PROSTITUTION AND CONCUBINAGE.
I. _Concubinage in General._--Frequency and reason of polygamic
instincts--Palliatives of monogamy.
II. _Prostitution._--Primitive prostitution--Slow rise
of scruples--Specialisation of prostitution in civilised
societies--Prostitution in the ancient States of Central America,
in China and Japan--The right of the father, and prostitution in
Japan--Prostitution in India--Religious prostitution--Prostitution in
Europe.
III. _Various Forms of Concubinage._--The concubinate--Concubine
captives in Judæa and Homeric Greece--Some modern facts of the same
kind--Slave concubines in Africa, in Abyssinia, and Madagascar--Legal
concubinate in Central America--Categories of the concubinate
in Mexico--The “lesser wives” in Tartary and China--Concubines
in Assyria, among the Arabs, and in India--Greek hetaïrism--The
concubinate in ancient Rome--The concubinate of the primitive catholic
clergy--Concubines “by precaution”--Contemporary concubinage--Why it
does not exist in Kabyle--The evolution of concubinage.
I. _Concubinage in General._
As a connecting link between polygamy and monogamy, concubinage
deserves special study.
Between institutions, as between organised beings, there is no sudden
leap. Societies evolve slowly; it is by degrees that customs become
refined, and that laws are formulated of a less and less brutal kind.
It has been with marriage as with everything else. To the confusion
of primitive bestial unions, when polygamy after the manner of
chimpanzees prevailed, have succeeded sexual associations regulated
by laws and customs. I have successively described these outlines
or primitive forms of marriage, ending with polygamy, which itself
is not incompatible with a somewhat advanced civilisation, but which
generally, by its restrictions, soon develops a tendency towards
monogamy.
The abyss is not so very great that separates polygamic from monogamic
marriage.
As we have seen, primitive man, besides having a purely animal absence
of modesty, has generally polygamic instincts, and nothing can be more
natural, since he descends from anthropoid precursors, and the great
monkeys are habitually polygamous. But the solidity of instincts, moral
or immoral, is always in proportion to the duration of their rise.
Now, during enormous chronological periods or cycles, in comparison
with which the historic ages of humanity are but a moment, our nearest
animal ancestors and our prehistoric percursors have, as far as it was
possible, lived in a polygamic _régime_. It is therefore quite natural
that most men, even in the present time, should be much inclined
to polygamy, and that primitive societies should only have emerged
slowly and imperfectly from it, while tempering monogamic marriage by
polygamic palliatives. Of these palliatives the two principal ones
still in use amongst the most civilised peoples are prostitution and
concubinage, which last becomes a concubinate when legalised.
II. _Prostitution._
It would certainly be out of place here to give a detailed history of
prostitution. Having, besides, repeatedly spoken of it in the preceding
chapters, I may now confine myself to recapitulating the chief traits
of its evolution. In primitive societies, as we know, it is general,
and in no way blamed. Free girls and women willingly sell themselves,
and more often still, they are an article of traffic for their parents,
like any other merchandise.
No idea of shame as yet attaches to sexual unions considered in
themselves. Prostitution is a simple barter which shocks no one,
and venal love is merely restrained by respect for the property of
another. Women who are already appropriated, or possessed by a man,
are in principle respected, but solely by the same title as any other
property. Their masters, their husbands, those who have bought or
captured them, have a perfect right to hire them out to whomsoever they
will, as the Australian husbands do, and as the Polynesian ones did.
When the appropriation of women, polygamic as much as possible,
became general, the more than fickle instincts of primitive man
persisted none the less; and, as a matter of fact, it is then that
prostitution, in the modern sense of the word, first arose. Outside the
majority of women, regularly belonging to husband-proprietors, there
existed, in much smaller numbers, women trafficking their persons,
either voluntarily for their own profit, or for that of their legal
possessors. At Senaar, for example, and in many other countries,
merchants and slave-dealers trade very profitably in their feminine
live stock.
