PROMISCUITY.
I. _Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity?_--Promiscuity rare among
the superior vertebrates--It has been exceptional in mankind.
II. _Cases of Human Promiscuity._--Promiscuity among the Troglodytes,
the ancient Arabs, the Agathyrses, the Anses, the Garamantes, the
ancient Greeks, in the _Timæus_, in China, in India, among the
Andamanites, in California, among the aborigines of India, among the
Zaporogs, and the Ansarians--Insufficience of these proofs.
III. _Hetaïrism._--_Jus primæ noctis_--Religious hetaïrism at Babylon,
in Armenia--Religious prostitution--Religious defloration--The _jus
primæ noctis_ with the Nasamons, in the Balearic Isles, in ancient
Peru, in Asia, etc.--The right of the chief with the Kaffirs, in New
Zealand, in New Mexico, in Cochin-China, in feudal Europe--The right
of religious prelibation--Religious defloration in Cambodia--The
reason of the right of prelibation--The _jus primæ noctis_ confounded
with the simple licence of unmarried women--Shamelessness of girls in
Australia, Polynesia, America, Malaya, Abyssinia, etc.--The _indotata_
in primitive Rome--Loan and barter of women in America and elsewhere,
and among the ancient Arabs--Actual promiscuity has been rare in
humanity.
I. _Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity?_
Having made our preliminary investigation of love, sexual unions,
marriage, or what corresponds to it, and the family in the animal
kingdom, we are now in a position to approach the examination of
corresponding social facts in regard to man. The method of evolution
requires us to begin our inquiry with the lowest forms of sexual
association, and there is none lower, morally and intellectually, than
promiscuity; that is to say, a social condition so gross that within
a group, a horde, or a tribe, all the women belong, without rule or
distinction, to all the men. In a society so bestial there is surely
no room for what we call love, however grossly we may understand this
sentiment. There is no choice, no preference; the sexual need is
reduced to its simplest expression, and absolutely debased to the level
of the nutritive needs; love is no more than a hunger or thirst of
another kind; there is no longer any distinction between the man and
the tatoway.
Some sociologists have affirmed, without hesitation, that community
of women represented a primitive and necessary stage of the sexual
associations of mankind. Surely they would have been less dogmatic
on this point if, before approaching human sociology, they had first
consulted animal sociology, as we have done. We have seen that many
vertebrated animals are capable of a really exclusive and jealous
passion, even when they are determined polygamists. As a matter of
fact, the vertebrates with whom love is merely a need, like any other,
seem to be a very small minority. Some among them, especially birds,
are models of fidelity, constancy, and devoted attachment, which may
well inspire man with feelings of modesty. Mammals, while less delicate
in their love than many birds, are, however, for the most part, already
on a moral level incompatible with promiscuity. The mammals nearest to
man, those whom we may consider as the effigies of our nearest animal
ancestors, the anthropoid apes, are sometimes monogamous and sometimes
polygamous, but, as a rule, they cannot endure promiscuity. Now, this
fact manifestly constitutes a very strong presumption against the
basis of the theory according to which promiscuity has been, with the
human species, the primitive and necessary stage of sexual unions. Do
we thus mean to say that there is no example of promiscuity in human
societies, primitive or not? Far from it. It would be impossible
to affirm this without neglecting a large number of facts observed
in antiquity or observable in our own day. But we are warranted in
believing that the very inferior stage of promiscuity has never been
other than exceptional in humanity. If it has existed here and there,
it is that by the very reason of the relative superiority of his
intelligence, man is less rigorously subject to general laws, and that
he knows sometimes how to modify or infringe them; there is more room
for caprice in his existence than in the life of the animals.
II. _Some Cases of Human Promiscuity._
Human groups have, then, practised promiscuity, and it is not quite
impossible that some of them practise it still. Exceptional as these
facts may be, they are interesting to sociologists, and it is important
to mention and to criticise them also. We are indebted for our
knowledge of a certain number of them to the writers of Greco-Latin
antiquity. I will give them in full, at least those that deserve or
have obtained more or less credit.
