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Title: The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family
Author: Letourneau, Ch. (Charles)
Language: English
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OF THE FAMILY ***
_THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES._
EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.
EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
THE EVOLUTION
OF MARRIAGE
AND OF THE FAMILY
BY
CH. LETOURNEAU,
_General Secretary to the Anthropological Society of Paris,
and Professor in the School of Anthropology_.
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE
PATERNOSTER ROW
1891.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE 1-19
I. The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom.
II. Reproduction.
III. Rut and Love.
IV. Love of Animals.
CHAPTER II.
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY AMONGST ANIMALS 20-36
I. The Preservation of Species.
II. Marriage and the Rearing of the Young among Animals.
III. The Family amongst Animals.
CHAPTER III.
PROMISCUITY 37-55
I. Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity?
II. Cases of Human Promiscuity.
III. Hetaïrism.
CHAPTER IV.
SOME SINGULAR FORMS OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION 56-72
I. Primitive Sexual Immorality.
II. Some Strange Forms of Marriage.
CHAPTER V.
POLYANDRY 73-88
I. Sexual Proportion of Births: its Influence on Marriage.
II. Ethnography of Polyandry.
III. Polyandry in Ancient Arabia.
IV. Polyandry in General.
CHAPTER VI.
MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE 89-104
I. Rape.
II. Marriage by Capture.
III. Signification of the Ceremonial of Capture.
CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE AND BY SERVITUDE 105-121
I. The Power of Parents.
II. Marriage by Servitude.
III. Marriage by Purchase.
CHAPTER VIII.
PRIMITIVE POLYGAMY 122-137
I. Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America.
II. Polygamy in Asia and in Europe.
CHAPTER IX.
POLYGAMY OF CIVILISED PEOPLE 138-153
I. The Stage of Polygamy.
II. Arab Polygamy.
III. Polygamy in Egypt, Mexico, and Peru.
IV. Polygamy in Persia and India.
CHAPTER X.
PROSTITUTION AND CONCUBINAGE 154-170
I. Concubinage in General.
II. Prostitution.
III. Various Forms of Concubinage.
CHAPTER XI.
PRIMITIVE MONOGAMY 171-187
I. The Monogamy of Inferior Races.
II. Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America.
III. Monogamy in Ancient Egypt.
IV. Monogamy of the Touaregs and Abyssinians.
V. Monogamy among the Mongols of Asia.
VI. Monogamy and Civilisation.
CHAPTER XII.
HEBREW AND ARYAN MONOGAMY 188-206
I. Monogamy of the Races called Superior.
II. Hebrew Marriage.
III. Marriage in Persia and Ancient India.
IV. Marriage in Ancient Greece.
V. Marriage in Ancient Rome.
VI. Barbarous Marriage and Christian Marriage.
CHAPTER XIII.
ADULTERY 207-227
I. Adultery in General.
II. Adultery in Melanesia.
III. Adultery in Black Africa.
IV. Adultery in Polynesia.
V. Adultery in Savage America.
VI. Adultery in Barbarous America.
VII. Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya.
VIII. Adultery among the Egyptians, the Berbers, and the Semites.
IX. Adultery in Persia and India.
X. Adultery in the Greco-Roman World.
XI. Adultery in Barbarous Europe.
XII. Adultery in the Past and in the Future.
CHAPTER XIV.
REPUDIATION AND DIVORCE 228-248
I. In Savage Countries.
II. Divorce and Repudiation among Barbarous Peoples.
III. The Evolution of Divorce.
CHAPTER XV.
WIDOWHOOD AND THE LEVIRATE 249-266
I. Widowhood in Savage Countries.
II. Widowhood in Barbarous Countries.
III. The Levirate.
IV. Summary.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FAMILIAL CLAN IN AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA 267-284
I. The Family.
II. The Family in Melanesia.
III. The Family in America.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FAMILIAL CLAN AND ITS EVOLUTION 285-302
I. The Clan among the Redskins.
II. The Family among the Redskins.
III. The Family in Polynesia.
IV. The Family among the Mongols.
V. The Evolution of the System of Kinship by Classes.
VI. The Clan and the Family.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MATERNAL FAMILY 303-321
I. The Familial Clan and the Family properly so-called.
II. The Family in Africa.
III. The Family in Malaya.
IV. The Family among the Naïrs of Malabar.
V. The Family among the Aborigines of Bengal.
VI. The Couvade.
VII. The Primitive Family.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FAMILY IN CIVILISED COUNTRIES 322-340
I. The Family in China.
II. The Family among the Semitic Races.
III. The Family among the Berbers.
IV. The Family in Persia.
V. The Family in India.
VI. The Greco-Roman Family.
VII. The Family in Barbarous Europe.
CHAPTER XX.
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY IN THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE
FUTURE 341-360
I. The Past.
II. The Present.
III. The Future.
INDEX 361
PREFACE.
A few preliminary observations in regard to the aim and method of this
work may be useful to the reader.
He will do well to begin by persuading himself, with Montaigne, that
the “hinges of custom” are not always the “hinges of reason,” and
still less those of reality in all times and places. He will do better
still to steep himself in the spirit of scientific evolution, and to
bear in mind that incessant change is the law of the social, quite as
much as of the physical and organic world, and that the most splendid
blossoms have sprung from very humble germs. This is the supreme truth
of science, and it is only when such a point of view has become quite
familiar to us that we shall be neither troubled nor disconcerted
by the sociological history of humanity; and however shocking or
unnatural certain customs may appear, we shall guard ourselves against
any feeling of indignation at them, and more especially against a
thoughtless refusal to give credence to them, simply because they run
counter to our own usages and morality.
All that social science has a right to ask of the facts which it
registers is that they should be authentic; this duly proved, it
only remains to accept, classify, and interpret them. Faithful to
this method, without which there could be no science of sociology,
I have here gathered together as proofs a number of singular facts,
which, improbable as they may appear according to our pre-conceived
notions, and criminal according to our moral sense, are nevertheless
most instructive. Although in a former work I have taken care to
establish the relativity of morality, the explanations that I am about
to make are not out of season; for the subject of this book is closely
connected with what, _par excellence_, we call “morals.”
On this point I must permit myself a short digression.
No one will pretend that our so-called civilised society has a very
strict practical morality, yet public opinion still seems to attach a
particular importance to sexual morality, and this is the expression of
a very real sentiment, the origin of which scientific sociology has no
difficulty in retracing. This origin, far from being a lofty one, goes
back simply to the right of proprietorship in women similar to that in
goods and chattels--a proprietorship which we find claimed in savage,
and even in barbarous countries, without any feeling of shame. During
the lower stages of social evolution, women are uniformly treated as
domestic animals; but this female live-stock are difficult to guard;
for, on the one hand, they are much coveted and are unskilful in
defending themselves, and on the other, they do not bend willingly to
the one-sided duty of fidelity that is imposed on them. The masters,
therefore, protect their own interests by a whole series of vexatious
restraints, of rigorous punishments, and of ferocious revenges, left at
first to the good pleasure of the marital proprietors, and afterwards
regulated and codified. In the chapter on adultery, especially, will
be found a great number of examples of this marital savagery. I have
previously shown, in my _Evolution de la Morale_, that the unforeseen
result of all this jealous fury has been to endow humanity, and more
particularly women, with the delicate sentiment of modesty, unknown to
the animal world and to primitive man.
From this evolution of thousands of years there has finally resulted,
in countries and races more or less civilised, a certain sexual
morality, which is half instinctive, and varies according to time
and place, but which it is impossible to transgress without the risk
of offending gravely against public opinion. Civilisations, however,
whether coarse or refined, differ from each other. Certain actions,
counted as blameworthy in one part of the world, are elsewhere held as
lawful and even praiseworthy. In order to trace the origin of marriage
and of the family, it is therefore indispensable to relate a number of
practices which may be scandalous in our eyes. While submitting to this
necessity, I have done so unwillingly, and with all the sobriety which
befits the subject. I have striven never to depart from the scientific
spirit, which purifies everything, and renders even indecency decent.
Like the savages of to-day, our distant ancestors were very little
removed from simple animal existence. A knowledge of their physiology
is nevertheless necessary to enable us to understand our own; for,
however cultivated the civilised man may be, he derives from the humble
progenitors of his race a number of instincts which are energetic in
proportion as they are of a low order. More or less deadened, these
gross tendencies are latent in the most highly developed individuals;
and when they sometimes break out suddenly in the actions of a man’s
life, or in the morals or literature of a people, they recall to us
our very humble origin, and even show a certain mental and moral
retrogression.
Now it is to this primitive man, still in such a rudimentary state,
that we must go back for enlightenment on the genesis of all our social
institutions. We must take him at the most distant dawn of humanity,
follow him step by step in his slow metamorphoses, without either
disparaging or poetising him; we must watch him rising and becoming
more refined through accumulated centuries, till he loses by degrees
his animal instincts, and at length acquires aptitudes, inclinations,
and faculties that are truly human.
Nothing is better adapted to exemplify the evolution which binds our
present to our past and to our future than the sociological history of
marriage and of the family.
After having spoken of the aim of this book, it remains for me to
justify its method. This differs considerably from what the mass of
the public like far too well. But a scientific treatise must not take
purely literary works for its models; and I can say to my readers,
with much more reason than old Rabelais, that if they wish to taste
the marrow, they must take the trouble to break the bone. My first
and chief consideration is to assist in the foundation of a new
science--ethnographical sociology. Elegant and vain dissertations, or
vague generalities, have no place here. It is by giving way to these,
and in attempting to reap the harvest before sowing the seed, that
many authors have lost themselves in a pseudo-sociology, having no
foundation, and consequently no value.
Social science, if it is to be seriously constituted, must submit with
docility to the method of natural science. The first task, and the one
which especially falls to the lot of the sociologists of the present
day, is to collect the facts which will form materials for the future
edifice. To their successors will fall the pleasure of completing and
adorning it.
The present work is, therefore, above all, a collection of facts which,
even if taken alone, are curious and suggestive. These facts have been
patiently gleaned from the writings of ethnographers, travellers,
legists, and historians. I have classed them as well as I could,
and naturally they have inspired me here and there with glimpses of
possible inductions, and with some slight attempts at generalisation.
But whether the reader rejects or accepts my interpretations, the
groundwork of facts on which they rest is so instructive of itself that
a perusal of the following pages cannot be quite fruitless.
CH. LETOURNEAU.
THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE AND OF THE FAMILY.
CHAPTER I.
THE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE.
I. _The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom._--Man is a
mammiferous, bimanous vertebrate--Biology the starting-point of
sociology--The origin of love.
II. _Reproduction._--Nutrition and
reproduction--Scissiparity--Budding--Ovulation--Conjugation--
Impregnation--Reproduction in the invertebrates--The entity called
Nature--Organic specialisation and reproduction--A dithyramb by
Haeckel.
III. _Rut and Love._--Rut renders sociable--Rut is a short puberty--Its
organic adornment--The frenzy of rut--Physiological reason of rut in
mammals--Love and rut--Schopenhauer and the designs of Nature.
IV. _Love of Animals._--Love and death--The law of coquetry--The
law of battle--Jealousy and æsthetic considerations--Love amongst
birds--Effects of sexual selection--The loves of the skylark--The males
of the blue heron and their combats--Battles of male geese and male
gallinaceæ--Courteous duels between males--Æsthetic seduction among
certain birds--Æsthetic constructions--Musical seduction--Predominance
of the female among certain birds--Greater sensuality of the
male--Effect of sexual exaltation--A Cartesian paradox--Individual
choice amongst animals--Individual fancies of females--General
propositions.
I. _The True Place of Man._
We have too long been accustomed to study human society as if man were
a being apart in the universe. In comparing human bipeds with animals
it has seemed as if we were disparaging these so-called demi-gods. It
is to this blind prejudice that we must attribute the tardy rise of
anthropological sociology. A deeper knowledge of biological science
and of inferior races has at last cured us of this childish vanity.
We have decided to assign to man his true place in the organic world
of our little globe. Granted that the human biped is incontestably
the most intelligent of terrestrial animals, yet, by his histological
texture, by his organs, and by the functions of these organs, he is
evidently only an animal, and easily classed in the series: he is
a bimanous, mammiferous vertebrate. Not that by his most glorious
representatives, by those whom we call men of genius, man does not rise
prodigiously above his distant relations of the mammal class; but, on
the other hand, by imperfectly developed specimens he descends far
below many species of animals; for if the idiot is only an exception,
the man of genius is still more so. In fact, the lowest human races,
with whose anatomy, psychology, and sociology we are to-day familiar,
can only inspire us with feelings of modesty. They furnish studies
in ethnography which have struck a mortal blow at the dreams of “the
kingdom of man.”
When once it is established that man is a mammal like any other,
and only distinguished from the animals of his class by a greater
cerebral development, all study of human sociology must logically be
preceded by a corresponding study of animal sociology. Moreover, as
sociology finally depends on biology, it will be necessary to seek in
physiological conditions themselves the origin of great sociological
manifestations. The first necessity of societies is that they should
endure, and they can only do so on the condition of providing
satisfaction for primordial needs, which are the condition of life
itself, and which imperatively dominate and regulate great social
institutions. Lastly, if man is a sociable animal, he is not the only
one; many other species have grouped themselves in societies, where,
however rudimentary they may be, we find in embryonic sketch the
principal traits of human agglomerations. There are even species--as,
for example, bees, ants, and termites--that have created true
republics, of complicated structure, in which the social problem has
been solved in an entirely original manner. We may take from them more
than one good example, and more than one valuable hint.
My present task is to write the history of marriage and of the family.
The institution of marriage has had no other object than the regulation
of sexual unions. These have for their aim the satisfaction of one of
the most imperious biological needs--the sexual appetite; but this
appetite is only a conscious impulse, a “snare,” as Montaigne calls
it, which impels both man and animal to provide, as far as concerns
them, for the preservation of their species--to “pay the ancestral
debt,” according to the Brahmanical formula. Before studying the sexual
relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it
will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general,
to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental,
and to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been
determined by physiological causes, and which render the fiercest
animals mild and tractable. This is what I shall attempt to do in the
following chapter.
II. _Reproduction._
Stendhal has somewhere said that the beautiful is simply the outcome
of the useful; changing the phrase, we may say that generation is
the outcome of nutrition. If we examine the processes of generation
in very simple organisms, this great function seems to answer to a
superabundance of nutritive materials, which, after having carried
the anatomic elements to their maximum volume, at length overflows
and provokes the formation of new elements. As long as the new-born
elements can remain aggregated with those which already constitute the
individual, as long as the latter has not acquired all the development
compatible with the plan of its being, there is simply growth. When
once the limit is attained that the species cannot pass, the organism
(I mean a very rudimentary organism) reproduces itself commonly by a
simple division in two halves. It perishes in doubling itself and in
producing two beings, similar to itself, and having nothing to do but
grow. It is by means of this bi-partition that hydras, vorticellæ,
algæ, and the lowest mushrooms are generally propagated.
In the organisms that are slightly more complicated the function of
reproduction tends to be specialised. The individual is no longer
totally divided; it produces a bud which grows by degrees, and detaches
itself from the parent organism to run in its turn through the very
limited adventures of its meagre existence.
By a more advanced step in specialisation the function of reproduction
becomes localised in a particular cell, an ovule, and the latter,
by a series of repeated bi-partitions, develops a new individual;
but it is generally necessary that the cellule destined to multiply
itself by segmentation should at first dissolve by union with another
cell. Through the action of various organic processes the two
generating cells arrive in contact. The element which is to undergo
segmentation--the female element--then absorbs the element that is
simply impulsive; the element called male becomes impregnated with
it, and from that moment it is fertilised, that is to say, capable of
pursuing the course of its formative work.
This phenomenon, so simple in itself, of the conjugation of two
cellules, is the foundation of reproduction in the two organic
kingdoms as soon as the two sexes are separated. Whether the sexes are
represented by distinct or united individuals, whether the accessory
organic apparatus is more or less complicated, are matters of no
consequence; the essential fact reappears always and everywhere of the
conjugation of two cellules, with absorption, in the case of superior
animals, of the male cellule by the female cellule.
The process may be observed in its most elementary form in the algæ and
the diatomaceæ, said to be conjugated. To form a reproductive cellule,
or spore, two neighbouring cellules each throw out, one towards the
other, a prolongation. These prolongations meet, and their sides
absorb each other at the point of contact; then the protoplasms of the
two elements mingle, and at length the two cellules melt into a single
reproductive cellule (_Spirogyra longata_).
Between this marriage of two lower vegetal cellules, which realises to
the letter the celebrated biblical words, “they shall be one flesh,” or
rather one protoplasm, and the fundamental phenomenon of fecundation
in the superior animals, including man, there is no essential
dissimilarity. The ovule of the female and the spermatozoon of the male
become fused in the same manner, with this difference only, that the
feminine cellule, the ovule, preserves its individuality and absorbs
the masculine cellule, or is impregnated by it.
But, simple as it is, this phenomenon of fecundation is the sole reason
of the duration of bi-sexual species. Thanks to it, organic individuals
that are all more or less ephemeral,
“Et, quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt.”
(_Lucretius_, ii. 78.)
For many organised beings reproduction seems in reality the supreme
object of existence. Numbers of vegetables and of animals, even of
animals high in the series--as insects--die as soon as they have
accomplished this great duty. Sometimes the male expires before having
detached himself from the female, and the latter herself survives just
long enough to effect the laying of eggs. Instead of laying eggs, the
female cochineal fills herself with eggs to such a degree that she dies
in consequence, and the tegument of her body is transformed into a
protecting envelope for the eggs.
At the not very distant time when animism reigned supreme, these facts
were attributed to calculations of design. Nature, it was believed,
occupied herself chiefly with perpetuating organised species; as for
individuals, she disdained the care of them. We now know that Nature,
as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist; that the great forces
called natural are unconscious; that their blind action results,
however, in the world of life, in a choice, a selection, a progressive
evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of the individuals best
adapted to the conditions of their existence. Without any intention of
Dame Nature, the preservation of the species was necessarily, before
anything else, the object of selection; and during the course of
geological periods primitive bi-partition gradually became transformed
through progressive differentiation into bi-sexual procreation,
requiring the concurrence of special and complicated apparatus in
order to be effected. But, at the same time as procreation, other
functions also became differentiated by the formation of special
organs; the nervous system vegetated around the _chorda dorsalis_;
and, finally, conscious life awoke in the nervous centres. Thenceforth
the accomplishment of the great function of procreation assumed an
entirely different aspect. In the lowest stages of the animal kingdom
reproduction is effected mechanically and unconsciously. A paramœcium,
observed by M. Balbiani, produced in forty-two days, by a series
of simple bi-partitions, 1,384,116 individuals, who very certainly
had not the least notion of the phenomena by which they transmitted
existence. But with superior animals it is very different; in their
case the act of procreation is a real efflorescence, not only physical,
but psychical. For the study that I am now undertaking it will not
be without use to recall the principal features of this amorous
efflorescence, since it is, after all, the first cause of marriage and
of the family. At the same time, not to lose our standpoint, it is
important to bear in mind that at the bottom all this expenditure of
physical and psychical force has for motive and for result, both in man
and animal, the conjugation of two generative cellules. Haeckel has
written a dithyramb on this subject in his _Anthropogenia_, which is
in the main so true that I take pleasure in quoting it--“Great effects
are everywhere produced, in animated nature, by minute causes....
Think of how many curious phenomena sexual selection gives rise to
in animal life; think of the results of love in human life; now,
all this has for its _raison d’être_ the union of two cellules....
There is no organic act which approaches this one in power and in the
force of differentiation. The Semitic myth of Eve seducing Adam for
the love of knowledge, the old Greek legend of Paris and Helen, and
many other magnificent poems, do they not simply express the enormous
influence that sexual love and sexual selection have exercised since
the separation of the sexes? The influence of all the other passions
which agitate the human heart cannot weigh in the balance with love,
which inflames the senses and fascinates the reason. On the one hand,
we celebrate in love the source of the most sublime works of art,
and of the noblest creations of poetry and of music; we venerate it
as the most powerful factor in civilisation, as the prime cause of
family life, and consequently of social life. On the other hand, we
fear love as a destructive flame; it is love that drives so many to
ruin; it is love that has caused more misery, vice, and crime than
all other calamities together. Love is so prodigious, its influence
is so enormous on psychic life and the most diverse functions of
the nervous system, that in regard to it we are tempted to question
the supernatural effect of our natural explanation. Nevertheless,
comparative biology and the history of development conduct us surely
and incontestably to the simplest, most remote source of love; that is
to say, the elective affinity of two different cellules--the spermatic
cell and the ovulary cell.”[1]
III. _Rut and Love._
In a former work on the evolution of morality I have described the
manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from
habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of
the same acts. The instinct of procreation has, and can have, no other
origin. The animal species, during the long phases of their evolution,
have reproduced themselves unconsciously, and by very simple processes,
which we may still observe in certain zoophytes. By degrees these mere
sketches of animals have become perfected and differentiated, and
have acquired special organs over which the biological work has been
distributed; thenceforth the play of life has echoed in the nervous
centres, and has awakened in them impressions and desires, the energy
of which strictly corresponds to the importance of the functions.
Now, there is no more primordial function than procreation, since on
it depends the duration even of the species; and for this reason the
need of reproduction, or the rut, breaks out in many animals like a
kind of madness. The psychic faculties of the animal, whether great or
small, are then over-excited, and rise above their ordinary level; but
they all tend to one supreme aim--the desire for reproduction. At this
period the wildest and most unsociable species can no longer endure
solitude; both males and females seek each other; sometimes, even,
they are seen to form themselves into groups, or small provisional
societies, which will dissolve again after the coupling time is over.
Each period of rut is for animals a sort of puberty. The hair, the
plumage, and the scales often assume rich tints which afterwards
disappear. Sometimes special epidermic productions appear in the male,
and serve him for temporary weapons with which to fight his rivals, or
for ornaments to captivate the female. It is with a veritable frenzy
that the sexual union is accomplished among certain species. Thus Dr.
Günther has several times found female toads dead, smothered by the
embrace of the males.[2] Spallanzani was able to amputate the thighs
of male frogs and toads during copulation, without diverting them from
their work.
In the animal class which more particularly interests us, that of
mammals, rut produces analogous, though less violent, phenomena. Now,
in this case, we know that erotic fury is closely related to congestive
phenomena, having for their seat the procreative glands, which swell
in both male and female, and provoke in the latter a veritable process
of egg-laying. We must not forget that man, in his quality of mammal,
is subject to the common law, that female menstruation is essentially
identical with the intimate phenomena of rut in the females of mammals,
and corresponds also to an ovarian congestion, or to the swelling and
bursting of one or more of the Graafian follicles; it is, in short, a
production of eggs. I need not lay stress on these facts, but it is
right to recall them by the way, since they are the _raison d’être_ of
sexual attraction, without which there would be neither marriage nor
family.
If we are willing to descend to the foundation of things, we find
that human love is essentially rut in an intelligent being. It exalts
all the vital forces of the man just as rut over-excites those of the
animal. If it seems to differ extremely from it, this is simply because
in man the procreative need, a primordial need beyond all others, in
radiating from highly developed nervous centres, awakens and sets in
commotion an entire psychic life unknown to the animal.
There is nothing surprising to the naturalist in this procreative
explosion, which evolves altruism out of egotism. We know too
well, however, that it has not appeared so simple a matter to many
philosophers and celebrated literary men, little familiar with
biological sciences. A belated metaphysician, Schopenhauer, who has
lately become fashionable, adopting the ancient stereotyped doctrine
which makes Nature an anthropomorphic personage, has gratuitously
credited her with quite a profound diplomatic design. According to him,
it is a foregone conclusion that she should intoxicate individuals with
love, and thus urge them on, without their suspecting it, to sacrifice
themselves to the major interest of the preservation of the species.
The glance that we have just thrown on the processes of reproduction,
from the paramœcium up to man, suffices to refute this dream. I will
not, however, dwell on this. What is here of great interest is to
inquire how the superior animals comport themselves when pricked by
desire, and to note the principal traits of their sexual psychology;
for here again we shall have to recognise more than one analogy to
what happens in regard to man; and we shall also see later that there
exists both in the animal and the man some relation between the manner
in which sexual attraction is felt and the greater or less aptitude for
durable pairing, and consequently for marriage and the family.
Without giving more time than is necessary to these short excursions
into animal psychology, it will be well to pause on them for a moment.
They throw a light on the sources of human sociology; they force us
also to break once for all with the abstract and trite theories which
have inspired, on the subject of marriage and the family, so much empty
writing and so many satiating trivialities. It is in animality that
humanity has its root; it is there, consequently, that we must seek the
origins of human sociology.
IV. _Loves of Animals._
In a well-known mystic book occurs an aphorism which has become
celebrated--“Love is strong as death.” The expression is not
exaggerated; we may even say that love is stronger than death, since
it makes us despise it. This is perhaps truer with animals than with
man, and is all the more evident in proportion as the rational will is
weaker, and prudential calculations furnish no check to the impetuosity
of desire. For the majority of insects to love and to die are almost
synonymous, and yet they make no effort to resist the amorous frenzy
which urges them on. But however short may be their sexual career, one
fact has been so generally observed in regard to many of them, that it
may be considered as the expression of a law--_the law of coquetry_.
With the greater number of species that are slightly intelligent, the
female refuses at first to yield to amorous caresses. This useful
practice may well have arisen from selection, for its result has
invariably been to excite the desire of the male, and arouse in him
latent or sleeping faculties. However brief, for example, may be
the life of butterflies, their pairing is not accomplished without
preliminaries; the males court the females during entire hours, and for
a butterfly hours are years.
We can easily imagine that the coquetry of females is more common
amongst vertebrates. When the season of love arrives, many male fishes,
who are then adorned with extremely brilliant colours, make the most of
their transient beauty by spreading out their fins, and by executing
leaps, darts, and seductive manœuvres around the females.
Among fishes we begin already to observe another sexual law, at least
as general as the law of coquetry, which Darwin has called the _law
of battle_. The males dispute with each other for the females, and
must triumph over their rivals before obtaining them. Thus, whilst
the female sticklebacks are very pacific, their males are of warlike
humour, and engage in furious combats in their honour. In the same way
the male salmon, whose lower jaw lengthens into a crook during the
breeding season, are constantly fighting amongst each other.[3]
The higher we ascend in the animal kingdom the more frequent and more
violent become two desires in the males--the desire of appearing
beautiful, and that of driving away rivals. In South America, the males
of the _Analis cristellatus_, a fissilingual saurian, have terrible
battles in the breeding season, the vanquished habitually losing his
tail, which is bitten off by the victor. An old observer also describes
the amorous male alligator as “swollen to bursting, the head and tail
raised, spinning round on the surface of the water, and appearing to
assume the manner of an Indian chief relating his exploits.”[4]
But it is particularly among birds that the sentiment, or rather the
passion, of love breaks out with most force and even poetry. It is
especially to birds that the celebrated Darwinian theory of sexual
selection applies. It is difficult, indeed, not to attribute to this
influence the production of the offensive and defensive arms, the
armaments, the organs of song, the glands of odoriferous secretion
of many male birds, also their courage, the warlike instinct of many
of them, and lastly, the coquetry of the females. Let us listen to
Audubon, as he relates the loves of the skylark:--“Each male is seen
to advance with an imposing and measured step, swinging his tail,
spreading it out to its full extent, then closing it again like a fan
in the hands of a fine lady. Their brilliant notes are more melodious
than ever; they repeat them oftener than usual as they rest on the
branch or summit of some tall meadow reed. Woe to the rival who dares
to enter the lists, or to the male who simply comes in sight of another
male at this moment of veritable delirium: he is suddenly attacked,
and, if he is the weaker, chased beyond the limits of the territory
claimed by the first occupant. Sometimes several birds are seen engaged
in these rude combats, which rarely last more than two or three
minutes: the appearance of a single female suffices to put an instant
end to their quarrel, and they all fly after her as if mad. The female
shows the natural reserve of her sex, without which, even among larks,
every female would probably fail to find a male [this is a little too
flattering for larks, and even for men]. When the latter,” continues
Audubon, “flies towards her, sighing forth his sweetest notes, she
retreats before her ardent admirer in such a way that he knows not
whether he is repulsed or encouraged.”[5]
In this little picture the author has noted all the striking traits of
the love of birds--the courage and jealousy of the male, his efforts
to charm the female by his beauty and the sweetness of his song, and
finally, the coquetry of the female, who retreats, and thus throws oil
on the fire. The combats of the amorous males among many species of
birds have been observed and described minutely. “The large blue male
herons,” says Audubon, “attack each other brutally, without courtesy;
they make passes with their long beaks and parry them like fencing
masters, often for half-an-hour at a time, after which the vanquished
one remains on the ground, wounded or killed.”[6]
The male Canadian geese engage in combats which last more than
half-an-hour; the vanquished sometimes return to the charge, and the
fight always takes place in an enclosed field, in the middle of a
circle formed by the band or clan of which the rivals form part.
But it is especially among the gallinaceæ that love inspires the
males with warlike fury. In this order of birds nearly all the males
are of bellicose temperament. Our barn-door cock is the type of the
gallinaceæ--vain, amorous, and courageous. Black cocks are also always
ready for a fight, and their females quietly look on at their combats,
and afterwards reward the conqueror. We may observe analogous facts,
only somewhat masked, in savage, and even in civilised humanity. The
conduct of certain females of the _Tetras urogallus_ is still more
human. According to Kowalewsky, they take advantage of a moment when
the attention of the old cocks is entirely absorbed by the anxiety of
the combat, to run off with a younger male.[7]
If we may believe certain authors, these amorous duels must not always
be taken seriously. They are often nothing more than parades, tourneys,
or courteous jousts, merely giving the males an opportunity of showing
their beauty, address, or strength. This is the case, according to
Blyth, with the _Tetras umbellus_.[8] In the same way, the grouse of
Florida (_Tetras cuspido_) are said to assemble at night to fight until
the morning with measured grace, and then to separate, having first
exchanged formal courtesies.[9]
But among animals, as well as men, love has more than one string to
his bow. It is especially so with birds, who are the most amorous of
vertebrates. They use several æsthetic means of attracting the female,
such as beauty of plumage and the art of showing it, and also sweetness
of song. Strength seems often to be quite set aside, and the eye and
ear are alone appealed to by the love-stricken males.