We know also that, in primitive Athens, the most eminent men possessed
troops of prostitutes, and drew a large revenue from them; for it is
very slowly that prostitution, and all that relates to it, has awakened
any scruple in the human conscience.
Even at the most glorious period of Hellenic civilisation, with what
consideration were the most distinguished hetaïræ still regarded, since
Socrates and Pericles willingly met at the house of Aspasia!
In all the more or less cultivated societies of the old or new world
prostitution has flourished or continues to flourish. It is even in
refined societies alone that prostitution becomes specialised and
legalised, and ends by being regulated, by becoming, in short, a kind
of institution, supplementing legal marriage and being concurrent with
it.
Everywhere--in all countries, and among all races--prostitution has
been, or continues to be, tolerated, and sometimes even honoured. It
existed in the great states of Central America, in ancient Peru, in
ancient Mexico, and in Nicaragua, where there were already prostitutes
and brothels. In this last country the morals were still so impure,
and continence, although very relative, so difficult to bear, that at
a certain annual festival the women of all classes were authorised to
abandon themselves to whomsoever they pleased.[452]
In the great societies founded by the Mongoloid races, or the Mongols
of Asia, prostitution displays itself in the open day. In China,
tea-houses abound, although the ancient morality of the Celestial
Empire makes chastity a moral duty for unmarried girls and women. In
Cochin-China and Japan, on the contrary,[453] practice and theory are
in accord. No moral brand of shame attaches to the prostitute. In
Cochin-China, says Finlayson,[454] a father has the right to give his
daughter, for a small sum of money, to a visitor or even a stranger,
without the reputation of the young girl suffering any harm, and
without any hindrance to her finding a suitable husband afterwards. In
Japan the tea-houses (_tsiaya_) are more numerous still than in China;
in the large towns they form vast quarters, and some of them are very
luxurious. The mode of recruiting for inmates seems at first improbable
to a European, and this alone suffices to show the relativity of
morality.
Everywhere “the right of the father of a family” over his children has
begun by being unlimited. In Japan it is still excessive, even over
married daughters. Thus M. Bousquet, who was travelling in Japan a few
years ago, relates that as he was lodging one day in the house of a
young married couple, the father of the wife offered her to him, and
the husband did not dream of protesting.[455]
A daughter represents a certain amount of capital, belonging first to
the father and then to the husband; to alienate it without the consent
of the proprietor is a theft, but with his authorisation the action
becomes lawful, and therefore parents who are in difficulties negotiate
their daughter without any intervention by the Japanese law. A young
girl is even admired when she prostitutes herself from devotion. “The
Japanese romances repeat to satiety the story of the virtuous virgin
who voluntarily submits to this servitude in order to save her father
from misery, or to pay the debts of her betrothed.”[456] In Japan,
houses of prostitution are a national institution; the law regulates
the costume of the women who inhabit them, and the duration of their
stay. On this point Europe has little to envy Japan. But what is
special to Japan is that the _tikakie_, the inmates of these houses,
are placed there by their parents themselves, and for a price that is
debated beforehand. These inmates of the tea-houses generally enter
them from the age of fourteen or fifteen years, to live there till
they are twenty-five years old. They are taught to dance, to sing, to
play the guitar, and to write letters. They are lodged in handsome
apartments, where men go to see them openly and without any mystery.
They are in no way dishonoured by their trade; many of them marry very
well afterwards; it even happens that respectable citizens go to seek
an agreeable wife in these houses of pleasure. The most beautiful among
them are celebrated. After their death their portraits are placed in
the temples. “In the temple of Asaxa,” says M. Bousquet, “is found a
painting representing several Japanese ladies in full dress; they are,
my guides tell me, the portraits of the most celebrated courtesans of
Yeddo, which are annually placed here in their honour.” So also Dr.