“Throughout the Troglodyte country,” relates Strabo, “the people lead
a nomad life. Each tribe has its chief, or _tyrant_. The women and the
children are possessed in common, with the exception of the wives and
children of the chief, and whoever is guilty of adultery with one of
the wives of the chief is punished by a fine consisting of the payment
of a sheep.”[66]
Another passage of Strabo’s, which is better known, is often quoted
as proving a primitive epoch of promiscuity among the ancient Arabs
also. This passage is curious and interesting, but it has not in the
least the extent of signification that is attributed to it. Concerning
the conjugal customs of the peoples of Arabia Felix, Strabo speaks as
follows:--“Community of goods exists between all the members of the
same family, but there is only one master, who is always the eldest
of the family. They have only one wife between them all, and he who
can forestall the others enters her apartment the first, and enjoys
her, after having taken the precaution of placing his staff across
the door (it is the custom for every man to carry a staff). She never
spends the night with any but the eldest, the chief. This promiscuity
makes them all brothers. We must add that they have commerce with
their own mothers. On the other hand, adultery, which means for them
commerce with a lover who is not of the family, is pitilessly punished
with death. The daughter of one of the kings of the country, who
was marvellously beautiful, had fifteen brothers, all desperately in
love with her, and who, for this reason, took turns in enjoying her
without intermission. Fatigued with their assiduity, she invented the
following stratagem. She procured staffs exactly similar to those of
her brothers, and when one of them left her, she quickly placed across
the door the staff similar to that of the brother who had just quitted
her, then replaced it shortly after by another, and so on, taking care
not to place there the staff like the brother’s whose visit she was
expecting. Now, one day, when all the brothers were together in the
public place, one of them went to her door, and concluded, at the sight
of the staff, that some one was with her; but, as he had left all his
brothers together, he believed in a flagrant act of adultery, hastened
to seek their father, and led him to the spot. He was, however, forced
to acknowledge in his presence that he had slandered his sister.”[67]
Even admitting the perfect accuracy of the fact related by Strabo (and
there is nothing in it to surprise an ethnographical sociologist), the
word promiscuity is here quite inappropriate. The custom of maternal
incest, which is not without example, perhaps warrants the supposition
of ancient familial promiscuity; but in reality the Arabs of whom
Strabo speaks were simply polyandrous, and they were so precisely
in the manner of the Thibetans of the present day; they practised
fraternal polyandry--a conjugal form to which we shall presently return.
The other examples of so-called promiscuity related by the writers of
antiquity are, unfortunately, so briefly given that it is difficult to
judge of their value.
“The Agathyrses” (Scythians), says Herodotus, “are the most delicate
of men; their ornaments are chiefly of gold. They have their women
in common in order that they may all be brothers, and that, being so
nearly related, they may feel neither hatred nor envy against each
other.”[68]
In another passage Herodotus says of the Massagetes (Scythians), “Each
man marries a wife, but they use them all in common.” The assertion
is grossly contradictory, and can only relate to the extremely loose
manners of the unmarried women. As a matter of fact, amongst many
savage or barbarous peoples chastity is not imposed on the women, as
long as they have no proprietors. “When one of them desires a woman,”
continues Herodotus, “he suspends his quiver in front of his chariot,
and tranquilly unites with her.”[69]
This is merely a trait of very free manners, which may be placed by
the side of many others, proving that modesty has been slow of growth
in the human brain. The Tahitians were still more cynical than the
Massagetes. Herodotus himself speaks of black Indians (Tamils) “who
coupled as publicly as beasts” (iii. 101), and V. Jacquemont has
related that Runjeet Singh would ride with one of his wives on the
back of an elephant and take his pleasure publicly with his companion,
careless of censure (V. Jacquemont, _Corres._, 16th March 1831). It
would be very easy, by searching into ethnography, to accumulate facts
of this kind; but for the moment I have only to continue my examination
of old Greco-Roman texts relating more or less to promiscuity. I
therefore return to them. Herodotus again relates, in speaking of the
Anses, an Ethiopian tribe: “Their women are common; they do not live
with them, but couple after the manner of beasts. When a vigorous child
is born to a woman, all the men go to see it at the third month, and
he whom it most resembles acknowledges it for his.”[70] And here we
have Pliny saying also of the Garamantes: _Garamantes matrimoniorum
exsortes, passim cum feminis degunt_.[71]
Strabo, too, affirms of the Celtic population of Ierne (Ireland), “the
men have public commerce with all kinds of women, even with their
mothers and sisters.”[72]
The passages that I have just quoted are those which are most
frequently used to support the pretension that human societies have
begun with promiscuity; they are at once the most ancient, most
authentic, and most explicit. We may add to them the assertion of
Varro, quoted by Saint Augustine,[73] according to which the Greeks,
prior to the time of Cecrops, lived in promiscuity. But how is it
possible not to be struck with the weakness of these historical
proofs? Some of them are mere general assertions, while others plainly
relate either to social anomalies or to cases of polyandry. There is no
doubt as to this in regard to the ancient Arabs of whom Strabo speaks,
and also to the Protohellenes of Varro. This last instance certainly
relates to the matriarchal family, of which I shall have to speak again
at some length. In fact, after having stated that the Protohellenes had
no marriage, Varro adds that the children only knew their mother and
bore her name. The proof is decisive, for the matriarchate does not in
the least exclude marriage, as we shall see later, and in the case of
the Lydians it lasted until the time of Herodotus.
