anger and the act itself is

regarded as being forbidden by a god. If then the abstinence from

it implies suffering, as is in some degree the case with fasting

and sexual continence, the conclusion is drawn that the god

delights in such suffering. The same inference is, moreover, made

from the fact that such abstinences are enjoined in connection

with religious worship, though the primary motive for this

injunction was fear of pollution. Beating or scourging, again,

was in certain cases originally a mode of purification, intended

to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion either

personified as demoniacal or otherwise of a magical character.

And although the pain inflicted on the person beaten was at first

not the object of the act but only incidental to it, it became

subsequently the chief purpose of the ceremony, which was now

regarded as a mortification well pleasing to the god.[89] This

change of ideas seems likewise to be due both to the tendency of

the supernatural contagion to develop into a divine punishment in

case it is not removed by the painful rite, and also to the

circumstance that purification is held to be a necessary

accompaniment of acts of religious worship. The Egyptian

sacrifice described by Herodotus was combined with purificatory

fasting as well as beating.[90] Among the Jews, before the

commencement of the fast of atonement, whilst a few very

religious persons undergo the penance of flagellation, "some

purify themselves by {359} ablutions."[91] And that the original

object of the scourging mentioned in the Yasts was to purify the

worshipper is suggested by the fact that he on the same occasion

had to wash his body three days and three nights.[92] But it

should also be remembered that religious exaltation, when it has

reached its highest stage, may express itself in self-laceration;[93]

and the deity is naturally supposed to be pleased with the

outward expression of such an emotion in his devotees.

[Footnote 88: See _infra_, p. 420 _sq._]

[Footnote 89: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, iii. 217 _sq._]

[Footnote 90: Herodotus, ii. 40.]

[Footnote 91: Allen, _op. cit._ p. 407.]

[Footnote 92: _Yasts_, x. 122.]

[Footnote 93: See Hirn, _Origins of Art_, p. 64.]

An ascetic practice may also be the survival of an earlier

sacrifice. We have seen that this is frequently the case with

fasting and almsgiving, and the same may hold true of other forms

of asceticism.[94] The essence of the act then no longer lies in

the benefit which the god derives from it, but in the self-denial

or self-mortification which it costs the worshipper. In the

sacred books of India "austerity" is mentioned as a means of

expiation side by side with sacrifice, fasting, and giving

gifts.[95]

[Footnote 94: _Cf._ Tertullian, _De resurrectione carnis_, 8

(Migne, _op. cit._ ii. 806).]

[Footnote 95: _Gautama_, xix. 11. _Vasishtha_, xx. 47; xxii. 8.

_Baudháyana_, iii. 10. 9.]

When an ascetic practice develops out of a previous custom of a

different origin, it may be combined with an idea which by itself

has been a frequent source of self-inflicted pain, to wit, the

belief that such pain is an expiation for sin, that it may serve

as a substitute for a punishment which would otherwise be

inflicted by the offended god; and almost inseparably connected

with this belief there may be that desire to suffer which is so

often, vaguely or distinctly, involved in genuine repentance.[96]

The idea of expiation very largely underlies the penitential

discipline of the Christian Church and the asceticism of its

saints. From the days of Tertullian and Cyprian the Latins were

familiar with the notion that the Christian has to propitiate

God, that cries of pain, sufferings, and deprivations are means

of appeasing his anger, that God takes strict account of the

quantity of {360} the atonement, and that, where there is no

guilt to have blotted out, those very means are regarded as

merits.[97] According to the doctrine of the Church, penance

should in all grave cases be preceded by sorrow for the sin and

also by confession, either public or private; repentance, as we

have noticed above, is the only ground on which pardon can be

given by a scrupulous judge.[98] But the notion was only too

often adopted that the penitential practice itself was a

compensation for sin, that a man was at liberty to do whatever he

pleased provided he was prepared to do penance afterwards, and

that a person who, conscious of his frailty, had laid in a large

stock of vicarious penance in anticipation of future necessity,

had a right "to work it out," and spend it in sins.[99] The idea

that sins may be expiated by certain acts of self-mortification

is familiar both to Muhammedans[100] and Jews.[101] According to

Zoroastrian beliefs, it is possible to wipe out by peculiarly

severe atonements not only the special sin on account of which

the atonement is performed, but also other offences committed in

former times or unconsciously.[102] In the sacred books of the

Hindus we meet with a strong conviction that pain suffered in

this life will redeem the sufferer from punishment in a future

existence. It is said that "men who have committed crimes and

have been punished by the king go to heaven, being pure like

those who performed meritorious deeds";[103] and the same idea is

at the bottom of their penitential system.[104] But in

Brahmanism, as in Catholicism, the effect of ascetic practices is

supposed to go beyond mere expiation. They are regarded as means

of accumulating religious merit or attaining superhuman powers.

Brahmanical poems tell of marvellous self-mortifications {361} by

which sages of the past obtained influence over the gods

themselves; nay, even the power wielded by certain archdemons

over men and gods is supposed to have been acquired by the

practice of religious austerities.[105] How largely ascetic

practices are due to the idea of expiation is indicated by the

fact that they hardly occur among nations who have no vivid sense

of sin, like the Chinese before the introduction of Taouism and

Buddhism,[106] and the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians.

In Greece, however, people sometimes voluntarily sacrificed a

part of their happiness in order to avoid the envy of the gods,

who would not allow to man more than a moderate share of good

fortune.[107]

[Footnote 96: See _supra_, i. 105 _sq._]

[Footnote 97: Tertullian, _De jejuniis_, 7 (Migne, _op. cit._ ii.

962). _Idem_, _De resurrectione carnis_, 8 (Migne, ii. 806

_sq._). Harnack, _History of Dogma_, ii. 110, 132; iii. 311.]

