_THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES._
EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.
EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
THE EVOLUTION
OF MARRIAGE
AND OF THE FAMILY
BY
CH. LETOURNEAU,
_General Secretary to the Anthropological Society of Paris,
and Professor in the School of Anthropology_.
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE
PATERNOSTER ROW
1891.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE 1-19
I. The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom.
II. Reproduction.
III. Rut and Love.
IV. Love of Animals.
CHAPTER II.
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY AMONGST ANIMALS 20-36
I. The Preservation of Species.
II. Marriage and the Rearing of the Young among Animals.
III. The Family amongst Animals.
CHAPTER III.
PROMISCUITY 37-55
I. Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity?
II. Cases of Human Promiscuity.
III. Hetaïrism.
CHAPTER IV.
SOME SINGULAR FORMS OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION 56-72
I. Primitive Sexual Immorality.
II. Some Strange Forms of Marriage.
CHAPTER V.
POLYANDRY 73-88
I. Sexual Proportion of Births: its Influence on Marriage.
II. Ethnography of Polyandry.
III. Polyandry in Ancient Arabia.
IV. Polyandry in General.
CHAPTER VI.
MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE 89-104
I. Rape.
II. Marriage by Capture.
III. Signification of the Ceremonial of Capture.
CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE AND BY SERVITUDE 105-121
I. The Power of Parents.
II. Marriage by Servitude.
III. Marriage by Purchase.
CHAPTER VIII.
PRIMITIVE POLYGAMY 122-137
I. Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America.
II. Polygamy in Asia and in Europe.
CHAPTER IX.
POLYGAMY OF CIVILISED PEOPLE 138-153
I. The Stage of Polygamy.
II. Arab Polygamy.
III. Polygamy in Egypt, Mexico, and Peru.
IV. Polygamy in Persia and India.
CHAPTER X.
PROSTITUTION AND CONCUBINAGE 154-170
I. Concubinage in General.
II. Prostitution.
III. Various Forms of Concubinage.
CHAPTER XI.
PRIMITIVE MONOGAMY 171-187
I. The Monogamy of Inferior Races.
II. Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America.
III. Monogamy in Ancient Egypt.
IV. Monogamy of the Touaregs and Abyssinians.
V. Monogamy among the Mongols of Asia.
VI. Monogamy and Civilisation.
CHAPTER XII.
HEBREW AND ARYAN MONOGAMY 188-206
I. Monogamy of the Races called Superior.
II. Hebrew Marriage.
III. Marriage in Persia and Ancient India.
IV. Marriage in Ancient Greece.
V. Marriage in Ancient Rome.
VI. Barbarous Marriage and Christian Marriage.
CHAPTER XIII.
ADULTERY 207-227
I. Adultery in General.
II. Adultery in Melanesia.
III. Adultery in Black Africa.
IV. Adultery in Polynesia.
V. Adultery in Savage America.
VI. Adultery in Barbarous America.
VII. Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya.
VIII. Adultery among the Egyptians, the Berbers, and the Semites.
IX. Adultery in Persia and India.
X. Adultery in the Greco-Roman World.
XI. Adultery in Barbarous Europe.
XII. Adultery in the Past and in the Future.
CHAPTER XIV.
REPUDIATION AND DIVORCE 228-248
I. In Savage Countries.
II. Divorce and Repudiation among Barbarous Peoples.
III. The Evolution of Divorce.
CHAPTER XV.
WIDOWHOOD AND THE LEVIRATE 249-266
I. Widowhood in Savage Countries.
II. Widowhood in Barbarous Countries.
III. The Levirate.
IV. Summary.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FAMILIAL CLAN IN AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA 267-284
I. The Family.
II. The Family in Melanesia.
III. The Family in America.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FAMILIAL CLAN AND ITS EVOLUTION 285-302
I. The Clan among the Redskins.
II. The Family among the Redskins.
III. The Family in Polynesia.
IV. The Family among the Mongols.
V. The Evolution of the System of Kinship by Classes.
VI. The Clan and the Family.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MATERNAL FAMILY 303-321
I. The Familial Clan and the Family properly so-called.
II. The Family in Africa.
III. The Family in Malaya.
IV. The Family among the Naïrs of Malabar.
V. The Family among the Aborigines of Bengal.
VI. The Couvade.
VII. The Primitive Family.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FAMILY IN CIVILISED COUNTRIES 322-340
I. The Family in China.
II. The Family among the Semitic Races.
III. The Family among the Berbers.
IV. The Family in Persia.
V. The Family in India.
VI. The Greco-Roman Family.
VII. The Family in Barbarous Europe.
CHAPTER XX.
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY IN THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE
FUTURE 341-360
I. The Past.
II. The Present.
III. The Future.
INDEX 361
PREFACE.
A few preliminary observations in regard to the aim and method of this
work may be useful to the reader.
He will do well to begin by persuading himself, with Montaigne, that
the “hinges of custom” are not always the “hinges of reason,” and
still less those of reality in all times and places. He will do better
still to steep himself in the spirit of scientific evolution, and to
bear in mind that incessant change is the law of the social, quite as
much as of the physical and organic world, and that the most splendid
blossoms have sprung from very humble germs. This is the supreme truth
of science, and it is only when such a point of view has become quite
familiar to us that we shall be neither troubled nor disconcerted
by the sociological history of humanity; and however shocking or
unnatural certain customs may appear, we shall guard ourselves against
any feeling of indignation at them, and more especially against a
thoughtless refusal to give credence to them, simply because they run
counter to our own usages and morality.