In order to complete this review of ancient texts, I will mention
further the passage of the _Timæus_ in which Socrates speaks of the
community of wives:--“On the subject of the procreation of children we
established a community of wives and children; and we devised means
that no one should ever know his own child. They were to imagine that
they were of one family, and to regard those who were within a certain
limit of age as brothers and sisters; and again, those who were of an
elder generation as parents and grandparents, and those who were of a
younger generation as children and grandchildren.”
But Plato had a lively imagination. He was a “great dreamer,” as
Voltaire said of him, and this passage evidently describes a purely
utopian society.
Traditions relative to a very ancient epoch of promiscuity are found
here and there outside the Greco-Roman world. In China, for example,
the women are said to have been common until the reign of Fouhi.[74] A
tradition of the same kind, but more explicitly stated, is mentioned in
the Mahabharata (i. 503): “Formerly it was not a crime to be faithless
to a husband; it was even a duty.... This custom is observed in our own
days among the Kourous of the north.... The females of all classes are
common on the earth; as are the cows, so are the women; each one has
her caste.... It is Civéta-Ketou who has established a limit for the
men and women on the earth.”[75] This assertion is vague, and has not
the least proof to support it.
If, continuing our inquiry, we attempt to correct these historical
documents by ethnographical information, we shall hardly find, on
this side of the subject more than on the other, anything but simple
assertions, which are either too vague or too brief, or evidently open
to dispute.
In the Andaman Islands, or at least in certain of them, the women
are said to have been held in common till quite recently. Every
woman belonged to all the men of the tribe, and resistance to any of
them was a crime severely punished.[76] This time we seem to have
found, at length, a case of actual legal promiscuity. But, according
to other accounts, the Andamanite man and woman contract, on the
contrary, a monogamic and temporary union, and remain together, in
case of pregnancy and maternity, until the child is weaned, as do
many animals.[77] Now, however short a conjugal union may be, it is
incompatible with promiscuity.
The indigenous Indians of California, who are among the lowest of
human races, couple after the manner of inferior mammals, without the
least formality, and according to the caprice of the moment.[78] They
are said even to celebrate feasts and propitiatory dances, which are
followed by a general promiscuity.[79]
According to Major Ross King, some aboriginal tribes of India, notably
the Kouroumbas and the Iroulas, have no idea of marriage, and live
in promiscuity.[80] The only prohibitory rule consists in not having
intimate commerce with a person belonging to another class or caste;
but there seem only to be two classes in the tribe.
Barbarous tribes belonging to white races are said also to have
practised promiscuity in modern times. Among certain tribes of the
Zaporog Cossacks the women are said to be common, and are confined
in separate camps.[81] Besides these, the Ansarians, mountaineers of
Syria, are said to practise, not promiscuity pure and simple, or civil
promiscuity, but a religious promiscuity, analogous to that of the
ancient Gnostics[82] and the Areoïs of Tahiti. These Ansarians must
doubtless have been confounded with the Yazidies, a sect of Arabs, also
Syrians, practising a sort of manichæism, and who, it is said, assemble
periodically every month, or every three months, in fraternal agapæ, at
the conclusion of which they unite in the darkness without heed as to
adultery or incest. Throughout the Syrian Orient the erotic festival of
the Yazidies is called by a significant name, _Daour-el-Cachfeh_--the
game of catching.[83] But even if the fact were true, what does it
show? Only one more aberration to the score of the phallic religions.