Every one has seen our pigeons and doves courteously salute their
mates. Many male birds execute dances and courting parades before
their females. Thus, for example, do the _Tetras phasaniellus_ of
North America, herons (_Cathartes jota_), vultures, etc. The male of
the red-wing struts about before his female, sweeping the ground with
his tail and acting the dandy.[10] The crested duck raises his head
gracefully, straightens his silky aigrette, or bows to his female,
while his throat swells and he utters a sort of gutteral sound.[11]
The male chaffinch places himself in front of the female, that she may
admire at her ease his red throat and blue head.[12]
All this æsthetic display is quite intentional and premeditated;
for while many pheasants and gallinaceous birds parade before their
females, two pheasants of dull colour, the _Crossoptilon auritum_ and
the _Phasianus Wallichii_, refrain from doing so,[13] being apparently
conscious of their modest livery.
Birds often assemble in large numbers to compete in beauty before
pairing. The _Tetras cuspido_ of Florida and the little grouse of
Germany and Scandinavia do this. The latter have daily amorous
assemblies, or _cours d’amour_, of great length, which are renewed
every year in the month of May.[14]
Certain birds are not content with their natural ornaments, however
brilliant these may be, but give the rein to their æsthetic desire
in a way that may be called human. Mr. Gould assures us that some
species of humming-birds decorate the exterior of their nests with
exquisite taste, making use of lichens, feathers, etc. The bower-birds
of Australia (_Chlamydera maculata_, etc.) construct bowers on the
ground, ornamented with feathers, shells, bones, and leaves. These
bowers are intended to shelter the courting parades, and both males
and females join in building them, though the former are more zealous
in the work.[15] But in this erotic architecture the palm is carried
off by a bird of New Guinea, the _Amblyornis inornata_, made known to
us by M. O. Beccari.[16] This bird of rare beauty, for it is a bird of
Paradise, constructs a little conical hut to protect his amours, and
in front of this he arranges a lawn, carpeted with moss, the greenness
of which he relieves by scattering on it various bright-coloured
objects, such as berries, grains, flowers, pebbles, and shells. More
than this, when the flowers are faded, he takes great care to replace
them by fresh ones, so that the eye may be always agreeably flattered.
These curious constructions are solid, lasting for several years, and
probably serving for several birds. What we know of sexual unions among
the lower human races suffices to show how much these birds excel men
in sexual delicacy.
Every one is aware that the melodious voice of many male birds
furnishes them with a powerful means of seduction. Every spring our
nightingales figure in true lyric tournaments. Magpies, who are
ill-endowed from a musical point of view, endeavour to make up for this
organic imperfection by rapping on a dry and sonorous branch, not
only to call the female, but also to charm her; we may say, in fact,
that they perform instrumental music. Another bird, the male of the
weaver-bird, builds an abode of pleasure for himself, where he goes to
sing to his companion.[17]
Audubon has made one observation in regard to Canadian geese which
is in every point applicable to the human species. The older the
birds are, he says, the more they abridge the preliminaries of their
amours. Their poetic and æsthetic sense has become blunted, and they go
straight to their object.
Wherever amongst the animal species supremacy in love is obtained
by force, the male, nearly always the more ardent, has necessarily
become, through the action of selection, larger, stronger, and better
armed than the female. Such is in reality the case in regard to the
greater number of vertebrates; certain exceptions, however, exist,
and naturally these are chiefly found among birds, as they are more
inclined than other types to put a certain delicacy in their sexual
unions. With many species of birds, indeed, the female is larger and
stronger than the male. It is well known to be the same with certain
articulates, and these facts authorise us to admit that there is no
necessary correlation between relative weakness and the female sex.
Must we therefore conclude, with Darwin, that the females of certain
birds owe their excess of size and height to the fact that they have
formerly contested also for the possession of the males? We may be
allowed to doubt it. Almost universally, whether she is large or
small, the female is less ardent than the male, and in the amorous
tragi-comedy she generally plays, from beginning to end, a passive
_rôle_; in the animal kingdom, as well as with mankind, amazons are
rare.
Among birds and vertebrates generally the male is much more impetuous
than the female, and therefore he has no difficulty in accepting for
the moment any companion whatever.[18] This uncontrollable ardour
sometimes even urges the males to commit actual attempts on the safety
of the family. Thus it happens that the male canary (_Fringilla_
_canaria_) persecutes his female while she is sitting, tears her nest,
throws out the eggs, and, in short, tries to excite his mate to become
again a lover, forgetting that she is a mother. In the same way our
domestic cock pursues the sitting hen when she leaves her eggs in order
to feed.[19]
With the cousins-german of man, the mammals, sexual psychology has a
general resemblance to that of birds, but more often it is far less
delicate. And besides this, the sexual customs are naturally less
refined in proportion as the nervous centres of the species are less
perfected. Thus the stupid tatoways meet by chance, smell each other,
copulate and separate with the greatest indifference. Our domestic dog
himself, although so civilised and affectionate, is generally as gross
in his amours as the tatoway.
With birds, as we have seen, the law of battle plays an important
part in sexual selection; but it is often counter-balanced by other
less brutal influences. This is rarely the case in regard to mammals,
with whom especially the right of the strongest regulates the unions.
The law of battle prevails among aquatic as well as land mammals. The
combats of the male stags, in the rutting season, are celebrated. The
combatants have been known to succumb without being able to disentangle
their interlocked antlers; but seals and male sperm-whales fight with
equal fury, and so also do the males of the Greenland whale.[20]
In mammals, as in birds, and as in man, sexual desire raises and
intensifies all the faculties, and seems to elevate the individual
above the level of normal life. Animals in a state of rut become
bolder, more ferocious, and more dangerous. The elephant, pacific
enough by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. The
Sanskrit poems constantly recur to the simile of the elephant in rut to
express the highest degree of strength, nobility, grandeur, and even
beauty.
But obviously I must not linger very long over the loves of the
animals. My chief object is to study sexual union and marriage
amongst human beings. The rut of animals and their sexual passions
merely interest us here as preliminary studies, which throw light on
the origin of analogous sentiments in mankind. Before leaving this
subject, however, it will be useful to note a few more facts which,
from the point of view of sexual psychology, bring animals and men near
to each other.
The old Cartesian paradox, which makes the animal an unconscious
machine, has still many partisans. A widely-prevailing prejudice
insists that animals always obey blind instincts, while man alone,
_homo sapiens_, made after the image of God, weighs motives,
deliberates and chooses. Now, as procreation constitutes one of the
great necessities of organised beings, and is an imperious law which no
species can elude without disappearing, surely we ought to find amongst
animals the most exact regularity in the acts connected with it. Man
alone ought to have the privilege of introducing caprice and free
choice into love. It is not so, however. On this side of his nature,
as on all the others, man and animal approach, resemble, and copy each
other. In his celebrated invocation to Venus, Lucretius has truly said,
proclaiming the universal empire of the instinct of reproduction--
“Per te quoniam genus omne animantum
Concipitur, visitque exortum lumine solis.”
The animal, as well as the morally developed man, is capable of
preference and individual passion; he does not yield blindly and
passively to sexual love.
According to observers and breeders, it is the female who is specially
susceptible of sentimental selection. The male, even the male of birds,
is more ardent than the female, that is to say, more intoxicated and
more sharply pricked by instinct, and thus generally accepts any
female whatever: all are alike to him. This is the rule, but it is not
without exceptions; thus, the male pheasant shows a singular aversion
to certain hens. Amongst the long-tailed ducks some females have
evidently a particular charm for the males, and are courted more than
the others.[21] The pigeon of the dovecot shows a strong aversion to
the species modified by breeders, which he regards as deteriorated.[22]
Stallions are often capricious. It was necessary, for example, to
use stratagem in order to induce the famous stallion Monarch to beget
Gladiateur, who became still more famous.[23] Analogous facts have been
observed in regard to bulls.[24]
But it is more especially the females who introduce individual fancy
into sexual love. They are subject to singular and inexplicable
aversions. Mares sometimes resist, and it is necessary to deceive
them.[25] Female pigeons occasionally show a strong dislike to certain
males without apparent cause, and refuse to yield to their caresses. At
other times a female pigeon, suddenly forgetting the constancy of her
species, abandons her old mate or legitimate spouse to fall violently
in love with another male. In the same way peahens sometimes show a
lively attachment to a particular peacock.[26] High-bred bitches, led
astray by passion, trample under foot their dignity, honour, and all
care for nobility of blood, to yield themselves to pug-dogs of low
breed or mongrel males. We are told of some who have persisted for
entire weeks in these degrading passions, repulsing between times the
most distinguished of their own race.[27]
Even among species noted for their fidelity it sometimes happens
that acts of sexual looseness are committed. The female pigeon often
abandons her mate if the latter is wounded or becomes weak.[28]
Misfortune is not attractive, and love does not always inspire heroism.
In concluding this short study of sexual union in the animal kingdom, I
will attempt to formulate the general propositions which may be drawn
from it.
All organic species undergo the tyranny of the procreative function,
which is a guarantee of the duration of the type.
The phenomenon of reproduction, when detached from all the complicated
accessories which often conceal it in bi-sexual species, goes back
essentially to the conjugation of two cellules.
With intelligent animals the procreative function echoes in the nervous
centres under the form of violent desires, which intensify all the
psychic and physical faculties in awakening what we call love.
At its base, the love of animals does not differ from that of man.
Doubtless it is never such a quintessence as the love of Petrarch,
but it is often more delicate than that of inferior races, and of
ill-conditioned individuals, who, though belonging to the human race,
seek for nothing in love but, to use an energetic expression of Amyot’s
Plutarch, to “get drunk.”
But among many of the animal species the sexual union induces a durable
association, having for its object the rearing of young. In nobility,
delicacy, and devotion these unions do not yield precedence to many
human unions. They deserve attentive study.
I have now, therefore, to consider marriage and the family amongst the
animals.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Anthropogenia_, p. 577.
[2] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 384.
[3] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 365.
[4] Bartram, _Travels through Carolina_, p. 128 (1791).
[5] Audubon, _Scènes de la Nature dans les États-Unis_, vol. i. p. 383.
[6] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 66.
[7] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 399.
[8] _Ibid._ p. 403.
[9] Espinas, _Sociétés Animales_, p. 326.
[10] Audubon, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 305.
[11] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 50.
[12] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 438.
[13] _Ibid._ p. 438.
[14] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 433.--Espinas, _Soc. Animales_, p.
326.
[15] _Ibid._ pp. 418, 453.
[16] _Annali del Museo civico di storia naturale di Genova_, t. ix.
fase 3-4, 1877.
[17] Espinas, _loc. cit._, pp. 299, 438.
[18] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 460.
[19] Houzeau, _Facultés mentales des animaux_, t. I^{er.} p. 292.
[20] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, pp. 550, 556.
[21] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, pp. 460, 461.
[22] _Ibid._ p. 457.
[23] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 575.
[24] _Ibid._ p. 576.
[25] _Ibid._ p. 576.
[26] _Ibid._ pp. 458, 459.
[27] _Ibid._ p. 574.
[28] _Ibid._ p. 234.
CHAPTER II.
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY AMONGST ANIMALS.
I. _The preservation of species._--Two great processes of
preservation--Different _rôles_ of the male and the female in the
animal family.
II. _Marriage and the rearing of the young among
animals._--Abandonment of the young in the inferior species--The
superior molluscs guard their eggs--Solicitude of spiders for
their eggs and their young--Instinctive foresight of insects--Its
origin--Larvæ are ancestral forms--The familial instinct amongst
birds--Frequency of monogamy amongst birds.
III. _The family amongst animals._--Intoxication of egg-laying with
birds--Absence of paternal love in certain birds--The familial
instinct very developed in certain species--Transient nature of
their love for the young--Promiscuity, polygamy, and monogamy among
mammals--Hordes of sociable animals--Polygamous monkeys--Monogamous
monkeys--General observations.
I. _The Preservation of Species._
Two great processes are employed in the animal kingdom to assure
the preservation of the species: either the parents do not concern
themselves at all with their progeny, in which case the females give
birth to an enormous number of young; or, on the other hand, they are
full of solicitude for their offspring, cherishing and protecting
them against the numerous dangers that menace them; and, in this last
case, the young are few in number. Nature (since the expression is
consecrated) proceeds sometimes by a lavish and lawless production,
and sometimes by a sort of Malthusianism. Thus a cod lays every year
about a million eggs, on which she bestows no care, and of which
only the thousandth, or perhaps even the hundred thousandth part,
escapes destruction; turtle-doves, on the contrary, only lay two eggs,
but nearly all their young attain maturity. In short, the species
is maintained sometimes by prodigality of births and sometimes by a
great expenditure of care and affection on the part of the parents,
especially of the female. It is almost superfluous to remark that
analogous facts are observed in human natality, according as it is
savage or civilised.
With animals, as with men, sexual association, when it endures, becomes
marriage, and results in the family, that is to say, a union of parents
for the purpose of protecting their young. The care of the male for his
progeny is more rare and tardy than that of the female. Among animals,
as among men, the family is at first matriarchal, and it is only in
the higher stages of the animal kingdom that the male becomes a truly
constituent part of the family group; but even then, except among
certain species of birds, his chief care is less to rear the young than
to govern in order to protect them. He plays the _rôle_ of a despotic
chief, guiding the family when it remains undivided after the rearing
of the young, and most frequently acting like a polygamous sultan,
without the purely human scruple in regard to incest.
Just as we find amongst animals the two principal types of the human
family, the matriarchate and the patriarchate, or rather the maternal
and paternal family, so we may observe equally among them all the forms
of sexual union from promiscuity up to monogamy; but for enlightenment
on these interesting points of sociology, a rapid examination of the
animal kingdom is worth far more than all generalities.
II. _Marriage and the Rearing of Young amongst Animals._
We shall leave entirely unnoticed the inferior kingdom of zoophytes,
which are devoid of coalescing nervous centres, and consequently of
conscious life. Even the lower types of molluscs do not begin to think
of their progeny; they scatter their eggs as plants do their seeds,
and leave them exposed to all chances. We must go to the superior
molluscs to see any care of offspring awakening. In this order, indeed,
the most highly developed species watch more or less over their eggs.
The taredos carry them stuck together in rings round their bodies;
snails often deposit them in damp ground, or in the trunk of a tree;
cephalopods fix them in clusters round algæ, and sometimes watch them
till they open, after which they leave them to get on as they can in
the great world.
With spiders and insects the eggs are often the object of a solicitude
and even prolonged forethought, which rejoice greatly the lovers of
design. We must observe, however, that the males of spiders and that of
the greater number of insects entirely neglect their young; it is again
in the female that the care for offspring first awakens. And this is
natural, for the eggs have been formed in her body; she has laid them,
and has been conscious of them; they form, in a way, an integral part
of her individuality.
The females of spiders also take care of their eggs after laying them,
enclose them in a ball of thread arranged in cocoons, carry them about
with them, and at the moment of hatching set them free, one by one,
from the envelope. Amongst some species there is even a certain rearing
of the young. Thus the _Nemesia Eleonora_ lives for some time in her
trapped nest with her young, numbering from twenty to forty.[29]
With insects maternal forethought sometimes amounts to a sort of
divining prescience, which the doctrine of evolution alone can explain.
There is really something wonderful in the actions of a female insect,
as she prepares for her descendants, whom she will never see any more
than she has seen her own parents, a special nourishment which differs
from her own. It is thus that the sphinx, the pompilus, the sand-wasp,
and the philanthus dig holes in the sand, in which they deposit with
the eggs a suitable food for the future larvæ.[30]
In order to understand these facts, apparently so inexplicable, we
must look not only to the powerful influence of selection, but also
to the zoögenic past of the species. With the insect the perfect form
is always the last which it assumes, the outcome of all the previous
metamorphoses. But the larval form, though actually transitory, must
have been for a long time the permanent form, and it had different
tastes and needs. At the present time there are still numbers of
insects whose larval existence has a much longer duration than that of
the so-called perfect insect (May-flies, cockchafers). There are even
larvæ which reproduce themselves. Certain others, even though sterile,
have not lost the maternal instinct. Thus at the time of the hatching
of the nymphs the larvæ of the termites assist the latter to get rid of
their envelope. It is therefore probable that, though now transitory,
the larval forms of insects have formerly been permanent; they
represent ancestral types, which evolution has by degrees metamorphosed
into insects that we call perfect. The larvæ, now actually sterile,
descend from ancestors which were not so, and in the larvæ of
certain species the maternal instinct has survived the reproductive
function.[31]
This is doubtless the case with bees and ants; their workers must
represent an ancestral form, having preserved the maternal fervour
of its anterior state; the winged form, on the contrary, must be
relatively recent. It even appears probable that in the republics of
ants and bees the laborious workers may have succeeded, in a certain
way, in getting rid of sexual needs which cause animals and even men
to commit so many mad actions. With them the old maternal instinct has
taken the place ceded to it by sexual instinct, and has become enlarged
and ennobled. Their affection is no longer exclusively confined to a
few individuals produced from their own bowels, but is shared by all
the young of the association. In their sub-œsophagian ganglion one care
takes precedence of all others--the care of rearing the young. This is
their constant occupation and the great duty to which they sacrifice
their lives. Maternal love, usually so selfish, expands with them into
an all-embracing social affection. It is not impossible that a psychic
metamorphosis of the same kind may one day take place in future human
societies.
It would even seem that the workers appreciate the faculty of
reproduction all the more for being deprived of it. The queen bee, or
rather the fertile female, who is the common mother of all the tribe,
has every possible care lavished on her, and is publicly mourned when
she dies. If she happens to perish before having young, and then cannot
be replaced, the virgin workers despair of the republic; losing for
ever “les longs espoirs et les vastes pensées,” they give way to an
incurable and mortal pessimism.
One primitive form of the family, the matriarchate, which we shall
study later, is realised, even in an exaggerated form, by ants and
bees. In human societies we shall only find very faint imitations of
this system, which has been so strictly carried out by the primates of
the invertebrates, and which seems to have inspired the ancients with
their fables about the amazons.
The vertebrated species, with the exception of mankind, have founded
no society that can be even distantly compared to that of hymenoptera
and of ants. With nearly all fishes and amphibia the parents are very
poorly developed as regards consciousness, and take no care of their
eggs after fecundation. Some species of fishes are, however, endowed
with a certain familial instinct, and strange to say, here it is the
male who tends his offspring. So true is it, that the imaginary being
called Nature has no preference for any special methods, and that in
her eyes all processes are good on the one condition that they succeed!
Thus the Chinese _Macropus_ gathers the fecundated eggs into his
jaws, deposits them in the midst of the froth and mucous exuding from
his mouth, and watches over the young when they are hatched.[32] The
male of synagnathous fishes and the sea-horses carry their eggs in an
incubating pouch; the _Chromis paterfamilias_, of the lake of Tiberias,
protects and nourishes in his mouth and bronchial cavity hundreds of
small fishes.[33]
Other fishes also have more or less care for their young. Salmon and
trout deposit their eggs in a depression which they have hollowed out
in the sand for the purpose. Fishes, belonging to various families,
construct nests and watch over the young when hatched (_Cranilabrus
massa_, _Cranilabrus melops_). Often again it is the male who
undertakes all the work. Thus the male of the _Gasterosteus leiurus_ is
incessantly occupied in fetching the young ones home, and driving away
all enemies, including the mother.[34] The male stickleback, who is
polygamous, builds a nest and watches with solicitude over the safety
and rearing of the young.[35]
Many reptiles are unnatural parents; some, however, already possess
some degree of familial instinct. Thus several males of the batrachians
assist the female to eject her eggs. The male accoucheur toad rolls the
eggs round his feet, and carefully carries them thus. The Surinam toad,
the _Pipa Americana_, after having aided the female in the operation of
laying the eggs, places them on the back of his companion, in little
cutaneous cavities formed for their reception.[36]
The _Cobra capella_ bravely defends its eggs. The saurians often live
in couples, and the females of crocodiles escort their new-born little
ones. Female tortoises go so far as to shelter their young in a sort of
nest.[37]
But it is especially among birds and mammals that we find forms
of union or association very similar to marriage and the family
in the human species. Nothing is more natural; for anatomical and
physiological analogy must of necessity lead in its train the analogy
of sociology. There is no more uniformity either amongst mammals than
amongst men; the needs, the habitat, and the necessities of existence
dominate everything, and in order to secure adjustment to these,
recourse is had to various processes.
Like men, birds live sometimes in promiscuity, and sometimes in
monogamy or polygamy; the familial instinct is also very unequally
developed among them. Sometimes even we find their conjugal customs
modified by the kind of life they lead. Thus the wild duck, which is
strictly monogamous in a wild state, becomes very polygamous when
domesticated, and it is the same with the guinea fowl. Civilisation
depraves these birds, as it does some men. As may be supposed, it is
generally the animals living in troops who are degraded most easily by
habitual promiscuity. But this is not always the case; the character
of the animal, his mode of life, and the degree of morality previously
acquired, determine his manner of acting. It is probable also that
certain animals, living in troops during the breeding season, have
formerly been less sociable than at present, for they leave the troop
and retire apart in couples as soon as they have paired. Social life is
burdensome to them.
It is especially interesting to study the various modes of conjugal
and familial association amongst birds. This may easily be inferred
from the ardour, the variety, and the delicacy they bring to their
amours; the moral level among them, to borrow a human expression, is
very diverse, according to the species. There are some birds absolutely
fickle and even debauched--as, for example, the little American
starling (_Icterus pecoris_), which changes its female from day to day;
that is to say, it is in the lowest stage of sexual union, a debauched
promiscuity, which we only exceptionally find in some hardly civilised
human societies.[38] The starling, nevertheless, is not ferocious, like
the asturides, to whom, according to Brehm, love seems unknown, and
amongst whom the female devours her male, the father and the mother
feast on their own young, and the latter, when full grown, willingly
eat their parents. These ferocious habits denote a very feeble moral
development. But if we may believe a French missionary, Mgr. Farand,
bishop of the Mackenzie territory, similar customs still prevail among
the Redskins of the extreme north.[39] We shall not, therefore, be too
much scandalised at the birds. These cases of moral grossness are,
besides, rare enough with them.
Other species, while they have renounced promiscuity, are still
determined polygamists. The gallinaceæ are particularly addicted to
this form of conjugal union, which is so common, in fact, with mankind,
even when highly civilised and boasting of their practice of monogamy.
Our barn-door cock, vain and sensual, courageous and jealous, is a
perfect type of the polygamous bird. But the polygamous habits of the
gallinaceæ do not prevent them from experiencing very strong sexual
passion. When seized by this frenzy of desire, some of them appear to
be senseless of all danger. The firing of a gun, for example, does not
alarm a male grouse when swinging his head and whistling to charm his
female;[40] but this ardour does not hinder him from being a fickle
animal, always in search of new adventures, and always seeking fresh
mates.[41]
These examples of wandering fancy are for the most part rare among
birds, the majority of whom are monogamous, and even far superior to
most men in the matter of conjugal fidelity.
Nearly all the rapacious animals, even the stupid vultures, are
monogamous. The conjugal union of the bald-headed eagle appears even to
last till the death of one of the partners. This is indeed monogamic
and indissoluble marriage, though without legal constraint.[42]
Golden eagles live in couples, and remain attached to each other for
years without even changing their domicile.[43] But these instances,
honourable as they are, have nothing exceptional in them; strong
conjugal attachment is a sentiment common to many birds.
With the female Illinois parrot (_Psittacus pertinax_) widowhood and
death are synonymous, a circumstance rare enough in the human species,
yet of which birds give us more than one example. When, after some
years of conjugal life, a wheatear happens to die, his companion
hardly survives him a month. The male and female of the _panurus_
are always perched side by side. When they fall asleep, one of them,
generally the male, tenderly spreads its wing over the other. The
death of one, says Brehm, is fatal to its companion. The couples of
golden wood-peckers, of doves, etc., live in a perfect union, and
in case of widowhood experience a violent and lasting grief. The
male of a climbing wood-pecker, having seen his mate die, tapped day
and night with his beak to recall the absent one; then at length,
discouraged and hopeless, he became silent, but never recovered his
gaiety (Brehm). These examples of a fidelity that stands every test,
and of the religion of memory, although much more frequent in the
unions of birds than in those of human beings, are not, however, the
unfailing rule. With birds, as with men, there seems to be a good
number of irregular cases--individuals of imperfect moral development
and of fickle disposition. This may be inferred from the facility with
which, among certain species of monogamous birds, the dead partner is
replaced. Jenner, who introduced vaccination, relates that in Wiltshire
he has seen one of a couple of magpies killed seven days in succession,
and seven times over immediately replaced. Analogous facts have been
observed of jays, falcons, and starlings. Now, when it concerns animals
that are paired, each substitution must correspond to a desertion, the
more so as the observations were made in the same locality and in the
height of the breeding season.[44]
Very peculiar fancies sometimes arise in the brains of certain birds.
Thus we see birds of distinct species pairing, and this even in a wild
state. These illegitimate unions have been observed between geese and
barnacle geese, and between black grouse and pheasants.
Darwin relates a case of this kind of passion suddenly appearing in
a wild duck. The fact is related by Mr. Hewitt as follows:--“After
breeding a couple of seasons with her own mallard, she at once shook
him off on my placing a male pintail in the water. It was evidently
a case of love at first sight, for she swam about the new-comer
caressingly, though he appeared evidently alarmed and averse to her
overtures of affection. From that hour she forgot her old partner.
Winter passed by, and the next spring the pintail seemed to have
become a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and produced
seven or eight young ones.”[45] It is difficult not to attribute
such deviations as these to motives similar to those by which we are
ourselves actuated--to passion, caprice, or depravity. They certainly
cannot be accounted for by the theory of mechanical and immutable
instinct. Such facts clearly prove that animal psychology, although
less complicated than our own, does not differ essentially from it,
and consequently throws much light on our present investigation. The
adventure of the wild duck, for example, may, without any alteration,
be read as a human adventure, proving for the hundred-thousandth
time that the heart, or what we call by that name, is versatile; that
conjugal fidelity does not always resist a strong impression arising
from a chance encounter; that novelty has a disturbing effect; and,
finally, that indifference and coldness can rarely hold out against
the persistent advances of one who loves ardently enough not to yield
to discouragement. Dante has already made this last reflection in his
celebrated line--
“Amor ch’a nullo amato amar perdona.”
To quote Dante _à propos_ of the illicit amours of a pintail and a wild
duck may shock the learned, but the aptness of the quotation proves
once more the essential identity of the animal and human organisms.
III. _The Family amongst Animals._
If the study of the modes of sexual union amongst animals is not
useless to the sociologist, that of the animal family is at least
quite as interesting. This latter confirms the inductions of theorists
relative to the primitive form of the human family. The animal family
is especially maternal. The female of birds, immediately she has laid
her eggs, experiences a sort of intoxication; to sit becomes for her
an imperious need, which completely transforms her moral nature. In
January 1871, during the bombardment of Paris, a German shell, bursting
in the loft of a house inhabited by one of my friends, was powerless
to disturb a female pigeon absolutely enchained by the passion of
incubation.
It is amongst birds that the animal family is best constituted; this,
however, differs much according to the species, especially as regards
the participation of the male in the rearing of the young.
Amongst ducks, the male has no care for his progeny. The male eider
resembles the duck in this respect (Audubon). Male turkeys do much
worse: they often devour the eggs of their females, and thus oblige the
latter to hide them.[46] Female turkeys join each other with their
young ones for greater security, and thus form troops of from sixty to
eighty individuals, led by the mothers, and carefully avoiding the old
males, who rush on the young ones and kill them by violent blows on the
head with their beaks.[47]
Among certain species of gallinaceæ the male leaves to the female the
care of incubation and of rearing the young. During this time he is
running after adventures, but returns when the young are old enough
to follow him and form a docile band under his government.[48] It
is important to notice that, amongst birds, the fathers devoid of
affection generally belong to the less intelligent species, and are
most often polygamous. It seems, therefore, that polygamy is not very
favourable to the development of paternal love.[49]
But bad fathers are rare amongst birds. Often, on the contrary, the
male rivals the female in love for the young; he guards and feeds her
during incubation, and sometimes even sits on the eggs with her. The
carrier pigeon feeds his female while she is sitting;[50] the Canadian
goose[51] and the crow do the same; more than that, the latter takes
his companion’s place at times, to give her some relaxation. The blue
marten behaves in the same manner.[52] Among many species, male and
female combine their efforts without distinction of sex; they sit in
turn, and the one who is free takes the duty of feeding the one who is
occupied. This is the custom of the black-coated gull,[53] the booby
of Bassan,[54] the great blue heron,[55] and of the black vulture.[56]
According to Audubon, the blue bird of America works so ardently at the
propagation of its species that a single brood does not satisfy him;
each couple, therefore, exerts itself zealously, rearing two or three
broods at the same time, the female sitting on one, while the male
feeds the little ones of the preceding brood.[57]
But however violent the love of birds for their progeny may be, it
lasts only a short time, and is suddenly extinguished when the young
can manage for themselves. It is then quite surprising to see the
parents drive away by strokes of the beak the little ones they had been
nursing with such devoted tenderness a few days before. The birds of
several species, however, teach their young to fly before separating
from them. The white-headed sea-eagle carries them on its back to give
them lessons in flying; grebes, swans, and eiders teach their young to
swim, etc. But the family is only of short duration among birds and
animals generally, unless, as is the case with some gallinaceæ, the
male keeps a few of his daughters to enrich his harem. As a matter
of fact, both with birds and other animals, the paternal or maternal
sentiment hardly lasts longer than the rearing time. When once the
young are full grown, the parents no longer distinguish them from
strangers of their species, and it is thus even with monogamic species
when the conjugal tie is lifelong; the marriage alone endures, but the
family is intermittent and renewed with every brood. We may remark that
it is almost the same with certain human races of low development. But,
before speaking of man, it will be well to investigate conjugal union
and the family amongst the animals nearest to man--the mammals.
