THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE AND MATING
Any attempt to discuss subjects pertaining to the sex-relation with
intelligence and an optimistic outlook is handicapped by the fact that
sex-problems are so intimately associated with religious prejudices,
reasons for which we have already mentioned in the chapter devoted to
sex-worship and sex-degradation.
It is possible, therefore, that in seeking to define freedom and to
make a plea for the freeing of women and men from the "bonds" of
matrimony, we may be accused of seeking to demolish with one blow, so
to speak, the social institution of marriage.
Such is not the intention of the present writer, for reasons which are
based upon something far more noteworthy than a concession to the
prejudices and "beliefs" of the average.
Luther Burbank has said: "In pursuing any of the everlasting and
fundamental laws of nature, all previous bias and inherited prejudices
must be laid aside, if the student hopes to be taken into Nature's
confidence and be the sharer of her secrets."
The average person, entrenched behind the bulwark of theological
bias, saturated with a belief in the finality of all previous
discovery and knowledge, teems with a fanatical desire to "defend his
God"--as if the Supreme Power, whatever name we give it--were not
capable of self-defense.
It is due to this mistaken zeal on the part of the short-sighted ones,
that human evolution is slow, albeit it is likewise inevitable.
They are like those who, viewing the wrecking of a ruined habitation,
condemned by the Board of Public Safety, try to stop the process of
the workers; they do not know that when the ground shall have been
cleared, a finer, more sightly, and above all, more habitable building
will be put up on the same ground; and anything from the old
architecture that was worthy of preservation will be used in the new
building.
The dug-outs of our antedeluvian ancestors were designed to protect
them from the destructive forces of storm and wave and also from their
brothers, the enemy; and although our ideas of what constitutes a
desirable dwelling-place have evolved to our modern ideal of a home,
rather than a shelter, yet the fundamental concept remains. A study of
history should be encouraging if only to prove that no radical changes
in human ethics have ever been forced upon us. Verily, the "gods wait
upon men" and until there is something like a concerted demand for
improved conditions, they stand just outside the door waiting to be
bidden, "Enter, Friend."
As with mental ideas, so it is with ethical ideals. Until there is a
more general demand for a higher concept of marriage, it is quite
certain that the world will worry along with the one which now does
duty for the majority, although it must be admitted that the poor
thing gives evidence of much decrepitude and suffers from as many
complaints as a hypochondriac.
But, the fact that marriage in some form has prevailed as one of the
fundamental necessities of human ethics, ever since the beginning of
recorded history, and doubtless before that, is, we believe, very
satisfactory evidence that marriage has a permanent place in social
and individual evolution. What that place is, can be deduced from a
study of the history of marriage.
There are two different viewpoints from which we may discuss all
phases of Life, namely, the mystical and the ethical. The mystic sees
all life from the inside, as it were; and the physicist studies the
exterior, the appearance. To the mystic, the visible, or external,
world is a succession of symbols, which he must interpret. To him, the
everlasting and fundamental truths of the Cosmos are told in a
succession of moving pictures. In fact, the mystic has long
anticipated the art which we now see manifested in our film-theatres
and has realized that the scenes, which appear to the eye as actual
events, are but the reflection of scenes enacted in a place far
distant and long before the moment of projection upon the screen which
meets his eye.
Science examines, dissects, and classifies these symbols according to
their relation to other symbols which the mind has previously noted
and classified. The same conclusion awaits both Science and Mysticism.
Humanity is ever seeking the Reality--the Noumenon, which we
intuitively postulate as behind the phenomena of Nature.
The institution of marriage, coming down to us through all the ages,
side by side with the mystery of sex, and incorporated with the
sex-mystery into every form and system of religious rites and
ceremonials among all peoples, would seem to have a place in human
ethics, as substantial and as permanent as the germ of life itself.
Indeed, the institution of marriage, in its first stages of evolution,
obtains in the animal kingdom, where selection in a great variety of
forms is common.