Here I end my enumeration. Evidently nothing very convincing results
from it. The greater number of the facts that I have just quoted
have either been carelessly observed, or contested, or affirmed by a
single witness, or depend merely on hearsay evidence. It is prudent,
therefore, to regard them with lawful suspicion, and even if certain of
them are exact, we must be careful not to draw general conclusions from
them. Promiscuity may have been adopted by certain small human groups,
more probably by certain associations or brotherhoods. Thus the chiefs
of the Namaquoi Hottentots willingly held their wives in common.
When we come to study the family we shall find that among the Kamilaroi
of Australia all the women of one clan are reputed to be the wives of
all the men of another. But this community is often only fictitious,
and, besides, it is already regulated; it is not promiscuity pure and
simple. So far, nothing proves sufficiently that there has been a
universal stage of promiscuity among mankind. Some theorists have been
so hasty to come to a conclusion on this point that they have gone
beyond actual experience. Moreover, as I have been careful to remark,
the simple fact that man is a mammalian primate weakens this hypothesis
in advance, since the nearest relations of man in the animal kingdom
are in general polygamous, and even sometimes monogamous.
III. _Hetaïrism.--Jus primæ noctis._
Not only is it impossible to admit that mankind has, in all times and
places, passed through a necessary stage of promiscuity, but we must
go further, and also renounce a theory which has had some degree of
success lately--the theory of obligatory primitive hetaïrism. According
to this theory, when the instinct of holding feminine property arose in
man, some individuals arrogated the right to keep for themselves one
or more of the women hitherto common. The community then protested,
and while tolerating this derogation from ancient usage, exacted that
the bride, or purchased woman, should make an act of hetaïrism, or
prostitution, before belonging to one man only.
It is Herodotus who has transmitted to us the most striking example of
this kind, the one invoked by all the theorists of hetaïrism. I shall,
therefore, quote it at length: “The most disgraceful of the Babylonian
customs is the following. Every native woman is obliged, once in her
life, to sit in the temple of Venus and have intercourse with some
stranger. And many, disdaining to sit with the rest, being proud on
account of their wealth, come in covered carriages, and take up their
station at the temple with a numerous train of servants attending them.
But the far greater part do this: many sit down in the temple of Venus,
wearing a crown of cord round their heads; some are continually coming
and others are going out. Passages marked out in a straight line lead
in every direction through the women, along which strangers pass and
make their choice. When a woman has once seated herself, she must not
return home till some stranger has thrown a piece of silver into her
lap and lain with her outside the temple. He who throws the silver
must say thus: ‘I beseech the goddess Mylitta to favour thee;’ for the
Assyrians call Venus Mylitta. The silver may be ever so small, for she
will not reject it, inasmuch as it is not lawful for her to do so, for
such silver is accounted sacred. The woman follows the first man that
throws, and refuses no one. But when she has had intercourse, and has
absolved herself from her obligations to the goddess, she returns home;
and after that time, however great a sum you may give her, you will
not gain possession of her. Those that are endowed with beauty and
symmetry of shape are soon set free; but the deformed are detained a
long time, from inability to satisfy the law, for some wait for a space
of three or four years. In some parts of Cyprus there is a custom very
similar.”[84]
After having read this passage, we are surprised at the import that has
been attributed to it. Even admitting the obligation and universality
of the custom in ancient Babylon, it is only an example of religious
prostitution, with traces of exogamy. The Babylonians honoured Mylitta,
just as the Armenians, according to Strabo,[85] venerated the goddess
Anaïtis. “They have erected temples to Anaïtis in various places,
especially in the Akilisenus, and have attached to these temples a good
number of hierodules, or sacred slaves, of both sexes. So far, indeed,
there is no ground for astonishment; but their devotion goes further,
and it is the custom for the most illustrious personages to consecrate
their virgin daughters to the goddess. This in no way prevents the
latter from easily finding husbands, even after they have prostituted
themselves for a long time in the temples of Anaïtis. No man feels on
this account any repugnance to take them as wives.”
I quote in full these venerable passages, which have been so much
used and abused, in order that it may not be possible to mistake
their signification. Once more we repeat that they merely relate to
erotico-religious aberrations. The procreative need, or delirium,
has inspired men with many foolish ideas, and probably will continue
to do so. A very slight knowledge of mythology is enough to show us
that numerous cults have been founded on the sexual instinct, and
these cults are naturally accompanied by special practices, little in
accordance with our European morality. Religious prostitution, which
was widely spread in Greek antiquity, has been also found in India,
where every temple of renown had its bayadères, the only women in India
to whom, until quite recently, any instruction was given.