All that social science has a right to ask of the facts which it
registers is that they should be authentic; this duly proved, it
only remains to accept, classify, and interpret them. Faithful to
this method, without which there could be no science of sociology,
I have here gathered together as proofs a number of singular facts,
which, improbable as they may appear according to our pre-conceived
notions, and criminal according to our moral sense, are nevertheless
most instructive. Although in a former work I have taken care to
establish the relativity of morality, the explanations that I am about
to make are not out of season; for the subject of this book is closely
connected with what, _par excellence_, we call “morals.”
On this point I must permit myself a short digression.
No one will pretend that our so-called civilised society has a very
strict practical morality, yet public opinion still seems to attach a
particular importance to sexual morality, and this is the expression of
a very real sentiment, the origin of which scientific sociology has no
difficulty in retracing. This origin, far from being a lofty one, goes
back simply to the right of proprietorship in women similar to that in
goods and chattels--a proprietorship which we find claimed in savage,
and even in barbarous countries, without any feeling of shame. During
the lower stages of social evolution, women are uniformly treated as
domestic animals; but this female live-stock are difficult to guard;
for, on the one hand, they are much coveted and are unskilful in
defending themselves, and on the other, they do not bend willingly to
the one-sided duty of fidelity that is imposed on them. The masters,
therefore, protect their own interests by a whole series of vexatious
restraints, of rigorous punishments, and of ferocious revenges, left at
first to the good pleasure of the marital proprietors, and afterwards
regulated and codified. In the chapter on adultery, especially, will
be found a great number of examples of this marital savagery. I have
previously shown, in my _Evolution de la Morale_, that the unforeseen
result of all this jealous fury has been to endow humanity, and more
particularly women, with the delicate sentiment of modesty, unknown to
the animal world and to primitive man.
From this evolution of thousands of years there has finally resulted,
in countries and races more or less civilised, a certain sexual
morality, which is half instinctive, and varies according to time
and place, but which it is impossible to transgress without the risk
of offending gravely against public opinion. Civilisations, however,
whether coarse or refined, differ from each other. Certain actions,
counted as blameworthy in one part of the world, are elsewhere held as
lawful and even praiseworthy. In order to trace the origin of marriage
and of the family, it is therefore indispensable to relate a number of
practices which may be scandalous in our eyes. While submitting to this
necessity, I have done so unwillingly, and with all the sobriety which
befits the subject. I have striven never to depart from the scientific
spirit, which purifies everything, and renders even indecency decent.
Like the savages of to-day, our distant ancestors were very little
removed from simple animal existence. A knowledge of their physiology
is nevertheless necessary to enable us to understand our own; for,
however cultivated the civilised man may be, he derives from the humble
progenitors of his race a number of instincts which are energetic in
proportion as they are of a low order. More or less deadened, these
gross tendencies are latent in the most highly developed individuals;
and when they sometimes break out suddenly in the actions of a man’s
life, or in the morals or literature of a people, they recall to us
our very humble origin, and even show a certain mental and moral
retrogression.
Now it is to this primitive man, still in such a rudimentary state,
that we must go back for enlightenment on the genesis of all our social
institutions. We must take him at the most distant dawn of humanity,
follow him step by step in his slow metamorphoses, without either
disparaging or poetising him; we must watch him rising and becoming
more refined through accumulated centuries, till he loses by degrees
his animal instincts, and at length acquires aptitudes, inclinations,
and faculties that are truly human.
Nothing is better adapted to exemplify the evolution which binds our
present to our past and to our future than the sociological history of
marriage and of the family.
After having spoken of the aim of this book, it remains for me to
justify its method. This differs considerably from what the mass of
the public like far too well. But a scientific treatise must not take
purely literary works for its models; and I can say to my readers,
with much more reason than old Rabelais, that if they wish to taste
the marrow, they must take the trouble to break the bone. My first
and chief consideration is to assist in the foundation of a new
science--ethnographical sociology. Elegant and vain dissertations, or
vague generalities, have no place here. It is by giving way to these,
and in attempting to reap the harvest before sowing the seed, that
many authors have lost themselves in a pseudo-sociology, having no
foundation, and consequently no value.
Social science, if it is to be seriously constituted, must submit with
docility to the method of natural science. The first task, and the one
which especially falls to the lot of the sociologists of the present
day, is to collect the facts which will form materials for the future
edifice. To their successors will fall the pleasure of completing and
adorning it.
The present work is, therefore, above all, a collection of facts which,
even if taken alone, are curious and suggestive. These facts have been
patiently gleaned from the writings of ethnographers, travellers,
legists, and historians. I have classed them as well as I could,
and naturally they have inspired me here and there with glimpses of
possible inductions, and with some slight attempts at generalisation.
But whether the reader rejects or accepts my interpretations, the
groundwork of facts on which they rest is so instructive of itself that
a perusal of the following pages cannot be quite fruitless.
CH. LETOURNEAU.
THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE AND OF THE FAMILY.
CHAPTER I.
THE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE.
I. _The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom._--Man is a
mammiferous, bimanous vertebrate--Biology the starting-point of
sociology--The origin of love.