Schliemann reports that he has seen statues of deified courtesans in
the Japanese temples. Their celestial intervention was implored in an
original manner. The suppliants first wrote a prayer on a paper, then
masticated the request and rolled it into a bullet, which they shot
with an air-gun at the statues of these strange divinities.[457]
It is clear that the Japanese differ very much from us in their idea
of feminine virtue. They have an idea, however, and do not in the
least permit the women to love as they please. Thus the girl who gives
herself to a lover without paternal authorisation is legally punished
by sixty lashes with a whip, and the Japanese public would not endure
in a play the personage of a young girl in love.[458]
It is not the chastity of woman, as we understand it, but her
subjection, that Japanese morality requires. The woman is a thing
possessed, and her immorality consists simply in disposing freely of
herself.
As regards prostitution, Brahmanic India is scarcely more scrupulous
than Japan, and there again we find religious prostitution practised in
the temples, analogous to that which in ancient Greece was practised at
Cyprus, Corinth, Miletus, Tenedos, Lesbos, Abydos, etc.[459]
According to the legend, the Buddha himself, Sakyamouni, when visiting
the famous Indian town of Vesali, was received there by the great
mistress of the courtesans.[460]
But the Brahmins have not been more strict in what concerns
prostitution than the founder of the great Buddhist religion. On this
point the accounts of travellers and missionaries supplement the
silence of the Code of Manu. The writers of _Lettres édifiantes_ found
religious prostitution openly practised in the Brahmanic temples. “The
people have put,” writes one of them, “the idol named _Coppal_ in a
neighbouring house; there she is served by priests and by _Devadachi_,
or slaves of the gods. These are prostitute girls, whose employment is
to dance and to ring little bells in cadence while singing infamous
songs, either in the pagoda, or in the streets when the idol is carried
out in state.”[461] In this case it was a matter of actual commerce,
of trading for the profit of the priests, and the latter had recourse
without any shame to what we call to-day the advertisement to attract
the customers. “I heard,” relates the same missionary, “published with
the blowing of a trumpet, that there was danger in frequenting the
_Devadachi_ who dwelt in the town; but that one could safely visit
those who served in the temple of _Coppal_.”[462] An old traveller,
Sonnerat, confirms the testimony of the missionaries of the seventeenth
century. He affirms that, like all the other Hindoos, the Brahmins are
much addicted to libertinage, and that, in their practical morality,
it is not considered a fault to have commerce with a courtesan; that
they have licentious books in which refined debauchery is taught _ex
professo_; that they use love-charms, etc.[463]
I stop here, and purposely abstain from speaking of the prostitution
of Europe. We know too well that it has always been very flourishing,
as well in ancient Rome as in the Middle Ages, although they were so
catholic. In old France it established itself boldly, in full daylight,
to such a degree that some towns, that of Rouen for example, had their
_proxénètes jurés_, wearing bronze medals with the arms of the town on
them.[464] As for contemporary prostitution, it is superfluous to call
attention to the fact that it is one of our great social diseases.
To sum up, the origin of prostitution goes back to the most primitive
societies; it is anterior to all the forms of marriage, and it has
persisted down to our own day in every country, and whatever might
be the race, religion, form of government, or conjugal _régime_
prevailing. Taken by itself, it would suffice to prove that monogamy is
a type of marriage to which mankind has found it very difficult to bend
itself; the very general existence of the concubinate completes the
demonstration.
III. _Various Forms of Concubinage._
Between animal love, that can be tasted with the prostitute, and the
noblest monogamic union, there is a wide space, which the concubinate
has filled. Legal concubinage or the concubinate, admitted and
practised, as we shall see, in so many countries, is a sort of free
marriage, tolerated by custom, recognised by law, and co-existing by
the side of monogamic marriage, the rigour of which it palliates. It
was at first a blending of polygamy with monogamy, and then, undergoing
itself an evolution analogous to that which has caused the adoption
by degrees of legal monogamy among nearly all civilised peoples, it
ended by becoming in its turn monogamic in ancient Rome. I will briefly
retrace its ethnographical history.