The far more peculiar custom of _Tchin-than_, or religious
defloration, formerly in use in Cambodia[86] and in Malabar, is
evidently akin to religious prostitution. But this custom is nothing
else than a mystic transformation of what was called the _jus primæ
noctis_, of which I must first speak. It is important to distinguish
several varieties of it. The first and most simple was the custom by
which every newly-married woman, before belonging to her husband, was
obliged to give herself, or be given, to a certain number of men,
either relatives, friends, or fellow-citizens. This was the custom
among the Nasamons, according to Herodotus: “When a Nasamon marries,
custom requires that his bride should yield herself on the first night
to all his guests in turn; each one who has had commerce with her makes
her a present, which he has been mindful to bring with him.”[87]
A similar custom is said to have existed in various countries of the
globe, in ancient times in the Balearic Isles, more recently among the
ancient Peruvians, in our own times among several aboriginal tribes of
India; in Burmah, in Cashmere, in the south of Arabia, in Madagascar,
and in New Zealand;[88] but always as an exceptional practice, in
use only in a small group or tribe. It is not impossible that here
and there this usage, which is rare enough, may have been derived
traditionally from an ancient marriage by classes, analogous to that
still found among the Kamilaroi of Australia; but it may have been
simply a mark of good-fellowship, or of conjugal generosity on the part
of the bridegroom.
The seignorial _jus primæ noctis_, the right of the lord, is much
more widely spread, and its existence cannot be contested. Among the
Kaffirs, says Hamilton,[89] the chiefs have the choice of the women for
several leagues round. So also, until lately, in New Zealand, every
pretty girl was _taboo_ for the vulgar, and had to be first reserved
for the chief.[90] In New Mexico, with the Tahous, as Castañeda informs
us, it is necessary, after having purchased the girl from her parents,
to submit her to the seignorial right of the cacique, or to a priest
of high rank. Religion already begins to insinuate itself into this
singular right.[91]
According to Marco Polo, the same custom existed in the thirteenth
century in Cochin-China. “Know,” says the old chronicler, “no woman can
marry without the king first seeing her. If she pleases him, he takes
her to wife; if she does not please him, he gives her enough from his
own property to enable her to marry.
“In the year 1280 of Christ, when Messire Marco Polo was in that
country, the king had three hundred and eighty-six children, male and
female.”[92]
Under the feudal system in Europe this right of prelibation, or
marquette (designated in old French by the expressive term _droit de
culage_), has been in use in many fiefs, and until a very recent epoch.
Almost in our own days certain lords of the Netherlands, of Prussia,
and of Germany, still claimed it. In a French title-deed of 1507 we
read that the Count d’Eu has the right of prelibation in the said place
when any one marries.[93] More than this, ecclesiastics, and even
bishops, have been known to claim this right in their quality of feudal
lords. “I have seen,” says Boetius, “in the court at Bourges, before
the metropolitan, an appeal by a certain parish priest, who pretended
to claim the first night of young brides, according to the received
usage. The demand was rejected with indignation, the custom unanimously
proscribed, and the scandalous priest condemned to pay a fine.”
“In a kingdom of Malabar,” says J. Forbes, “the ecclesiastical power
took precedence of the civil on this particular point, and the
sovereign himself passed under the yoke. Like the other women, the
queen had to submit to the right of prelibation exercised by the
high priest, who had a right to the first three nights, and who was
paid fifty pieces of gold besides for his trouble.”[94] In Cambodia,
according to an ancient Chinese traveller, religious prelibation
was obligatory on all the young girls, and was performed every year
with great ceremony. The parents who had daughters to marry made a
declaration of it, and a public functionary fixed the day for the
celebration of _Tchin-than_, or the legal and religious defloration.