And it must be confessed that here we find the same tendency to change
and variation, both in regard to the individual and the family
species, as we have in the human family.
Polyandry, polygamy, and monogamy, have been general among some
animals while among others only one form of mating has been the rule.
Strange to say, sex promiscuity is not at all general among the
animals, though polygamy is common. The adoption of polygamy is
obviously due to one of two things, or possibly, to be more specific,
to both. First, because the percentage of deaths among the males is
greater than among the females; this applies to animal life, both wild
and domestic. In wild life, because of frequent combats; in domestic
life, because the females are kept for breeding while the males are
slaughtered for food.
The second reason is because the female is seldom as virile as the
male, and to this is also added the debilitating effect of bearing and
rearing the young, the necessity for which must have manifested itself
very early among the various families, from motives of self-protection,
if from nothing higher, since victory evidently favored the numerically
strong.
In bird-life, especially, where love is so vital a part of their life,
and so beautifully expressed, monogamy is the rule, and in some
species, like that of the robin, a certain aristocracy seems to exist,
preventing intercourse with any other family. The robin will mate only
with a robin, and not infrequently mates for life; which is to say
that should one die, the other refuses to mate again.
It is claimed that the bald-headed eagle never varies from monogamy. A
mate once chosen, the union lasts until the death of either partner.
It does not follow from this, however, that the bald-headed eagle is a
creature of a superior moral conscience. It may be that he is guided
in his selection of a conjugal mate by an intuitional power
undeveloped by other types of life, or, which is far more probable, it
may be that his sexual nature is easily satisfied and that he has no
temperamental affinities or repulsions, in which event force of habit
would be the strongest actuating power. This explanation is in keeping
with the eagle character.
The point is that marriage, or what constitutes marriage, exists among
birds and animals, and that it antedates history as a social
institution among men. Another fact which we must concede, if we are
just, is that marriage apparently knows no systematic and upward
trend. There is, in fact, no determined evolution toward a definite
and conclusive practice of monogamy, although the monogamic custom is
recognized as the evolutionary type among the civilized races of
today. Nevertheless, it would be folly to imply that a strict monogamy
obtains in the letter of the word, or that social exigencies might not
reinstate polygamy as a legalized custom.
Passing over those forms of mating, which may be classed as
sex-promiscuity, such, for example, as exist among the Esquimaux, and
also among the Dyaks, of Borneo, where a "contract" is made for a
night by the simple expediency of the man and the woman exchanging
head-gear, we come to one of the earliest and most general forms of
marriage among primitive peoples, where the parents arranged a
marriage between their children for reasons of personal profit. In
these instances, neither the youth nor the girl was consulted and
generally did not meet until they met to consummate the marriage. In
fact, they seemed not to have any preferences. These marriages were
easily broken, unless children resulted therefrom, when there seems
to have developed a sense of obligation to the offspring to continue
the family.
Marriage by capture grew out of the matriarchal system and came as the
very natural revolt of the male from the female rule, in which he had
no rights and no home with his spouse. Since the gens of the family
was the first consideration and this was maintained by the female
heads of a clan, there was nothing left for the male to do, if he
would be a factor in the community, but to steal his wife from her
family, and establish a family life of his own. Thus the female became
the possession of the male, by his right of capture and defense.
Inspired by the thirst for further invasions, the male gradually
acquired not only one, but many wives, which constituted his
"possessions," from the fact that he had earned them by right of
conquest, conquest being not only the savage but also the civilized
idea of "earning."
Indeed, our modern marriages reveal a degree of savagery in this
respect, which is not suspected by the casual observer. The almost
general observance of what has come to be known in legal jurisprudence
as "the unwritten law," which permits a man to go unpunished when he
kills another man whom he believes to have been on terms of intimacy
with his wife, is a tacit admission of a man's vested rights in his
wife's person.