II. _Reproduction._--Nutrition and
reproduction--Scissiparity--Budding--Ovulation--Conjugation--
Impregnation--Reproduction in the invertebrates--The entity called
Nature--Organic specialisation and reproduction--A dithyramb by
Haeckel.
III. _Rut and Love._--Rut renders sociable--Rut is a short puberty--Its
organic adornment--The frenzy of rut--Physiological reason of rut in
mammals--Love and rut--Schopenhauer and the designs of Nature.
IV. _Love of Animals._--Love and death--The law of coquetry--The
law of battle--Jealousy and æsthetic considerations--Love amongst
birds--Effects of sexual selection--The loves of the skylark--The males
of the blue heron and their combats--Battles of male geese and male
gallinaceæ--Courteous duels between males--Æsthetic seduction among
certain birds--Æsthetic constructions--Musical seduction--Predominance
of the female among certain birds--Greater sensuality of the
male--Effect of sexual exaltation--A Cartesian paradox--Individual
choice amongst animals--Individual fancies of females--General
propositions.
I. _The True Place of Man._
We have too long been accustomed to study human society as if man were
a being apart in the universe. In comparing human bipeds with animals
it has seemed as if we were disparaging these so-called demi-gods. It
is to this blind prejudice that we must attribute the tardy rise of
anthropological sociology. A deeper knowledge of biological science
and of inferior races has at last cured us of this childish vanity.
We have decided to assign to man his true place in the organic world
of our little globe. Granted that the human biped is incontestably
the most intelligent of terrestrial animals, yet, by his histological
texture, by his organs, and by the functions of these organs, he is
evidently only an animal, and easily classed in the series: he is
a bimanous, mammiferous vertebrate. Not that by his most glorious
representatives, by those whom we call men of genius, man does not rise
prodigiously above his distant relations of the mammal class; but, on
the other hand, by imperfectly developed specimens he descends far
below many species of animals; for if the idiot is only an exception,
the man of genius is still more so. In fact, the lowest human races,
with whose anatomy, psychology, and sociology we are to-day familiar,
can only inspire us with feelings of modesty. They furnish studies
in ethnography which have struck a mortal blow at the dreams of “the
kingdom of man.”
When once it is established that man is a mammal like any other,
and only distinguished from the animals of his class by a greater
cerebral development, all study of human sociology must logically be
preceded by a corresponding study of animal sociology. Moreover, as
sociology finally depends on biology, it will be necessary to seek in
physiological conditions themselves the origin of great sociological
manifestations. The first necessity of societies is that they should
endure, and they can only do so on the condition of providing
satisfaction for primordial needs, which are the condition of life
itself, and which imperatively dominate and regulate great social
institutions. Lastly, if man is a sociable animal, he is not the only
one; many other species have grouped themselves in societies, where,
however rudimentary they may be, we find in embryonic sketch the
principal traits of human agglomerations. There are even species--as,
for example, bees, ants, and termites--that have created true
republics, of complicated structure, in which the social problem has
been solved in an entirely original manner. We may take from them more
than one good example, and more than one valuable hint.
My present task is to write the history of marriage and of the family.
The institution of marriage has had no other object than the regulation
of sexual unions. These have for their aim the satisfaction of one of
the most imperious biological needs--the sexual appetite; but this
appetite is only a conscious impulse, a “snare,” as Montaigne calls
it, which impels both man and animal to provide, as far as concerns
them, for the preservation of their species--to “pay the ancestral
debt,” according to the Brahmanical formula. Before studying the sexual
relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it
will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general,
to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental,
and to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been
determined by physiological causes, and which render the fiercest
animals mild and tractable. This is what I shall attempt to do in the
following chapter.
II. _Reproduction._
Stendhal has somewhere said that the beautiful is simply the outcome
of the useful; changing the phrase, we may say that generation is
the outcome of nutrition. If we examine the processes of generation
in very simple organisms, this great function seems to answer to a
superabundance of nutritive materials, which, after having carried
the anatomic elements to their maximum volume, at length overflows
and provokes the formation of new elements. As long as the new-born
elements can remain aggregated with those which already constitute the
individual, as long as the latter has not acquired all the development
compatible with the plan of its being, there is simply growth. When
once the limit is attained that the species cannot pass, the organism
(I mean a very rudimentary organism) reproduces itself commonly by a
simple division in two halves. It perishes in doubling itself and in
producing two beings, similar to itself, and having nothing to do but
grow. It is by means of this bi-partition that hydras, vorticellæ,
algæ, and the lowest mushrooms are generally propagated.
In the organisms that are slightly more complicated the function of
reproduction tends to be specialised. The individual is no longer
totally divided; it produces a bud which grows by degrees, and detaches
itself from the parent organism to run in its turn through the very
limited adventures of its meagre existence.
By a more advanced step in specialisation the function of reproduction
becomes localised in a particular cell, an ovule, and the latter,
by a series of repeated bi-partitions, develops a new individual;
but it is generally necessary that the cellule destined to multiply
itself by segmentation should at first dissolve by union with another
cell. Through the action of various organic processes the two
generating cells arrive in contact. The element which is to undergo
segmentation--the female element--then absorbs the element that is
simply impulsive; the element called male becomes impregnated with
it, and from that moment it is fertilised, that is to say, capable of
pursuing the course of its formative work.