For this the intervention of a Buddhist priest, or a _tao-sse_
priest, was indispensable. The parents entreated his service, which
was very costly, and for this reason girls who were poor retained
their virginity longer than the rich. It even sometimes happened that
pious persons, moved by a sentiment of charity, took on themselves
the payment of the costs of the ceremony for those who had been
waiting a long time. Great display attended it. On the appointed day
the officiating priest was carried in the evening with much pomp to
the festive house, and the next morning he was reconducted home in a
palanquin with parasol, drum, and music, and not without being offered
fresh presents. A. de Rémusat has given, in Latin, some curious
particulars of the intimate details of the ceremony, which I cannot
relate here.[95]
These few examples suffice to show how very much morality is a relative
thing, but they cannot serve as a basis to a general theory of
hetaïrism.
The seignorial right of prelibation is simply an abuse of force and
good pleasure; only, viewed in the light of our morality, it shocks us
more than the others. One might justify it, however, by reasons which
Bossuet considered sufficient to render slavery lawful. The right of
conquest has given, or still gives, all over the world, every sort
of right over the vanquished, even the right of life and death. The
conqueror, “in a just war,” says the sage of Meaux, may legitimately
kill the vanquished and, _a fortiori_, enslave him; and one may add,
following out a logical conclusion, that it is lawful for him to
dispose as he pleases of his wife and daughter. As a matter of course,
the priest, in his quality of lord, can claim the same privileges as
the layman; but besides this, if it should happen that his particular
religion lends itself to the idea by being founded in some manner on
the worship of the principle of procreation, as is so frequently the
case with oriental religions, a sort of superstitious prestige will
come to adorn and clothe this sacerdotal shamelessness.
In all this there is hardly any room for hetaïrism considered as a
compensation to the community for damage to its ancient rights.
Admitting that the _jus primæ noctis_ of relatives and friends does
not imply simple polyandry, it may very naturally be explained by
primitive laxity of morals. Among the greater number of peoples who
are very slightly or not at all civilised, the women are free to give
or sell themselves before marriage as they please, and as it does not
entail any disgrace, they use the liberty largely. Besides, in many
countries the husband had, or still has, over his wife or wives all the
rights of a proprietor over the thing possessed. Now, considering he
is a stranger to all modesty and sexual restraint, nothing seems more
natural, if he has some instinct of sociability, than to lend his wife
to his friends, just as he would do them an act of politeness, make
them a present, or invite them to a feast, all without thinking any
evil. This view of the practice is supported by many facts.
Doubtless it is the great sexual licence accorded to young girls in so
many countries which has led many observers and travellers to conclude
that promiscuity has been systematically established. In Australia
the girls cohabit from the age of ten with young boys of fourteen or
fifteen, without rebuke from any one, and there are even great sexual
orgies in which the signal is given to the young people for liberty to
unite freely in open day.[96]
In the greater number of savage countries these customs are common. At
Nouka-Hiva, or more generally all over Polynesia, the young girls did
not marry, that is to say, did not become the chattel of a man, before
the age of nineteen or twenty, and until then they contracted a great
number of capricious unions, which became lasting only in case of the
birth of children.[97]
In all these islands, moreover, modesty was unknown, and the members of
each family passed the night side by side on mats, and entirely naked.
The place of honour, in the centre, was occupied by the master of the
house, flanked by his wife or wives.[98]
Analogous customs, extremely licentious in our eyes, but perfectly
natural for primitive peoples, were in full force among all the
indigenous races of America.
The Chinouk girls give or hire themselves out as they please. In the
latter case the parents often take the payment.[99]
The Aymaras, who have no word for marriage, and who are such a simple
folk that, in their opinion, any crime can be committed with impunity
on Good Friday, since God is dead on that day, contract without scruple
free unions merely for the duration of the evening of a feast. The
contract is made in mimic language, and in settling it the man and
woman exchange head-gear only.[100]
Similar manners prevail among the Esquimaux, the Kaffirs, and the Dyaks
of Borneo. In Japan the parents willingly hire out their daughters,
either to private individuals or to houses of prostitution, for a
period of several years, and the girls are in no way dishonoured
thereby. In Abyssinia, says Bruce, outside of the conjugal bond, which
is easily tied or untied, the women dispose of their person as they
please.
In primitive Rome, as with us, the young girl without dowry, the
_indotata_, was held in moderate esteem; and therefore many young
girls procured themselves a dowry by trafficking their persons. An old
Latin proverb has handed down the souvenir of this ancient fashion of
procuring a dowry: _Tusco more, tute tibi dotem quæris corpore_.[101]
Now, in all these customs, at once so simple and so gross, it is
impossible to see the traces of an enforced hetaïrism, derived from
an antique period of promiscuity, which was also equally obligatory.