In innumerable instances, which have been given world-wide publicity
within very recent times, the man who has been guilty of homicide
under these circumstances has been exalted to the plane of a
martyr-hero, and one woman writer, whose hysterical effusions are
given considerable space in the public print, defended a man who had
taken advantage of this "unwritten law" to shoot his rival, in the
following words: "You, Mister, would shoot a man whom you found
prowling through your house with the intention of stealing your
silver; your jewelry; your property of whatever kind or value. How
much more, then, should you guard the honor of your wife, from these
pestilential marauders?"
Of course we question the right of human beings to kill each other in
defense of mere property; but that is not the point here. The
inference here is obvious that this woman, who represents at least the
average degree of intelligence, placed her sex in the category of
man's possessions, utterly ignoring the woman's right, or power of
free-will.
Mention is here made of this incident to show how deeply rooted is the
possessive idea of marriage, which had its origin in nothing more
ideal than the animal instinct of the dog with the bone.
Nor would we give the impression that this one-sided idea of what
constitutes a monogamous marriage is confined to the male. The same
idea of possession as of a piece of property, representing so much
investment of time and money, and service of one kind or another,
actuates the female also although the rights of the woman in the male
are not so generally defended and she seldom resorts to such violent
methods of defense or of revenge for loss of her property. Perhaps she
has a keener sense of values. Necessity has substituted "support" for
"outraged honor," and modern woman avenges the loss of her possessions
through the safer channels of the law-courts.
The feeling of possession, so ingrained in human nature, and so much a
part of our modern marriage relation, is not grounded upon a moral
code, which has for its basic principle fidelity to one's partner.
This is proven by the fact that men have for some time abrogated to
themselves the right of promiscuity, the main clause of their defense
being that their conduct does not deprive their wife and family of
satisfactory maintenance. Many a woman today, irreproachably
respectable and church-going, will admit to herself if not to her
neighbors, that she closes her eyes to her husband's laxity in sexual
matters, "as long as he provides well for me."
When we come, as we will later, to a consideration of what constitutes
morality, we will see that, like all our evolving ideals, it is
governed by immediate conditions, both individual and social.
It is easy to see why polygamy has been practiced, as a necessary
expedient, and why women have been held so cheaply, when we realize
the centuries of devastating wars, both of conquest and of defense,
which besmirch the path of Evolution.
Thus the tendency to aesthetic selection, always more pronounced in
the female than in the male, has been swallowed up in the false
valuation put upon the male, because of his relative scarcity.
In America, in the early sixties, fear of the epithet "old maid" drove
many a woman to marriage with a man whom, personally, she did not
like, but as he represented a more or less "rara avis" and as her
claim to attractiveness rested upon her success in trapping this rare
bird, she permitted herself to become a victim of conditions; and we
may safely conclude that no higher motive actuated the average woman
of the last century than that of submission to conditions, for the
"virtues of fidelity and devotion to the home and fireside" which
critics of present-day morals are fond of reminding us characterized
our grandmothers.
Briefly, then, we may review the history of marriage and of mating,
everywhere, and at all times, as variable, controlled by expediency;
and always based on the egoistic idea of possession, expressed by the
right of the parents to dispose of their children; the right by
capture; the right by purchase; and the right by consent.
One or all of these customs have been tried in various parts of the
world and at various times, and seldom has the condition of woman
approached even so enviable a place as that of the female animal,
except in the comparatively short periods when women have been the
gens of the family.
These periods have become more and more infrequent, until the legal
status of women has been, as it is now, no more than what the
evolving consciousness of the male permitted to her.
It is a question whether, under our pretended monogamy, which is, per
se, a more ideal condition than polygamy, all women have been either
better conditioned or more moral. The answer depends largely upon our
idea of what constitutes morality. Certainly, the condition of women
in Christian countries has been, and is now, far from ideal; which
would, judging from surface appearances, indicate that monogamy, as it
has been practiced in the past, served only as an ideal, and at best
has been of first aid to the male, primarily because of a question of
personal health and cleanliness; secondly, as a means of developing in
him the latent qualities of altruism, manifested selfishly enough at
first in protecting his possessions; among which he egotistically
conceded _his children at least_ first place; although the wife was
hardly more than a convenience and an incubator.