From the point of view of duration and strength of the affections,
or that which we as men should call their morality, the mammals are
far from occupying the first rank in the animal hierarchy; many birds
are very superior to them. We find, however, great differences in
the morals, according to the species. Many mammals have stopped at
the most brutal promiscuity; males and females unite and separate
at chance meetings, without any care for the family arising in the
mind of the male. The females of mammals being always weaker than
the males, no sexual association comparable to polyandry is possible
in this class, since, even if she wished it, the female could not
succeed in collecting a seraglio of males. But as to polygamy, it is
quite different, and this is very common with mammals, especially
with the sociable kinds, living in flocks. It is even a necessity
of the struggle for existence. Sociability generally proceeds from
weakness. The species that are badly armed for fierce combats, and
that have besides some difficulty in finding food, are glad to live in
association. Union is strength. The ruminants, for example, do this.
Certain carnivorous animals, ill-furnished with teeth and claws, dogs
also, and jackals, live in troops for the same reason--that of opposing
a respectable front to the enemy. This life in common is certainly
favourable to the development of social virtues; it cannot but soften
primitive cruelty, and develop altruistic qualities; but it is little
conducive to sexual restraint and monogamy. Thus the greater number of
sociable mammals are polygamous. The ruminants live in hordes composed
of females and young, grouped around a male who protects them, but who
expels his rivals and becomes a veritable chief of a band. Very various
species compose familial societies in the same manner, and strongly
resembling each other.
When the Indian adult elephant renounces the solitary life which strong
animals generally adopt, it is in order to found a little polygamous
society, from which he expels all the males weaker than himself.[58]
The moufflons of Europe and of the Atlas also form little societies of
the same kind in the breeding season.[59]
Among the walrus, says Brehm, the male, who is of very jealous
temperament, collects around him from thirty to forty females, without
counting young, making altogether a polygamous family sometimes
amounting to a hundred and twenty individuals.
The male of the Asiatic _antilope saiga_ is inordinately polygamous; he
expels all his rivals, and forms a harem numbering sometimes a hundred
females.[60]
The polygamic _régime_ of animals is far from extinguishing
affectionate sentiments in the females towards their husband and
master. The females of the guanaco lamas, for example, are very
faithful to their male. If the latter happens to be wounded or killed,
instead of running away, they hasten to his side, bleating and offering
themselves to the shots of the hunter in order to shield him, while, on
the contrary, if a female is killed, the male makes off with all his
troop; he only thinks of himself.
In regard to mammals, there is no strict relation between the
degree of intellectual development and the form of sexual union. The
carnivorous animals often live in couples for the reason previously
given; but this is not an absolute rule, for the South African lion is
frequently accompanied by four or five females.[61] Bears, weasels,
whales, etc., on the contrary, generally go in couples. Sometimes
species that are very nearly allied have different conjugal customs;
thus the white-cheeked peccary lives in troops, whilst the white-ringed
peccary lives in couples.[62]
There is the same diversity in the habits of monkeys. Some are
polygamous and others monogamous. The wanderoo (_Macacus silenus_) of
India has only one female, and is faithful to her until death.[63] The
_Cebus capucinus_, on the contrary, is polygamous.[64]
Those cousins-german of man, the anthropoid apes, have sometimes
adopted polygamy and sometimes monogamy. Savage tells us that the
_Gorilla gina_ forms small hordes, consisting of a single adult male,
who is the despotic chief of many females and a certain number of young.
Chimpanzees are sometimes polygamous and sometimes monogamous. The
polygamous family of monkeys is always subject to the monarchic
_régime_. The male, who is at the same time the chief, is despotic; he
exacts a passive obedience from his subordinates, and he expels the
young males as soon as they are old enough to give umbrage to him. To
sum up, he is at once the father, the protector, and the tyrant of
the band. Nevertheless, the females are affectionate to him, and the
most zealous among them prove it by assiduously picking the lice from
him, which, with monkeys, is a mark of great tenderness.[65] But the
master who has been thus flattered and cringed to sometimes comes to a
bad end. One fine day, when old age has rendered him less formidable,
when he is no longer capable of proving at every instant that right
must yield to might, the young ones, so long oppressed, rebel, and
assassinate this tyrannous father. We must here remark, that whatever
the form of sexual association among mammals, the male has always
much less affection for the young than the female. Even in monogamous
species, when the male keeps with the female, he does so more as chief
than as father. At times he is much inclined to commit infanticides and
to destroy the offspring, which, by absorbing all the attention of his
female, thwart his amours. Thus, among the large felines, the mother is
obliged to hide her young ones from the male during the first few days
after birth, to prevent his devouring them.
I shall here conclude this very condensed study of sexual association
and the family in the animal kingdom. My object is not so much to
exhaust the subject, as to bring into relief the analogies existing
between man and the other species. The facts which have been cited
are amply sufficient for this purpose, and we may draw the following
general conclusions from them:--
In the first place there is no premeditated design in nature; any mode
of reproduction, of sexual association and of rearing of young that is
compatible with the duration of the species may be adopted. But in a
general manner it may be said that a sort of antagonism exists between
the multiplicity of births and the degree of protection bestowed on the
young by the parents.
A rough outline of the family is already found in the animal kingdom;
it is sometimes patriarchal, as with sticklebacks, etc., but most often
it is matriarchal. In the latter case the female is the centre of it,
and her love for the young is infinitely stronger and more devoted than
that of the male. This is especially true of mammals, with whom the
male is generally an egoist, merely protecting the family in his own
personal interest.
The familial instinct, more or less developed, exists in the greater
number of vertebrates, and in many invertebrates. From an early period
it must have been an object of selection, since it adds considerably to
the chances of the duration of the species. With some species (ants,
bees, termites) this instinct has expanded into a wide social love,
resulting in the production of large societies of complex structure,
in which the family, as we understand it, is unknown. I lay stress on
this fact, for it is of great importance in theoretical sociology; it
proves, in fact, that large and complicated societies, with division
of social labour, can be maintained without the institution of the
family. We are not, therefore, warranted in pretending, as is usually
done, that the family is absolutely indispensable, and that it is the
“cellule” of the social organism. Let us observe, by the way, that the
expression “social organism” is simply metaphorical, and we must beware
of taking it literally, as Herbert Spencer, with a strange naïveté,
seems to have done. Societies are agglomerations of individuals in
which a certain order is necessarily established; but it is almost
puerile to seek for, and to pretend to find in them, an actual
organisation, comparable, for example, to the anatomic and physiologic
plan of a mammal.
Terminating this short digression, I revert to my subject by summing up
the results of our examination of sexual associations among the animals.
In regard to marriage, as well as to the family, nature has no
preference; all means are welcome to her, provided the species profits
by them, or, at least, does not suffer too much from them.
We find amongst animals temporary unions, at the close of which the
male ceases absolutely to care for the female; but we also find,
especially among birds, numbers of lasting unions, for which the word
marriage is not too exalted. It does not appear that polyandry--that
is, a durable society between one female and many males--has been
practised by animals. The female, nearly always weaker than the male,
could not reduce a number of them to sexual servitude, and the latter
have never been tempted to share one female systematically. On the
contrary, they are often polygamous. But it is especially amongst
mammals that polygamy is common, and it must often have had its _raison
d’être_ either in the sexual proportion of births, or in a greater
mortality of males. These are reasons I shall have to refer to later,
in speaking of human polygamy.
But if polygamy is frequent with mammals, it is far from being the
conjugal _régime_ universally adopted; monogamy is common, and is
sometimes accompanied by so much devotion, that it would serve as an
example to human monogamists.
It is important also to notice that, in regard to animals, the mode of
sexual association may vary without much difficulty. No species is of
necessity and always restricted to such or such a form of sexual union.
An animal belonging to a species habitually monogamous may very easily
become polygamous. In short, there does not seem to be any relation
between the degree of intelligence in a species and its conjugal
customs.
In the following chapters it will be seen that, in great measure, these
observations do not apply exclusively to animals.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Espinas, _Soc. Animales_, pp. 343, 344.
[30] _Ibid._ pp. 344, 345.
[31] Espinas, _Soc. Animales_, pp. 336-396.
[32] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 375.
[33] Lortet, _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, 1878.
[34] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 379.
[35] _Ibid._ p. 244.
[36] Espinas, _Soc. Animales_, p. 415.
[37] _Ibid._ pp. 416, 417.
[38] Houzeau, _Fac. mentales des animaux_, t. ii. p. 380.
[39] _Dix-huit ans chez les sauvages_, etc., p. 374.
[40] Espinas, _Soc. anim._, p. 427.
[41] _Ibid._ p. 421.
[42] Audubon, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 83.
[43] _Ibid._ t. I^{er.} p. 292.
[44] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, pp. 446, 449.
[45] _Ibid._ p. 455.
[46] Espinas, _Soc. Animales_, p. 422.
[47] Audubon, _Scènes de la Nature_, t. I^{er.} p. 29.
[48] Espinas, _loc. cit._ pp. 421-423.
[49] Audubon, _loc. cit._ t. I^{er.} p. 209.
[50] _Ibid._ t. ii. p. 13.
[51] _Ibid._
[52] _Ibid._ t. I^{er.} p. 167.
[53] _Ibid._ t. ii. p. 199.
[54] _Ibid._ t. ii. p. 476.
[55] _Ibid._ t. ii. p. 70.
[56] _Ibid._ t. I^{er.} p. 347.
[57] Audubon, _Scènes de la Nature_, t. I^{er.} p. 317.
[58] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 238.
[59] Espinas, _Soc. Animales_, p. 448.
[60] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 238.
[61] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 443.
[62] Espinas, _loc. cit._ p. 443.
[63] Houzeau, _Facultés mentales des animaux_, t. ii. p. 394.
[64] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 238.
[65] Espinas, _loc. cit._ p. 453.
CHAPTER III.
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_.
CHAPTER IV.
SOME SINGULAR FORMS OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION.
I. _Primitive Sexual Immorality._--Origin of modesty--Absence of
modesty in the savage--Loan of wives in Melanesia and among the
Bochimans--Absence of modesty in the Esquimaux, the Redskins, and
Polynesians--Right of the husband in Polynesia--Loan or barter of
wives--Erotic training of little girls in Polynesia--Society of the
Areoïs--Man in a state of nature--Unnatural love in New Caledonia,
in the two Americas, among Asiatic peoples, and in Greco-Roman
antiquity--The _erastes_ of Crete.
II. _Some Strange Forms of Marriage._--Coarseness of primitive
marriage--Horror of incest artificially created--Incest among
various peoples--Artificial defloration--Experimental marriages
among the Redskins, the Otomies, the Sonthals, the Tartars, and
in Ceylon--Temporary marriages among the Jews of Morocco and the
Tapyres--Free unions--Partial marriages and marriages for a term
among the Arabs--Marriage and the right of the strongest in savage
countries--Savage coarseness and civilised depravity.
I. _Primitive Sexual Immorality._
In a former work[112] I have attempted to trace the genesis of a
sentiment peculiar to humanity--the sentiment of modesty. It would be
inexpedient here to treat the subject afresh in detail, but I will
recall the conclusions arrived at by that investigation. Modesty is
_par excellence_ a human sentiment, and is totally unknown to the
animals, although the procreative need inspires them with desires and
passions essentially identical with what in man we call love; it is
therefore certainly an artificial sentiment, and comparative ethnology
proves that it must have resulted from the enforced chastity imposed
on women under the most terrible penalties. In reality, primitive
marriage hardly merits the name; it is simply the taking possession
of one or several women by one man, who holds them by the same title
as all other property, and who treats adultery, when unauthorised by
himself, strictly as robbery. This ferocious restraint has resulted,
especially in the woman, in the formation of particular mental
impressions, corresponding psychically to the sentiment of modesty, and
inducing a certain sexual reserve which has become instinctive. But
this moral inhibition is still very weak in races of low development,
and, taking the whole human species, it exists chiefly in the woman;
it is a sexual peculiarity of character, and is of relatively recent
origin.
If we keep well in mind these preliminary considerations, we shall
not be much surprised at the forms of sexual association which we
are about to consider, although they are singularly repulsive to our
ideas of morality. We shall be still less surprised at them when we
are acquainted with the extreme licence permitted in many savage and
barbarous societies.
There is nothing more difficult for us to realise, civilised as we
are, than the mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation as
regards what we call _par excellence_ “morality.” It is not indecency;
it is simply an animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably
quite natural, since they are the expression of a primordial need,
essential to the duration of the species, but which a long ancestral
and individual education has trained us to subject to a rigorous
restraint, and to the accomplishment of which, consequently, we cannot
help attaching a certain shame, do not in the least shock the still
imperfect conscience of the primitive man. On this point facts are
eloquent and abundant; I will quote a few of them.
In Tasmania it way thought an honour for women to prostitute themselves
to Europeans, who were ennobled in the eyes of the natives by the
prestige of their superiority.[113] The Australians, who were a little
more developed than the Tasmanians, willingly lent or hired out
their women--at least those that were their own property--to their
friends.[114]
The women were not less bestial than their males. They often engaged,
says Peltier, in furious combats, fighting with spears, for the
possession of a man. This is a peculiar case, and is an entirely human
instance of that _law of battle_ of which I have spoken in regard to
animals. Like the females of animals also the Australian women adored
strength, and when the men of their own horde were beaten in battle
they sometimes went over to the camp of the conquerors of their own
accord (Mitchell).[115] In these facts there is nothing exceptional,
and we may change the country without changing the customs. Thus the
Bochimans treat their wives as simple domestic animals, and offer them
willingly to strangers,[116] as do also the Australians.
In the Andaman Islands and elsewhere the women give themselves up
before marriage--that is, before becoming the property of one man--to
the most unbridled prostitution,[117] and yet the most innocent,
according to the morality of the country.
Among the Esquimaux the laxity of sexual customs, both for men and
women, is extreme. The husbands feel no shame in selling, or rather
hiring out, their wives; and the latter, as soon as their proprietors
are gone to the chase or to fish, abandon themselves to an uncontrolled
debauch, taking care to post their children outside the hut to warn
them in case of the unexpected return of the master.[118] Sexual
morality does not yet exist among the Esquimaux, and an Aleout said
quite simply to the missionary Langsdorff, “When my people couple they
do it like the sea-otters.”[119] In fact, if the cold permitted, the
Esquimaux would not be any more clothed than the sea-otters. In their
common houses, where two or three hundred people are crowded together,
and a high degree of temperature is maintained, they throw off their
clothing without distinction of age or sex.[120] They go further
still, and, like many savages, practise what is called Socratic love
openly and without shame. Thus, among the Inoits, well-favoured boys
are brought up with care, dressed as girls, and sold at a high price
towards the age of fifteen,[121] without any harm being seen in it.
The Redskins of the extreme north are scarcely more modest than the
Esquimaux. Carver relates that among the Nandowessics a woman was
particularly honoured because she had first entertained and then
treated as husbands the forty chief warriors of the tribe.[122]
But it is especially in Polynesia that the naïve immodesty of primitive
peoples was displayed with the greatest indifference to the opinions of
others.
“The principal difficulty of the missionaries in the Sandwich Isles,”
says M. de Varigny, “consisted in teaching the women chastity; they
were ignorant of the name and of the thing. Adultery, incest, and
fornication were common things, approved by public opinion, and even
consecrated by religion.”[123]
These customs are of ancient date in Polynesia. The travellers of
last century had observed them still the same. The Tahitian women,
if they were free, openly bartered their persons, and the fathers,
mothers, brothers, and sometimes the husbands, often brought them to
the European sailors and hired them out, after a lively bargaining, for
nails, red feathers, etc.[124]
At Noukahiva “the young girls of the island,” says Porter, “are the
wives of all those who can buy their favours, and a beautiful daughter
is considered by her parents as a means of procuring them for a time
riches and plenty. However, when they are older, they form more lasting
connections, and seem then as firmly attached to their husbands as
women of any other country.”[125]
In the same archipelago, the surgeon Roblet says that the French
sailors were frequently offered girls of eight years; “and,” he adds,
“they were not virgins.”[126]
“Virtue,” says Porter, “such as we understand it, was unknown among
them, and they attached no shame to acts which they regarded not only
as natural, but as an inoffensive amusement. Many parents thought
themselves honoured by the preference given to their daughters, and
showed their satisfaction by presents of pigs and fruits, which, on
their part, was an extreme of munificence.”[127]
In Polynesia public opinion forbade married women to yield themselves
without the authorisation of their owners, and this was almost the only
strict rule of morals existing; but the husbands trafficked in their
wives without scruple. “Tawee,” says Porter, “was one of the handsomest
men of the island, and loved to adorn his person; a bit of red stuff,
some morsels of glass, or a whale’s tooth, had irresistible charms
for him, and in order to procure these objects he would offer any of
the most precious things he possessed. Thus, though his wife was of
remarkable beauty, and he was the tenderest of husbands, Tawee offered
his wife more than once for a necklace.”[128]
To offer a woman to a visitor to whom one would do honour was, for that
matter, a simple act of courtesy in Polynesia, and the same courtesy
prescribed the immediate acceptance of the offer, _coram populo_
(Bougainville). It was frequently his own wife that the husband thus
gave up to his guest, and the case of Porter, which I have just quoted,
had nothing exceptional in it. A similar thing happened to Captain
Beechey,[129] and to many other travellers. This conjugal liberality
was one of the customs of the country; the friend, or _tayo_, acquired
conjugal rights over the wife or wives of his friend. Between brothers
and relations the exchange of wives was frequent,[130] to such a degree
that at Toubouai, etc., Moerenhout tells us the women were nearly held
in common, and that in the Marquesas a woman had sometimes as many as
twenty lovers.[131]
For the Polynesians the pleasures of sensual love were the chief
business of life; they neither saw evil nor practised restraint in
them. The women were trained with a view to amorous sports;[132] they
were fattened on a soup of bread fruit, and from earliest infancy
taught by their mothers to dance the _timorodie_, a very lewd dance,
accompanied by appropriate words.[133] The conversation also was in
keeping with the morals. “One thing which particularly struck me,” says
Moerenhout, “as soon as I began to understand their language, was the
extreme licence in conversation--a licence pushed to the limit of most
shameless cynicism, and which is the same even with the women; for
these people think and talk of nothing but sensual pleasure, and speak
openly of everything, having no idea of the euphemisms of our civilised
societies, where we use double meanings and veiled words, or terms
that are permitted in mentioning things which would appear revolting
and cause scandal if plainly expressed; but these islanders could not
understand this, and the missionaries have never been able to make them
do so.”[134]
Lastly, the existence of the religious and aristocratic society of
the _Areoïs_, in Tahiti and other archipelagoes, finishes the picture
of the mental condition of the Polynesians as regards morals. Without
describing afresh this curious association, I shall only remind
my readers that it had for its object an unrestrained and public
abandonment to amorous pleasures, and that, for this reason, the
community of women and the obligation of infanticide were decreed.
During the last century sentimentality invaded the brains of thinkers
and writers like an epidemic, and gave rise to the belief that
primitive man, or “man in a state of nature,” as the phrase went,
was the model of all virtues. But we must discount much of this.
As we might naturally expect, the uncultivated man is a mammal of
the grossest kind. We have already seen that his sexual morality is
extremely loose, and necessarily so; we are, however, surprised to find
him addicted to certain aberrations from nature which the chroniclers
of the Greco-Latin world have accustomed us to regard as the result
of a refined and depraved civilisation,--an opinion which is quite
erroneous, as comparative ethnography irrefutably proves. Nothing is
more common among primitive races than what is called Socratic love,
and on this point I will briefly quote a few facts, without pausing
longer on them than my subject requires. In the vast sociological
investigation which I am undertaking, moral bestiality must not
discourage scientific analysis any more than putrefaction arrests the
scalpel of the anatomist; it does not therefore follow that we take
delight in it.
As a matter of fact, many human races have practised, from the first,
vices contrary to nature. The Kanaks of New Caledonia frequently
assemble at night in a cabin to give themselves up to this kind of
debauchery.[135] The New Zealanders practised it even among their
women.[136] It was also a widely-spread custom throughout Polynesia,
and even a special deity presided over it. In the whole of America,
from north to south, similar customs have existed or still exist. We
have previously seen that the Esquimaux reared young boys for this
purpose. The Southern Californians did the same, and the Spanish
missionaries, on their arrival in the country, found men dressed as
women and assuming their part. They were trained to this from youth,
and often publicly married to the chiefs.[137] Nero was evidently a
mere plagiarist. The existence of analogous customs has been proved
amongst the Guyacurus of La Plata, the natives of the Isthmus of
Darien, the tribes of Louisiana, and the ancient Illinois, etc.[138]
The two chief forms of sexual excess of which I have been speaking,
unnatural vice and the debauchery of girls or free women, are habitual
in savage countries; and later, when civilisation and morality have
evolved, the same inveterate inclinations still persist for a long
time, in spite of public opinion and even of legal repression.
The Incas, according to the chronicler Garcilaso, were merciless in
regard to these sexual aberrations, and the Mexican law was equally
severe, but all without much effect, if we may believe the accounts of
Garcilaso himself, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, etc. I have elsewhere related
how the ancient legislations of the great Asiatic states repressed
these base aberrations of the procreative sense, and nevertheless,
at the present day, the Arabs frequently give way to them, even in
the holy Mosque at Mecca;[139] and other Eastern peoples, Hindoos,
Persians, and Chinese, are also very imperfectly reformed on this point.
When we remember that morality is essentially relative, and that
ancestral impressions are extremely tenacious in the human brain,
we shall not be much surprised to see these low tendencies persist
as survivals in the midst of civilisations already far advanced.
Nevertheless, the theoretic morality of all the great nations of the
East has for centuries condemned these repugnant excesses, which our
European ancestors, both Celts and Teutons, have early reproved and
repressed. It is all the more singular to find the most intelligent
race of antiquity, the ancient Greeks, practising the greatest
tolerance on this subject, so much so that the names of Socrates and
Plato, those fathers of ethereal spiritualism, are attached to amours
the mere thought of which now excites disgust in a civilised European.
A very slight acquaintance with Greco-Roman literature furnishes
abundant information on this matter. I have no need, therefore, to
dwell on it, but I must quote a curious passage of Strabo, from
which we learn that the ancient Cretans associated with so-called
Socratic amours the ceremonial of marriage by capture, of which I
shall soon have to speak. This strange passage is as follows:--“It
is not by persuasion, but by capture, that they obtain possession
of the beloved object. Three days or more in advance the _erastes_
apprises the friends of the young boy of his project of abduction.
It would be considered the greatest disgrace for them to conceal the
child, or prevent him from passing by the road indicated. By so doing
they would appear to confess that he did not merit the favours of
such a distinguished _erastes_. What do they do therefore? They meet
together, and if the ravisher is equal or superior in rank and all
other respects to the family of the child, they are content in their
pursuit to comply with the idea of the law, and to make a semblance of
attack only, allowing the child to be carried off, and even testifying
their satisfaction; but if, on the contrary, the ravisher should be of
greatly inferior rank, they invariably rescue the child from his hands.
In any case the pursuit comes to an end when the child has crossed the
threshold of the _andrion_ of his captor.” We may doubtless presume,
from this passage, that the ancient Cretans were no longer in the state
of bestial coarseness of the New Caledonians. With them the capture was
a symbol or comedy. It was a mark of esteem, paid less to the beauty of
the child than to his valour and propriety of manners. In fact, the boy
had the legal right to revenge himself, if he had suffered any violence
in his capture; and in restoring him to liberty his ravisher loaded
him with presents, some of which were obligatory and legal, namely,
a warrior’s cloak, an ox, and a goblet; it was a kind of initiation
in virility, and it was considered a disgrace for a young boy not to
obtain an _erastes_.[140]
But even if we admit that all the ceremonial of this singular platonic
marriage among the Cretans was perfectly innocent, it arose, none the
less, from a moral laxity, plainly showing that ancient morals were
gross in the extreme.
I here conclude my enumeration. Short as it has been, for I have
purposely limited my facts to a small number, it is sufficient to
prove that for an immense period man has been a very coarse animal. We
may, therefore, expect to find him adapting without scruple forms of
marriage or sexual association quite unusual among Europeans, and which
it now remains for me to describe briefly.
II. _Some Strange Forms of Marriage._
In savage societies, where no delicacy yet exists in regard to sexual
union, and where, on the other hand, woman is strictly assimilated
to things and domestic animals, marriage, or what we please to call
so, is an affair of small importance, which is regulated according
to individual caprice. More generally the parents, and sometimes the
friends or the chiefs, pair the young people as they think fit, and
quite naturally they have little regard for monogamic marriage, to
the strictness of which, even in civilised societies, man finds it so
difficult to bend.
The young people, on their part, have hardly any individual
preferences. The young boys of the Redskins, as Lafitau tells us, never
even troubled to see, before marriage, the wife chosen for them by
their parents.[141] In Bargo, according to R. and J. Lander, they marry
with perfect indifference; “a man does not care any more about choosing
a wife than about which ear of corn he shall pick.” There is never any
question as to the sentiments of the contracting parties.[142]
It is quite certain, also, that during the first ages of the evolution
of societies, the ties of kinship, even those we are accustomed to
regard as sacred, and respect for which seems to be incarnate in us,
have not been any impediment to sexual unions. Like the sentiment of
modesty, the horror of incest has only been engraved on the human
conscience with great difficulty and by long culture. Scruples of
this kind are unknown to the animal, and before they could arise in
the human brain it was first necessary that the family should be
constituted, and then that, from some motive or other, the custom of
exogamous marriage should be adopted. Now, as we shall see later, the
family has at first been matriarchal or rather maternal, and with such
a familial system, the children have no legal father; the prohibitions
relative to incest could therefore, at the most, only exist in regard
to the female line, and, in fact, we find it to be so in many countries
where this system of filiation prevails. But primitive morals, existing
before the formation of a morality condemning incest, have left many
traces in the past, and even in the present. “The Chippeways,” says
Hearne, “frequently cohabit with their mother, and oftener still with
their sisters and daughters.”[143] And yet he is speaking here of
Redskins, a people reputed to be fanatical on the matter of exogamy.
Langsdorff says the same of the Kadiaks, who unite indiscriminately,
brothers with sisters, and parents with children.[144] It is well
known, besides, that in the matter of sexual unions no race has fewer
prejudices than the Esquimaux. The Coucous of Chili, and the Caribs
also, willingly married at the same time a mother and daughter. With
the Karens, too, of Tenasserim, marriages between brother and sister,
or father and daughter, are frequent enough, even in our own day.[145]
But these unions, though incestuous for us, have not been practised
amongst savages and inferior races only. According to Strabo, the
ancient Irish married, without distinction, their mothers and
sisters.[146]
We are told by Justin and Tertullian[147] that the Parthians and
Persians married their own mothers without scruple. In ancient Persia,
religion went so far even as to sanctify the union of a son with his
mother.[148] Priscus relates that these marriages were also permitted
among the Tartars and Scythians, and it is reported, too, that Attila
married his daughter Esca.[149]
Whether from a survival of ancient morals, or the care to preserve
purity of race, conjugal unions between brother and sister were
authorised, or even prescribed, in various countries, for the royal
families. The kings of ancient Egypt were obliged to marry their
sisters, and Cleopatra thus became the wife of her brother Ptolemy
Dionysius. The Incas of Peru were subject to a similar law; and at Siam
also, when the traveller La Loubère visited it, the king had married
his sister.[150] But I shall have to return to the subject of marriage
between relations in treating of the endogamic _régime_ which has been,
or is, in force among many peoples.
These incestuous marriages astonish us, and certain of them are even
revolting to our ideas, as, for example, the union of the mother with
the son. Another custom will probably surprise, if not shock us quite
as much. I allude to experimental marriages, which are far from being
rare. They will appear, however, less singular, if we remember that in
societies of low order little value is set on the chastity of young
girls; virginal purity is not at all prized, and there are even some
peoples, as the Saccalaves of Madagascar,[151] for instance, and also
certain indigenous peoples of India,[152] among whom it is regarded as
a duty for the mothers themselves to deflower their daughters before
marrying them.
With such morals prevailing, experimental marriages seem natural
enough. De Champlain, an ancient French traveller in North America,
relates that the Redskins of Canada always lived a few days together,
and then quitted each other if the trial had not been satisfactory to
either of them.[153]
A Spanish chronicler, Herrara, reports that the Otomies of Mexico spent
a night of trial with the woman that they desired to marry; they could
quit her afterwards, but only on condition of not retaining her during
the following day.[154]
Among the Sonthals also, an aboriginal tribe of India, whose marriages
are celebrated simultaneously once a year, the candidates for marriage
must first live six days together, and it is only after this trial
that it is lawful for them to marry.[155] With certain Tartar tribes
of Russia in Europe and of Siberia there existed an institution of
experimental marriages lasting for a year, if the woman did not become
a mother during that period.[156] In the island of Ceylon, according to
Davy, there are also provisional marriages, confirmed or annulled at
the end of a fortnight.[157]
Among the Jews in Morocco the Rabbis consecrate temporary marriages,
for three or six months, according to agreement. The man only engages
to acknowledge the child if needful, and to make a certain donation to
the mother.[158]
Strabo tells us of an analogous custom prevailing in antiquity among
the Tapyres (Parthians), according to which a woman, after having
had two or three children by a man, was forced by law to change her
husband.[159] This is almost exactly what Marshal Saxe demanded for
Frenchwomen in the last century.
We must not confound these experimental marriages, which are regulated,
and in some sort legal, with free and easily cancelled unions still
more common, as, for example, those of the Nouka-Hivians, that are
broken at will, provided there are no children;[160] those of the
Hottentots;[161] those of the Abyssinians, who marry, part, and
re-marry at will.[162] These last unions, founded merely on individual
caprice, have nothing extraordinary about them, and we know that they
are not rare in civilised countries.