In its primitive phase, still very confused, the concubinate has been
simply the conjugal appropriation of slaves, especially of women
captured after a victory. These were part of the rights of the victor;
the captives were considered as booty, and shared in the same way. We
have already seen in Deuteronomy that Moses authorises this barbarous
practice, and that it was habitual also among the primitive Arabs. The
Homeric warriors did the same, as various passages of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ prove.
I will quote a few of them. To begin with, we find the old priest
Chryses comes to offer Agamemnon a rich ransom for his daughter, and
receives from the king of kings the brutal reply--“I will not set your
daughter free: old age shall find her in my dwelling at Argos, far
from her native land, weaving linen and sharing my bed. Go, then, and
provoke me not.”[465]
Thersites, speaking to Agamemnon, is still more explicit--“Son of
Atreus, what more dost thou require? What wilt thou? Thy tents are full
of brass and of many most beautiful women, that we give first to thee,
we, Acheans, when we take a town.”[466] Elsewhere, Achilles, speaking
of his beloved Briseis, of whom he had been robbed, cries--“Why have
the Atreides led hither this vast army? Is it not for the sake of the
dark-haired Helen? Are they, then, the only men who love their wives?
Every wise and good man cherishes and loves his wife. And I also loved
Briseis from my heart, although she was a captive.”[467]
And, a little further on, he makes a clear distinction between the
slave concubine and the legitimate wife, swearing never to accept as
wife a daughter of Agamemnon.
In the _Odyssey_, when Ulysses enters unrecognised his own house, and
sees pass before him in the vestibule his female slaves, laughing and
joyous as they go to play with the suitors, his feelings are not merely
those of a lawful proprietor who is offended, but of a jealous man
whose harem has been violated. At first he is tempted to kill these
women, which he actually does a little later, and he hears “his heart
cry out in his bosom, as a bitch, turning around her young ones, barks
at a stranger and tries to bite him.”[468]
But such customs have prevailed here and there up to modern times.
In 1548, in Peru, when Pedro de la Gasca had defeated the party of
Pizarro, he distributed amongst his followers the widows of the
colonists who were killed.
At Asterabad, after a small local revolt, Hanway saw the Persian
magistrates sell fifty women to the soldiers.
In Livonia, after the taking of Narva, Peter the Great coolly sold to
the boyars the wives of the inhabitants.[469] Bruce tells us also that
in Abyssinia the victors habitually take possession of the wives of the
vanquished.[470]
But if captives serve or have served somewhat in all countries to
supply the domestic concubinate, they were not the only ones reserved
for this purpose; female slaves, however procured, were treated as
such. The fact is so well known that I shall abstain from establishing
it by examples. I only quote one observed at Sackatoo, in tropical
Africa, for it proves clearly that in a barbarous country, concubinage,
or the domestic and servile concubinate, does not outrage morality in
any way, and is regarded merely from a commercial point of view. At
Sackatoo, when a married man has intimate relations with one of the
female slaves given as dowry to his wife, he need simply replace her
the following day by another slave who is a virgin and of equal value.
On this purely mercenary condition, the caprice of the husband never
occasions any conflict with the legitimate wife.[471]
The relative and so-called Christian civilisation of the Abyssinians
accommodates itself very easily to such customs. By the side of the
_oizoro_, the proud and indolent matron, all the great nobles have a
troop of pretty servant girls with sprightly looks.[472]
The king sets the example, and naturally he goes further still. If any
woman has had the good luck to please him, he sends an envoy to invite
her to live in the palace. This distinction is received as it should
be: the lady adorns herself as quickly as possible, and obeys without
a murmur; but above these concubines there is the wife or queen, the
_itighe_.
As far as they can, ecclesiastical dignitaries imitate laic ones.
Bruce found one, the Abba-Salam, guardian of the sacred fire, third
personage in authority in the church, who forced women to yield to
him by a threat at the same time pious and original--the fear of
excommunication.