This phenomenon, so simple in itself, of the conjugation of two
cellules, is the foundation of reproduction in the two organic
kingdoms as soon as the two sexes are separated. Whether the sexes are
represented by distinct or united individuals, whether the accessory
organic apparatus is more or less complicated, are matters of no
consequence; the essential fact reappears always and everywhere of the
conjugation of two cellules, with absorption, in the case of superior
animals, of the male cellule by the female cellule.
The process may be observed in its most elementary form in the algæ and
the diatomaceæ, said to be conjugated. To form a reproductive cellule,
or spore, two neighbouring cellules each throw out, one towards the
other, a prolongation. These prolongations meet, and their sides
absorb each other at the point of contact; then the protoplasms of the
two elements mingle, and at length the two cellules melt into a single
reproductive cellule (_Spirogyra longata_).
Between this marriage of two lower vegetal cellules, which realises to
the letter the celebrated biblical words, “they shall be one flesh,” or
rather one protoplasm, and the fundamental phenomenon of fecundation
in the superior animals, including man, there is no essential
dissimilarity. The ovule of the female and the spermatozoon of the male
become fused in the same manner, with this difference only, that the
feminine cellule, the ovule, preserves its individuality and absorbs
the masculine cellule, or is impregnated by it.
But, simple as it is, this phenomenon of fecundation is the sole reason
of the duration of bi-sexual species. Thanks to it, organic individuals
that are all more or less ephemeral,
“Et, quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt.”
(_Lucretius_, ii. 78.)
For many organised beings reproduction seems in reality the supreme
object of existence. Numbers of vegetables and of animals, even of
animals high in the series--as insects--die as soon as they have
accomplished this great duty. Sometimes the male expires before having
detached himself from the female, and the latter herself survives just
long enough to effect the laying of eggs. Instead of laying eggs, the
female cochineal fills herself with eggs to such a degree that she dies
in consequence, and the tegument of her body is transformed into a
protecting envelope for the eggs.
At the not very distant time when animism reigned supreme, these facts
were attributed to calculations of design. Nature, it was believed,
occupied herself chiefly with perpetuating organised species; as for
individuals, she disdained the care of them. We now know that Nature,
as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist; that the great forces
called natural are unconscious; that their blind action results,
however, in the world of life, in a choice, a selection, a progressive
evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of the individuals best
adapted to the conditions of their existence. Without any intention of
Dame Nature, the preservation of the species was necessarily, before
anything else, the object of selection; and during the course of
geological periods primitive bi-partition gradually became transformed
through progressive differentiation into bi-sexual procreation,
requiring the concurrence of special and complicated apparatus in
order to be effected. But, at the same time as procreation, other
functions also became differentiated by the formation of special
organs; the nervous system vegetated around the _chorda dorsalis_;
and, finally, conscious life awoke in the nervous centres. Thenceforth
the accomplishment of the great function of procreation assumed an
entirely different aspect. In the lowest stages of the animal kingdom
reproduction is effected mechanically and unconsciously. A paramœcium,
observed by M. Balbiani, produced in forty-two days, by a series
of simple bi-partitions, 1,384,116 individuals, who very certainly
had not the least notion of the phenomena by which they transmitted
existence. But with superior animals it is very different; in their
case the act of procreation is a real efflorescence, not only physical,
but psychical. For the study that I am now undertaking it will not
be without use to recall the principal features of this amorous
efflorescence, since it is, after all, the first cause of marriage and
of the family. At the same time, not to lose our standpoint, it is
important to bear in mind that at the bottom all this expenditure of
physical and psychical force has for motive and for result, both in man
and animal, the conjugation of two generative cellules. Haeckel has
written a dithyramb on this subject in his _Anthropogenia_, which is
in the main so true that I take pleasure in quoting it--“Great effects
are everywhere produced, in animated nature, by minute causes....
Think of how many curious phenomena sexual selection gives rise to
in animal life; think of the results of love in human life; now,
all this has for its _raison d’être_ the union of two cellules....
There is no organic act which approaches this one in power and in the
force of differentiation. The Semitic myth of Eve seducing Adam for
the love of knowledge, the old Greek legend of Paris and Helen, and
many other magnificent poems, do they not simply express the enormous
influence that sexual love and sexual selection have exercised since
the separation of the sexes? The influence of all the other passions
which agitate the human heart cannot weigh in the balance with love,
which inflames the senses and fascinates the reason. On the one hand,
we celebrate in love the source of the most sublime works of art,
and of the noblest creations of poetry and of music; we venerate it
as the most powerful factor in civilisation, as the prime cause of
family life, and consequently of social life. On the other hand, we
fear love as a destructive flame; it is love that drives so many to
ruin; it is love that has caused more misery, vice, and crime than
all other calamities together. Love is so prodigious, its influence
is so enormous on psychic life and the most diverse functions of
the nervous system, that in regard to it we are tempted to question
the supernatural effect of our natural explanation. Nevertheless,
comparative biology and the history of development conduct us surely
and incontestably to the simplest, most remote source of love; that is
to say, the elective affinity of two different cellules--the spermatic
cell and the ovulary cell.”[1]
III. _Rut and Love._
In a former work on the evolution of morality I have described the
manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from
habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of
the same acts. The instinct of procreation has, and can have, no other
origin. The animal species, during the long phases of their evolution,
have reproduced themselves unconsciously, and by very simple processes,
which we may still observe in certain zoophytes. By degrees these mere
sketches of animals have become perfected and differentiated, and
have acquired special organs over which the biological work has been
distributed; thenceforth the play of life has echoed in the nervous
centres, and has awakened in them impressions and desires, the energy
of which strictly corresponds to the importance of the functions.