Much more curious, from a point of view of sexual and conjugal
morality, are the partial marriages, which only bind the parties for
certain days of the week. This is a rare kind of marriage that seems
improbable to us, yet it has been proved to have existed among the
Hassinyehs of the White Nile, of Arab or perhaps Berber race.
By an agreement, which is sharply discussed beforehand, the Hassinyeh
woman engages to be a faithful wife for a fixed number of days in the
week, generally three or four, but this is in proportion to the number
of heads of cattle given to the parents by the bridegroom as the price
of their daughter, and it is the mother herself who makes the bargain.
Naturally, on the days that are not reserved the woman is free, and she
has a right to use her liberty as she pleases.[163]
These strange customs amongst the Arabs must surely date from old
pre-Islamite ages, and we may class them with other antique customs,
as, for example, marriage for a term, called _mot’a_ marriage, which
was in use with the Arabs until the time of Mahomet, and which
doubtless they imported later into Persia, where it exists in our own
day. And again, in the kingdom of Omân, in the fourteenth century, the
Sultan could still grant to a woman, indeed to any woman he pleased,
the permission to have lovers according to her fancy, and her relations
had no right to interfere.[164]
The partial marriage of the Hassinyeh Arabs is therefore not so
surprising as it seems at first sight when isolated from other
practices of the same kind. And it must be confessed that, immoral as
it may appear to us, it is superior to the other modes of primitive
conjugal association in use among the greater number of savage peoples.
Doubtless it denotes an extreme of moral grossness, but at the same
time it shows a certain respect for feminine independence, contrasting
strongly with the animal subjection imposed on women in the greater
number of societies of little or no civilisation. The situation of the
woman who is owned and treated as a simple domestic animal, hired out
or lent to strangers or to friends, according to the caprice of her
master, but not allowed, at the peril of her life, to be unfaithful to
her owner without his leave, is surely far more abject still.
I shall not dwell any more on these mere sketches of marriage, free
and transient unions broken as soon as made, experimental marriages,
three-quarter marriages, and marriages for a term, all of which show
the very slight importance attached to sexual union by man in a low
stage of development. And yet we must not refuse the name of marriage
to these ephemeral and incomplete unions, since they are arranged by
means of serious contracts which have been well discussed beforehand,
and by agreements entered into at least between the husband and the
relatives of the wife. The men of the horde or tribe do not, however,
profess a very strict respect for these marriages; the husband is often
uneasy in the enjoyment of his feminine property, and although legally
obtained, he must always be ready to defend it.
Among the Bochimans, says Liechtenstein, with whom marriage is reduced
to its most simple expression, “the strongest man often carries off the
wife of the weakest,” because it is the proper thing for him to do,
since he is called “the lion.”
In fact, these abuses of strength exist, more or less, in all countries
and all races; but among the Redskins of America and the Esquimaux it
seems that public opinion ratifies them, and that might has morally
become right.
“When a Toski,” says Hooper, “desires the wife of another man, he
simply fights with her husband.”
“A very ancient custom,” says Hearne, “obliges the men to wrestle for
any woman to whom they are attached; and of course the strongest party
always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good hunter
and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger
man thinks worth his notice. This custom prevails throughout all the
tribes.”[165]
In the same way, among the Copper and Chippeway Indians woman is a
property which is little respected, and which the strong may always
take from the weak.[166]
Richardson also says that among the Redskins every man has the right
to challenge another to fight, and if he is victor, to carry off his
wife.[167]
The same customs prevail among the Indians of South America--at least
among certain of them. Thus Azara relates that the Guanas never marry
before they are over twenty, for earlier than this they would be beaten
by their rivals.[168]
It has been attempted to show that these conflicts are the equivalent
of what is called in regard to animals “the law of battle,” but the
comparison is not exact, for animals seem in this respect much more
delicate than men. If they fight it is before pairing, and besides, as
we have seen, their combats are often courteous, like the tournaments
of our ancestors; frequently, too, the object of these assaults is
much less to capture the female than to seduce her by displaying
before her eyes the qualities with which they are endowed--courage,
force, address, and beauty. On her part, the female for whom they are
competing is so little alarmed at their violence that, in general, she
tranquilly looks on at the duels, and afterwards gives herself, one
may say, freely to the victor. With certain species of birds a lyric
tourney is substituted for the fight, and so ardently do the birds
engage in it that a competitor will often die of exhaustion.
Lastly, when the tourney is over, the couples paired, and the marriage
concluded, all rivalry ceases, the newly-mated birds isolate themselves
more or less, and devote all their energies to the production of a
family. Now these are delicate refinements unknown to primitive man,
whose rivalries on the subject of the possession of women resemble far
more the struggles of the old males with the young in the hordes of the
gorillas or chimpanzees. We are forced to acknowledge that the sexual
morality of primitive man does not much differ from that of anthropoid
apes, and it is quite a stranger to the æsthetic and poetic refinements
of certain birds.
I here end my short inquiry into the morals of primitive man and the
eccentric modes of conjugal union which have preceded the institution
of a more durable, exclusive, and solemn marriage.
We are filled with astonishment when we find such complete animal
laxity in our undeveloped ancestors, and we can hardly understand the
total absence of scruples which are now profoundly incarnate in us.
Those anthropologists who insist on making man a being apart in the
universe shut their eyes to these gross aberrations. Evolutionists are
not so timid, and do not fear to face the truth.
If, as it is impossible to deny, man is subject to the laws of
evolution like all other beings, we are forced to admit that he
must have passed through very inferior phases of physical and moral
development. _Homo sapiens_ surely descends from an ancient pithecoid
ancestor, and this original blot has necessarily been a drawback to his
moral evolution.
But here it is important to make a distinction. The resemblance
between the moral coarseness of the savage and the depravation of the
civilised man is quite superficial. Who thinks of being shocked at the
morals of animals? Now those of primitive man are quite as innocent,
and the brutality of the savage has nothing in common with the moral
retrogression of the civilised man struck with decay.
How unlike is the Aleout, imitating the sea-otter, without thinking
any evil, to the European degraded by the vices of our civilisation!
For the latter the future is closed; there are some declivities that
can never be remounted. The posterity of the savage, on the contrary,
may, with the aid of time and culture, attain to great moral elevation,
for there are vital forces within him which are fresh and intact. The
primitive man is still young, and he possesses many latent energies
susceptible of development. In short, the savage is a child, while the
civilised man, whose moral nature is corrupt, presents to us rather the
picture of decrepid old age.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] _L’Évolution de la Morale._
[113] Wake, vol. i. p. 77.
[114] _Id._ vol. i. p. 71.
[115] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 213.
[116] Wake, vol. i. p. 205.
[117] Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 68.
[118] Parry (_Third Voyage_), _Hist. Univ. des Voyages_, t. xl. p. 456.
[119] Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 96.
[120] Élie Reclus, _Les Primitifs_, p. 70.
[121] Élie Reclus, _Les Primitifs_, p. 80.
[122] Carver, _Travels in North America_, p. 245.
[123] De Varigny, _Quatorze ans aux îles Sandwich_, p. 159.
[124] Wallis, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xviii. p. 364.--Edwards,
_ibid._ t. xiii. p. 426.
[125] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvi. p. 232.
[126] Marchand, _ibid._ t. xv. p. 406.--Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, t.
I^{er.} p. 313.
[127] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvi. p. 229.
[128] _Id., loc. cit._, t. xvi. p. 245.
[129] _Ibid._ t. xix. p. 213.
[130] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 79.
[131] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 56.
[132] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 206.
[133] Cook, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. v. p. 268.
[134] Moerenhout, _loc. cit._, t. I^{er.} p. 229.
[135] Bourgarel, _Des Races de l’Océanie française_, in _Mém. Soc.
d’Anthropologie_, t. ii. p. 390.--De Rochas, _Nouvelle Calédonie_, p.
235.
[136] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 167.--Marion, _Hist.
Univ. des Voy._, t. iii. p. 487.
[137] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 241.
[138] Peschel, _Races of Man_, p. 408.
[139] Burckhardt, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxii. p. 155.
[140] Strabo, x. 21.
[141] Démeunier, _Esprit des Différents Peuples_, t. I^{er.} p. 153
[142] _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxx. p. 94.
[143] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 218.
[144] Langsdorff, _Voyages_, t. ii. p. 64.
[145] Heber, quoted by H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 248.
[146] _Geography_, Lib. iv. par. 4.
[147] Justin, _Agatha_, vol. ii. Tertullian, in _Apologet._
[148] A. Hovelacque, _L’Avesta_, pp. 465, 466.
[149] Démeunier, t. I^{er.} pp. 465, 466.
[150] _Ibid._ p. 166.
[151] Noël, _Bull. de la Soc. de Géog._, Paris, 1843.
[152] Collection Ramusio, t. I^{er.} libro di Odoardo Barbosa,
portoghese.
[153] Démeunier, t. I^{er.} p. 155.
[154] _Ibid._
[155] _The People of India_, vol. i. p. 2.
[156] _Travels through the Russian Empire and Tartary_, by D. J. Cook,
vol. i.
[157] Davy, _Ceylon_, p. 286.
[158] Dr. Decugis, _Bull. de la Soc. de Géog._, Paris.
[159] Strabo, vol. ii. p. 514.
[160] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvi. p. 323.
[161] Levaillant, _ibid_. t. xxi. p. 164.
[162] Bruce, _Travels_, vol. ix. p. 187; vol. v. p. 1.
[163] Ausland, Jan. 1867, p. 114.
[164] Ibn Batûta, vol. ii. p. 230 (quoted by R. Smith in _Kinship and
Marriage in Early Arabia_).
[165] Hearne, _A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort_, p. 104 (1796).
[166] Franklin, _Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea_, vol. viii. p.
43.
[167] Richardson, _Boat Journey_, vol. ii. p. 21.
[168] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 614.
CHAPTER V.
POLYANDRY.
I. _Sexual Proportion of Births: its Influence on
Marriage._--Sexual proportion amongst animals--The state of this
in Europe--Its variations according to race and profession--Its
oscillations--Proportion of the sexes disturbed by war, by
infanticide, and by the sale of daughters--Polyandry has not been
general.
II. _Ethnography of Polyandry._--Examples of polyandry--Great
polyandrous centres--The polyandry of Thibet--The polyandry of the
Naïrs.
III. _Polyandry in Ancient Arabia._--Its causes--Infanticide in
Arabia--The legend of Caïs, the infanticide--Evolution of polyandry in
Arabia--_Mot’a_ marriage--_Ba’al_ marriage.
IV. _Polyandry in General._--Matriarchal polyandry and patriarchal
polyandry.
I. _Sexual Proportion of Births, and its Influence on Marriage._
With the exception of the rare and singular forms of sexual or conjugal
association which we have just passed in review, matrimonial types
are not numerous among the peoples more or less civilised who have
already instituted a marriage--that is to say, a sexual association
regulated by generally admitted convention. The forms of marriage most
universally practised, those which the majority of mankind has reached
and stopped at, are polygamy and monogamy, or monandry. I shall have
much to say of these. For the moment I shall treat of another kind of
marriage, far less widely spread without doubt, but which, however,
exists or has existed at divers points of the globe; I allude to
polyandry.
I have no longer to prove that morality is variable and perfectible,
that it results from social life, and is only to be taken together
with the other needs, desires, and necessities of the struggle for
existence. Our moral sentiments are simply habits incarnate in our
brain, or instincts artificially created; and thus an act reputed
culpable at Paris or at London may be and frequently is held innocent
at Calcutta or at Pekin. In order to judge impartially of polyandric
marriage we must remember these elementary truths. Not, certainly, that
polyandry is rare amongst us, but it is censured, counted as criminal,
and obliged to hide itself. The legal and regulated possession,
publicly acknowledged, of one woman by several men, who are all
husbands by the same title, shocks our feelings and morality extremely
in the present day.
Nevertheless, human societies, small or large, must and will live, and
it is an imperious condition which imposes the polyandric _régime_,
namely, a considerable inequality between the number of men and that of
women. Now, this disproportion may result from divers causes. In the
first place, it may be natural, as it is among certain animal species.
Among the lepidoptera, for example, nine hundred and thirty-four males
have been counted as against seven hundred and sixty-one females.[169]
Although smaller, the disproportion is not less real amongst mankind.
As a general rule, and in nearly all countries where it has been
possible to ascertain it, the relation between masculine and feminine
births gives a certain excess of boys. This relation has been found
in Europe to be 106 for 70 million of births; but our great masculine
mortality re-establishes the equilibrium in the early years of life.
The proportion of births, besides, is far from being identical in
all the countries of Europe, and we even find oscillations in a
given country. In England it is generally 104.5, in France 106.3,
in Russia 108.9, at Philadelphia 110.5. In certain ethnic or social
categories the proportion of masculine births notably augments. It
rises to 113 for the Jews of Russia, to 114 for those of Breslau, to
120 for the Jews of Livonia. More singular still, the proportion of
masculine to feminine births augments for certain professions; it is,
for example, higher amongst the English clergy.[170] It is even seen
to vary spontaneously. In the year 1886, during several months, the
proportion of feminine births rose at Paris. In France, for a period
of forty-four years, it has happened five times in one department, and
six times in another, that the female births have been in excess. At
the Cape of Good Hope, among the whites, for several years there have
been ninety to ninety-nine masculine births. The reason or reasons of
these spontaneous oscillations in the proportion of the sexes still
escapes us. We verify it only, and we are warranted in concluding that
the production of sex in the embryo depends on some relatively second
causes. It is sure, for example, that the clergy of England are not
of a special race. If, however, they have more male children than the
other inhabitants of England, the fact can only depend on intimate
particulars of their kind of life. This reminds us of certain biblical
precepts relative to conjugal life, and the too neglected theory of M.
Thury (of Geneva) on the influence of the degree of ovular maturity on
the production of the sexes.
But spontaneous oscillations in the proportion of the sexes are always
feeble; even the matrimonial type does not seem to influence them, for
in the harems of Siam the sexual relation of births is the same as in
Europe.[171] On the other hand, it is proved that race-horses, which
are very polygamous, since they serve as stallions, have male and
female descendants in exactly equal proportions.[172]
It is the social actions of men which produce the most profound
disturbances in the proportion of the sexes. To begin with, in savage
or barbarous countries, where violent death has become an ordinary
occurrence for men, the number of adult females much exceeds that of
adult males. Thus, at Bantou, when the Dutch established themselves
there, they found ten women to one man.[173] In La Soñora, at the
end of a civil war, there were seven women to one man. In spite of
all moral and legal precepts, such conditions unfailingly result in
polygamy, disguised or not.
On the contrary, a custom very widely spread in savage countries, that
of the infanticide of girls, not less necessarily engenders polyandry,
if the equilibrium in the numerical proportion of the sexes is not
re-established in another manner. In reality, the infanticide of
girls has been largely practised in nearly all polyandrous countries.
It seems also that the custom of sacrificing the female children
influences in the long run the natural production of the sexes.
Thus the polyandrous Todas, who _formerly_ killed their girls, have
actually a sexual proportion of 133.3 for adults, and of 124 for the
children.[174]
In Polynesia, where the infanticide of girls was so largely practised,
the sexual relation to-day is altogether in favour of male births.
In New Zealand the proportion of the sexes in 1858 was 130.3 for
adults, and 122.2 for non-adults.[175]
In 1839, in the Sandwich Islands, the numerical proportion was 125.08
for adults, and 125.75 for non-adults.
In 1872 a general census of all the Sandwich Islands gave for the
numerical proportion of the sexes 125.36.
But there is more than one way of falsifying the proportion of the
sexes. It is not necessary to kill nearly all the female children,
as was the custom among the Gonds of Bengal, where in many villages
Macpherson did not see a single girl;[176] it suffices to sell them.
It is even the sale of girls which in many countries has at first
restrained the savage practice of feminine infanticide. Girls became a
merchandise negotiated by the parents, and afterwards redeemed by the
men, because they could not do without them; but then it happened, in
various countries and among various races, that men joined together to
lighten the expense, and that several of them contented themselves with
one wife in common, became polyandrous.
But we must not believe, with certain sociologists, that polyandry has
ever been a universal and necessary matrimonial phase. The enormous
consumption of men, necessitated by a savage or barbarous life, has
often given an impulse to polygamy. It is only in certain societies
where the practice of female infanticide exceeded all measure, or in
certain islands, or certain regions with little or no population,
where conquerors badly off for wives came to settle, that polyandry has
become general and enduring. It is surely only an exceptional form of
marriage, and we can enumerate the countries where it has been or is
still in use.
II. _Ethnography of Polyandry._
Cæsar speaks thus of the polyandry of the ancient Britons:--“By tens
and twelves the husbands have their wives in common, especially
brothers with brothers, and parents with children.”[177]
I have previously quoted Strabo on the polyandry of the primitive
Arabs, which was also fraternal.
In the sixteenth century the Guanches of two of the Canary Isles,
Lancerote and Tortaventura, were still polyandrous, but amongst them
the husbands did not number more than three.[178]
Polyandry also existed in New Zealand and in the Marquesas, but
restricted to certain women only.[179]
In America, amongst the Avaroes and the Maypures, according to
Humboldt, brothers had often only one wife.
But the great polyandric centres exist or have existed in Asia, in
India, Ceylon, and Thibet. Various aboriginal tribes of India, nearly
always much addicted to female infanticide, have practised polyandry.
The Miris and Dophlas of Bengal are still polyandrous.[180] Among the
Todas of Nilgherry polyandry was fraternal. When a man married a girl,
she became on that account the wife of all his brothers, and inversely
these became the husbands of all the sisters of the wife. The first
child born of these marriages was attributed to the eldest brother, the
second to the next brother, and so forth.[181]
But polyandry has not flourished only among the primitive races of
India. The Hindoo populations had also adopted it, and traces of it are
found in their sacred literature. Thus in the Mahabharata the five
Pandou brothers marry all together the charming Drâaupadi, with eyes
of lotus blue.[182] But in Brahmanic India polyandry is more than a
mere memory. Skinner has proved that near the sources of the Djemmah,
amongst a very fine race of Hindoo mountaineers, fraternal polyandry
still prevailed. “Having asked one of these women,” says the traveller,
“how many husbands she had--‘Only four,’ she replied. ‘And all living?’
‘Why not?’”
These customs, according to the traveller, did not hinder these
mountaineers from being, on other points, very moral men. Thus they
held lying in horror, and in their eyes to deviate from the truth, even
quite innocently, was almost a sacrilege.[183]
At the other extremity of India, in Ceylon, the polyandric _régime_ is
still very flourishing, especially in the interior of the island, and
among the leisured classes. The number of husbands, generally brothers
or relatives, is variable; it varies from three to eight. According
to Emerson Tennent, polyandry was formerly general in the island, and
it is owing to the efforts of the Dutch and Portuguese that it has
disappeared from the coast.[184]
It is particularly in lamaic Thibet that the polyandric _régime_ is
in full vigour; and in this country religion strengthens it, for the
most distinguished men, the ruling classes, the chiefs or officers of
the State, _a fortiori_ the lamas, have the same disdain for marriage
so loudly professed by the saints of Catholicism. The greater number
exempt themselves from it, and leave to the common people the gross
care of producing children. Now, the latter, by reason of their
poverty, associate together to lighten the burden of the family. It is,
again, fraternal polyandry which is the rule in Thibet. It is in this
country that sociologists have sought the classic type of this kind of
polyandry.
In Thibet the right of primogeniture is combined with the right of
marriage, and the younger brothers follow the fate of their chief.
It is this last who marries for all of them, and chooses the common
wife.[185] However, if we may believe other accounts, a certain liberty
is allowed to younger brothers. The pressure on them is chiefly
economic. When the eldest son marries, the property is transmitted
to him in advance of his inheritance, with the charge of maintaining
his parents, who, however, can live in a separate house. The youngest
brother takes orders, and becomes a lama. The others, if they choose,
become inferior husbands of the wife, who with us would be their
sister-in-law, and they are almost forced to do this, since their
eldest brother is sole inheritor. Once within the polyandric _régime_,
the younger brothers have a subordinate position. The eldest, the
husband-in-chief, considers them as his servants, and has even the
right to send them away without any resource, if he pleases. If the
principal husband dies, then his widow, his property, and his authority
pass to the younger brother next in age. In the case of the brother not
being one of the co-husbands, he cannot inherit the property without
the wife, nor the wife without the property. We have here, then, a sort
of polyandrian levirate.[186]
The children springing from these unions give the name of father
sometimes to the eldest of the husbands, and sometimes to all.[187]
Travellers tell us that these polyandrous households are not more
troubled than our monogamous ones. Some Thibetans, living thus in
conjugal association, could not understand V. Jacquemont when he
asked them if the preference of their single wife for one or other of
them did not cause quarrels between the husbands. But if jealousy is
unknown to the husbands, it is, on the contrary, frequent with the
wife. “A Thibetan woman,” says Turner, “united to several husbands, is
as jealous of her conjugal rights as an Indian despot could be of the
beauties who people his zenana or harem.”[188]
As to the manner in which the intimate relations between husbands and
wife are regulated in the polyandric households of Thibet, we have
scarcely any information. Among the Todas the wife never had conjugal
commerce with more than one husband at a time, but she changed every
month; sometimes also the associated husbands add to their number
temporarily some young man belonging to the tribe, but not yet engaged
in the bonds of wedlock.[189]
There is another form of polyandry besides the fraternal, but quite
as curious, and which has been made to play a great _rôle_ in various
sociological theories. It is the polyandry of the Naïrs, an indigenous
high caste of Malabar.
However extraordinary the fraternal polyandry called Thibetan may
seem in our eyes, that of the Naïrs of Malabar is far more so. Here
the reality exceeds all that we could have imagined in the way of
conjugal customs. The Naïr parents married their daughters early. The
bride was rarely more than twelve years old. The proceedings began
with an ephemeral union, a sort of fictitious marriage, but celebrated
nevertheless with great rejoicings in presence of parents and friends.
The initiative and provisional husband passed round the neck of the
bride the conjugal collar, the _tali_, and henceforth the marriage
was concluded and had to be consummated; only at the end of four or
five days the new husband was obliged to quit the house of the wife
for ever. On the contrary, the young bride remained in the family, and
from this period contracted a series of partial but durable marriages.
The first marriage of the young Naïr girl had evidently no other
object than defloration; it was a service demanded of a fictitious
husband, and for which he was often paid. A traveller relates that
for this preliminary marriage a porter or a workman was employed and
paid. If his pretensions were too high, recourse was had to an Arab
or a stranger; and, says the narrator, the gratuitous services of
these last were always preferred if, when the ceremony was over, they
withdrew in time and with good grace. When once well and duly prepared
for marriage, the young Naïr girl might take for husband whomsoever
she liked, except the provisional husband of the first few days.[190]
The number of her husbands varied from four to twelve.[191] Each one
of them was at first presented to her either by her mother or by her
maternal uncle, an important personage in the family. Each co-partner
was in his turn husband in reality during a very short time, varying
from one day to ten, and he was free, on his side, to participate in
divers polyandric conjugal societies. We are assured that in these
curious _ménages_ all the associated husbands lived in very good
understanding with each other.[192]
Generally the Naïr husbands were neither brothers nor relatives, for
these polyandrous people seemed to have ideas about incest analogous to
our own. But the unions outside the caste were the only ones reputed
culpable; they constituted a sort of social adultery. The conjugal
prerogatives of the husbands were not unaccompanied by certain duties.
They had to maintain the common wife, and they agreed together to share
the expense. One took on himself to furnish the clothes, another to
give the rice.[193] On these conditions each one could in his turn
enjoy the common property, and, in order not to be troubled in the use
of his rights, it sufficed the husband on duty to hang on the door of
the house and on the wife’s door his shield and his sword or knife.
The Brahmins were obliged to tolerate these polyandric marriages, so
contrary, however, to their laws; they finished by even deriving a
profit from them. In the Brahmanic families in contact with the Naïrs
the eldest son alone married, so as not to scatter the patrimony; the
others entered the matrimonial combinations of the Naïrs, and thus
their children did not inherit.[194]
On their side, the Naïrs were naturally only acquainted with
matriarchal heredity. No Naïr, says Buchanan, knows his father, and
every man has for heirs the children of his sister. He loves them as
if they were his own, and unless he is reputed a monster, he must show
much more grief at their death than he would for his own possible
children--namely, those of his own wife.[195]
In comparing the two kinds of polyandry that I have just described, the
patriarchal polyandry of the Thibetans, and the matriarchal polyandry
of the Naïrs, the majority of sociologists consider the first as
superior to the other. In so doing they seem to me not to be able to
shake off sufficiently our European ideas. Doubtless the fraternal
Thibetan polyandry, while leaving undecided the paternal filiation of
the children, assures them a sort of collective paternal parenthood,
since the fathers are of the same blood. This polyandrian family
consequently differs less than the Naïr family from our own system of
patriarchal kinship, which is reputed superior; but surely the liberty,
and even the dignity of the woman, which must count for something, are
more respected under the Naïr system, which not only does not reduce
the woman to a thing possessed, that one lends to one’s friends, but
gives her the power of choosing her husbands.
Fraternal polyandry being declared superior to polyandry of the Naïr
type, it has been concluded that in virtue of the law of progress
it must have been preceded in all times and places by the latter.
As regards the greater number of cases of Thibetan polyandry, the
supposition is gratuitous; it seems, however, established as far as
ancient Arabia is concerned, where, thanks to a very learned treatise
recently published by Mr. W. Robertson Smith, professor of Arabic at
the University of Cambridge,[196] we may note the causes of polyandry
and follow its evolution.
III. _Polyandry in Ancient Arabia._
The chief cause of ancient Arabian polyandry was the one we find in
nearly all the polyandric countries--that is to say, the infanticide of
daughters.
The primitive Arabs, extremely savage and even anthropophagous, were
led to adopt the custom of female infanticide by the difficulty of
living in their arid country, where famines were very common. Down to
the present time the nomads of Arabia suffer constantly from hunger
during a great part of the year.[197]
The custom of infanticide was inveterate among the Arabs, and Mahomet
was obliged to condemn it over and over again in the Koran:--“They who
from folly or ignorance kill their children shall perish.[198] Kill not
your children on account of poverty.[199] Kill not your children for
fear of poverty; we will feed them, and you also.[200] When it shall be
asked of the girl buried alive for what crime she is put to death ...
every soul will then acknowledge the work that she had done.”[201]
In this last verse the Koran bears witness to the custom of killing the
girls, and it indicates the process in use, which actually consisted
in burying them alive. This was done openly, and often the grave of
the newly-born infant was dug by the side even of the couch of the
mother who had just given birth to it. According to the morality of
the primitive Arabs, these acts were not only very simple, but even
virtuous and generous,[202] which seems to indicate that they were
indeed only precautions against famine. An Arab legend, quoted by Mr.
R. Smith, paints in lively colours these atrocious customs. It relates
to a chief of Tamin, who became a constant practitioner of infanticide
in consequence of a wound given to his pride. He was called Caïs, and
was contemporary with Mahomet. The daughter of his sister was carried
off in a razzia and given to the son of her captor, as was the usage
in Arabia, where the captured women made part of the booty and were
divided with it. This time, when Caïs came to reclaim his niece by
offering to pay her ransom, the latter, being well pleased with the
adventure, refused to quit her husband. Caïs, the uncle, was mortally
offended, and from that moment he interred alive all his daughters,
according to the ancient custom. But one day, during his absence, a
daughter was born to him, whom the mother secretly sent to a relative
to save her, and then declared to her husband that she had been
delivered of a still-born child. Some years later, the girl, grown
tall, came to pay a visit to her mother. Caïs discovered her, while
her mother was plaiting her hair and ornamenting it with cowries. “I
arrived,” the father is made to say, speaking to Mahomet, “and I said,
‘Who is this young girl?’ ‘She is yours,’ replied the mother, weeping,
and she related how she had formerly saved her. I waited till the
emotion of the mother was calmed; then one day I led away the girl; I
dug a grave and I made her lie down in it. She cried, ‘Father, what do
you intend to do with me?’ Then I covered her with earth. She cried
again, ‘Father, do you wish to bury me? Are you going away, and will
you abandon me?’ But I continued to heap earth on her until her cries
were stifled. That was the only time it has happened to me to feel pity
in burying a daughter.”[203]
Such customs, combined with the sale to strangers of girls carried
off in razzias, and the polygamy of the rich men, must assuredly have
profoundly disturbed the numerical proportion of the sexes, and have
rendered polyandry almost a necessity, which, besides, could not
excite any scruple with the ancient Arabs, whose morals were very
licentious. Thus the captured women often remained common to a group of
relatives.[204] In the fifth century the Syrio-Roman law had even to
forbid the contracts of fraternity, by which all was held in common,
including the wives and children.[205]
That fraternal polyandry, called Thibetan, may have existed in Arabia,
the passage of Strabo, which I have previously quoted in regard to
promiscuity, would suffice to establish; but Arab writers expressly
attest it, and notably Bokhâri (vi. 127), according to whom the number
of polyandrous husbands was not allowed to exceed ten; besides this,
various customs of more modern date, as, for example, the passing of
the widow, by heritage, to the relatives of the husband, seem to arise
from it. Moreover, even at the present day in Arabia, the father cannot
give his daughter to another if the son of his brother demands her, and
the latter has the right to obtain her at a lower price;[206] this is
the right of pre-emption applied to the woman.
It seems, indeed, as if these were the vestiges of an antique
fraternal polyandry, and it is in fact of fraternal or Thibetan
polyandry that Strabo speaks. Has this fraternal patriarchal polyandry
been preceded by a matriarchal polyandry, after the mode of the
Naïrs--a polyandry which did not make the woman the property of the
husbands? Without being able to give a direct proof of this, we may,
however, consider it as very probable. In the present day the partial
marriages, by which the women of the Hassinyeh Arabs engage themselves
for some days of the week only, strongly resemble the matriarchal
polyandry of the Naïrs, and temporary marriage, or _mot’a_, of the
ancient Arabs approaches nearly to it also.