I have already spoken of the Malagasy concubinage, of the chief wife
(_vadi-be_) having her own apartment and privileges, and ruling
over the “lesser wives” (_vadi-keli_), who live together in equal
submission.[473]
In short, the domestic concubinate is largely practised over all
central or barbarous Africa.
The ancient half-civilised nations of central America did not disdain
it either. In Peru, as we shall see, the monogamic _régime_ was
obligatory, but only for the poorer people.
In the Maya nations, the rich and powerful practised the concubinate
without any moderation.[474] At Guatemala, the parents were filled with
solicitude on this point, and when a young noble married a girl of his
own rank who had not yet attained puberty, they were careful to keep
him patient by giving him a young slave as concubine, whose children,
however, would not be his heirs.[475]
In Mexico the were three kinds of concubines:--
1. Young girls not yet arrived at a marriageable age, and whom the
parents usually chose for their sons at the request of the latter.
These unions required neither ceremony nor contract, but they were
often legitimated later, when they became fruitful.
2. Partially legitimate wives, who were also partially married,
retaining only the characteristic trait of the conjugal ceremony--that
is, the tying together of the garments of the half-married ones. These
wives could not be repudiated without a motive, but neither they nor
their children could inherit.
3. Lastly, the third class comprehended simple concubines, largely
kept by the nobles, and who ranked not only lower than the legitimate
wives, but also than the half-legitimate ones.[476] All this system is
ingenious, and it is certainly difficult to state the gradation better.
However common the concubinate may be, nowhere do we find it so wisely
combined as in ancient Mexico, where four sorts of sexual association
were recognised--monogamic marriage, consecrated by law and religion;
semi-legitimate marriage; free and durable union with a legitimable
concubine; and lastly, free love, escaping all regulation.
I shall proceed soon to take an estimate of these customs, so different
from our own, but it still remains for me to speak of the concubinate
among the superior races, the yellow and the white. The Mongols of
Tartary are monogamous in principle, in the sense of having one sole
legitimate wife; but the rich and noble have by the side of this matron
or chief wife, concubines or lesser wives, subject to the former,
who has precedence and rules over them, who governs the household,
and whose children are considered legitimate and have hereditary
rights.[477]
In China, the concubinage of the Mongols has been carefully regulated,
like everything else; it is naturally, as elsewhere, the privilege
of the rich and great, who sometimes keep a veritable harem, and
people it by purchasing pretty girls, scarcely arrived at puberty,
from their parents (Macartney, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxiii.
473).[478] According to the current morality of China, the concubinate
is blamed unless the legitimate wife remains sterile for ten or twelve
years.[479] Formerly an attempt was made to restrain it, by only
tolerating it for the mandarins and childless quadragenarians;[480] but
these severe measures have fallen into desuetude.
At the present day the Chinese concubinate has no other check than
human respect and public opinion. It is perfectly legal. The first or
_chief wife_ is an honoured matron; she commands the _lesser wives_,
who owe her respect and obedience. If a husband attempts to lower her
to the rank of lesser wife, he incurs the bastonnade with a hundred
strokes of the bamboo, but ninety only if, on the contrary, he tries
to raise a lesser wife to the supreme rank.[481] The legal concubines,
the lesser wives, are subordinate to the especially legitimate wife,
and are forbidden to assume the dress reserved for her.[482] The chief
wife is the mistress of the house; she is not only the mother of her
own children, but also the putative mother of the children of the
lesser wives. The latter children wear mourning for her and not for
their natural mother; and it is on the legal mother that they lavish
the expressions of their respect, affection, and obedience.[483] We
learn from Chinese comedies that rivalries sometimes break out between
the matron and her fellow wives; but in general the Chinese woman is so
well trained, so well broken in from infancy, that this is rare enough,
and Chinese wives have even been known to counsel their husbands
to take concubines in the towns where they may be long detained by
business.[484] It is well to remember, by the way, that the human brain
can retain all kinds of impressions, and that morality and instincts
strictly result from the nature of the life and education.