[Footnote 98: _Supra_, i. 85.]

[Footnote 99: See Thrupp, _The Anglo-Saxon Home_, p. 259.]

[Footnote 100: _Supra_, ii. 315, 317. Pool, _op. cit._ p. 264.]

[Footnote 101: _Supra_, ii. 315 _sqq._ Allen, _op. cit._ p. 130.]

[Footnote 102: Geiger, _Civilization of the Eastern Ir[=a]nians_,

i. 163.]

[Footnote 103: _Laws of Manu_, viii. 318.]

[Footnote 104: _Ibid._ xi. 228.]

[Footnote 105: Monier-Williams, _Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism_,

pp. 231, 427. Oldenberg, _Buddha_, p. 302.]

[Footnote 106: Réville, _La religion Chinoise_, p. 221.]

[Footnote 107: Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_, 1008 _sqq._ Schmidt,

_Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, i. 82.]

Self-mortification is also sometimes resorted to not so much to

appease the anger of a god as rather to excite his compassion. In

some of the Jewish fasts, as we have seen before, these two

objects are closely interwoven.[108] The Jewish custom of fasting

in the case of a drought is in a way parallel to the Moorish

practice of tying holy men and throwing them into a pond in order

that their pitiful condition may induce God to send rain. Mr.

Williams tells us of a Fijian priest who, "after supplicating his

god for rain in the usual way without success, slept for several

successive nights exposed on the top of a rock, without mat or

pillow, hoping thus to move the obdurate deity to send a shower."[109]

[Footnote 108: _Supra_, ii. 315.]

[Footnote 109: Williams and Calvert, _Fiji_, p. 196.]

Not only is suffering voluntarily sought as a means of wiping off

sins committed, but it is also endured with a view to preventing

the commission of sin. This is the second or, in importance, the

first great idea upon which Christian asceticism rests. The

gratification of every worldly desire is sinful, the flesh should

be the abject slave of the spirit intent upon unearthly things.

Man was created for a life in spiritual communion with God, {362}

but he yielded to the seduction of evil demons, who availed

themselves of the sensuous side of his nature to draw him away

from the contemplation of the divine and lead him to the earthly.

Moral goodness, therefore, consists in renouncing all sensuous

pleasures, in separating from the world, in living solely after

the spirit, in imitating the perfection and purity of God. The

contrast between good and evil is the contrast between God and

the world, and the conception of the world includes not only the

objects of bodily appetites but all human institutions, as well

as science and art.[110] And still more than any theoretical

doctrine, the personal example of Christ led to the glorification

of spiritual joy and bodily suffering.

[Footnote 110: Harnack, _op. cit._ ii. 214 _sqq._, iii. 258

_sqq._ von Eicken, _Geschichte der mittelalterlichen

Weltanschauung_, p. 313 _sqq._]

The antithesis of spirit and body was not peculiar to

Christianity. It was an old Platonic conception, which was

regarded by the Fathers of the Church as the contrast between

that which was precious and that which was to be mortified. The

doctrine that bodily enjoyments are low and degrading was taught

by many pagan philosophers; even a man like Cicero says that all

corporeal pleasure is opposed to virtue and ought to be

rejected.[111] And in the Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean

schools of Alexandria an ascetic ideal of life was the natural

outcome of their theory that God alone is pure and good, and

matter impure and evil. Renunciation of the world was taught and

practised by the Jewish sects of the Essenes and Therapeutæ. In

India, Professor Kern observes, "climate, institutions, the

contemplative bent of the native mind, all tended to facilitate

the growth of a persuasion that the highest aims of human life

and real felicity cannot be obtained but by the seclusion from

the busy world, by undisturbed pious exercises, and by a certain

amount of mortification."[112] We read in the Hitopadesa,

"Subjection to the senses has been called the road to ruin, and

{363} their subjugation the path to fortune."[113] The Jain

regards pleasure in itself as sinful:--"What is discontent, and

what is pleasure? One should live subject to neither. Giving up

all gaiety, circumspect, restrained, one should lead a religious

life."[114] According to Buddhism, there are two causes of the

misery with which life is inseparably bound up--lust and

ignorance; and so there are two cures--the suppression of lust

and desire and the removal of ignorance.[115] It is said in the

Dhammapada, "There is no satisfying lusts, even by a shower of

gold pieces; he who knows that lusts have a short taste and cause

pain, he is wise."[116] Penances, as they were practised among

the ascetics of India, were discarded by Buddha as vexatious,

unworthy, unprofitable. "Not nakedness, not platted hair, not

dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust,

not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome

desires."[117] Where all contact with the earthly ceases, there,

and there only, are deliverance and freedom.

[Footnote 111: Cicero, _De officiis_, i. 30; iii. 33.]

[Footnote 112: Kern, _Manual of Indian Buddhism_, p. 73.]

[Footnote 113: Hitopadesa, quoted by Monier-Williams, _Indian

Wisdom_, p. 538.]

[Footnote 114: Hopkins, _op. cit._ p. 291.]

[Footnote 115: Oldenberg, _op. cit._ p. 212 _sq._ Monier-Williams,

_Buddhism_, p. 99.]

[Footnote 116: _Dhammapada_, 186 _sq._]

[Footnote 117: _Ibid._ 141. See also Oldenberg, _op. cit._

p. 301 _sq._]

The idea that man ought to liberate himself from the bondage of

earthly desires is the conclusion of a contemplative mind

reflecting upon the short duration and emptiness of all bodily

pleasures and the allurements by which they lead men into misery

and sin. And separation from the material world is the ideal of

the religious enthusiast whose highest aspiration is union with

God conceived as an immaterial being, as pure spirit.

CHAPTER 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.]

CHAPTER 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._]