Now, there is no more primordial function than procreation, since on
it depends the duration even of the species; and for this reason the
need of reproduction, or the rut, breaks out in many animals like a
kind of madness. The psychic faculties of the animal, whether great or
small, are then over-excited, and rise above their ordinary level; but
they all tend to one supreme aim--the desire for reproduction. At this
period the wildest and most unsociable species can no longer endure
solitude; both males and females seek each other; sometimes, even,
they are seen to form themselves into groups, or small provisional
societies, which will dissolve again after the coupling time is over.
Each period of rut is for animals a sort of puberty. The hair, the
plumage, and the scales often assume rich tints which afterwards
disappear. Sometimes special epidermic productions appear in the male,
and serve him for temporary weapons with which to fight his rivals, or
for ornaments to captivate the female. It is with a veritable frenzy
that the sexual union is accomplished among certain species. Thus Dr.
Günther has several times found female toads dead, smothered by the
embrace of the males.[2] Spallanzani was able to amputate the thighs
of male frogs and toads during copulation, without diverting them from
their work.
In the animal class which more particularly interests us, that of
mammals, rut produces analogous, though less violent, phenomena. Now,
in this case, we know that erotic fury is closely related to congestive
phenomena, having for their seat the procreative glands, which swell
in both male and female, and provoke in the latter a veritable process
of egg-laying. We must not forget that man, in his quality of mammal,
is subject to the common law, that female menstruation is essentially
identical with the intimate phenomena of rut in the females of mammals,
and corresponds also to an ovarian congestion, or to the swelling and
bursting of one or more of the Graafian follicles; it is, in short, a
production of eggs. I need not lay stress on these facts, but it is
right to recall them by the way, since they are the _raison d’être_ of
sexual attraction, without which there would be neither marriage nor
family.
If we are willing to descend to the foundation of things, we find
that human love is essentially rut in an intelligent being. It exalts
all the vital forces of the man just as rut over-excites those of the
animal. If it seems to differ extremely from it, this is simply because
in man the procreative need, a primordial need beyond all others, in
radiating from highly developed nervous centres, awakens and sets in
commotion an entire psychic life unknown to the animal.
There is nothing surprising to the naturalist in this procreative
explosion, which evolves altruism out of egotism. We know too
well, however, that it has not appeared so simple a matter to many
philosophers and celebrated literary men, little familiar with
biological sciences. A belated metaphysician, Schopenhauer, who has
lately become fashionable, adopting the ancient stereotyped doctrine
which makes Nature an anthropomorphic personage, has gratuitously
credited her with quite a profound diplomatic design. According to him,
it is a foregone conclusion that she should intoxicate individuals with
love, and thus urge them on, without their suspecting it, to sacrifice
themselves to the major interest of the preservation of the species.
The glance that we have just thrown on the processes of reproduction,
from the paramœcium up to man, suffices to refute this dream. I will
not, however, dwell on this. What is here of great interest is to
inquire how the superior animals comport themselves when pricked by
desire, and to note the principal traits of their sexual psychology;
for here again we shall have to recognise more than one analogy to
what happens in regard to man; and we shall also see later that there
exists both in the animal and the man some relation between the manner
in which sexual attraction is felt and the greater or less aptitude for
durable pairing, and consequently for marriage and the family.
Without giving more time than is necessary to these short excursions
into animal psychology, it will be well to pause on them for a moment.
They throw a light on the sources of human sociology; they force us
also to break once for all with the abstract and trite theories which
have inspired, on the subject of marriage and the family, so much empty
writing and so many satiating trivialities. It is in animality that
humanity has its root; it is there, consequently, that we must seek the
origins of human sociology.
IV. _Loves of Animals._
In a well-known mystic book occurs an aphorism which has become
celebrated--“Love is strong as death.” The expression is not
exaggerated; we may even say that love is stronger than death, since
it makes us despise it. This is perhaps truer with animals than with
man, and is all the more evident in proportion as the rational will is
weaker, and prudential calculations furnish no check to the impetuosity
of desire. For the majority of insects to love and to die are almost
synonymous, and yet they make no effort to resist the amorous frenzy
which urges them on. But however short may be their sexual career, one
fact has been so generally observed in regard to many of them, that it
may be considered as the expression of a law--_the law of coquetry_.
With the greater number of species that are slightly intelligent, the
female refuses at first to yield to amorous caresses. This useful
practice may well have arisen from selection, for its result has
invariably been to excite the desire of the male, and arouse in him
latent or sleeping faculties. However brief, for example, may be
the life of butterflies, their pairing is not accomplished without
preliminaries; the males court the females during entire hours, and for
a butterfly hours are years.
We can easily imagine that the coquetry of females is more common
amongst vertebrates. When the season of love arrives, many male fishes,
who are then adorned with extremely brilliant colours, make the most of
their transient beauty by spreading out their fins, and by executing
leaps, darts, and seductive manœuvres around the females.