It is this kind of marriage, in all probability, that the prophet means
when he inveighs against “fornication.”
By the _mot’a_ marriage the woman does not leave her home; her tribe
preserves the rights it has over her, and her children do not belong
to the husband. In short, the conjugal union is only contracted for a
fixed time. These _mot’a_ marriages had nothing dishonourable in them,
and did not in the least prevent the women from finding fresh husbands
when, at the expiration of the lease, they became once more free.[207]
The custom of _mot’a_ marriage was long prevalent in Arabia. Ammianus
speaks of it,[208] saying that the wife received a price or indemnity
from her temporary husband, and that, if it happened to the contracting
parties to wish to continue to live together at the expiration of
the time fixed, they inaugurated a fresh and more durable union by
a symbolic ceremony, during which the wife offered to her husband a
javelin and a tent.
The prophet himself decided with great hesitation to condemn the
_mot’a_ marriage. A tradition makes him say that “if a man and a woman
agree together, their union should last for three nights, after which
they may separate or live together, as they please.”[209]
In fact, the _mot’a_ marriage was only abolished in the time of Omar;
and it is important to remark with regard to it, that this mode of
marriage, singular as it may appear to us, was, for the woman, very
superior to the servitude of the Mussulman harem. It was a personal
contract, in which her parents did not interfere, and which did not
degrade her from the rank of an independent person to the humiliation
of merely being a thing possessed. The _mot’ a_ marriage indicates,
besides, very free manners, as is attested by a number of facts and
traditions, particularly certain religious rites of the Canaanites, the
Aramites, and the pagan Hebrews, and also the licentious practices of
women and girls in the temple of Baalbek.
By degrees the _mot’ a_ marriage gave place to a definite marriage,
the _ba’al_ marriage, by which the young girl went to live with her
husband and owed him fidelity. Marriages of this kind were sought at
first by the chiefs, to whom they assured alliances. As a consequence
these unions became honourable, and dethroned the ancient matrimonial
custom.[210] Henceforth the women who continued to live in the ancient
mode were dishonoured, and treated as prostitutes, whose dwelling was
indicated by a special flag. At the same time the taste for paternity
was born in men, and, in case of doubt on this matter, sages whose
profession it was, declared the signs by which a man could recognise
his own offspring.[211]
IV. _Polyandry in General._
I have quoted or made a summary of nearly all the information that
has reached us on the subject of ancient and modern polyandry. From
thence we may conclude that in no way are we authorised to consider
this form of conjugal union as having been general. Still it has become
a necessity in a good number of gross societies. It has specially
prevailed in countries badly supplied with food, where the struggle
for existence was severe, where warlike conflicts with neighbouring
tribes were incessant, and where, in order to endure, the community
was forced to diminish the _impedimenta_ and the useless mouths. In
such conditions, men still savage or barbarous have recourse without
hesitation all over the world to female infanticide; and as, on the
other side, the chiefs and strong men monopolise as many women as
possible, the debauchery of unmarried women and polyandrian households
become necessary palliatives.
We have seen that there are two principal kinds of polyandry--the
matriarchal and patriarchal. In the first, the woman or girl does not
quit her family or her _gens_; sometimes even she is permitted the
right of choosing her husbands, who are not related to each other, and
upon whom the woman scarcely depends at all, since she remains with her
own relations, and bears children for them.
On the contrary, in the patriarchal polyandry, the woman, captured or
bought, is almost entirely uprooted; she leaves her natural protectors
to go and live with her husbands, to whom she belongs, who are limited
in number, are nearly always brothers or relations, and to whom she
cannot be unfaithful without authorisation.
Both forms of polyandric marriage suppose a complete absence of
modesty, of sexual reserve and moral delicacy. But we know that these
qualities can only be the fruit of long culture. In this respect both
matriarchal and patriarchal polygamy are equal. But it is important to
observe that the first enslaves woman much less. On the other hand,
the second already permits the establishment of a sort of paternal
filiation, since the husbands are generally of the same blood. For this
reason it is reputed superior.
In reality matriarchal polyandry always coincides with the primitive
family form, the matriarchate--that is to say, with a system that takes
no account of paternal filiation, and leaves the children to the tribe
of the mother.
Patriarchal polyandry, on the contrary, already presents the outline of
a sort of paternal family, with the right of primogeniture attributed
to the first-born.
We shall have to study in detail both the patriarchate and the
matriarchate. Polyandry, in its reputedly highest form, the Thibetan,
only constitutes a patriarchate of the most imperfect kind, since there
is still a confusion of fatherhood.
Proof is still wanting to force us to conclude that matriarchal
polyandry must always have preceded the other. This appears to be true
for ancient Arabia only. In all other places we can merely suppose
it to have been so. We should be equally mistaken if we admitted _a
priori_ that patriarchal polyandry implies a degree of civilisation
superior to that of the countries where matriarchal polyandry prevails.
The ancient Arabs, of whom Strabo speaks, practised fraternal
polyandry, and yet we know that they were scarcely civilised, they
were cannibals, and so ferocious that their wives accompanied them in
combats in order to despatch and mutilate the wounded enemies. These
furies made themselves necklaces and bracelets for their ankles with
the nose and ears of a dead enemy,[212] and sometimes even they ate his
liver.
In conclusion, polyandry is an exceptional conjugal form, as rare as
polygamy is common. It must be classed with experimental and term
marriages. With our European ideas on conjugal fidelity, obligatory
by the right of proprietorship, we can scarcely conceive even of the
possibility of this perfect absence of jealousy, this placidity of the
co-husbands. It is indelicate, doubtless. But how shall we describe our
morality and the laws that give to the deceived husband the right of
life and death over his faithless companion, and in this respect bring
us down to the level of the savage? Do indelicate manners rank lower
than ferocious manners? They are both those of the animal.
FOOTNOTES:
[169] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 278.
[170] A. Bertillon.
[171] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 270.
[172] _Id., ibid._
[173] Houzeau, _Facultés mentales des animaux_, t. I^{er.} p. 282.
[174] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 270.
[175] _Id., ibid._ p. 282.
[176] Dalton, _Ethn. Bengal_, p. 289.
[177] _De bello Gallico_, v. p. 14.
[178] Berthelot, _Mém. Soc. Ethn._, pp. 121, 125, 155, 186, 210.
[179] Radiguet, _Derniers Sauvages_, p. 180.
[180] Dalton, _loc. cit._, pp. 33-36.
[181] Schortt, _Trans. Ethno. Soc._ (New Series), vol. viii. p. 240.
[182] _Mahabharata_, trad. Fauche, t. ii. p. 148.
[183] _Hist. Univ. des Voy_., vol. xxxi. pp. 458-468.
[184] Davy, _Ceylon_, p. 286.--O. Sachot, _L’île de Ceylon_, p. 25.
[185] Turner, _Thibet_, p. 348, and _Hist. Univ. des Voy_., vol. xxxi.
p. 434.
[186] Moorcroft and Trebeck’s _Travels_, vol. i. p. 320.
[187] Rousselet, _Ethnographie de l’Himalaya occidental_, in _Revue
d’anthrop._, 1878.
[188] Turner, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, vol. xxxi. p. 434.
[189] Major Ross King, _Journ. of Anthrop._ (1870), p. 32.
[190] Élie Reclus, _Les Primitifs_, p. 191.
[191] Hamilton, _Account of the East Indies_, vol. i. p. 308.
[192] Forbes, _Oriental Memoirs_, vol. i. p. 385.
[193] _Lettres Edifiantes_, vol. x. p. 22.
[194] Robertson Smith, _Kinship_, etc., p. 313.
[195] Buchanan, _Journey_, vol. ii. p. 411, etc.
[196] _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, 1885.
[197] _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 283.
[198] Sourate, vi. p. 141.
[199] _Ibid._ p. 152.
[200] _Ibid._ xvii. p. 33.
[201] _Ibid._ lxxxi. pp. 8-14.
[202] R. Smith, _Kinship_, p. 282.
[203] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc., pp. 279, 280.
[204] _Id., ibid._ pp. 131-134.
[205] _Id., ibid._ p. 135.
[206] _Id., ibid._ p. 137.
[207] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc., pp. 69, 141-143.
[208] _Id., ibid._ vol. xiv. p. 4.
[209] _Id., ibid._ p. 67.
[210] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc., pp. 141-143.
[211] _Id., ibid._ p. 143.
[212] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc., p. 284.
CHAPTER VI.
MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE.
I. _Rape._--Rape and marriage--Rape in Tasmania, Australia, New
Guinea, Africa, America, among the Tartars, the Hindoos, the Hebrews,
and the Celts--The rape of concubines in ancient Greece.
II. _Marriage by Capture._--The ceremonial of capture in
marriage--Symbolic capture among the Esquimaux, the Indians of Canada,
in Guatemala, among the Mongols, the aborigines of Bengal, in New
Zealand, among the Arabs, the ancient Greeks, in ancient Rome, in
Circassia, among the modern Celts, and in Livonia.
III. _Signification of the Ceremonial of Capture._--Violent exogamy
has not been universal--Rape and marriage by purchase--What the
ceremonial of capture means.
I. _Rape._
The marriage by capture, which we have now to consider, is not actually
a form of marriage; it is only a manner of procuring one or more
wives, whatever at the same time may be the prevailing matrimonial
_régime_. If, however, we cannot dispense with the special study of
marriage by capture, it is because it has been made to play a chief
_rôle_ in sociology. According to some authors, it has been a universal
necessity, and must have preceded exogamy in all times and places.
Surely this too general theory may be contested; but it is beyond doubt
that the rape of women has been widely practised all over the world,
that very often it has been considered glorious, and that in many
countries it has been attenuated into pacific marriage.
Nothing is more natural and simple than rape among savage or barbarous
tribes, who hold violence in esteem and use it largely, and who, as we
have previously seen, are almost always addicted to female infanticide.
But has the widely-spread custom of rape the great importance in
sociological theory that has been attributed to it? This is a question
to which we can only reply after having consulted the facts.
Throughout Melanesia capture has been the primitive means of procuring
wives, or rather slaves-of-all-work, absolutely at the discretion
of the ravisher. Bonwick, indeed, tells us that in Tasmania, and
consequently in Australia, capture was more often simulated only, and
resulted from a previous agreement between the man and woman;[213] but
the savage manner in which the rape was effected abundantly proves that
amiable agreement was exceptional. The Australian who desires to carry
off a woman belonging to another tribe prowls traitorously around the
camp. If he happens to discover a woman without a protector he rushes
on her, stuns her with a blow of his club (_douak_), seizes her by
her thick hair, drags her thus into the neighbouring wood; then, when
she has recovered her senses, he obliges her to follow him into the
midst of his own people, and there he violates her in their presence,
for she has become his property--his domestic animal.[2] The captured
woman generally resigns herself without difficulty;[214] in truth, she
has, generally, changed her master, but not in the least changed her
condition.
Sometimes two men unite to commit one of these rapes. They glide
noiselessly into a neighbouring camp in the night; one of them winds
round his barbed spear the hair of a sleeping _lubra_, the other
points his spear at her bosom. She awakes, and dares not cry out; they
take her off, bind her to a tree, and then return in the same manner
to make a second capture; after that they return in triumph to their
own people.[215] The captives rarely revolt, for they are, in a way,
accustomed to the capture. From infancy they have been familiarised
with the fate that awaits them, for the simulation of the rape is one
of the games of the Australian children.[216] Later the life of a
pretty Australian girl is marked by a series of plots to carry her off,
and of successive rapes, which force her to pass from hand to hand,
and expose her to wounds received in conflicts, and to bad treatment
inflicted by the other women amongst whom she is introduced. Sometimes
she is dragged very far, even hundreds of miles from the place of her
birth.[217]
It is the duty of the tribe to which the ravished woman belongs to
avenge her, and the Australian has, after his own manner, a strong
sentiment of certain obligations, which for him are moral; but more
frequently, to escape too great damages, the tribes hold a meeting, and
the ravisher submits to a symbolic retaliation agreed on beforehand.
Armed with his little shield of bark, he takes his place at about forty
yards from a group of ten warriors belonging to the aggrieved tribe,
and each one of these throws two or three darts at him, which are
nearly always avoided or parried. Thenceforth the offence is effaced,
and peace re-established.[218]
The same customs prevail among the Papuans of New Guinea. At Bali the
men carry off and violate brutally the solitary women they may meet;
and afterwards they agree with the tribe as to compensation.[219] In
like manner, in the Fiji Isles, rape, real or simulated, was general
and even glorious. A particular divinity presided over it. The ravished
woman either fled to a protector or resigned herself, and then a feast
given to the parents terminated the affair.[220]
To be able to see in these bestial customs anything resembling
marriage, one must be a prey to a fixed idea--a positive matrimonial
monomania. There is here no marriage by capture, but rather slavery
by capture. This is not the only method of procuring wives practised
by the Australians. They often proceed pacifically by traffic, and a
man acquires a wife by giving in exchange another woman of whom he
has power to dispose--a sister or relative.[221] Certain tribes had
also instituted a sort of regulated promiscuity--a collective marriage
between all the men of one clan and all the women of another. I shall
have to return to the consideration of this singular form of sexual
association. For the moment I confine myself to noticing that rape is
not always obligatory in Australia.
Neither is it so among the negroes of Africa; it is even more rare
there than in Melanesia, but there also it does not constitute a
marriage. Women are carried off just in the same way as other things
are carried off. Thus the Damara Hottentots often steal wives from the
Namaquois Hottentots.[222] Among the Mandingos and the Timanis there is
no marriage by capture, properly speaking; already they purchase the
daughter from her parents, without, of course, consulting her; then the
intending purchaser, aided by his friends, carries off his acquisition
in a brutal manner, whether she will or not. It is a simple commercial
affair; the daughter is an exchange value representing a certain number
of jars of palm wine, of stuffs, etc.
Amongst the natives of America brutal rape was, or still is, very
common. In Terra del Fuego, the young Fuegians carry off a woman as
soon as they are able to construct or procure a canoe.[223] From tribe
to tribe the Patagonians at war exterminate the men and carry off the
women. The Oen Patagonians make incursions every year at the time of
“the red leaf” on the Fuegians to seize their women, their dogs, and
their weapons.[224] The Indians on the banks of the Amazon and Orinoco
continually capture women, and thus every tribe is sometimes nearly
without women and sometimes overflowing with them.[225] The Caribs so
frequently procured wives in this way that their women did not often
speak the language of the men.[226] In the Redskin tribe of the Mandans
the rape of young women was a perpetual cause of trouble, of disorder,
and of vengeance, proportioned to the power and to the anger of the
relations of the ravished woman.[227]
We find similar customs among savage or barbarous peoples nearly
everywhere. The Tartars, says Barnes, make their wives of the prisoners
that they capture in battles.[228]
The Code of Manu also mentions this primitive mode of union more or
less conjugal:--“When a young girl is carried off by force from the
parental house, weeping and crying for succour, and those who oppose
this violence are killed or wounded, and a breach is made in the walls,
this mode (of marriage) is called that of the giants.”[229]
The Bible relates several facts of the same kind. Thus the tribe of
Benjamin procured themselves wives by massacring the inhabitants of
Jabez-Gilead and capturing four hundred of their virgins. Another time
the Benjamites practised a Sabine rape in carrying off the women during
a feast near Bethel.
The Israelites, having vanquished the Midianites, killed all the
men, according to the Semitic custom, and took away the cattle, the
children, and the women.[230] But Moses, always directly inspired by
the Lord, ordered them to put to death the women and even the male
children, and to keep the young girls and virgins.[231] There were
sixteen thousand maidens, of whom thirty-two were reserved for the
Lord’s share, which doubtless means for the priests. Of the sheep,
oxen, asses, and maidens that remained, Moses further deducted the
fiftieth part, which he gave to the Levites of the tabernacle.[232]
This ferocity and this coarse assimilation of captured women to cattle
are not peculiar to the people of God, but prevailed amongst the
primitive Arabs,[233] or rather amongst all the Semites, who were still
savage or barbarous.
Capture in war has, besides, been largely practised by all races and
throughout the world. An old Irish poem, the “Duan Eiranash,” speaks
of three hundred women carried off by the Picts from the Gaels, who,
finding themselves thus deprived of their women by a single blow,
allied themselves then with the Irish.
I will confine myself to these examples, gleaned from all parts, and
which it would be easy to multiply. They amply suffice to establish
that in primitive societies woman, being held in very low esteem, is
absolutely reduced to the level of chattels and of domestic animals;
that she represents a booty like any other; that her master can use
and abuse her without fear. But in these bestial practices there is
nothing which approaches, even distantly, to marriage, and we are not
in the least warranted to call these brutal rapes marriages. Even in
the countries where a true marriage exists, the customs and the laws
tolerate for a long time the introduction into the house of the husband
of captured slaves, who are treated by the master as concubines by
the side of the legitimate wife or wives. The heroes of Homer profit
largely by this legal tolerance, and when the Clytemnestra of Æschylus
justifies herself for having killed her husband, she alleges, among
other extenuating circumstances, the intimacy of Agamemnon with his
slave Cassandra.
Assuredly in all this there is no marriage. We shall presently see that
in many countries the concubinate, legal and patent, has co-existed, or
co-exists, by the side of marriage without being confounded with it.
It is important to reserve the name of _marriage by capture_ to legal
and pacific marriage, in the ceremonial of which we find practices
recalling or simulating by survival the primitive rape of woman.
II. _Marriage by Capture._
It is to be observed that this symbolic rape does not always signify
that the capture of the woman has preceded pacific conjugal union. It
represents especially a mental survival, the tradition of an epoch,
more or less distant, when violence was held in high esteem, and when
it was glorious to procure slaves for all sorts of labour by force of
arms. In the countries where the ceremonial of capture exists, the
fine times of rape are generally somewhat gone by, but the mind is
still haunted by it, and even in peaceful marriages, after the contract
or bargain is concluded, men like to symbolise in the ceremonial the
rapes of former days, which they cannot and dare not any longer commit.
These practices have also another bearing: they signify that the bride,
then nearly always purchased from her parents, must be in complete
subjection to the master that has been given her, and occupy the
humblest place in the conjugal house.
For all these reasons the symbolic ceremonial of capture has been, or
is still, in use with many races at the celebration of their marriages.
In some degree it is found all over the world. Among the Esquimaux of
Cape York the marriages are arranged in a friendly way by the parents
of the future couple, and nevertheless, from the infancy of the latter,
the conjugal ceremony must simulate a capture. The future bride must
fly, must defend herself with her feet and hands, scream at the height
of her voice, until her new master has succeeded in taking her to his
hut, where she at once settles happily.[234]
In the same way, in Greenland the bridegroom captures his bride, or has
her captured for him; and in the latter case he has recourse to the
help of two or three old women.[235]
With the Indians of Canada, where sometimes a true marriage is
concluded in presence of the chief of the tribe, when he has pronounced
the matrimonial formula, “the husband turns round, stoops down,
takes his wife on his back, and carries her to his tent, amid the
acclamations of the spectators.”[236]
Some Redskin tribes, observed by Lafitau, symbolised rape even in the
intimate relations between young couples. The husband was obliged
to enter the wigwam of his wife in the night; it would be a grave
impropriety for him to approach it in the day-time.[237]
In ancient Guatemala, where marriages were celebrated with a certain
pomp, the father of the bridegroom sent a deputation of friends to seek
the bride, and one of these messengers had to take the girl on his
shoulders and carry her to an appointed spot, near the house of the
bridegroom.[238]
In Asia, over the vast Mongol region extending from Kamtschatka to the
country of the Turcomans, the ceremonial of capture is always held in
honour.
This symbolism of capture is especially curious with the
Kamtschatdales. There it is not as a conqueror that the husband enters
the family of the wife, since he must first do an act of servitude,
find the parents of the girl he desires, put himself at their service,
and take his part in the domestic labour. This period of probation
may last a long time, even years,[239] and surely it is a singular
prelude to a marriage by violent capture. However, when the time of the
novitiate is over, the future husband is allowed to triumph violently
and publicly over the resistance of his bride. She is armed with thick
garments, one over the other, and with straps and cords. Besides this
she is guarded and defended by the women of the _iourte_. However, the
marriage is not definitely concluded until the bridegroom, surmounting
all these obstacles, succeeds in effecting on his well-defended bride a
sort of outrage on modesty, that she herself must acknowledge by crying
_ni ni_ in a plaintive tone. But the girls and women of the guard fall
on the assailant with great cries and blows, tear his hair, scratch
his face, and sometimes throw him. Victory often necessitates repeated
assaults and many days of combat. When at last it is gained, and the
bride has herself acknowledged it, the marriage is settled, and is
consummated the same evening in the _iourte_ of the bride, who is not
taken to her husband’s house till the next day.[240]
The ceremonial of capture still continues in the marriages of the
Kalmucks, the Tungouses, and the Turcomans, but has become less coarse.
With the Kalmucks the girl is first bought from her father, and
then, after a pretended resistance, is carried away on a horse ready
saddled.[241] The custom varies: sometimes it is enough to place the
bride, by force, on a horse; sometimes she flees, always on horseback,
but is pursued and caught by the bridegroom, who consummates the
marriage on the spot, and then conducts his prize to his tent.[242]
The Tungouses, coarser still, proceed by an attempt on modesty, as with
the Kamtschatdales; the bridegroom must attack his bride and tear her
clothes.[243]
With the Turcomans, marriage can be concluded with or without the
consent of the parents. In the latter case, the young people fly and
seek refuge in a neighbouring _obah_. They are always well received
there, and remain a month or six weeks. During this time the elders
of the two _obahs_ negotiate an arrangement with the parents; they
agree on the price of the girl, who afterwards returns to the paternal
domicile; she must remain six months or a year, or even longer, before
living with her husband, and during all this time he may only see her
secretly. Sometimes the flight is executed with the previous consent
of the parents, and then it is no more than a symbolic capture,[244] a
comedy.
In reality rape, more or less real, is often replaced by a simple
ceremonial with the greater part of the nomads of Central Asia, and
notably the Turcomans. Then the young girl, clothed in her bridal
costume, bestrides a fiery horse, which she puts to a gallop, having
at the saddle a kid or a lamb freshly killed. The bridegroom and all
the wedding guests, also on horseback, pursue the future wife, who,
by clever turns and evolutions, hides herself, and hinders them from
seizing the animal she has carried off.[245] All this is plainly the
mere mimic of rape, and there is in these divers customs a designed
gradation: at first the actual stealing of the girl, with the
understanding that the affair will not end tragically; then a stealing
that may be called legal, as it is authorised by the parents; at length
the simple ceremony symbolic of rape by violence.
Customs very similar to these are found with a certain number of the
aborigines of Bengal.
The Kurmis and other _sudras_ celebrate marriage by a pretended
combat. Sometimes the bridegrooms mark their foreheads with blood,
which seems, indeed, to be the origin of the singular and nearly
universal custom in India of the _sindradan_,[246] consisting of
marking the forehead of the bride with vermilion. The vermilion has
apparently replaced the blood, and the blood may, and doubtless does,
symbolise a violent rape.
With the Mecks and the Kacharis, the bridegroom, accompanied by his
friends, goes to the house of his future bride; he there meets the
friends of the latter, and the two troupes simulate a combat, in which
the future husband is always victor; the bride finishes by being
carried off, and her husband has only to feast the friends of both
parties, and pay the father the price of the girl.[247]
With the Soligas, the man carries away the young girl with her consent,
and goes, like the Mongols, to a neighbouring village to pass the
time of the honeymoon, after which the couple return home and give a
feast.[248]
The custom of simulated capture still exists among other aboriginal
tribes of India, the Khonds, Badagas, etc.
It is evident that in primitive humanity, to carry off a woman with
armed violence was considered a glorious exploit, since in the most
diverse races pacific marriage assumes, with such good will, the
pretence of violent conquest.
In New Zealand, in order to marry a girl, a man applied either to her
father or nearest relation; then, consent being obtained, he ravished
his future bride, who was bound to resist energetically. As the New
Zealand women were robust, the contest, however courteous it might be,
was severe; the clothes of the girl were generally torn to shreds, and
it sometimes took hours to drag her a hundred yards.[249]
Sometimes the mother of the bride interfered. Mr. Yate mentions a case
of this kind. It relates to a mother quite content with the marriage
of her daughter, but obliged by custom to make a show of violent
opposition. The newly-married couple, on coming out of the church, for
they were converted, met the old woman, vociferating and tearing her
hair, and abusing the missionary, but telling him at the same time in a
low voice not to mind, for she was not serious.[250]
In certain districts of New Zealand the future husband was obliged
literally to carry off the girl. When the marriage was negotiated and,
in principle, concluded, all the relatives watched the _fiancée_ with
the greatest care, and held themselves in readiness to defend her. The
young man had to seize his bride at all costs by force of arms; his
honour depended on it, and often he suffered severely in conducting his
glorious enterprise to a successful end.[251]
The ceremonial of capture evidently springs from customs of rape,
whether ancient or not; it is, therefore, quite natural to meet with
razzias among the Bedouins, as among all of their race. With the
Bedouins of Sinai, the comedy is played to the life. The bridegroom,
accompanied by a couple of friends, attacks the girl when she is
leading the flocks home. She defends herself vigorously by throwing
stones, and is esteemed according to the amount of energy she shows.
At length they finish by taking her to the tent of her father, where
the name of her future husband is proclaimed. After this the girl
is dressed as a bride, placed on a camel, all the time feigning
resistance, and conducted to the encampment. A feast and presents
terminate the ceremony.[252]
With the Mezeyn Arabs things are pushed further. The girl, in the
so-called capture, evades pursuit and takes refuge in the mountains,
where her friends have prepared provisions for her beforehand. The
bridegroom rejoins his future wife in her retreat, and it is there
that the marriage is consummated. After this the couple return to the
paternal domicile, which the woman, unless she is with child, does not
quit for a year.
The matrimonial comedy is not always so complicated. With the Amezas
the bride only runs from tent to tent, and is at last conducted by
several women to a tent prepared at some distance; her bridegroom
awaits her there, but he has to force her to enter it; that done, the
women retire.[253]
With the Moors of Java, relates Schouten, the father of the bride
carries her, all swathed up, to the bridegroom. The latter, aided by
two of his paranymphs, lifts her on a horse and rides away with her.
Once arrived at his house he hides his wife there and goes off, without
thanking his assistants and friends.
Many European races have also practised the ceremonial of marriage
by capture. The Bœotians, says Pausanias, conducted the wives to the
house of the husband in a chariot, of which they afterwards solemnly
burnt the pole, to indicate that the woman was henceforth the property
of her master, and was never to think of quitting his abode. But in
ancient Greece it was at Sparta especially that the nuptial ceremony of
capture was practised.[254] A frequently quoted passage from Plutarch’s
_Life of Lycurgus_ gives us details on this point. “In their marriages
the bridegroom carried off the bride by violence; and she was never
chosen in a tender age, but when she had arrived at full maturity. Then
the woman that had the direction of the wedding cut the bride’s hair
close to the skin, dressed her in a man’s clothes, laid her upon a
mattress, and left her in the dark. The bridegroom, neither oppressed
with wine nor enervated with luxury, but perfectly sober, as having
always supped at the common table, went in privately, untied her
girdle, and carried her to another bed. Having stayed there a short
time, he modestly retired to his usual apartment to sleep with the
other young men, and observed the same conduct afterwards, spending the
day with his companions and reposing himself with them in the night,
nor even visiting his bride but with great caution and apprehensions
of being discovered by the rest of the family; the bride at the same
time exerted all her art to contrive convenient opportunities for their
private meetings,” etc.[255]
At Rome the ceremonial of capture was kept up for a long time in the
plebeian marriages, without confarreation or coemption. As in so
many other countries, they played the comedy of the carrying off
of the bride by the bridegroom with the pretended resistance of the
mother and the relations.[256] In the more respectable marriages the
ceremonial of capture was simplified, but still very significant. The
hair of the bride was separated with the point of a javelin (_hasta
celibaris_),[257] and for this symbolic ceremony a javelin that
had pierced the body of a gladiator was preferred. Then the bride,
conducted to the house of her husband, was to enter it without touching
the threshold; she was lifted over it.[258] It is curious to find
this same custom in China now in our own day, and we can hardly help
recognising in it the symbolic embodiment of capture.
A similar ceremonial is always practised in Circassia. In the midst of
a feast the bridegroom enters, escorted by his friends, and carries off
his bride, who henceforth becomes his wife.[259]
Moreover, as at Sparta, the newly-married Circassian must not visit the
wife, except in secret, for a whole year--a term evidently fixed, as at
Sparta, for the period of probable pregnancy.[260]
It is not very long ago that a ceremonial of the same kind was observed
quite near us, in Wales. On the day fixed, the bridegroom and his
friends, all on horseback, came to take the bride; but they found
themselves in the presence of the friends of the young girl, also on
horseback, and a mock fight ensued, during which the future wife fled
on the crupper of the horse of her nearest relative. But instantly the
squadron of the bridegroom, counting sometimes two or three hundred
horse, galloped in pursuit. Finally they rejoined the fugitive, and all
was terminated by a feast and common rejoicings.[261]
In Livonia every marriage was also the occasion of a simulated
combat of cavalry, as with the Welsh, but it took place before the
marriage.[262] In Poland also, and in Lithuania and Russia, the seizure
of the girl often preceded marriage.
I shall here end the enumeration of these customs, which are all
manifestly symbolical of capture. We still find the trace of it even
in the Brittany of to-day, where the representative of the husband,
the _bazvalan_, and the parents of the _fiancée_ sing, alternately,
strophes of a marriage song, in which the one asks and the others
refuse the bride, offering in her stead either a younger sister, or the
mother or grandmother.[263] Our inquiry is terminated; it remains now
to ask what is the meaning of this ceremonial so widely spread in all
ages and in all countries.
III. _Signification of the Ceremonial of Capture._
The author of an interesting book on primitive marriage, Mr. McLennan,
and after him a great number of sociologists, have concluded that in
savage societies sexual unions or associations have been generally
effected by the violent capture of the woman, that by degrees these
captures have become friendly ones, and have at length ended in a
peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial
form.