The concubinate must actually have been necessary for man, for we see
it practised by all races, and by the white races as well as the others.
We know that the monarchs of ancient Assyria had, by the side of the
single wife, a good number of concubines, exactly like the Abyssinian
negroes of our own days, or, to keep to antiquity, like the glorious
Solomon.
Polygamous as they are, the modern Arabs do not on that account abstain
from the concubinate. Even at Mecca all the rich men keep in their
houses, with their legitimate wives, concubines who are generally
natives of Abyssinia. However, if one of these women becomes a mother,
the morality of the country requires her master to raise her to the
rank of legitimate wife.[485] The _Mekavy_ of the middle and lower
class also buy young Abyssinian slaves, teach them to cook and to sew,
make concubines of them, and re-sell them afterwards advantageously to
passing strangers, especially if they have been sterile;[486] in this
commerce they unite pleasure and profit.
The concubinate is not more rare among the Aryans than the Semites. The
monarchs of ancient Persia had, we know, a troop of concubines; and in
all the great barbarian societies, the princely concubinate is only the
survival of old customs.
In India the Brahmins of the middle class often have one chief wife,
and at the same time several domestic concubines.[487]
We have seen that in Homeric Greece the concubinate was a general
practice, and in no way censured. In later times, when Greece was more
civilised, the primitive domestic concubinate disappeared, but there
always remained to alleviate the ennui of monogamic marriage what we
call concubinage, or hetaïrism, which was openly practised by Socrates
and Pericles. “If,” says Lecky on this subject, “we could imagine a
Bossuet or a Fénelon figuring among the followers of Ninon de Lenclos,
and publicly giving her counsel on the subject of her professional
duties and the means of securing adorers, this would be hardly less
strange than the relation which really existed between Socrates and the
courtesan Theodota.”[488]
All societies which have had any legal form of marriage have adopted
the concubinate, either free or more or less regulated, but it has
nowhere been so precisely legalised as in ancient Rome. I shall say
a few words about it, not that I intend to walk in the steps of our
legists, but in order to show what assistance ethnographical sociology
could be to the science of written law. By its means alone can the
legal texts, which have been a hundred times studied, commented on, and
criticised in an isolated manner, as if they related to sociological
facts without analogy in the world, be connected with the general
evolution of customs and institutions.
At the bottom, the Roman concubinate is essentially similar to the
others; it has merely been legalised with more care, and transformed
into an institution as regular as marriage proper. It was, besides,
indispensable in a country where the right of marriage, the _jus
connubii_, was restricted. The _leges Julia_ and _Papia Poppæa_ also
expressly authorise it.
In short, the Roman concubinate was a free union between a man and a
woman not wishing, or not being able, to marry.[489] It was lawful
to have as concubine a woman with whom marriage was forbidden--an
adulteress, an actress, a woman of bad life, or a freed slave. This
last case was the most frequent, most moral, and the most protected by
the laws.
The intention of the parties, revealed either by a formal declaration,
or by the inequality of conditions, determined between marriage and the
concubinate. The dowry was one of the signs which served to distinguish
marriage from the concubinate.
The Roman concubinate was only, in fact, a marriage of inferior
degree.[490] Thus a married man could not take a concubine. A bachelor
could not have several at the same time.[491]
The concubinate implied paternity. The child was considered as a
natural child of the father (_naturalis, non vulgo conceptus_), though
he did not enter the father’s family or become his heir, but followed
the status of his mother.[492]
The institution of the Roman concubinate evolved naturally, and its
conditions were more and more ameliorated.