Among fishes we begin already to observe another sexual law, at least
as general as the law of coquetry, which Darwin has called the _law
of battle_. The males dispute with each other for the females, and
must triumph over their rivals before obtaining them. Thus, whilst
the female sticklebacks are very pacific, their males are of warlike
humour, and engage in furious combats in their honour. In the same way
the male salmon, whose lower jaw lengthens into a crook during the
breeding season, are constantly fighting amongst each other.[3]
The higher we ascend in the animal kingdom the more frequent and more
violent become two desires in the males--the desire of appearing
beautiful, and that of driving away rivals. In South America, the males
of the _Analis cristellatus_, a fissilingual saurian, have terrible
battles in the breeding season, the vanquished habitually losing his
tail, which is bitten off by the victor. An old observer also describes
the amorous male alligator as “swollen to bursting, the head and tail
raised, spinning round on the surface of the water, and appearing to
assume the manner of an Indian chief relating his exploits.”[4]
But it is particularly among birds that the sentiment, or rather the
passion, of love breaks out with most force and even poetry. It is
especially to birds that the celebrated Darwinian theory of sexual
selection applies. It is difficult, indeed, not to attribute to this
influence the production of the offensive and defensive arms, the
armaments, the organs of song, the glands of odoriferous secretion
of many male birds, also their courage, the warlike instinct of many
of them, and lastly, the coquetry of the females. Let us listen to
Audubon, as he relates the loves of the skylark:--“Each male is seen
to advance with an imposing and measured step, swinging his tail,
spreading it out to its full extent, then closing it again like a fan
in the hands of a fine lady. Their brilliant notes are more melodious
than ever; they repeat them oftener than usual as they rest on the
branch or summit of some tall meadow reed. Woe to the rival who dares
to enter the lists, or to the male who simply comes in sight of another
male at this moment of veritable delirium: he is suddenly attacked,
and, if he is the weaker, chased beyond the limits of the territory
claimed by the first occupant. Sometimes several birds are seen engaged
in these rude combats, which rarely last more than two or three
minutes: the appearance of a single female suffices to put an instant
end to their quarrel, and they all fly after her as if mad. The female
shows the natural reserve of her sex, without which, even among larks,
every female would probably fail to find a male [this is a little too
flattering for larks, and even for men]. When the latter,” continues
Audubon, “flies towards her, sighing forth his sweetest notes, she
retreats before her ardent admirer in such a way that he knows not
whether he is repulsed or encouraged.”[5]
In this little picture the author has noted all the striking traits of
the love of birds--the courage and jealousy of the male, his efforts
to charm the female by his beauty and the sweetness of his song, and
finally, the coquetry of the female, who retreats, and thus throws oil
on the fire. The combats of the amorous males among many species of
birds have been observed and described minutely. “The large blue male
herons,” says Audubon, “attack each other brutally, without courtesy;
they make passes with their long beaks and parry them like fencing
masters, often for half-an-hour at a time, after which the vanquished
one remains on the ground, wounded or killed.”[6]
The male Canadian geese engage in combats which last more than
half-an-hour; the vanquished sometimes return to the charge, and the
fight always takes place in an enclosed field, in the middle of a
circle formed by the band or clan of which the rivals form part.
But it is especially among the gallinaceæ that love inspires the
males with warlike fury. In this order of birds nearly all the males
are of bellicose temperament. Our barn-door cock is the type of the
gallinaceæ--vain, amorous, and courageous. Black cocks are also always
ready for a fight, and their females quietly look on at their combats,
and afterwards reward the conqueror. We may observe analogous facts,
only somewhat masked, in savage, and even in civilised humanity. The
conduct of certain females of the _Tetras urogallus_ is still more
human. According to Kowalewsky, they take advantage of a moment when
the attention of the old cocks is entirely absorbed by the anxiety of
the combat, to run off with a younger male.[7]
If we may believe certain authors, these amorous duels must not always
be taken seriously. They are often nothing more than parades, tourneys,
or courteous jousts, merely giving the males an opportunity of showing
their beauty, address, or strength. This is the case, according to
Blyth, with the _Tetras umbellus_.[8] In the same way, the grouse of
Florida (_Tetras cuspido_) are said to assemble at night to fight until
the morning with measured grace, and then to separate, having first
exchanged formal courtesies.[9]
But among animals, as well as men, love has more than one string to
his bow. It is especially so with birds, who are the most amorous of
vertebrates. They use several æsthetic means of attracting the female,
such as beauty of plumage and the art of showing it, and also sweetness
of song. Strength seems often to be quite set aside, and the eye and
ear are alone appealed to by the love-stricken males.
Every one has seen our pigeons and doves courteously salute their
mates. Many male birds execute dances and courting parades before
their females. Thus, for example, do the _Tetras phasaniellus_ of
North America, herons (_Cathartes jota_), vultures, etc. The male of
the red-wing struts about before his female, sweeping the ground with
his tail and acting the dandy.[10] The crested duck raises his head
gracefully, straightens his silky aigrette, or bows to his female,
while his throat swells and he utters a sort of gutteral sound.[11]
The male chaffinch places himself in front of the female, that she may
admire at her ease his red throat and blue head.[12]
All this æsthetic display is quite intentional and premeditated;
for while many pheasants and gallinaceous birds parade before their
females, two pheasants of dull colour, the _Crossoptilon auritum_ and
the _Phasianus Wallichii_, refrain from doing so,[13] being apparently
conscious of their modest livery.