It is quite possible to have been thus in a certain number of
countries; but we must beware of seeing in this a necessary and general
evolution. Surely savage hordes and tribes naturally carry off the
women and girls of their neighbours and enemies, the little groups
with whom they are incessantly struggling for existence. They seize
their women as they do everything else, and impose on the captives
the unenviable _rôle_ of slaves-of-all-work. Given the brutality of
primitive man, the fate of the captured woman is necessarily of the
hardest, and it is natural that the woman of the tribe should not
solicit it. Thus, with or without reason, the Australian fells to the
ground his captured wife, pierces her limbs with his javelin, etc. A
stranger, a prisoner, violently brought into a society where she cannot
count on a single friend, will evidently be more resigned to this
bad treatment, and can nearly always be made to submit to it without
resistance. But we must not accept this as a sufficient explanation of
exogamy. We have seen that the Australian, accustomed to primitive
rape in all its brutality, only has recourse to it when he cannot
procure by simple barter the woman he covets.
There is certainly great temptation to capture a woman. A man thereby
escapes paying a price for her to her parents, which is the rule in
nearly all savage countries, but the operation is not effected without
risk and reprisals more or less dangerous, so that before undertaking
it he thinks twice.
We must be careful not to confound rape with marriage; nothing is more
distinct with savage and even with civilised men. Perhaps even the
dangers and the inconveniences of brutal capture have given rise to the
idea of primitive conjugal barter, of a peaceful agreement by which a
girl was ceded to a man for a compensation agreed upon. In principle
this commercial transaction left to the husband the greater part of
the rights he would have acquired by violent capture; but, in reality,
these rights were necessarily mitigated, for the woman, being thus
ceded in a friendly manner, was not completely abandoned by her own
people.
Thus in Polynesia, or at least in New Zealand, the husband who murdered
his wife, although he had purchased her, incurred the revenge of her
relations, unless she was guilty of adultery.[264] It was often thus,
but not always, however; for with the Fijians, in delivering a daughter
to the purchaser, the father or the brother said to the future husband,
“If you become discontented with her, sell her, kill her, eat her; you
are her absolute master.”[265] Much nearer home, in ancient Russia, the
father at the moment of marriage gave his daughter some strokes with a
whip, saying, “Henceforth, if you are not obedient, your husband will
beat you.”[266]
Such customs show us plainly why, in so many countries, symbolic
practices recalling violent capture are kept up in the ceremony of
marriage. In the first place, by reason even of the dangers to which
it exposed the ravisher, rape was considered a brilliant action, and
pleasure was felt in simulating it. But besides and beyond all, the
ceremonial of capture symbolised also the subjection of the woman
sold or ceded by her parents; it sanctioned the very excessive rights
that the husband acquired over the wife. As a rule, the ceremonial of
capture coincides with a very great subjection of the woman, even where
it is only a very distant survival. At Sparta, for example, the wife
might still be lent by the husband, and it was the same in ancient
Rome, where she was, according to the legal expression, _in manu_,
assimilated to slaves, and where the _pater familias_ had the right of
life and death over her.
We are, therefore, warranted in believing that in civilised countries
where conjugal legislation is still derived from the Roman law, the
subordinate position assigned to woman is the last vestige of primitive
marriage by capture or by rape, attenuated to a purchase, as practised
in the earliest times of the Romans.
FOOTNOTES:
[213] _Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians_, p. 65.
[214] Dumont d’Urville, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, vol. xviii. p.
225.--Oldfield, _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, vol. iii. p. 250.
[215] _Chambers’s Journal_, p. 22 (October 1861).
[216] Collins, _English Colony in New South Wales_, p. 362.
[217] G. Grey, _Travels in North-Western Australia_, vol. ii. p. 249.
[218] _Chambers’s Journal_, 1864.
[219] _Notices on the Indian Archipelago_, p. 90.
[220] Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, vol. i. p. 174.
[221] McLennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 321.
[222] Campbell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, vol. xxix. p. 343.
[223] Laing, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, vol. xxviii. p. 31.
[224] Fitzroy, _Voy. Beagle_, vol. ii. p. 182.
[225] Fitzroy, _loc. cit._, vol. ii. p. 205.
[226] McLennan, _loc. cit._, p. 48.
[227] McLennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 71.--Lewis and Clarke,
_Travels to the Source of the Missouri River_, vol. i. p. 231.
[228] _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, vol. xxvii. p. 130.
[229] _Code of Manu_, book iii. p. 33.
[230] Numbers, ch. xxxi. ver. 7-9.
[231] _Ibid._ ver. 15-18.
[232] _Ibid._ ver. 40-47.
[233] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc.
[234] T. Hayes, _The Open Sea at the Pole_, pp. 448, 449.
[235] Egede, _History of Greenland_, p. 143.
[236] Carver, _Travels_, p. 374.
[237] Lafitau, _Mœurs des Sauvages Américains_, t. I^{er.} p. 576.
[238] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. ii. p. 668.
[239] Kotzebue (_Deuxième Voyage_), _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvii. p.
392.
[240] Beniouski, _Hist Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 408.
[241] H. de Hell, _Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea_, p. 289.
[242] Clarke, _Travels_, etc., vol. i. p. 433.
[243] Erman, _Travels in Siberia_, vol. ii. p. 372.
[244] Fraser’s _Journey_, vol. ii. pp. 372-375.
[245] A. Vambéry, _Voy. d’un faux Derviche_, p. 295.
[246] Dalton, _Ethn. Bengal_, p. 319.
[247] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 86.
[248] Buchanan, _Journey from Madras_, vol. ii. p. 178.
[249] Earle, _Residence in New Zealand_, p. 244.
[250] Yate, _New Zealand_, p. 96.
[251] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles du Grand Océan_, t. ii. p. 68.
[252] Burckhardt, _Notes_, vol. i. p. 263.
[253] Burckhardt, _Notes_, vol. i. p. 107.
[254] Démeunier, _Esprit des Différents Peuples_, t. I^{er.} p. 296.
[255] Plutarch, _Life of Lycurgus_.
[256] Apuleius, _Golden Ass_, iv.
[257] Plutarch, _Romulus_.--Ovid, _Fastes_, ii.
[258] Lucan, ii.--Virgil, _Æneid_, iv.
[259] Louis Moser, _The Caucasus and its People_, p. 31.
[260] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 401.
[261] Lord Kames, _Sketches of the Hist. of Man_, book i., sec. 6.
[262] _Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus_ (1555), lib. xiv. cap. 2.
[263] La Villemarqué, _Barzas Breis_.
[264] _Voyage de l’Astrolabe._
[265] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, t. ii. p. 62.
[266] Démeunier, t. I^{er.} p. 191.
CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE AND BY SERVITUDE.
I. _The Power of Parents._--The hypothesis of a primitive
matriarchate--Maternal filiation and the condition of the
woman--Parental right of property in children--Conjugal sales of
little girls in Africa, Polynesia, America, and India.
II. _Marriage by Servitude._--Labour and exchange value--Marriage by
servitude with the Redskins, in Central America, in India, with the
Hebrews--Influence of marriage by servitude on the condition of the
woman.
III. _Marriage by Purchase._--With the Hottentots and the Kaffirs
in Middle Africa, in Polynesia, in America, with the Mongols in
China, with the aborigines of India, with the Berbers, the Hindoos
in Malasia, and in Greco-Roman antiquity--Dowry marriage--Moral
signification of marriage by purchase.
I. _The Power of Parents._
Marriage by capture, that is to say, the custom of rape, necessarily
supposes a profound disdain for the ravished woman, and the antipathies
or sympathies she may feel. It is indeed the truth that, as far back
as we can carry our historical and ethnographical investigations, we
find, with very rare exceptions, the subjection of woman is the rule
in all human societies, and that the more backward the civilisation
the harder was the subjection. Some sociologists have pretended that
maternal filiation implied for the woman a sort of golden age--a reign
of Amazons--during which the woman, as centre of the family, must have
been honoured as its chief. All we know of ethnography gives the lie to
this hypothesis. In the present day the matriarchate does not anywhere
exist, but maternal kinship does, and we do not find that it involves
a milder condition for the woman. This system of filiation necessarily
indicates a gross state of society, in which paternity is still
uncertain. Now, as a rule, the subjection of woman is in inverse ratio
to the development of man. In primitive societies, where might is the
only right, the woman, on account of her relative weakness, is always
treated with extreme brutality. It would be difficult, without losing
all human quality whatever, to be less intelligent than the Australian,
and equally difficult to imagine a more cruel servitude than that of
the Australian woman, always beaten, often wounded, sometimes killed
and eaten, according to the convenience of her owner. The Fijians, much
more intelligent than the Australians, amused themselves with beating
their mother, and with binding their wives to trees in order to whip
them.[267] A Fijian named Loti, simply to make himself notorious,
devoured his wife, after having cooked her on a fire that he had forced
her to light herself.[268] No kind of ferocious caprice was condemned
by the morality of the country. But such manners are as far as possible
from being consistent with the idea of a matriarchal society, in which
a place of honour is accorded to the wife.
In primitive societies the condition of children is, if possible, still
more subordinate than that of woman. Infanticide at the moment of
birth is not even a venial fault. And later, the parents exercise the
undisputed right of life and death over their progeny; and when slavery
is instituted, the children become a veritable article of merchandise.
In short, the rights of a father of a family are unlimited.
From this primitive right of property accorded to the parents over
their children has resulted quite naturally all over the world the
right of marrying them without consulting them at all. Moreover, as
it had long been the custom to sell them, marriage was naturally
considered as a commercial bargain, and by degrees marriage by purchase
even took the place of marriage by capture, but after having long
co-existed with it. Capture and purchase had each their advantages
and disadvantages. Capture cost nothing, and it procured wives and
concubines over whom the husband had every possible right; but, in
practice, it was not exempt from danger, and once accomplished, it
exposed him still to revenge and retaliation. Men became resigned,
therefore, to the purchase of the wife, as soon as they could dispose
of some exchange-values; and as nothing, absolutely nothing, was
any obstacle to the caprice or avidity of the parents, the most
unreasonable marriages were often negotiated, and notably the marriages
of children.
This custom of selling children, especially girls, for a future
conjugal association is very common all over the world.
In New Caledonia the children are betrothed by the parents almost from
the moment of birth.[269] In Africa, among the black races, and notably
the Hottentots, whose women age fast, the prudent men retain, years in
advance, the little girls destined to succeed their actual wives.[270]
In Ashantee little girls of ten and twelve thus sold are already
legally considered the wives of the acquirer, although they have not
yet left their mothers, and any familiarity taken with them by another
man is punished by a fine paid to the future owner.[271]
In Polynesia, also, the fathers, mothers, and relatives arranged the
conjugal unions of the children years before these unions were actually
possible.[272]
With the Moxos and the Chiquitos of South America premature marriages
were such a settled order of things that there were no celibates above
the age of fourteen for the men and twelve for the women. The Jesuit
missionaries in America had completely adopted this native custom,
and they often married young girls of ten to boys of twelve years.
Naturally these child marriages entailed sometimes equally precocious
widowhood. D’Orbigny states that he has seen among these tribes a
widower of twelve and a widow of ten years.[273]
In the time of Marco Polo the Tartars of Asia celebrated marriages
that were more singular still--the marriages of deceased children. The
families drew up the contract as if their children had been living,
solemnly celebrated a symbolic wedding, then burned not less solemnly
the fictitious contract, which would be, they thought, the means of
holding it good in the other world for the vanished young couple.
Thenceforward an alliance existed between the contracting families as
if the marriage had been real.[274]
Among the Reddies of India a young woman from sixteen to twenty years
old is frequently married to a little boy of five or six. The wife
then goes to live either with the father, or with an uncle, or a
maternal cousin of her future husband. The children resulting from
these extra-conjugal unions are attributed to the boy, who is reputed
to be the legal husband. When once this boy has reached manhood his
legitimate wife is old, and then he in his turn unites himself to the
wife of another boy, for whom he also raises up pseudo-legitimate
children.[275]
Child-marriages, at least of little girls, are still very common in
India amongst the Brahmins, and it is not unusual to see sexagenarian
Brahmins marry little girls of six or seven years, for whom they pay
money.[276]
On this point, as on most others, our European ancestors have not been
more delicate than the savage or barbarous races of other countries.
Thus Plutarch tells us that in ancient Italy the girls were often
married before the age of twelve years, but that they did not become
wives before that age.[277]
At the present day the Russian peasants still frequently act like the
Reddies of India, and it is not rare to see, under the _Mir_ system,
young boys of eight or ten years married to women of twenty-five or
thirty. Very often, in this case, the chief of the family becomes the
effective husband of the woman while the legal husband is growing
up.[278]
II. _Marriage by Servitude._
From all these facts we may evidently conclude that in societies of
little or no cultivation the children are left absolutely to the
discretion of the parents. The latter, having every possible right over
their progeny, consider them as a property, and think it no crime to
sell their daughters, pubescent or not, as soon as they constitute a
negotiable value. This sale of daughters is even the most widely spread
form of primitive marriage, or of what it is convenient to call so. In
societies of some degree of civilisation, where exchange-values exist,
as domestic animals, stores of provisions, or slaves, the sale of a
daughter is argued and debated like any other transaction, and the
merchandise is delivered for the price agreed on. In a more primitive
state of civilisation, when man subsists chiefly by the chase, or
fishing from day to day, and is not always rich enough to buy a wife,
the exchange-values considered equivalent of the required daughter are
often replaced by a certain amount of labour or services rendered to
the parents, and hence results a special form of marriage--marriage by
servitude.
This mode of marriage was not uncommon with the Indians of North
America. Sometimes the future husband engaged to serve the parents of
the girl for a fixed period of time. He hunted for them, hollowed out
or constructed canoes, or where agriculture was practised he cultivated
the land.[279] Sometimes the husband was not entirely enslaved; he had
only to give to his wife’s parents a part of the produce of the chase,
and he was not exempt from this tribute till a daughter was born to
him, who became, by way of indemnity, the property of the maternal
uncle of his wife.[280]
Often during the time of his voluntary servitude the husband remained
in the family of his wife, and he actually took the position there of a
sort of slave.[281]
In the more civilised societies of Central America the custom of
marriage by servitude was nevertheless preserved. Among the Kenaï, the
future husband went every morning for a whole year to the house of the
parents of his betrothed to prepare the food, carry the water, or heat
the bath-chamber; then, when his year of service was over, he took away
the daughter.[282] In Yucatan the son-in-law was obliged to serve his
father-in-law for two or three years. This manner of acting even became
a general custom which it was considered immoral not to follow.[283]
With the Mayas, the bridegroom was required to build himself a house
opposite that of his future father-in-law, and he lived there five or
six years, giving his labour during all that period.[284]
Although more common in America than elsewhere, the custom of marriage
by servitude is not confined to that continent. The Limboos and the
Kirantis of Bengal often buy their wives by giving a certain term of
labour to the father, in whose house they remain until the payment is
finished.[285] We know also that marriage by servitude is not peculiar
to savages of inferior races, since the Bible informs us that Jacob
only espoused Leah and Rachel at the price of fourteen years’ service.
Without dilating further on marriage by servitude, I shall remark by
the way that it had for its result the placing of the husband in a
subordinate position towards the woman, or at least towards the family
of the woman, in which he had so long been treated as a servant. A
certain independence was gained by the wife who had been acquired in
this manner. Thus, with the Kenaï, of whom I was speaking just now, the
woman had the right to return to her father if she was not well treated
by her husband.[286] Marriage by servitude had therefore, in fact,
a moral side; it lessened the subjection, always hard and sometimes
cruel, to which woman is liable in nearly all savage or barbarous
societies.
III. _Marriage by Purchase._
Marriage by purchase is much more widely spread than marriage by
servitude or service. All over the world, in all races and in all
times, wherever history can inform us, we find well-authenticated
examples permitting us to affirm that during the middle age of
civilisation the right of parents over children, and especially
over daughters, included in all countries the power to sell them. I
purpose to consult on this subject all the great races of mankind, and
confirmatory facts will not be wanting; I shall, indeed, have to limit
myself in giving them.
Among the Hottentots and the Kaffirs, the exchange value of the country
being cattle, the daughters are paid for in cows or oxen, and the price
of the merchandise varies according to the fluctuations of demand and
supply. Among the Great Namaquois Levaillant saw a conjugal affair
concluded very cheaply, for a single cow;[287] but this price may be
increased tenfold.[288] With the Corannas, the man makes his request
leading an ox to the door of the girl. If he is allowed to kill the
animal, it means that his demand is granted. In the contrary case, the
suitor is sent away and sometimes stoned.[289] Hottentot girls are
sometimes sold in their own tribe, and sometimes in a neighbouring one.
At the time of Burchell’s travels there was a lively traffic in girls
between the Bachapin Hottentots and the Kora Hottentots.[290]
According to Livingstone, among the Makalolo Kaffirs the price paid
to the father had also for its object the redemption of the right of
ownership which he would otherwise have in the children of his daughter.
In Central Africa, in Senegambia, in the valley of the Niger, with the
Mandingoes, the Peuls, etc., marriages are reduced to the sale of the
girl by those having the right.[291] With the Timannis, says Laing,
the pretendant first brings a jar of palm wine, or a little rum, to
the parents. If his demand is favourably received the presents are
accepted, and the giver is invited to return, which he does, bringing
a second jar of wine, some kolas, some measures of stuff, and some
chaplets. All is then definitely concluded, and they announce to the
girl that she is married.[292]
With the Moors of Senegambia conjugal sales are effected in nearly the
same manner; however, the girl has a right to refuse, but on condition
of renouncing marriage for ever, on pain of becoming the slave of her
first suitor in the case of an attempt to marry her to another.[293]
This right of refusal, limited as it is, already constitutes a notable
degree of progress which does not always exist in much more civilised
countries. We must place by the side of this some other customs in
force here and there in this region of Central Africa, confining
ourselves to the Sahara and to where the population is strongly mixed
with Berber blood. It is to be remembered that in nearly all Berber
countries the subjection of women is or has been a little less severe.
At Sackatoo the daughter is generally consulted by her parents as a
matter of form only, for she never refuses. In the same district the
young people first obtain a mutual consent, and then that of their
parents. Among rich people the husband settles on his future wife a
dowry consisting of female slaves, sculptured calabashes filled with
millet, dourra, and rice, of cloth, bracelets, toilet articles, of
stones for grinding the grain, mortars for pounding it, etc. All these
presents are borne in great pomp, on the heads of female slaves, to the
husband’s house when the wife enters it for the first time.
At Kouranko the young girls are often sold by their parents as
dearly as possible to rich old men. They are forced to submit, but,
once widows, they resume their liberty and recoup themselves by
choosing at will a young husband, on whom they lavish their care
and attentions.[294] Now we shall find that in many civilisations
relatively advanced, widowhood even does not gratify the woman with a
liberty of which she is never thought worthy.
At Wowow and at Boussa the emancipation of woman is markedly greater.
It is no longer the father, it is the grandmother who gives or refuses
her grand-daughter, and if the grandmother is dead, the girl is free
to act as she likes.[295] This fact, if correct, is infinitely more
curious than all the others, and it ought to rejoice the sociologists
full of faith, who admit in a distant antiquity the existence of a
matriarchal _régime_ assigning to woman the chief place in the family.
But let us continue our inquiry.
In Polynesia marriage by purchase was habitual. In New Zealand the man
bought the girl, and offered presents to her parents.[296]
Generally in Polynesia the suitor offered pigs, stuffs, etc. If his
demand was granted, the bargain was quickly concluded; the girl was
there and then delivered to the husband; a Polynesian bed was arranged
in the house of the bride’s father, and the newly-married couple passed
the night there. The next day a feast was celebrated, to which friends
were invited, and which consisted of several pigs.[297]
At Tahiti temporary marriages were also concluded, and in this case the
presents of pigs, stuffs, pigeons, etc., varied in amount according to
the length of the union.[298]
But, in spite of the sale, the Polynesian father always retained over
his daughter the prior right of ownership, and when the presents seemed
to him to be insufficient, he took back the merchandise to let or sell
it to a more generous lover. If a child was born, the husband was free
to kill the infant, which was done by applying a piece of wet stuff
to the mouth and nose, or to let it live, but in the latter case he
generally kept the wife for the whole of her life. If the union was
sterile, or the children put to death, the man had always the right to
abandon the woman when and how it seemed good to him.[299] She was a
slave that he had bought, and that he could get rid of at will.[300]
On the great American continent, from north to south the custom of
the sale of the daughter is common to a great number of peoples. With
the Redskins female merchandise is generally paid for in horses and
blankets. When the daughter had been sold to a white man and then
abandoned, as frequently happened, the parents resumed possession of
her, and sold her a second time.
In Columbia what was most prized was the aptitude of the woman for
labour, and her qualities as a beast of burden were worth to her
parents a greater or less number of horses.[301]
Among the Redskins of northern California the girls were bought and
sold like any other articles, and there was no thought of consulting
them in the matter. The price was paid to the father, and the girl was
led off simply as if it were a horse-sale. Poor suitors naturally had
to give way to rich ones, and hence all the opulent old men obtained
all the beautiful young women.[302] There was no nuptial ceremony.
However, with the Modocs, the conclusion of the business is marked by a
feast, but the newly-married couple take no part in it.
The Redskin parents do not always entirely abandon their married
daughter, and if she is too ill-treated by her owner, they have the
right to take her back, and then of course to sell her to some one
else.[303] Socialist customs sometimes co-exist with these gross
conjugal ones. The nuptial abode is often prepared by the tribe, or,
as in Columbia, the friends join in paying to the father the price of
the daughter.[304] The Californian suitors sometimes obtain a wife on
credit; but then the man is called “half-married,” and is forced to
live as a slave with the parents of the girl until he has concluded
the payment, for there is no essential difference between marriage by
servitude and marriage by purchase. In America, as elsewhere, morality
is simply the expression of habits and needs, and thus the purchase
of the wife has ended by becoming an honourable thing; and among the
Californian Redskins the children of a wife who has cost nothing to her
husband are looked down on.[305]
The Papayos of New Mexico are not content with selling their daughters
by private contract; they put them up to auction.[306] As for the
inhabitants of those curious Neo-Mexican phalansteries called
_pueblos_, as they are much more advanced than the greater part of
their American congeners, their matrimonial customs are less gross;
and the suitor, when accepted by the parents, tries to charm his
bride by daily serenades lasting for hours--a rare thing in savage
countries.[307]
With the half-civilised tribes of Guatemala and Nicaragua conjugal
unions were also determined according to the presents made to the
parents, and in Guatemala the young people were both kept in ignorance
of the affair until the last moment.[308] In Nicaragua, however, there
existed a curious exception in certain towns, where at a particular
festival the young girls had the right to choose their husbands freely
from among the young men present.[309]
With the Moxos and the Guaranis the price paid to the parents is still
the decisive reason of the marriage.[310] However, the Guaranis also
exact from the husband proofs of virile qualities in the chase and in
war.[311] The struggle for existence is still severe, and in order
to keep one or more wives a man must be able not only to feed but to
defend them.
The Mongols of Asia buy their wives exactly like the Mongoloids of
America, of whom I have just spoken.
Among the nomad Mongols, the Tartars of northern Asia, the parents
arrange the marriages with absolute authority, and without consulting
the parties more especially interested. The bargain is sharply debated
between the parents, and the price to be paid by the husband or his
family is very precisely settled; the future couple are not even
informed of it, their sentiments, their desires, or dislikes, are not
considered in the least. The price of the girl is paid in cattle,
sheep, oxen, or horses; in pieces of stuff, in brandy, in butter, in
flour, etc. Everything being agreed on, the contract of sale is drawn
up before witnesses, but the girl is only delivered to the purchaser
after the ceremony of marriage, which, as we have previously seen,
takes the form of capture.[312]
The Turcomans have customs very similar to those of the Tartars.
With them the price of the girl is chiefly reckoned in camels, and
it generally takes five to pay for a girl; but as in their eyes the
woman is not an object of luxury, as she not only has to manage the
housekeeping but to manufacture articles which have an exchange
value, and which are profitable to the family, experienced women and
widows, provided they are passable, are much more sought for in the
conjugal market than young girls. It is no longer five camels, but
fifty, or even a hundred, that must be paid for a widow still in good
condition.[313] If the suitor cannot immediately get together the price
of the woman he covets, he has recourse to marriage by capture, and
takes refuge with his bride in a neighbouring camp.
A settlement is always effected, matters are compounded, and the
ravisher engages to pay a certain number of camels and horses, which
he generally procures by marauding on the frontiers of Persia. It is
a veritable debt of honour for him, and he must pay it with the least
possible delay.[314]
These barbarous customs of Mongolia are naturally softened in China,
but without any essential change in their main features. There, as well
as in Tartary, the young girl is considered as the property of her
parents, and her training is so perfect that she has not the slightest
desire to be consulted before being married, or rather sold, for ready
money.[315] In the Chinese family, daughters count for so little value
that they are only called by ordinal numbers--first-born, second-born,
etc.--to which is added a surname.[316] The price of the daughter when
purchased is paid to the parents in two separate portions--the first on
the conclusion of the agreement and the signing of the contract, and
the other on the wedding-day.[317] Marriage by capture has naturally
gone out of use in the old civilisation of China, but the trace of it
still remains in the ceremonial, for the bride is lifted over the
threshold of the conjugal dwelling, as was the custom in ancient Rome.
It has appeared so natural to parents all over the world to dispose of
their daughters as they chose, that many of the aborigines of India
do nearly the same as the Mongols. The daughters are sold by the
parents among the Kolhans, the Bendkars, the Limboos, the Kirantis, the
Moundas, the Santals, the Oraons, the Muasis, the Birhors, the Hos, the
Boyars, the Nagas, the Gonds, etc.[318] The price of the girl varies
from three to fourteen rupees, or is reckoned in head of cattle or
measures of rice. Sometimes female merchandise is rare and dear, for in
some countries female infanticide has long prevailed; it may happen,
too, that daughters are condemned to celibacy, as with the Hos,[319]
or, as with the Nagas, that marriages are delayed, and that the
bridegroom must often submit to marriage by servitude.[320] Sometimes,
again, the girls are carried off, as happens among the Kolhans, by the
impatient bridegrooms, and, after the rape, arbitrators negotiate a
settlement.[321] It should be remarked, by the way, that with the Nagas
marriage by servitude has its ordinary effect, that of abasing the
husband and raising the wife; and, in fact, among these races, although
the wife performs severe labour, she is treated as the equal of her
husband.[322]
In some aboriginal tribes of India we even find matriarchal customs.
Thus with the Pani-Koechs the husbands leave to their very industrious
wives the care of their property. In marrying, a man goes to live with
his mother-in-law, and obeys her as well as his wife. Moreover, in this
tribe the mothers negotiate the marriages; the fathers have nothing to
do with them.[323]
Among the Yerkalas the maternal uncle has the right to claim for his
sons the two eldest daughters of his sister, or to renounce them for an
indemnity of eight images of idols.[324]
Money, always money! With all peoples and races marriage is often
reduced to a pecuniary question. In this respect the Berbers, the
Semites, and the Aryans are not distinguished from other human types.
With certain Touaregs of the Sahara, says Duveyrier, it is the daughter
herself who indemnifies the father, and it is after the old Italian
manner, _more tusco_, that she gains the price of enfranchisement
which is necessary for her marriage. “The father, before the marriage
of his daughter, exacts from her the reimbursement, levied on her
body, of what she has cost her family ... and the girl, dishonoured
according to our ideas, but ransomed according to local ideas, is all
the more sought after, the greater her success in the commerce of her
attractions.”[325]
In contrast to the Touaregs, the Semites, Hebrews, and Arabs, attached
and still attach an enormous value to the virginity of the bride;
but marriage was not and is not any the less for them a simple sale.
The history of Jacob’s marriage has already shown us that marriage
by servitude was practised by the ancient Hebrews. In later times
the consent of the woman became necessary, which is a great step in
advance, but the husband none the less bought his wife in some way or
other.[326]
With contemporary Arabs marriage is a simple sale, without any
disguise. An Arab jurist gives us the formula of it, which is very
clear. It is as follows: “I sell you my daughter for such a sum.” “I
accept.” The same author says elsewhere: “The woman sells in marriage
a part of her person. In a purchase men buy an article of merchandise;
in a marriage they buy the field of procreation.”[327] It would be
impossible to speak more plainly. Nevertheless, the consent of the
woman is necessary; it is she who is supposed to sell herself, and the
price of the bargain constitutes her dowry. It was the same with the
Hebrews.
Whatever may have been their religion, the greater number of the Aryan
peoples have also considered marriage as a commercial transaction.
The Afghan Mussulmans buy their wives, and these are regarded as a
property, so much so that in case of widowhood they cannot re-marry,
unless the second husband indemnifies the family of the first.[328]
In Brahmanic India the daughter is also bought from the parents. A
curious verse of the Code of Manu tells us how the purchaser was
indemnified in the case of substitution of another person: “If, after
having shown a suitor a young girl, whose hand is granted to him,
another is given him to wife, and secretly brought to him, he becomes
the husband of both for the same price; such is the decision of
Manu.”[329] Things have not much changed at present. “When they wish to
signify that they are going to be married,” says an editor of _Lettres
édifiantes_, in speaking of the Hindoos, “they generally say that they
are going to buy a wife.” However, the parents do not appropriate
the entire sum paid by the purchaser; a great part of it goes to buy
jewels for the bride.[330] The ancient Malays of Sumatra had solved the
conjugal problem in three different ways. Sometimes the man bought and
led away the woman, according to the universal custom; sometimes the
woman bought the man, who then came to live with her family; sometimes
the two were married on a footing of equality.[331] We must note in
passing that this last matrimonial form is very exceptional.
Throughout Europe, as well in Greco-Latin antiquity as among
barbarians, the young girl has formerly been considered as a negotiable
property, and marriage as a sale.