They are simply traits of animal laxity. Men were still almost devoid
of moral training, and the care for decency and modesty was of the
slightest.
If in a primitive country a certain amount of restraint is imposed
on a woman who is married, or rather owned by a man, it is solely
because she is considered as property, held by the same title as a
field or a domestic animal. For her to dispose of her person without
authorisation is often a capital crime; but the husband, on the
contrary, has in many countries the undisputed right to lend, let out,
or barter his wife or wives: _jus utendi et abutendi_. I will mention a
few of these marital customs.
In America, from the land of the Esquimaux to Patagonia, the loan of
the wife is not only lawful, but praiseworthy. Egidius says of the
Esquimaux, “that those who lend their wives to their friends without
the least hesitation are reputed in the tribe as having the best and
noblest character.”[102] The English traveller, Captain Ross, relates
that one of the Esquimaux prowling around his ship was accompanied by
the wives and children of one of his intimate friends, to whom he had,
in the preceding autumn, confided, on his side, his own two wives.
The exchange was to terminate at a fixed time, and the Esquimaux of
whom Captain Ross speaks was very indignant with his friend because
the latter, having forgotten himself while chasing the deer in distant
regions, was not exact in keeping the engagement.[103]
On this point the Redskins are not more delicate than the Esquimaux.
Thus the Natchez make no difficulty of lending their wives to their
friends.[104] In New Mexico the Yuma husbands willingly hire out their
wives and their slaves, without making any difference. And, besides,
with them, as in many other countries, to furnish a guest with a
temporary wife is simply one of the duties of hospitality.[105] The
chiefs of the Noutka Columbians barter their wives among each other as
a sign of friendship.[106] Nothing would be easier than to enumerate a
great number of facts of the same kind observed in Australia, Africa,
Polynesia, Mongolia, and almost everywhere. But it is more remarkable
to meet with the same custom in a Mussulman country. Nevertheless,
Burckhardt relates that the Merekedeh, a branch of the great tribe
of Asyr, understood hospitality in this primitive manner. To every
stranger received under their tents or in their houses, they offered
a woman of the family, and most often a wife of the host himself.
The young girls alone were exempt from this strange service. It was
considered the duty of the traveller to conform with a good grace to
the custom, otherwise he was hooted and chased from the village or
camp by the women and children. This extreme manner of understanding
hospitality was very ancient and deeply rooted, and it was not without
difficulty that the conquering Wahabites brought the Asyrs to renounce
it.[107] But these customs were not specially confined to the Asyrs;
they were in force throughout prehistoric Arabia. An old Arab writer,
Ibn al Moghawir, mentions them. “Sometimes,” he says, “the wife was
actually placed at the disposition of the guest; at other times, the
offer was only symbolic. The guests were invited to press the wife
in their arms, and to give her kisses, but the poignard would have
revenged any further liberties.”[108] It is not very long since the
same practice prevailed in Kordofan and Djebel-Taggale.[109] Certain
traits of morals related by the Greco-Latin writers show that in Rome,
and Greece also, if it was not the husband’s duty to lend his wife to
his friends, he had at least the right to do so. At Sparta, Lycurgus
authorised husbands to be thus liberal with their wives whenever they
judged their friends worthy of this honour. And, further, the public
opinion of Sparta strongly approved the conduct of an aged husband
who took care to procure for his wife a young, handsome, and virtuous
substitute.[110]
The same customs prevailed at Athens, where Socrates, it is said,
lent his wife Xantippe to his friend Alcibiades; and at Rome,[111]
where the austere Cato the elder gave up his wife Marcia to his friend
Hortensius, and afterwards took her back, much enriched, it is true, at
the death of this friend.
All these facts relate, therefore, to a very widely-spread and almost
universal custom, which is in perfect accord with the extremely low
position that has been granted to women in the greater number of savage
and barbarous societies. The married woman, being exactly assimilated
to a slave or a thing possessed, might thenceforth be treated as such;
and the right of property, soon becoming sacred, easily stood before
any scruples of decency which were still rare and weak.