Birds often assemble in large numbers to compete in beauty before
pairing. The _Tetras cuspido_ of Florida and the little grouse of
Germany and Scandinavia do this. The latter have daily amorous
assemblies, or _cours d’amour_, of great length, which are renewed
every year in the month of May.[14]
Certain birds are not content with their natural ornaments, however
brilliant these may be, but give the rein to their æsthetic desire
in a way that may be called human. Mr. Gould assures us that some
species of humming-birds decorate the exterior of their nests with
exquisite taste, making use of lichens, feathers, etc. The bower-birds
of Australia (_Chlamydera maculata_, etc.) construct bowers on the
ground, ornamented with feathers, shells, bones, and leaves. These
bowers are intended to shelter the courting parades, and both males
and females join in building them, though the former are more zealous
in the work.[15] But in this erotic architecture the palm is carried
off by a bird of New Guinea, the _Amblyornis inornata_, made known to
us by M. O. Beccari.[16] This bird of rare beauty, for it is a bird of
Paradise, constructs a little conical hut to protect his amours, and
in front of this he arranges a lawn, carpeted with moss, the greenness
of which he relieves by scattering on it various bright-coloured
objects, such as berries, grains, flowers, pebbles, and shells. More
than this, when the flowers are faded, he takes great care to replace
them by fresh ones, so that the eye may be always agreeably flattered.
These curious constructions are solid, lasting for several years, and
probably serving for several birds. What we know of sexual unions among
the lower human races suffices to show how much these birds excel men
in sexual delicacy.
Every one is aware that the melodious voice of many male birds
furnishes them with a powerful means of seduction. Every spring our
nightingales figure in true lyric tournaments. Magpies, who are
ill-endowed from a musical point of view, endeavour to make up for this
organic imperfection by rapping on a dry and sonorous branch, not
only to call the female, but also to charm her; we may say, in fact,
that they perform instrumental music. Another bird, the male of the
weaver-bird, builds an abode of pleasure for himself, where he goes to
sing to his companion.[17]
Audubon has made one observation in regard to Canadian geese which
is in every point applicable to the human species. The older the
birds are, he says, the more they abridge the preliminaries of their
amours. Their poetic and æsthetic sense has become blunted, and they go
straight to their object.
Wherever amongst the animal species supremacy in love is obtained
by force, the male, nearly always the more ardent, has necessarily
become, through the action of selection, larger, stronger, and better
armed than the female. Such is in reality the case in regard to the
greater number of vertebrates; certain exceptions, however, exist,
and naturally these are chiefly found among birds, as they are more
inclined than other types to put a certain delicacy in their sexual
unions. With many species of birds, indeed, the female is larger and
stronger than the male. It is well known to be the same with certain
articulates, and these facts authorise us to admit that there is no
necessary correlation between relative weakness and the female sex.
Must we therefore conclude, with Darwin, that the females of certain
birds owe their excess of size and height to the fact that they have
formerly contested also for the possession of the males? We may be
allowed to doubt it. Almost universally, whether she is large or
small, the female is less ardent than the male, and in the amorous
tragi-comedy she generally plays, from beginning to end, a passive
_rôle_; in the animal kingdom, as well as with mankind, amazons are
rare.
Among birds and vertebrates generally the male is much more impetuous
than the female, and therefore he has no difficulty in accepting for
the moment any companion whatever.[18] This uncontrollable ardour
sometimes even urges the males to commit actual attempts on the safety
of the family. Thus it happens that the male canary (_Fringilla_
_canaria_) persecutes his female while she is sitting, tears her nest,
throws out the eggs, and, in short, tries to excite his mate to become
again a lover, forgetting that she is a mother. In the same way our
domestic cock pursues the sitting hen when she leaves her eggs in order
to feed.[19]
With the cousins-german of man, the mammals, sexual psychology has a
general resemblance to that of birds, but more often it is far less
delicate. And besides this, the sexual customs are naturally less
refined in proportion as the nervous centres of the species are less
perfected. Thus the stupid tatoways meet by chance, smell each other,
copulate and separate with the greatest indifference. Our domestic dog
himself, although so civilised and affectionate, is generally as gross
in his amours as the tatoway.
With birds, as we have seen, the law of battle plays an important
part in sexual selection; but it is often counter-balanced by other
less brutal influences. This is rarely the case in regard to mammals,
with whom especially the right of the strongest regulates the unions.
The law of battle prevails among aquatic as well as land mammals. The
combats of the male stags, in the rutting season, are celebrated. The
combatants have been known to succumb without being able to disentangle
their interlocked antlers; but seals and male sperm-whales fight with
equal fury, and so also do the males of the Greenland whale.[20]
In mammals, as in birds, and as in man, sexual desire raises and
intensifies all the faculties, and seems to elevate the individual
above the level of normal life. Animals in a state of rut become
bolder, more ferocious, and more dangerous. The elephant, pacific
enough by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. The
Sanskrit poems constantly recur to the simile of the elephant in rut to
express the highest degree of strength, nobility, grandeur, and even
beauty.