The Sagas tell us that the Scandinavian fathers married their daughters
without consulting them--after the manner of savages--and received an
indemnity from the son-in-law.[332]
With the Germans the daughter could not marry without the authorisation
of her father or of her nearest relative, who first received the
earnest money from the bridegroom;[333] as for the bride, she received
the _oscle_, or price of the first kiss, and then the _morgengabe_,
which constituted her dowry. In return, the German widow, like the
Afghan widow, was the property of the parents of her husband, and could
not re-marry without their authorisation.[334]
In primitive Greece the daughter was purchased either by presents
to the father or by services rendered to him.[335] The father could
marry his daughter as he thought well, and in default of a son could
leave her by will, with the heritage of which she formed a part, to a
stranger.[336]
At Rome also the daughter was the property of her father, and until
the time of Antoninus the father had the right to re-marry her when
the husband had been absent three years.[337] Marriage by purchase had
certainly been the primitive form of the conjugal contract. In reality
the _confarreatio_, a solemn and religious union in the presence of ten
witnesses, was a patrician marriage. The _usus_, or the consecration
of a free union after a year of cohabitation, strongly resembles the
Polynesian marriage. But the most common conjugal form, the one which
succeeded the _usus_, and surely preceded the _confarreatio_, was
marriage by purchase, the _coemptio_.
Coemption ended in time by becoming purely symbolic; the wife was
delivered to the husband, who, as a formality, gave her a few pieces
of money; but the ceremony is none the less eloquent, and it proves
clearly that in principle the woman had been, at Rome as elsewhere,
assimilated by the parents to a thing, to a venal property. When at
Athens and at Rome an effort was made to give the married woman a
less subordinate position, nothing more was done than opposing money
to money by inventing the dowry marriage; and hence resulted other
inconveniences, on which Latin writers have largely dilated, and which
we can easily study to-day from life. But for the present I must not
speak of them. It suffices to have proved that all over the earth, in
all times and among all races, marriage by purchase has been widely
practised.
Now, the custom of marriage by purchase has a very clear and very
important signification from a moral and social point of view. It
implies a profound contempt for woman, and her complete assimilation
to chattels, to cattle, and to things in general. On this point the
Roman law leaves no room for ambiguity, since it makes no essential
difference between the marital law and the law of property. In regard
to the woman, as in regard to goods, possession or use, continued
for a year, gave a right of ownership. When applied to things, this
possession is called _usucapion_; applied to the woman, it is called
_usus_.[338] The difference between the terms is slight; between the
facts there is none. In reality the wife and the child, especially
the female child, have been the first property possessed by man,
which has even implanted in the savage mind the taste for possession,
and the pretension to use and abuse the things left entirely to his
mercy. At Rome this became by the _jus quiritium_, for the woman the
_manus_ of the husband, and for property the _jus utendi et abutendi_
of the proprietor. But this abuse, and this use, nearly always equally
an abuse also, have contributed not a little to deprave man and to
render him, from the origin of societies until our own day, refractory
to ideas of equity and justice, especially in what relates to the
condition of woman.
FOOTNOTES:
[267] Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, vol. i. p. 156.
[268] Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, etc., p. 371.
[269] De Rochas, _Nouv. Calédonie_, p. 231.
[270] Burchell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvi. p. 330.
[271] Bowdich, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxviii. p. 430.
[272] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 67.
[273] _Homme Américain_, t. I^{er.} p. 40.
[274] Marco Polo (Edition Populaire), p. 61.
[275] Schortt, _Trans. Ethn. Soc._ (New Series), vol. vii. p. 194.
[276] Sonnerat, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 350.--_Lettres
Edifiantes_, t. x. p. 23.
[277] Plutarch, _Numa and Lycurgus compared_.
[278] E. de Lavelaye, _De la Propriété_, p. 35.
[279] Lafitau, t. I^{er.} pp. 557-560.
[280] Domenech, _Voy. pittoresque_, etc., p. 508.
[281] Lafitau, t. I^{er.} pp. 557-560.
[282] H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, etc., vol. i.
p. 134.
[283] _Id., loc. cit._, vol. ii. p. 606.
[284] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. p. 662.
[285] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. p. 104.
[286] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. p. 134.
[287] Levaillant, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxiv. p. 348.
[288] Burchell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvi. p. 486.
[289] Campbell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxix. p. 363.
[290] Burchell, _ibid._ t. xxvi. p. 486.
[291] _Neue Missionsreise in Süd-Afrika_, vol. i. p. 317.
[292] Laing, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxviii. p. 31.
[293] Clapperton, _Second Voyage_, vol. ii. p. 86.
[294] Laing, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxviii. p. 71.
[295] R. J. Lauder, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxx. p. 244.
[296] Duperrey, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xviii. p. 157.
[297] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 62.
[298] Cook (_Third Voyage_), _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. x. p. 232.
[299] _Id., ibid._ t. x. p. 232.
[300] Domenech, _Voy. pittoresque_, etc., p. 511.
[301] Bancroft, _Native Races of Pacific_, etc., vol. i. p. 276.
[302] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. p. 349.
[303] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. p. 412.
[304] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. pp. 276-349.
[305] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. p. 349.
[306] _Id., ibid._ vol. i. p. 549.
[307] Bancroft, _Native Races_, vol. i. p. 549.
[308] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. pp. 666, 667.
[309] _Id., ibid._ ii. p. 667.
[310] _Lettres Edifiantes_, t. x. p. 202.
[311] A. d’Orbigny, _L’homme Américain_, t. ii. p. 307.
[312] Timkowski, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxii. p. 332.--Huc,
_Travels in Tartary_, vol. i. pp. 298, 299.
[313] Fraser, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxv. p. 118.
[314] Burnes, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxvii. p. 270.
[315] _Lettres Edifiantes_, t. x. p. 138.--Huc, _Chinese Empire_, vol.
ii. p. 255.
[316] Comte d’Hérisson, _Journal d’un interprète en Chine_, p. 7.
[317] Huc, _Chinese Empire_, vol. ii. p. 256.
[318] Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, passim.
[319] _Id., ibid._ p. 190.
[320] _Id., ibid._ p. 41.
[321] Dalton, _loc. cit._ p. 192.
[322] _Id., loc. cit._ p. 41.
[323] _Id., ibid._ p. 91.
[324] Schortt, _Trans. Ethn. Soc._ (New Series), vol. vii. p. 187.
[325] Duveyrier, _Touaregs du Nord_, p. 340.
[326] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. ii. p. 68.
[327] Sidi Khelil, _Précis de jurisprudence musulmane_, trad. Perron
(quoted by E. Meynier) in _Études sur l’Islamisme_, pp. 152, 156.
[328] Elphinstone, _Picture of the Kingdom of Cabul_, vol. i. p. 168.
[329] _Code of Manu_, book viii. p. 204.
[330] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xiv. p. 382.
[331] Marsden, _Hist. of Sumatra_, p. 262.
[332] Nials, _Saga_, vol. i. pp. 9, 10.
[333] Rambaud, _Hist. civil. française_, p. 107.
[334] Hist. _Succes. des Femmes_.
[335] Aristotle, _Politics_, vol. ii. p. 8.
[336] Legouvé, _Hist. Mor. des Femmes_, p. 86.
[337] Plautus, _Stichus_.--Laboulaye, _Droit romain_.
[338] R. Cubain, _Lois civiles de Rome_, p. 181.
CHAPTER VIII.
PRIMITIVE POLYGAMY.
I. _Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America._--Polygamy and
sociability--Polygamy in Australia, in New Caledonia, and at Fiji--The
legitimate wife and concubines at Fiji--Polygamy among the Hottentots
and Kaffirs--Economic reasons of polygamy in Africa--Brutality
of husbands on the Gaboon--Polygamy limited by the law of supply
and demand--Its effects on the morality of women--Commercial
fidelity--Mumbo Jumbo--Love unknown in black Africa--Legal
marriage with the Bongos at Madagascar--Hierarchical polygamy at
Madagascar--Polygamy in Polynesia, in America--Jealousy unknown to
the female savage--The sister-wives among the Redskins--Religion
sanctifies polygamy--Monogamic tendencies in America.
II. _Polygamy in Asia and in Europe._--Polygamy among the aborigines
of India, in Bootan, among the Ostiaks and the Battas--Universality
of primitive polygamy--Polygamy of the ancient Peruvians, Chinese,
and Vedic Aryans--Polygamy among the Gauls and the Germans--Causes of
primitive polygamy--Its evolution.
I. _Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America._
We have seen that in the animal kingdom species are sometimes
monogamous, sometimes polygamous, but that in general a gregarious
life, a life in association, favours polygamy. Now, man is surely the
most sociable of animals, therefore he is much inclined to polygamy,
like the great anthropoid apes, with whom our primitive ancestors must
have had more than one analogy. We have already spoken of the causes
which in human societies of the earliest ages disturbed the normal
relation of the sexes, or the approximate equilibrium between the
number of men and that of women. We have seen how savage life rapidly
uses up the men to such a degree that often, in spite of the custom
of female infanticide, there is still an excess of women sufficient
to impose polygamy. Although primitive morality may not think in the
least of blaming the plurality of wives, it yet happens that this
polygamy, to which all men aspire in a savage country, is spontaneously
restricted; and, as with chimpanzees, and for the same reasons, it
becomes, in fact, the privilege of a small number of the strongest and
the most feared, the chiefs, the sorcerers, or the priests, when there
are any.
In Australia, for example, the adult men take possession of the women
of all ages, and in consequence the greater number of young men cannot
become proprietors of a woman before the age of about thirty years.[339]
Enforced celibacy is, besides, softened by the complaisance of the
men already provided for, the husbands, if we may so call them, who
are generous to the other men, and much more jealous of their rights
of property than of their conjugal rights. It is easy to have an
understanding with them, and, with the aid of a suitable present, to
induce them to lend their wives. In New Caledonia the chiefs and rich
men only can indulge in the luxury of polygamy, and in this archipelago
the plurality of wives has already the character that it nearly always
assumes in a primitive country. If the New Caledonians ardently
desire to have several wives it is not generally with a sensual aim,
for among the Canaks the genetic appetite is little developed; their
reasons are of quite another kind. Neither slavery nor domesticity
yet exist in New Caledonia. However, agriculture is already practised
there, and this requires hard labour, from which the men, especially
the chief men, like to exonerate themselves. Now, it is polygamy that
furnishes the Canaks with servile labour, which they cannot do without;
it exactly replaces slavery. Therefore, every man, of however little
importance he may be, procures a number of women in proportion to the
extent of the land he has in cultivation, and also to the figure he
must make in the world. We shall find this servile polygamy in many
other countries, notably among the Fijians, who resemble the New
Caledonians, but at Fiji polygamy had already evolved and become
complicated. It was accompanied by concubinage. As we shall see later,
this is generally the case. Nowhere do we find men passing abruptly
from polygamy to monogamy, and long before arriving at the latter, when
first custom and then law restrains and regulates the loose polygamy
of the earlier ages, the change is only at first effected in the form;
a man has a small number of wives, who, with their children, enjoy
certain privileges, but by the side of these titular wives he possesses
concubines in greater or less number. In this manner everything is
reconciled--morality with sensuality, and the family with the interests
of property.
This _régime_ was already in force among the Melanesians of the Fiji
Isles, where the chiefs, living in great state, acquired in one way
or another three or four hundred women, of whom the greater number
filled only the position of servants to the master, and at the same
time of concubines, who were at the disposition of the warriors or of
the guests. The wives whose children inherited were very few in number.
They were daughters of chiefs, and their situation, although less
degraded than that of the concubines, was still very humble. Not only
did they resign themselves without difficulty to polygamy, but they
were subjected to a singular duty--that of rearing for their husband
a chosen concubine. The fact is curious, and worth the trouble of
narrating. “The bride takes with her a young girl who is still a child,
but who promises to be beautiful, and who has been carefully selected
from the lower class of the people. It is a virgin destined for her
husband. She brings her up with the tenderest solicitude, and when the
girl is marriageable, the queen, on an appointed day, undresses her,
washes her carefully, and even pours perfumed oil on her hair, crowns
her with flowers, conducts her thus naked to her husband, presents her
to him, and retires in silence.”[340] Excessive as it seems to us, this
absolute resignation is quite natural among savages.
In primitive countries the married woman--that is to say, the woman
belonging to a man--has herself the conscience of being a thing, a
property (it is proved to her often and severely enough), but she does
not think of retaliating, especially in what concerns the conjugal
relations. Moreover, as her condition is oftenest that of a slave
over-burdened with work, not only does she not resent the introduction
of other women in the house of the master, but she desires it, for
the work will be so much the less for herself. Thus among the Zulus
the wife first purchased strives and works with ardour in the hope of
furnishing her husband with means to acquire a second wife--a companion
in misery over whom, by right of seniority, she will have the upper
hand.[341]
In consequence of this the greater number of the men in Kaffirland
have two or three wives, and hence a certain scarcity of feminine
merchandise in the country; the young men have difficulty in providing
for themselves, and many girls are sold from infancy.[342] The same
customs prevail with the Hottentots; and both Kaffirs and Hottentots
esteem the monogamic preaching of the Christian missionaries as very
impertinent, and on this point both men and women are agreed.[343]
Along the whole course of the Zambesi, says Livingstone, the number of
wives are the measure of a man’s riches, and the women are the first to
find this quite natural.
It is important to observe that in savage societies the woman could not
live independently; for her, celibacy is synonymous with desertion, and
desertion would mean a speedy death. This is even the reason of the
levirate, of which I shall have to speak later.
As for all the negroes of Africa, whatever the degree of their
civilisation or savagery, they have not even a suspicion of the
monogamic _régime_. But, in Africa also, sensuality is only one of the
secondary causes of the plurality of wives so strongly desired by all
the blacks. Their polygamy is chiefly founded on economic motives. At
the Gaboon,[344] says Du Chaillu, the supreme ambition of a man is to
possess a great number of wives. Nothing is of more value to him, for
they cultivate the ground, and their strict duty is to serve him and
furnish him with food. The wife is always purchased from her father
at a price agreed on, and often from her earliest infancy. In this
case she is placed under the care of the husband’s chief wife. The
husband-proprietor does not interfere at all with the agricultural
labour executed by the wives; he only requires them to supply him with
food. If he has bought them, it is merely as a profitable investment.
He consequently treats them as slaves, or as domestic animals, and
has no scruple in lashing them with a whip for nothing at all, and
thus causing ineffaceable scars. “I have seen very few women,” says Du
Chaillu, “who had not traces of this kind on their bodies.”
The whip which serves for these conjugal corrections has a double
thong, made of hippopotamus or sea-cow hide. “You should hear,” says
the traveller, “the worthy husband cry out--‘Ah, wretch! do you think
I have bought you for nothing?’”[345] The Gaboon tribes, of whom Du
Chaillu speaks, are reckoned the least civilised of negroes; but even
among the least gross of African races the conjugal _régime_ and the
degree of subjection imposed on women are scarcely lessened.
At Tchaki, and at Badagry, etc., when Clapperton spoke of English
monogamy to the natives, all his auditors, without distinction of
sex, burst into a laugh,[346] so absurd did the thing appear to them.
Throughout Africa the number of a man’s wives is only limited by his
resources. If, as Schweinfurth tells us, among the Bongos of the upper
Nile, a man rarely has more than three wives, it is simply on account
of the strict law of supply and demand; for a woman costs no less than
ten iron plates, each weighing about two pounds, to which must be
added twenty iron spear heads, all precious articles and not easily
procured.[347] At Bornou also men in easy circumstances have seldom
more than three wives; and the poor have to content themselves, whether
they will or not, with monogamy.[348] But among the negroes of Kaarta
and the Fantis of the coast of Guinea polygamy is excessive. In Kaarta
a private individual often has ten wives and as many concubines;
but princes or knights often have threefold or even tenfold that
number.[349] In consequence of this, about a third of the inhabitants
are of princely or royal blood. As for the Fantis, polygamy is a source
of riches, not only through the labour of the women, but also through
the sale of the children, of whom a large and profitable trade is
made.[350] This trait of morals is not in the least peculiar to them;
throughout black Africa the right of the father of a family includes
that of selling the children, and he exercises it without scruple.
Naturally the last sentiments we may expect to find in African
households are those of delicacy or moral nobility. Humble to servility
in presence of the master, the women give the rein to their shameless
excesses as soon as they can do it without danger.
In Bornou a wife never approaches her husband without kneeling.[351]
When a Poul orders one of his wives to prepare his supper, which
implies that the master desires her company for the night, this signal
favour is received with transports of joy. The chosen wife hastens to
obey, and when the repast is ready she proudly goes to seek the master,
thus humiliating her female colleagues, who retreat in confusion to
their cabins to await their turn.[352] But all this abject behaviour
is merely by compulsion, and the women recoup themselves well for it
whenever they have the chance.
The poor women of the Gaboon, who are lacerated by whips for no
offence, do not understand chastity, and their intrigues constantly
provoke conflicts and _palavers_ between the men of the villages.[353]
The obscenity of the Monboottoo women astonished Schweinfurth, well
acquainted as he was with negro customs.[354] The Bambarra women easily
forget conjugal fidelity for a bead necklace, a fine waist-cloth, etc.;
and, as in so many other countries, the husband-proprietors have no
scruple in hiring out their wives for a sufficient price.[355]
Nevertheless, unauthorised adultery is cruelly punished throughout
Africa; but fear is powerless to ensure to the negro husbands the
purely commercial fidelity they exact from their wives, and therefore,
in order to correct feminine morals, they have recourse in certain
parts to fantastic methods--to the _Mumbo Jumbo_ which Mungo Park
describes.[356] Strangely attired and unrecognisable, a singular
personage, doubtless a sorcerer, appears in the evening after being
called for by frightful howlings in the woods, and first goes to the
spot where the inhabitants are accustomed to assemble to talk at their
ease. This coming is the signal for songs and dances, which last into
the middle of the night. Then the _Mumbo Jumbo_ designates the guilty
or indocile woman. The latter is immediately seized, stripped, bound
to a stake, and vigorously beaten by the _Mumbo_ himself, amid the
acclamations and laughter of the assembly, and especially of the other
women.
In all negro Africa the husbands are generally strangers to the
jealousy of honour which exists among the intelligent husbands of
civilised countries. They do not care for moral fidelity, based on
affection and free choice. The Kaffir woman, Schouter tells us, is the
ox of her husband. A Kaffir said one day, speaking of his wife, “I have
bought her, therefore it is her duty to work.”
“The negro,” relates another traveller (Monteiro), “knows neither love,
affection, nor jealousy. During the many years that I have spent in
Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for a
woman--put his arms around her, give or receive a caress, denoting some
degree of affection or love on one side or the other.... They have no
word in their language to signify love or affection.”[357]
A French traveller says also of the Malagasies, “Modesty and jealousy
are two sentiments very little developed among the Malagasies of both
sexes and all ranks. They push licence very far in their manners, but
quite unconsciously.”[358]
Throughout black Africa, indeed, marriage does not exist, at least
in the sense we attach to the word. It is not a civil institution,
much less a sacrament; it is a bargain, delivering the woman to the
mercy of the buyer. Here and there, however, we see dawnings of legal
marriage--that is to say, a contract sanctioned by civil authority.
Among the Bongos of the upper Nile, for example, a man who wishes to
procure a certain woman generally applies to the chief or to some
dignitary, who enforces his demand.[359]
With the Malagasies, where the social organisation is much more complex
and _quasi_ feudal, there is already a veritable civil marriage. The
future pair, accompanied by their parents, go before the judge or the
chief of the village, declare their intentions, pay the _Hasina_,
or matrimonial tax, and the union is concluded. As is the case in
many countries, Malagasian polygamy already tends towards monogamy.
At Madagascar, as in China, rich men have one chief wife, who has a
house to herself and other privileges; but by the side of the titular
wife there are lesser wives.[360] I shall have to return to this
hierarchical polygamy, which forms a sort of evolutionary connecting
link between primitive polygamy, subjecting all the wives equally
before their owner, and monogamic marriage. But for the present I must
pursue my summary inquiry through the lands of primitive polygamy.
In the whole of Polynesia polygamy was general and unlimited. There,
again, the number of wives was strictly in proportion to rank and
riches.[361] There were, however, examples of voluntary monogamy[362]
among the chiefs, and a much larger number of monogamists, in spite of
themselves, in the lower classes.[363] In several Polynesian islands
polygamy was already evolving towards monogamy; thus, at Samoa,[364]
at Tonga,[365] in New Zealand,[366] there existed a chief wife,
exempted from hard work, and having pre-eminence over the other wives.
Over all the great American continent polygamy is or has been in force.
The Ancas or Araucanos of South America--nomads and robbers--buy very
dear wives when they can, and make concubines of all the prisoners
procured in their razzias, exactly after the manner of the ancient
Arabs. The poor or the feeble among them, as elsewhere, are badly
provided, and are frequently reduced to remain celibate,[367] or to
have only one wife. For the same reasons, the young men among the
Otomacs were often obliged to be contented with an old woman,[368] and
the Charruas waited till their first wife grew old before procuring
a younger one.[369] Herrero tells us also, that in Honduras forced
monogamy was general enough, except, indeed, for the chiefs, who
appropriated the women by the right of the strongest.[370] In South
America, as in Africa, the women were very far from rebelling against
polygamy; for there, also, all the hard work fell to them, and the
burden of it was lightened in proportion to the number of labourers. In
the tribes that were already agricultural, the Guaranis, for example,
the men did nothing to the land but clear off the brushwood and timber;
then came the women, who did all the sowing, harvesting, prepared the
fermented drink for guests,[371] without mentioning other domestic
cares. Such a kind of life is necessarily unfavourable to delicacy, and
even amongst civilised people habitual overwork is hardly compatible
with refined sentiments. In all countries exclusive love and jealousy
suppose not only some moral development, but also a certain amount
of leisure and of time and capacity, to think. It is therefore quite
natural that the savage woman should seldom pretend to possess a man
for herself alone, and on this point the women of the Redskins of
North America think and feel like the Guarani women of Brazil. Thus,
with the Omahas, the man hardly ever takes a second wife but with the
consent of the first.[372] Often the initiative even comes from her;
she goes to find her husband, and says to him, “Marry the daughter
of my brother. She and I are of the same flesh.” It must be admitted
that America is the promised land of the matriarchate, or rather, of
maternal filiation; polygamy easily takes an incestuous colour there;
the wives of the same man are often relatives, habitually sisters. In
about forty of the Redskin tribes, and surely they are not the only
ones, when a man marries the eldest daughter of a family, he acquires,
by express privilege, the right of taking afterwards for wives all the
sisters of the first as soon as they become marriageable.[373] This was
the custom of the Omahas, the Cheyennes, the Crees, the Osages, the
Black-feet, the Crows, the Spokans of Columbia,[374] the Chawanons of
Louisiana, etc.
The custom was not, however, obligatory. The wives were not necessarily
relatives, or, at least, not necessarily sisters. Thus, with the
Omahas, a man sometimes took as wives an aunt and a niece of his first
wife.[375] Among the Californians a man sometimes married not only a
group of sisters, but also their mother,[376] and in this respect the
Greenlanders imitated their hereditary enemies, the Redskins.[377]
But, consanguine or not, polygamy was general among the savage tribes
of North America. The possession of a numerous flock of wives placed
a man above the common as surely as that of a large fortune does
in Europe;[378] religion even sanctified this polygamy, for in all
countries it can accommodate itself to the dominant morals. Thus, the
Chippeways believe that polygamy is agreeable to the Great Spirit; for
it is a means of having a numerous posterity.[379]
Except the habitual consanguinity of the wives, the polygamy of
the Redskins has nothing original in it; it is, as elsewhere, the
privilege of the rich men.[380] Sometimes also the girls are retained
from infancy, and then, as happens with the Noutka-Columbians, the
buyer deposits certain valuable articles as security.[381] In these
polygamous families of Redskins the harmony is rarely disturbed; and
the man, always having the power to repudiate any wife as he may
please, only has to command very submissive ones.[382] Here and there
certain customs appear which have a shade of monogamy about them; for
instance, among the Columbians every wife has her separate habitation,
or, at the least, her special fireside.[383] Sometimes there is a chief
wife having authority over the other wives.[384] But everywhere the
subjection of women in regard to man is extreme. Among the Indians
of New Mexico--and these are not by any means the most savage--the
women have to prepare the food, tan the skins, cultivate the ground,
fabricate the clothes, build the houses, and groom the horses. In
return for this, the men, whose sole occupations are hunting and war,
beat their wives without pity, and often mutilate and kill them.[385]
II. _Polygamy in Asia and Europe._
We might already deduce some general ideas from our rapid survey
of savage polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America; but it will be
convenient, before we do so, to interrogate the primitive races of Asia
and Europe. Doubtless, the description of their conjugal manners and
customs, after all that precedes, may seem monotonous; nevertheless,
this monotony even is instructive; it proves that in all times and
places, in despite of differences of race, climate and environment, the
evolution of human groups is subject to certain laws, that the family,
marriage, the constitution of property, and social organisation pass
through a series of necessary phases; in short, that in attempting to
construct a science of sociology we are not pursuing a chimera.
I resume, therefore, my enumeration. Among the indigenous tribes of
India polygamy is widely spread, without, however, being universal; for
each one of these small peoples has evolved, as it has been able, more
or less rapidly. Some among them are polyandrous, and even monogamous.
Often enough polyandry co-exists with polygamy, the one appearing as
moral as the other.
With all these aborigines, marriage, or what we are pleased to call
so, is generally concluded by purchase, and the price of the woman
naturally oscillates according to the law of supply and demand. Most
often it is represented by poultry, pigs, oxen, or cows, given to the
parents. From this manner of procuring wives it seems that, there
also, polygamy is the luxury of the rich or of chiefs. Among the
Mishmis these privileged individuals sometimes possess sixty wives.
The Mishmi husbands form a rare exception on one point--they are not
at all exacting about the fidelity of their wives; they consider them
as slaves or servants, and provided they continue to benefit their
masters by their work, the latter willingly shut their eyes to their
intrigues.[386]
Among these polygamous tribes, which it would take too long to
enumerate, may be counted the Miris, the Dophlas, the Juangs, the
Khamtis, the Singphos, etc.
We must again note in certain tribes, the Khamtis, for example, the
monogamic pre-eminence of the first wife.[387] It is one of those
sociological analogies of which I have already spoken, and it is
important to point it out.
Polygamy still prevails with the mountaineers of Bootan, concurrently
with polyandry. It is often incestuous; a man willingly marries two
sisters, the one an adult, the other younger. But no other incest
is recognised or punished except that committed between son and
mother.[388]
Farther north, among the Ostiaks, a man feels no repugnance to marrying
several sisters,[389] and, in general, polygamy is very widely spread
among the nomad Mongols. A Yakout, for example, if obliged to make
frequent journeys, takes care to have a wife in every place at which
he stops.[390]
The polygamic _régime_ is also in great honour in the Mongolian
archipelagoes of Asia, in the Palos Islands, in the Caroline Islands,
etc. Among the Battas of Sumatra it evidently begins to be distasteful
to the women, since the polygamous husband is obliged to assign to each
of his wives a special hearth, and kitchen utensils of her own, with
which she prepares her food apart, or with that of her husband, when
she is on duty, and required by the master.[391]
In this chapter I confine myself to primitive polygamy, to that of the
grossest savages or barbarians; but there are barbarians of every race
and colour, and the roots of all superior civilisations necessarily go
far down into primitive savagery. Now we have seen that the polygamic
_régime_ is prevalent throughout the world among races that are little
cultivated; we may hence conclude that the most civilised nations must
have begun with polygamy, and, in reality, it has been thus everywhere
and always. In the various civilised societies, living or dead,
marriage has commenced by being polygamous. It is a law which has few
exceptions.
In ancient Peru, the Incas decreed monogamy to be obligatory for the
lower classes. The Chinese attribute to Fo-Hi, their first sovereign,
the institution of marriage. This legendary king is said to have raised
them out of promiscuity. Such also was the _rôle_ of Cecrops, in
Greece, and the same thing happened in primitive India. About thirty
years ago a number of erudite Europeans, especially the mythologists
and linguists, were smitten with a blind love for the Indian hymns of
the Rig-Veda. They set to work to torture these old Sanscrit texts,
naturally obscure, and by subjecting them to a sort of linguistic
examination, they wrung from them imaginary revelations. It was
decided that a unique and marvellous race, primitively endowed with
every virtue and capacity, had sprung up one fine day on some plateau
or other of Central Asia. The most enthusiastic of them generously
endowed these hypothetical Aryans with superhuman faculties. A French
academician believed and declared that from the high plateaus of Pâmir
they perceived the sea, distant, however, some hundreds of leagues;
he affirms that they understood the “circles of the stars,” and were
omniscient. It is to be presumed that this model race was of necessity
monogamous, since it was perfect. To-day, however, we must demolish all
these castles in the air, too lightly built in primitive and chimerical
Arya. The antiquity of the Vedic hymns has had to be much shortened,
and, if we consent to read them without prejudice, we shall have little
admiration for the authors, those gross Aryans, who tried to make their
gods drunk in order to obtain cows, and who sacrificed and cut to
pieces animals, and perhaps men, on their altars. There is surely room
to suppose that their social condition was not more refined than their
religion. On this point the information that may be drawn from the
Vedic hymns is vague and drowned in the waves of religious effusion.
Nevertheless the Rig-Veda speaks of spouses of the gods, and of princes
surrounded by their wives, etc. In fact, a document much more precise
and more recent, the Code of Manu, abundantly proves that the Hindoos,
like all other peoples, have begun by being polygamous.
I do not now insist on this point, as I shall return to it later.