Under Constantine, the legitimation of children born from a concubinate
was permitted in a general way by marriage between the father and
the woman who had been his concubine up to the day of marriage. It
was necessary, however, that the man should not have at the time a
legitimate child. But Justinian authorised the legitimation even in
this last case; he granted also the benefit of legitimation to the
children of an enfranchised slave marrying her master, provided that
the latter had not then any legitimate children.[493]
When Christian marriage had definitely abolished the Roman legal
concubinate, custom naturally braved the laws, and the clergy
themselves were the first to set the example, thus proving the truth
of the assertion in Genesis, “It is not good for man that he should
be alone.” For a long time the anointed of the Lord had wives or
concubines. The latter took the place of the former when, by St.
Boniface, St. Anselm, Hildebrand, etc., and the Councils, the marriage
of priests had become an atrocious crime.
In 1171, at Canterbury, an investigation proved that the abbot-elect
of St. Augustine had seventy children in a single village.[494]
During many years a tax, called by an expressive name (_culagium_),
was systematically levied by various princes on priests living in
concubinage.[495] Better still, it often happened that the lay
parishioners obliged their priests to have concubines, _by way of
precaution_. A canon of the Council of Palencia (1322) anathematises
the laics who act thus.[496] In his _History of the Council of Trent_,
Sarpi says that many Swiss cantons had adopted this custom. At the
Council of Constance, an important speaker, Nicolas de Clemangis,
declared that it was a widely-spread practice, and that the laity were
firmly persuaded that the celibacy of the priests was quite fictitious.
Bayle quotes on this point the following remarkable passage--“Taceo de
fornicationibus et adulteriis a quibus qui alieni sunt probro cæteris
ac ludibrio esse solent, spadonesque aut sodomitæ appellantur; denique
laici usque adeo persuasum habent nullos cælibes esse, ut in plerisque
parochiis non aliter velint presbyterum tolerare nisi concubinam
habeat, quo vel sic suis sit consultum uxoribus, quæ nec sic quidem
usque quaque sunt extra periculum.”
If, leaving aside the middle age and its clergy, we cast our eyes
around us in the most civilised and polished European societies,
we see that the concubinate has indeed disappeared, but that its
inferior form, concubinage, is very flourishing. Centuries of legal
and religious restraint have not been able to uproot it, and the
rigid monogamic marriage inscribed in our laws is constantly set at
defiance by our customs. Nearly everywhere the number of births called
illegitimate is on the increase. In France it constantly progresses--
From 1800 to 1805 4.75 per cent.
” 1806 to 1810 5.43 ”
” 1821 to 1825 7.16 ”
Since that time the proportion has oscillated round 7.25 in France. But
in Sweden, from 1776 to 1866, it has risen from 3.11 per cent. to 9.5.
In Saxony the return has been 15.37 in 1862-1864.[497]
At Paris, according to the calculations of A. Bertillon, more than a
tenth of the couples (40,000) were living in free union.
In fact, if we interrogate all races, all epochs, and all countries,
we see that the concubinate and concubinage have flourished, and still
flourish, by the side of legal marriage. One country alone is an
exception to this--Kabyle. But the exception confirms the rule. If we
find in Kabyle neither concubinage nor concubinate, neither free unions
nor natural children, the reason is very simple. It is that outside
marriage no sexual union is tolerated, and in case of illegitimate
birth the mother and child are both put to death, whilst retaliation
falls on the illegal father.[498]
The concubinate is therefore, or at least has been till now, natural
to man. One may say, borrowing a locution from Bossuet, that this
is proved by “the experience of all the centuries.” It remains for
me now to deduce from the facts I have enumerated a sketch of the
general evolution which they represent, and to estimate their moral
significance. The evolution is of the simplest. Sexual union, without
restraint or law, has been the commencement. Then the right of the
strongest or the richest has created polygamic households. In these
households the priority was at last bestowed on one wife; but as the
husband did not intend to curb his changing humour, he kept by the side
of the chief spouse either slaves or “lesser wives,” to whom, in the
end, a legal position was accorded. The monogamic _régime_ making more
and more way, the time came--at Rome, for example--when this disguised
polygamy was no longer tolerated, and the concubinate became a marriage
of the second order, being unable to co-exist with the other. At
length there was a pretence of abolishing it, and there was no other
matrimonial type legally recognised except the monogamic union, lasting
till the death of the husband or wife. But custom has rebelled against
the law, and monogamy has been more apparent than real. Prostitution
for the least refined, adultery and free union for the others, have
served as safety-valves for inclinations too inveterate and too violent
to be controlled by legal texts. Has moral purity gained thereby?