After the preceding investigation, there appears to be no difficulty
in refuting the sociological theory, far too prevalent, according to
which the entire human race has passed through a primitive period of
promiscuity followed by hetaïrism. Our first ancestors, the precursors
of man, were surely very analogous to the other primates. We may,
therefore, conclude that, like them, they generally lived in polygamous
families. When these almost human little groups were associated in
hordes or tribes, it is quite possible that great laxity of morals may
have prevailed amongst them, but not a legal or obligatory promiscuity.
In a society sufficiently numerous and savage it is no easy task for a
man to guard his feminine property, for the women are not by any means
averse to adventures. Their modesty is still very slight, and before
belonging specially to one man they have generally been given or sold
to many others. At that period of the social evolution public opinion
saw no harm in all this. And, besides, the husband or the proprietor of
the woman considered her absolutely as his thing, and did not scruple
to lend her to his friends, to barter her, or to hire her out.
These primitive customs, combined with polyandrous or collective
marriage and the matriarchate, have deceived many observers, both
ancient and modern.
When we come to scrutinise these facts, and to view them in the light
of animal sociology, we arrive at the conclusion that human promiscuity
can only have been rare and exceptional, and that the theory of
the community of wives and of obligatory hetaïrism will not bear
examination.
The procreative need is one of the most tyrannical, and primitive
man has satisfied it as he best could, without the least delicate
refinement; but the egotism of individuals has had for its result, from
the origin of human societies, the formation of unions based on force,
and, correlatively, a right of property which fettered more or less
rigorously the liberty of the women who were thus possessed.
These primitive unions were concluded according to the chance caprices
or needs of extremely gross societies, who cared little to submit to a
uniform conjugal type. There are some very singular ones among them,
which differ essentially from the legal forms of marriage finally and
very tardily adopted by the majority of mankind. It is these isolated
conjugal unions, extravagant and immoral in our eyes, that we now have
to consider.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Herodotus, Book xvi. p. 17.
[67] Strabo, vol. xvi. ch. iv. p. 25.
[68] Herodotus, Book i. p. 216.
[69] Herodotus, iv. 104.
[70] _Ibid._ iv. 180.
[71] Pliny, v. 8.
[72] Strabo, iv. 4.
[73] Varro, _Apud. August. de Civit. Dei_., xviii. 9.
[74] Goguet, _Orig. des lois_, t. iii. p. 388.
[75] Quoted by Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 66.
[76] _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, New Series, vol. ii. p. 35.
[77] _Ibid._ vol. v. p. 45.
[78] Bagaert, _Smithsonian Report_, p. 368, 1863.
[79] Bancroft, _Native Races of Pacific_, vol. i. p. 352.
[80] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 110.
[81] Campenhausen, _Bemerk. über Russland_.
[82] Volney, _Syria_, ch. iii.
[83] Mayeux, _Les Bédouins ou Arabes du Désert_ (1816), t. I^{er.} pp.
187, 189.
[84] Herodotus, Book i. 199.
[85] Strabo, vol. xi. 14.
[86] Abel de Rémusat, _Nouv. mél. Asiatiques_, p. 116.
[87] Herodotus, iv. 172.
[88] Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 69.
[89] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 651.
[90] _Ibid._ p. 651.
[91] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. i. p. 584.
[92] Marco Polo, _Edition Populaire_, p. 187.
[93] Laurière, _Glose du droit Français_, at the word Culage ou Culiage.
[94] James Forbes, _Oriental Memoirs_, vol. i. p. 446; vol. iv. 1813.
[95] A. Rémusat, _Nouv. mél. Asiatiques_, t. I^{er.} p. 118.
[96] Eyre, _Discoveries_, vol. ii. p. 320.
[97] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy_., vol. xvi. p. 323.
[98] Cook, _First Voy_. (_Hist. Univ. des Voy._., t. v. p. 252).
Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles du Grand Océan_, t. I^{er.} p. 263.
[99] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc.
[100] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 219.
[101] Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 83.
[102] _History of Greenland_, p. 142.
[103] Ross, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xl. p. 158.
[104] _Lettres Edifiantes_, t. xx. p. 116.
[105] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. i. p. 514.
[106] Meares, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xiii. p. 375.
[107] Burckhardt, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxii. p. 380.
[108] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc., p. 276.
[109] _Les Abyssiniennes et les Femmes du Soudan Oriental_, p. 97.
[110] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_.
[111] _Ibid._, _Cato_.