Of the conditions that have prevailed under the monogamous custom and
among the so-called superior races, Letourneau, in his _Evolution of
the Family_, says: "The Hebrews seem to have been alone, among the
Semites, in adopting monogamy, at least in general practice. Doubtless
the subjection of the Jewish woman was not extreme as it is in Kabyle;
it was, however, very great. Her consent to marriage, it is true, was
necessary when she had reached majority, but she was all the same sold
to her husband. We find hardly more than the portrait of a laborious
servant, busy and grasping. We shall see that the wife, though she
might gain much money, which seems to have been the ideal of the
Hebrew, according to the Proverbs, was repudiable at will, with no
other reason than the caprice of the master who had bought her.
Finally, and this is much more severe, she was always obliged to be
able to prove, _cloths in hand_, that she was a virgin at the moment
of her marriage, and this under pain of being stoned."
The same state of affairs or worse existed in India and in Persia,
although in Persia there seems to have been an attempt to enjoin the
same fidelity upon the husband as upon the wife, according to the
Zend-Avesta; the only severe restriction to marriage being that
neither should marry an infidel. In India, where there has been for
centuries an alleged monogamy (except among the privileged classes,
where concubinage held sway), the ethical condition of the women has
been, and still is, deplorable.
In ancient Greece and Rome the position of the woman was most
inferior. She was generally purchased, or given for service. Her
husband's word was law, and mothers were compelled to obey their male
children as uncomplainingly as though they were slaves. The wife and
mother was not permitted to attend festivities and neither was she
allowed the selection of her friends, her husband deciding this choice
for her.
This, of course, applied to the respectable, or so-called virtuous
woman, which constituted the average. Then, as now, two classes of
women were to some extent exempt from this rigid custom. One class
was formed by those women whose wealth conferred upon them a degree of
power, because the possessors of great wealth have always been a law
unto themselves. The other class was formed by the women who practiced
prostitution, and who, by reason of their mode of life, met men on
terms of at least temporary social equality.
Thus it is evident that the path of the virtuous woman without the
independence that accompanies the possession of her own money, was in
ancient days much more thorny than that of the concubine or the
prostitute; and it is because of this fact that parental love, the
most powerful of all levers employed by the Cosmic Law to lift love
out of degradation, instituted the custom of the "dowry," and although
this, too, has at various times become a source of degradation,
inspiring impoverished aristocrats to loveless marriages with
so-called inferiors, yet it has after all been a factor in the
evolution of women and the preservation of the races. It has served
two purposes. It has made women, in theory at least, more independent;
and it has resulted in an admixture of blood which has saved the
aristocratic class from extinction through decadence.
As might well be expected in those instances where women did enjoy a
degree of liberty that was due to financial and social advantages,
they took a mean delight in ruling it over their male relatives, and,
as we may note in our own time, men who yielded to the seduction of
wealth, and married women to whom they were forced to accord the
freedom and the deference which wealth confers, complained bitterly of
their lot; as witness the following complaint of a Roman husband: "I
have married a witch with a dowry; I took her to have her fields and
houses, and that, O Apollo, is the worst of evils."
One dominant idea controlled the status of marriage in early Greece
and Rome--an idea in full accord with the materialistic phase of their
civilization; this was the idea of procreation; an idea that logically
was inevitable, since continuous warfare resulted in a population in
which women predominated, and we are told that in the interest of
procreation both childlessness and celibacy were severely punished.
Thus the situation of women was that best described by the phrase
"between the devil and the deep sea."