But obviously I must not linger very long over the loves of the
animals. My chief object is to study sexual union and marriage
amongst human beings. The rut of animals and their sexual passions
merely interest us here as preliminary studies, which throw light on
the origin of analogous sentiments in mankind. Before leaving this
subject, however, it will be useful to note a few more facts which,
from the point of view of sexual psychology, bring animals and men near
to each other.
The old Cartesian paradox, which makes the animal an unconscious
machine, has still many partisans. A widely-prevailing prejudice
insists that animals always obey blind instincts, while man alone,
_homo sapiens_, made after the image of God, weighs motives,
deliberates and chooses. Now, as procreation constitutes one of the
great necessities of organised beings, and is an imperious law which no
species can elude without disappearing, surely we ought to find amongst
animals the most exact regularity in the acts connected with it. Man
alone ought to have the privilege of introducing caprice and free
choice into love. It is not so, however. On this side of his nature,
as on all the others, man and animal approach, resemble, and copy each
other. In his celebrated invocation to Venus, Lucretius has truly said,
proclaiming the universal empire of the instinct of reproduction--
“Per te quoniam genus omne animantum
Concipitur, visitque exortum lumine solis.”
The animal, as well as the morally developed man, is capable of
preference and individual passion; he does not yield blindly and
passively to sexual love.
According to observers and breeders, it is the female who is specially
susceptible of sentimental selection. The male, even the male of birds,
is more ardent than the female, that is to say, more intoxicated and
more sharply pricked by instinct, and thus generally accepts any
female whatever: all are alike to him. This is the rule, but it is not
without exceptions; thus, the male pheasant shows a singular aversion
to certain hens. Amongst the long-tailed ducks some females have
evidently a particular charm for the males, and are courted more than
the others.[21] The pigeon of the dovecot shows a strong aversion to
the species modified by breeders, which he regards as deteriorated.[22]
Stallions are often capricious. It was necessary, for example, to
use stratagem in order to induce the famous stallion Monarch to beget
Gladiateur, who became still more famous.[23] Analogous facts have been
observed in regard to bulls.[24]
But it is more especially the females who introduce individual fancy
into sexual love. They are subject to singular and inexplicable
aversions. Mares sometimes resist, and it is necessary to deceive
them.[25] Female pigeons occasionally show a strong dislike to certain
males without apparent cause, and refuse to yield to their caresses. At
other times a female pigeon, suddenly forgetting the constancy of her
species, abandons her old mate or legitimate spouse to fall violently
in love with another male. In the same way peahens sometimes show a
lively attachment to a particular peacock.[26] High-bred bitches, led
astray by passion, trample under foot their dignity, honour, and all
care for nobility of blood, to yield themselves to pug-dogs of low
breed or mongrel males. We are told of some who have persisted for
entire weeks in these degrading passions, repulsing between times the
most distinguished of their own race.[27]
Even among species noted for their fidelity it sometimes happens
that acts of sexual looseness are committed. The female pigeon often
abandons her mate if the latter is wounded or becomes weak.[28]
Misfortune is not attractive, and love does not always inspire heroism.
In concluding this short study of sexual union in the animal kingdom, I
will attempt to formulate the general propositions which may be drawn
from it.
All organic species undergo the tyranny of the procreative function,
which is a guarantee of the duration of the type.
The phenomenon of reproduction, when detached from all the complicated
accessories which often conceal it in bi-sexual species, goes back
essentially to the conjugation of two cellules.
With intelligent animals the procreative function echoes in the nervous
centres under the form of violent desires, which intensify all the
psychic and physical faculties in awakening what we call love.
At its base, the love of animals does not differ from that of man.
Doubtless it is never such a quintessence as the love of Petrarch,
but it is often more delicate than that of inferior races, and of
ill-conditioned individuals, who, though belonging to the human race,
seek for nothing in love but, to use an energetic expression of Amyot’s
Plutarch, to “get drunk.”
But among many of the animal species the sexual union induces a durable
association, having for its object the rearing of young. In nobility,
delicacy, and devotion these unions do not yield precedence to many
human unions. They deserve attentive study.
I have now, therefore, to consider marriage and the family amongst the
animals.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Anthropogenia_, p. 577.
[2] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 384.
[3] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 365.
[4] Bartram, _Travels through Carolina_, p. 128 (1791).
[5] Audubon, _Scènes de la Nature dans les États-Unis_, vol. i. p. 383.
[6] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 66.
[7] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 399.
[8] _Ibid._ p. 403.
[9] Espinas, _Sociétés Animales_, p. 326.
[10] Audubon, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 305.
[11] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 50.
[12] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 438.
[13] _Ibid._ p. 438.
[14] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 433.--Espinas, _Soc. Animales_, p.
326.
[15] _Ibid._ pp. 418, 453.
[16] _Annali del Museo civico di storia naturale di Genova_, t. ix.
fase 3-4, 1877.
[17] Espinas, _loc. cit._, pp. 299, 438.
[18] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 460.
[19] Houzeau, _Facultés mentales des animaux_, t. I^{er.} p. 292.
[20] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, pp. 550, 556.
[21] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, pp. 460, 461.
[22] _Ibid._ p. 457.
[23] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 575.
[24] _Ibid._ p. 576.
[25] _Ibid._ p. 576.
[26] _Ibid._ pp. 458, 459.
[27] _Ibid._ p. 574.
[28] _Ibid._ p. 234.