Surely not. Moreover, there is in consequence a whole population of
illegitimate children, too often abandoned by their fathers, and
suffering from their birth a legal indignity of the most iniquitous
kind. Hence arise a thousand unmerited sufferings, which legislation
must some day or other remedy, and from which the legal concubinate has
spared China, for example. Doubtless the ideal is a fine thing, but it
is folly to sacrifice the real to it, and to legislate without taking
into account the requirements of human nature.
FOOTNOTES:
[452] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. ii. p. 676.
[453] _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 133.
[454] _Ibid._ t. xxxiv. p. 334.
[455] G. Bousquet, _Le Japon de nos jours_ (1877), t. I^{er.} p. 246.
[456] G. Bousquet, _loc. cit._, t. I^{er.} p. 87.
[457] Schliemann, _La Chine et le Japon_.
[458] G. Bousquet, _Le Théâtre au Japon_ (_Revue des Deux Mondes_,
1874).
[459] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, vol. i. p. 103.
[460] Mrs. Spier, _Life in Ancient India_, p. 28.
[461] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xii. p. 412.
[462] _Ibid._ p. 417.
[463] _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 351.
[464] Desmaze, _Curiosités des anciennes justices_, etc., p. 289.
[465] _Iliad_, i.
[466] _Ibid._ ii.
[467] _Ibid._ ix.
[468] _Odyssey_, xx. xxii.
[469] Houzeau, _Études sur les facultés mentales des animaux_, t. ii.
p. 381.
[470] _Les Abyssiniennes_, p. 13.
[471] Clapperton, _Second Voy._, vol. ii. p. 86.
[472] Le Jean, _Théodore_, ii.
[473] Dupré, _Trois Mois à Madagascar_, p. 153.
[474] Bancroft, _Native Races_, vol. ii. p. 671.
[475] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. p. 664.
[476] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. p. 164.
[477] Huc, _Voyage en Tartarie_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 301.--Préjévalsky,
t. I^{er.} p. 69; t. ii. p. 121.
[478] Timkowski, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxiii. p. 311.
[479] Sinibaldo de Mas, _La Chine et les puissances Chrétiennes_, t.
I^{er.} p. 51.
[480] Huc, _L’Empire Chinois_, t. ii. p. 255.
[481] Pauthier, _Chine moderne_, p. 238.
[482] Milne, _Real Life in China_, p. 161.
[483] Huc, _L’Empire Chinois_, t. ii. p. 258.
[484] Milne, _Real Life in China_, p 161.
[485] Burckhardt, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 148.
[486] Burckhardt, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxii. p. 148.
[487] Sonnerat, _Hist. Univ. des Voy_., t. xxxi. p. 349.--_Ibid._,
Laplace, t. xviii. p. 433.
[488] Lecky, _Hist. of European Morals_, vol. ii. p. 280.
[489] Domenget, _Institutes de Gaius_, sec. 63.
[490] R. Cubain, _Lois civiles de Rome_, pp. 188, 189.
[491] Domenget, _loc. cit._ sec. 63.
[492] R. Cubain, _loc. cit._ p. 188.
[493] Domenget, _Institutes de Gaius_, sec. 58.
[494] Lea, _History of Sacerdotal Celibacy_ (Philadelphia, 1867), p.
296.
[495] _Id., ibid._ pp. 274, 292, 422.
[496] _Id., ibid._ p. 324.
[497] M. Block, _Europe Politique et Sociale_, pp. 204, 205.
[498] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _La Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 148.