Regarding the "ideal of marital fidelity," Plutarch is authority for
the story that Cato loaned his wife to his friend Hortensius and took
her back on the death of the latter, plus a rich inheritance from the
transaction. However, should Martha have yielded herself voluntarily
to Hortensius, from motives of affection, the chances are that she
would have met death at the hands of her "justly outraged" spouse.
In Europe, similar conditions prevailed, and although monogamy was the
rule, concubinage and prostitution in all its forms existed. The wife
was subject to the husband in every wish and whim, and after him to
the eldest son. This is true today in Germany and among the Saxons in
a degree whose modifications do not accord with other advances in our
social ethics.
It is a mistake to claim that religious systems have had any direct
influence in the emancipation of women during the nineteen hundred
years of Christian civilization among the white races.
Religious systems have only reflected the race-thought; they have not
molded it. This is true, despite the fact that true religion, when
esoterically understood, has always aimed at union, and union means
equality along all lines, sex-equality; social equality; race
equality.
We must here digress from the main point of this chapter long enough
to explain that equality is not synonymous with identity, as seems to
be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to
say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the
construction gang, and the idiotic observation that "if women expect
to vote they must expect to stand up in the street-car," is not, alas!
confined to the lout, but is quite often voiced by the professional
man.
The same silly idea prevails with regard to race-equality. It is
judged by a similarity to our own in matters of dress; or choice of
foods; by inconsequential differences, rather than by an estimate of
what a given race may contribute to the variety of human knowledge;
and yet it is evident that nature aims at variety; at a multiplicity
of ideas and customs and creations.
Differentiation is the primal attempt.
Woman's claim to equality should be based upon the fact that first of
all she is different from, rather than identical with, men.
The woman who dons male attire and eschews all so-called "feminine
frivolity" in her efforts to prove herself man's equal, is confessing
that in her natural environment she does not consider herself his
equal, and is masquerading as man, in the vain hope that she may
deceive herself and others into thinking she is.
An individual is important to Society in proportion to his
originality; in proportion as he contributes some new idea; some
hitherto unfamiliar view.
Returning to the point of what constitutes true religion, namely, a
consciousness of our unity with all life, we find that although
religious ethics have included this ideal, it has not been emphasized
in the ratio of its importance. The result is that where unity should
have been established, segregation has been the rule, and it is
without any desire to reflect discredit upon the ideal of the Church
that we point to the fact that woman's emancipation, and her
co-operation in all departments of life, as a hope, if not a
consummated reality, has but now made its initial bow to the world.
That this initial bow comes side by side with, if not actually in the
wake of, disruption of the old theologic dogmas; dissatisfaction with
religious systems; and a determined disregard for what has been
presented as religion; cannot be denied. The fact is that religious
creeds never save anyone; never really elevate nations. At best they
have been but a "consolation prize" or a narcotic. Love of freedom is
the great liberator.
The influence of Rationalism, as inaugurated by Ingersoll in America
and Bradlaugh in England, was the opening wedge. Christian Science,
mothered by a woman, incorporated the phrase "Father-Mother-God" into
its literature, and unity has been the avowed ideal of all the variety
of new cults and philosophies presented under so great a variety of
names that we cannot here enumerate them.
Nevertheless, we are still many leagues short of realizing this ideal,
despite the preachments in its favor. Politically, the ideal of unity
is presented, more or less imperfectly, of course, as Socialism, and
Suffrage. Commercially, still more imperfectly in the merchants' "let
us get together on this," and in efforts at legislation that shall
control corporation dividends and labor schedules, and regulate hours
of work. In fact, all along the line we see the shadow cast by the
rising sun of unity.
We have thus briefly traced the history of marriage and of mating, in
order that we may discuss with sane impartiality the questions: What
does marriage symbolize? What is its function in the life of the
social body; in the existence of the sphere itself; of the entire
Cosmos?
Has it any real place and purpose beyond that of procreation, or any
more spiritual function than the perpetuation of the human species?