In every country the primitive races have practised polygamy, when
that has been possible for them. Our European ancestors have not been
more scrupulous on this point than our hypothetical Aryan cousins of
Central Asia. Cæsar tells us that the Gauls were polygamous, and had
the right of life and death over their wives.[392] Tacitus vaunts much
the monogamy of the Germans; this moral feature, says he, distinguishes
them from other barbarians, but he confesses that certain German chiefs
had several wives, and that, as it happens in all barbarous countries,
the wife was sold by the parents for presents consisting of oxen,
horses, and arms.[393]
Polygamy was so natural to German morals that, long after Tacitus, the
Merovingian kings, Clotaire and his sons, for example, still practised
it, that Dagobert had three wives, and that Charlemagne himself was
bigamous. We know, too, that Saint Columban was banished from Gaul
only for having blamed the polygamy of King Thierry. Let us resign
ourselves, therefore, to confess the truth. The white race has no
divine investiture. Like all the others, it has sprung from animality;
like all the others, it has been polygamous, and we have only to open
our eyes to perceive that, in the present day, in countries reputed to
be the most civilised, and even in the classes reputed to be the most
distinguished, the majority of individuals have polygamic instincts
which they find it difficult to resist.
We are now in a position to form a just opinion of primitive polygamy.
Its causes are manifold. The principal one is often the disproportion
of the sexes, resulting from the enormous mortality of men which savage
life necessitates. The desire of giving the rein to a sensuality that
there is, as yet, no thought of repressing, may have a certain share
in the matter; but this motive, which is perhaps dominant in the
polygamous anthropoid apes, quickly becomes secondary in man.
Even the lowest savage is more calculating, and has more forethought,
than the monkey. His first slave, one may say his first domestic
animal, is his wife. Even when he is still a simple hunter and nomad,
he has always game to be carried, fire to be lighted, a shelter to be
erected, without reckoning that wives are very apt at gathering edible
fruits and shell-fish, and rendering a thousand services. Besides, they
give birth to offspring that can be bartered, sold, or even eaten at
need.
It is, therefore, very desirable to possess as many as possible
of these beings, fitted for such various ends. If a man is an
agriculturist, the wife is then of still greater utility; he puts upon
her all the hard work; she digs, plants, sows, reaps even, and all
for the profit of her master. She is, besides, a subjected and feeble
creature, whom he can treat just as he will, and on whom he can let
loose his instincts of brutal domination. By force or by ruse, by
capture or by purchase, he therefore procures himself as many wives
as possible. He often buys them in the lump; for example, a lot of
sisters, or of relations of different ages. This diversity of age has
its value; for, in all the numerous uses to which a wife can be put,
the younger ones can take at need the place of the elder when the
latter are worn out or broken down.
Polygamy begins with equality--that is to say, that the man subjects
his little feminine flock to an equal servitude, against which the
wives do not think of rebelling, as they find it quite natural, for
they are not of a more refined nature than their proprietor. By
degrees, however, a certain hierarchy is established among the wives of
the same man. This comes to pass when the social structure is already
more complex, when there are chiefs, nobles, and priests. Polygamy,
in this case, is restrained. Though it continues to be the taste of
nearly all men, it becomes the privilege of the rich and powerful. The
latter sometimes even indulge in an excessive polygamy, and it becomes
difficult for them to maintain order and servile submission among their
feminine flock. From this time they have one or more titular wives, who
rule over their companions, and are sometimes exempt from hard labour.
These chief wives are often daughters, sisters, or relatives of noted
warriors, or of important men, with whom the husband is allied, and
whose prestige somewhat protects the wives that they have given, or
more often sold. In consequence of this, a certain tendency to become
a distinct personality awakens in the wives themselves; they insist on
having their separate hearth, and even their distinct apartment; life
in the flock weighs on them.
Polygamy then puts on monogamic tendencies. The greater number of
superior races have adopted this hierarchical polygamy before reaching
the legal monogamy, in a mitigated form, of which I shall treat later.
It is important now to describe with some details this polygamy of
superior races.
FOOTNOTES:
[339] Baudin, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xviii. p. 34.
[340] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 235.
[341] Waitz, _Anthropology_, vol. i. p. 299.--Steedman, _Wanderings,
etc., in South Africa_, vol. i. p. 240.--Delegorgue, t. I^{er.} p. 154;
t. ii. p. 231.
[342] Campbell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy_., t. xxix. p. 357.
[343] Burchell, _ibid._ t. xxvi. p. 204.
[344] Du Chaillu, _Voy. dans l’Afrique équatoriale_, pp. 376, 377.
[345] Du Chaillu, _loc. cit._ p. 377.
[346] _Second Voyage_, etc., pp. 18-48.
[347] _The Heart of Africa_, vol. i. p. 301.
[348] Denham and Clapperton, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvii. p 437.
[349] Gray and Dockard, _ibid._ t. xviii. p. 373.
[350] Brodie Cruikshank, _Sojourn of Eight Years on the Gold Coast_.
[351] Denham and Clapperton, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvii. p. 437.
[352] Mollien, _ibid._ t. xxviii. p. 439.
[353] Du Chaillu, _loc. cit._, pp. 378-435.
[354] _The Heart of Africa_, vol. ii. p. 91.
[355] Raffenel, _Nouv. Voy. aux Pays des Nègres_, t. I^{er.} p. 402.
[356] _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxv. p. 58.
[357] Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. pp. 284-293.
[358] Dupré, _Trois Mois à Madagascar_, p. 153.
[359] Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_, vol. i. p. 27.
[360] Dupré, _Trois Mois à Madagascar_, p. 153.
[361] Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, etc., p. 270.
[362] Th. West, _Ten Years in South Central Polynesia_, p. 270.
[363] Bougainville, _Voyages_, p. 244.
[364] Pritchard, _loc. cit._, p. 372.
[365] Cook (Third Voyage), _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. ix. p. 70.
[366] Dumont d’Urville.
[367] A. d’Orbigny, _L’homme Américain_, t. I^{er.} p. 403.
[368] _Voyage à la Terre-ferme_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 304.
[369] A. d’Orbigny, _loc. cit._, t. ii. p. 89.
[370] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 282.
[371] A. d’Orbigny, _loc. cit._, t. ii. p. 308.
[372] J. Owen Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, p. 260 (_Smithsonian
Institution_, 1885).
[373] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 432.
[374] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 277.
[375] J. Owen Dorsey, _loc. cit._, p. 260.
[376] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 388.
[377] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 255.
[378] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. i. p. 283.
[379] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. p. 285.
[380] Domenech, _Voy. pitt._, p. 509.--Bancroft, vol. i. pp. 168-195.
[381] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, p. 511.
[382] Domenech, _loc. cit._, p. 511.
[383] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 277.
[384] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 511.
[385] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 511.
[386] Dalton, _Descriptive Ethno. of Bengal_, pp. 12, 16, 19.
[387] _Ibid._ p. 8.
[388] _Voy. au Bootan_, by a Hindoo author, in _Revue Britannique_,
1827.
[389] Wake, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 269.
[390] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 280.
[391] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. p. 292.
[392] _De bello Gallico_, vi. 19.
[393] _Germania_, xviii.
CHAPTER IX.
POLYGAMY OF CIVILISED PEOPLE.
I. _The Stage of Polygamy._--Primitive polygamy--Man resigns himself
to monogamy.
II. _Arab Polygamy._--Why the Mussulmans have remained polygamous--The
inferiority of woman proclaimed by the Koran--Polygamic restrictions
in the Koran--Religion sanctions the right of conjugal property--The
purchased woman--The conjugal prerogatives of the prophet--Duties of
the polygamous husband--Celestial polygamy--The Mussulman marriage
is laic--Female merchandise--The preliminaries of marriage--Duties
and obligations of the Mussulman husband; his rights--Marriage in
Kabyle--Cruel subjection of the Kabyle wife--Sale and purchase of the
wife--Excessive rights of the Kabyle husband--The Kabyle marriage is
inferior to the Arab marriage--Polygamy and the subjection of women.
III. _Polygamy in Egypt, Mexico, and Peru._--Monogamy of the priests
in Egypt--Polygamy of the Incas and of the nobles in Peru--Polygamy of
the nobles in Mexico--Polygamy with monogamic tendency.
IV. _Polygamy in Persia and India._--Polygamy and concubinage of
princes in Persia--Severity of sexual morality in the Avesta--Polygamy
according to the Rig-Veda--Polygamy in the Code of Manu--Evolution of
polygamy in India--How monogamy became established.
I. _The Stage of Polygamy._
Our inquiry is already sufficiently advanced to give us an idea of the
first phases of the evolution of marriage. To begin with, both in the
case of human beings and of anthropoid apes, sexual unions have not
been reduced to any rule; promiscuity has been rare and exceptional,
but polygamy has been very common, at least a gross polygamy, not
regulated in any way, and merely resulting from the monopoly of the
women by the strongest or the richest men. It has been a sort of
conjugal anarchy, admitting simultaneously of various matrimonial
forms, as polyandry, term marriage, experimental marriage, etc., during
periods of more or less length.
Besides their primordial _rôle_ as child-bearers, wives were found very
useful in other ways--either for the satisfaction of sensual desires,
or for the execution of a number of painful labours; and therefore
men endeavoured to procure as many of them as possible, first by
capture, and then by purchase, or by giving a certain amount of work in
submitting to a temporary servitude. In the preceding chapter I have
given the history of this primitive, savage polygamy which as yet no
law regulated.
During the first phases of their social evolution, all the human races
have practised, with more or less brutality, this gross polygamy. We
have seen--and it is a subject to which I shall have to return--how,
in the bosom of the polygamic _régime_, monogamic tendencies have
appeared, which by degrees have ended by prevailing amongst all the
more civilised races. These races have resigned themselves to adopt
monogamy, or at least legal monogamy. I say “resigned,” for it seems
that monogamy costs much to man; in reality laws and customs have
everywhere attenuated the severity of it for him by various compromises
of which I shall soon have to speak.
II. _Arab Polygamy._
However, among the superior races, there is one, the Arab race,
which, up to our own time, has maintained and legalised the polygamic
_régime_, while propagating and regulating it among the various
peoples that have come under its domination. If, in this respect, the
Arab race has been an exception to the general evolution, it is not
because it is less gifted than the others; it has sufficiently proved
this. According to the ancients, a fantastic fish, the _remora_, had
the power of suddenly stopping the passage of ships at sea; religion
has played this part for the Arabs. Theoretically, all the great and
solidly constituted religions are incompatible with progress. Although
relatively they may appear innovations at the moment of their birth,
yet they bar the route of the future, and, as much as is in their
power, oppose all ulterior evolution. This is imperative, since they
pretend to declare the immutable will of divine personages, who are
omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly wise, and who cannot consequently
either re-touch or amend the laws that they make, and the commands
they give to poor human creatures. Now, Islamism arose amidst the full
polygamic _régime_; its founder could not even dream of establishing
any other. Polygamy was therefore established by divine right among
the faithful, and as at the bottom it is in accord with the primitive
instincts of man, it has maintained itself in Mussulman countries from
the time of Mahomet to our own days. From the sociological point of
view this is a most interesting fact, for it gives us the opportunity
of studying and estimating the polygamic _régime_ in its full
development.
Let us listen at first to the Koran; we will then consult the Arabian
jurists and the customs of contemporary Arabs.
To begin with, the holy book loudly proclaims the inferiority of women,
which naturally justifies their subjection, and this subjection is
great in all polygamous countries. There is no ambiguity on this point
in the words of the prophet: “Men are superior to women by reason
of the qualities God has given them to place them above women, and
_because men employ their wealth in giving dowries to women_. Virtuous
women are obedient and submissive; they carefully guard, during their
husband’s absence, that which God has ordered them to preserve intact.
Thou shalt correct those whom thou fearest may be disobedient: thou
shalt put them in beds apart: _thou shalt beat them_: but as soon as
they obey thee again, do not seek cause for quarrel with them. God is
merciful and great.”[394]
This text is eloquent. It first of all consecrates masculine
superiority by divine right, then marriage by purchase, and lastly, the
liberty of the husband to treat his wives with brutality.
The restrictions on polygamy found in the Koran are very slight:
“Marry not the women whom your fathers had to wife: it is a sin, and
abomination: except what is already past.”[395]
No retrospective effect here! We may conclude from this that, up to the
time of Mahomet, the sons inherited the harem of their father, as is
still the case in a number of little despotic states of negro Africa.
The holy book also commands respect for the feminine property of
others, save in the case of capture by war or of religious infidelity
of the husband. “You are forbidden to take to wife free women who are
married, except those women whom your right hand shall possess as
slaves: such is the law of God.”[396] “O believers! when believing
women come unto you as refugees, try them. And if you know them to be
true believers, send them not back to their infidel husbands; but give
their husbands back what they have expended for their dower.”[397]
In the Koran the respect for money is already much greater than for
females. The wife must be purchased. “It is permitted unto you to
procure wives with money, and you shall keep them in virtuous ways,
avoiding debauchery. Give unto her with whom thou dost cohabit the
dower thou hast promised.”[398]
The prophet counsels the faithful, without however commanding it,
to have a small number of wives: “But if ye fear that ye cannot act
equitably towards the orphans, take in marriage of such other women as
please you, two, or three, or four, and not more.”
The text ends with a permission to the man merely to pay a fictitious
dowry to the wives: “Assign dowries freely to your wives, and if it
pleases them to give you back a part, enjoy it conveniently at your
ease.”[399]
As for the prophet himself, he was to be above most of the restrictions
which he imposed on others: “O prophet, we have allowed thee thy wives
unto whom thou hast given their dower, and also the slaves which thy
right hand possesseth of the booty which God hath granted thee, and
the daughters of thy uncle, and the daughters of thy aunts, both on
thy father’s side and on thy mother’s side, who have fled with thee
from Mecca, and any other believing woman, if she give herself unto
the prophet.”[400] “O prophet, if believing women come to thee for an
asylum, having promised thee that they will flee idolatry, that they
will not steal, nor commit fornication, nor kill their children, and
will not disobey thee in anything that is just: believe them and pray
for them: God is indulgent and merciful.”[401] This last text gives
a sad enough idea of the morality of the Arab women before the time
of Mahomet; but taken together with the preceding one, it shows how
convenient and even agreeable it is to be the interpreter of the Divine
will.
With such facilities for recruiting, the harem of the prophet must have
been richly furnished; therefore he has taken care to free himself from
one duty which he recommends to others, of _debitum conjugale_: “Thou
mayest,” he says to himself, “either grant or refuse thy embraces to
thy wives.”[402]
On the contrary, he says to vulgar believers: “Ye can by no means carry
yourselves equally between wives in all respects, though you study to
do it; therefore turn not from a wife with all manner of aversion, nor
leave her like one in suspense; if ye agree and fear to abuse your
wives, God is gracious and merciful.”[403]
Polygamy is not rare in the world. We have seen it and shall see it
again in the course of our inquiries; but the polygamy of the Koran
has an advantage over most of the others; it is at once celestial
and terrestrial, for the paradise of true believers is only an ideal
harem: “Say, O believer, what shall I declare of greater benefit for
those who fear God, than gardens through which flow rivers of water,
where they shall dwell for ever, and there shall be women, who are pure
virgins, etc.[404]... Damsels having large black eyes. Therein shall be
agreeable damsels, whom no man or genius hath deflowered.[405] There
shall be young and beautiful virgins.[406]... And near them (the elect)
shall be houris with large black eyes, having complexions like rubies
and pearls.[407] Verily we have created the damsels of Paradise by a
peculiar creation.”[408]
The whole of this sacred code sanctifies the inferiority of the woman,
and this inferiority has not been at all mitigated in practice; for
iniquity, always tenacious, is far more so when it is authorised by
religion.
We must notice, however, in regard to Mussulman marriage, a
circumstance which at first sight is singular: it is that Mahometanism
intervenes in nothing, as religion, in all that concerns marriage; all
conjugal matters are absolutely private, and even the civil power does
not appear any more than the religious power in the celebration of
marriage.
As a general rule, the future husband goes to declare his union to
the sheik or cadi, who then remits the minute of it to the interested
party, without keeping a copy of it. This formality is, besides, in no
way obligatory; the marriage is considered as a private act, and if
afterwards any disputes should arise in relation to it, the parties
concerned arrange them as well as they can, by appealing to the
testimonial proof.[409]
It all amounts to this, that for Mussulmans the wife is a thing, and
the marriage a simple bargain. The wife is always sold to the husband,
and the price is discussed either by her legal representative or by her
conventional agent. The nuptial gift is even essential to marriage, and
if it has not been paid the wife has the right to refuse all intimate
commerce. “The wife sells herself,” says Sidi Khelil; “and every vendor
has the right to retain the merchandise sold until after taking the
payment.”[410] Before buying, the suitor is allowed to see the face and
the hands of the bride; for the hands of the woman are reputed to give
an idea of her personal beauty.[411]
A man ought, whenever possible, to marry a virgin, and the bargain may
be concluded several years before the delivery of the merchandise.[412]
If the girl is still a virgin, not emancipated, but beyond the age when
it is considered necessary to commence the special _rôle_ reserved to
her sex, the father has the right to impose marriage on her.[413]
The orphan girl can also be married by the authority of the Cadi, if
she is more than ten years old, and if there is reason to fear that she
may lead an irregular life.[414]
In all other cases the consent of the girl is necessary. This
circumstance, let us especially note, constitutes a real moral
progress beyond savage polygamy, and we shall presently see that it is
not yet realised in Kabyle. The consent of the girl is given in two
ways, according to whether she is a virgin or not. This interesting
particular must be frankly declared during the negotiation; the Koran
commands it. If the girl is a virgin, it is understood that modesty
should deprive her of speech, and in order to signify yes or no, she
must have recourse to the language of signs. She can, for example, show
her repugnance by covering her face, and her content by smiling. But if
she is no longer _virgo intacta_ she is allowed to speak freely.[415]
We have seen that, according to the Koran, the woman owes her master an
absolute submission; and he, in return, whatever may be the number of
his wives, binds himself morally not to leave any one of them “as in
suspense.” This precept of the sacred code is specifically carried out.
Every Mussulman owes to his wives an equal share of his nights, and she
who has had the favour of the night has a right to the following day
also.
When the husband buys a fresh wife he is indebted to her seven
successive nights if she is a virgin; for three only, in a contrary
case. He has the right to refuse greater exactions than this.[416]
But the husband has other obligations. He must supply food to his wife,
even if she is afflicted with a voracious appetite. This last case is
considered as a calamity, but the husband must resign himself to it,
or repudiate the glutton.[417]
The husband owes, besides, to his wife or wives water to drink, water
for ablutions and purifications, oil to eat, oil to burn, oil for
cosmetic unctions, wood for cooking and for the oven, salt, vinegar,
meat every other day or otherwise, according to the custom in various
countries. He must supply them with a mat or a bed--that is to say, a
mattress--and a cover to put on the mat. These duties have correlative
rights. The husband has the right to forbid his wife to eat garlic, or
to eat or drink any other thing which may leave a disagreeable odour.
He may interdict any occupation likely to weaken her, or impair her
beauty.[418] Finally, if she refuses her conjugal obligations without
reasonable motives, the husband can at will deprive her of salt,
pepper, vinegar, etc.[419] The sum total of these restrictions renders
an Arab woman’s position a very subordinate one, both before and after
marriage. But the fate of the Kabyle woman is much more miserable.
We are always hearing it repeated in France that the Kabyle man is
monogamous, and consequently not so different from ourselves in this
respect as the Arab; but among the Kabyles, as among the Arabs, it is
polygamy which is legal; and if the greater number of the Kabyles are
monogamous in practice, it is chiefly from economy.
In spite of their republican customs, of their respect for individual
liberty, of the rights they accord to the mother, and of certain
safeguards with which they protect the women in time of war, contrary
also to the liberal tendencies of the Berbers in relation to women,
the Kabyles of Algeria treat their married women and their daughters
as actual slaves, and they are in this respect inferior to the Arabs
themselves.[420] In all matters that refer to sexual relations the
Kabyle customs are ferocious. Outside of marriage all union of the
sexes is severely interdicted in Kabyle, and the married woman has no
personality; she is literally a thing possessed.[421]
The young Kabyle girl is sold by her father, her brother, her uncle,
or some relation (_açeb_); in short, by her legal owner. In announcing
his marriage, a man says quite bluntly--“I have bought a wife.” When a
father has married his daughter, the phrase in ordinary use is--“He has
eaten his daughter.”[422]
Among the Cheurfas, but it is an exceptional case, the girl is
consulted on the choice of a husband when she has attained the age of
reason; everywhere else the virgin daughter is never consulted, and
even the widow and repudiated wife, to whom the Mussulman law accords
liberty, cannot dispose of themselves in Kabyle countries.[423]
In many tribes, however, the daughter can twice refuse the man that is
proposed to her; but after that she has exhausted her right, and is
forced to submit.[424]
The legal owner of the Kabyle woman generally gives her, at her
wedding, garments and jewels; or rather, he lends them to her, for it
is forbidden to the woman to dispose of them, and at her death these
precious articles must be returned to her relatives.[425]
An essential condition of the Kabyle marriage, as of the Arab, is the
payment of a certain price, generally debated, but which certain tribes
of southern Jurjura have fixed once for all. This price is called the
“turban” (_thâmanth_), as with us “pin-money” is spoken of. A penal
sanction guarantees the payment of the _thâmanth_ and the delivery of
the person sold.[426]
In principle the woman has no right over the _thâmanth_.[427]
Besides the purchase money, or _thâmanth_, the Kabyle further
stipulates in addition that he shall receive a certain quantity of
provisions (cattle, or food, flour, oil, butter) to be consumed during
the marriage festivities.
The villages which have tariffed the _thâmanth_ have also fixed the
amount of these presents.
The father likewise stipulates, for the benefit of the daughter who is
sold, a gift of garments and of jewels; but this gift dispenses the
husband from providing in this respect for the maintenance of the wife
during one year. This is particularly necessary, because the bride, in
quitting her parents, leaves them all that she has received,[428] and
takes away nothing but her body.
It is sometimes the mother who thus makes the conjugal sale of her
daughter, but on condition of being recognised as guardian; and even
then she does not enjoy, like the father, an unrestrained power, and
she has to consult her daughter.[429]
Once purchased, the Kabyle wife is entirely at the mercy of the
husband-proprietor. She must follow him wherever it suits him to
settle; her only actual possession is the raiment which covers her.
Her husband has the right to chastise her with his fist, with a stick,
with a stone, or even with a poignard. He is only forbidden to kill her
without a reasonably serious motive.[430]
If, however, when she has become a mother, she is unable to suckle her
child, the law decides that the husband is obliged to provide a wet
nurse;[431] though this is more for the child’s sake than the mother’s,
as she cares little enough about the infant.
The married woman is considered so entirely as property in Kabyle that
the prolonged absence of the master is allowed to set her free. In this
case she belongs, after four years, to her maternal relations, who
have the right to re-marry her--that is to say, to re-sell her--unless
the absent husband has left her a sufficient provision. However, the
husband’s parents can delay the dissolution of the first marriage,
sometimes for seven years, sometimes for ten years, but on condition of
taking the place of the absent husband in furnishing the deserted wife
with food and clothes.[432]
The Kabyle woman, therefore, married or not, is always a thing
possessed. We shall see later that even widowhood does not enfranchise
her. The right of correcting the woman who is not under the power of a
husband ceases only when she has reached an age when marriage would be
sterile, and especially if she has in a way abjured her sex by mixing
with men in the markets.[433]
Very often the assimilation of the Kabyle people to the French is
spoken of as a thing relatively easy. It appears to me that the servile
subjection of the Kabyle woman is an almost insurmountable obstacle to
this dream of fusion. Without doubt the married woman in France is only
a minor; but in Kabyle she is still in the lowest stage of slavery. In
this respect the Berbers of Kabyle are on a level with the coarsest
savages; they are even inferior to the Arabs, although the latter have
preserved almost unchanged the polygamic _régime_ of the old Islamite,
and even pre-Islamite ages. But in all times and all countries the
condition of woman is the measure of the moral development of the whole
people. Now, in regard to this there is a gulf between Kabyle and
civilised Europe.
The polygamic _régime_ has, besides, in every country an almost
necessary result--the slavery of women. This is natural. As in the
hordes of chimpanzees, the male, the anthropomorphous paterfamilias,
only maintains his authority by force and by expelling his rivals, so,
in human societies, the polygamous husband can hardly be anything but
the proprietor of subjugated beings, not daring to aspire to freedom.
It may be remarked also that the polygamic appetite, so habitual to
man, cannot be strange to woman. Both have the same blood and share the
same heredity. The polygamous husband, therefore, has always to prevent
or repress the straying of his feminine flock by close confinement or
by terror. Under a polygamic _régime_ the wife has scarcely any rights;
she has chiefly duties.
III. _Polygamy in Egypt, Mexico, and Peru._
I have dwelt long enough on Mussulman polygamy. From a sociological
point of view it is extremely interesting. It affords us the
opportunity of studying from life customs which, with differences of
detail, must have been those of all civilised peoples at a certain
period of their evolution, and which probably have only been kept up
among the Islamites on account of the confusion of civil and religious
laws, these last giving to polygamy a sort of consecration.
In all the great primitive barbarous monarchies the polygamy of the
first ages has been by degrees restrained or abolished, according to
the measure of social progress.
In ancient Egypt polygamy was still in force; but already it was
interdicted to the priests,[434] contrary to what has happened nearly
everywhere. As a matter of fact, and by the simple necessity resulting
from the proportion of the sexes, even when polygamy is authorised and
legal, it is especially the luxury of rich and powerful men; the common
people have everywhere been reduced to monogamy, whether they wished
it or not. Under most of the great early despotic monarchies which
had emerged from primitive savagery this fact became legalised, and
plurality of wives constituted a privilege reserved to the great ones
of the land.
In ancient Peru monogamy was obligatory for men who possessed nothing,
but not for the Inca and the nobles of the kingdom. Thus the last Inca,
Atahualpa, had three thousand wives or concubines. As generally happens
when polygamy is restrained, there was already a hierarchy among the
wives of the Inca; one of them, who was obliged to be his sister,
the _coya_, was reputed superior to the others, and her eldest son
succeeded his father.[435] On this point, as on many others, ancient
Peru had unconsciously copied Egypt.
In Mexico also, monogamy was habitual for the poor, but the powerful
and the nobles had a number of wives proportioned to their rank and to
their riches.[436] In Mexico, as in Peru, polygamy was monogamic in
the sense that one wife had pre-eminence over the others, and that her
children alone inherited the paternal title and wealth.
This polygamy of princes and potentates, who by right of birth soar
above the common rule, is found also in the great Aryan empires of
Asia.[437]
IV. _Polygamy in Persia and India._
The polygamy of the monarchs of ancient Persia seems to have been
copied from that of the kings of Egypt, or of the Incas of Peru. They
had numerous concubines and three or four wives, of whom one was
especially considered as queen, or privileged wife.[438]
As for the Persians of more ancient times still, the Mazdeans who drew
up the sacred code of the Avesta, if we refer to the Zend text, we
find they had a most severe sexual morality. The Avestic code condemns
and punishes resort to prostitutes, seduction, sexual extravagances,
abortion, etc. Throughout that portion of the Avesta which has come
down to us there is no recognition of polygamy, and the verses which
mention marriage have quite a monogamic meaning. It seems, however,
says one of the translators of the Avesta, that among the ancient
Persians polygamy may have been authorised in case of sterility of
the first wife.[439] Like anthropophagy, polygamy is an original
sin with human societies. But writings so exclusively religious and
even liturgic as the Avesta constitute very incomplete sources of
information in regard to civil institutions. To study the marriage of
the ancient Persians in the Avesta seems about as illusory as it would
be to study ours in a Catholic prayer-book.
We know also, from the Code of Manu and historical and ethnographical
documents, that polygamy is and has been far from being unknown in
India, and yet it is difficult to prove from the text of the Vedic
hymns that the writers of these chants have practised it.
This may be inferred, however, from several verses. In the beginning
the morals were coarse enough for abortion to be common. “Let Agni,” we
read in a hymn, “kill the rakchasa who, under the form of a brother, a
husband, or a lover, approaches thee to destroy thy fruit.”[440] On the
other hand, woman is held in slight esteem by the sacred chants. She is
a being “of incapable mind and unfit for serious employment.”[441] In
one hymn, Satchi, the daughter of Buloman, boasts of having eclipsed
her rivals in the eyes of her husband.[442] A certain number of verses
speak of the wives of the gods: “The praying cows, these wives of Agni,
wish to obtain a proof of the virility of the god.”[443]
In Sanskrit the word “finger” is feminine, and thus very often the
fingers which handle the sacred mortar are called the ten wives of
Agni.[444]
In short, other accounts leave us no room to doubt that in primitive
India, as elsewhere, the great and the powerful have largely practised
polygamy from Vedic times.[445]
That these customs have been those of Brahmanic India, the text of Manu
in antiquity, and the reports of travellers in modern times, attest
loudly enough. One verse of Manu regulates the right of succession
of sons that a Brahmin may have by four wives belonging to different
castes. “If a Brahmin has four wives belonging to four classes, in
the direct order, and if they all have sons, this is the rule of
inheritance. Let the son of the Brahmin (after having deducted the
bull, the chariot, and the jewels) take three parts of the rest; let
the son of the Kchatriya wife take two parts; that of the Vaisyâ, one
part and a half; that of the Soudra, one part only.”[446]
Another verse, much more singular, declares that the children of a
second wife belong to the person who has lent the money to buy her:
“He who has a wife, and who, after having borrowed money from some one,
marries another with it, derives no other advantage than the sensual
pleasure; the children belong to the man who has given the money.”[447]
As for the king, the Code of Manu permits polygamy to him in the
largest measure, at least under the form of concubinage. He ought to
have a troop of wives, whose duty it is to fan him, and to pour water
and perfumes over his august person. He refreshes himself with them
from the cares of government, and passes the night in their agreeable
company.[448] We must not forget, besides, that, as the Mahabharata
has informed us, the Kchatriyas practised marriage by capture and
polygamy.[449]
To sum up, in India, as everywhere else, polygamy has evolved; it
has at first been common; then, when power and riches have been
concentrated in the hands of a small number, it has become the
privilege of the great. The polygamy of the princes and of the rich
Brahmins was even the first obstacle encountered in the seventeenth
century by the preaching of the Jesuits in India.[450]
In the present time it is the same for the great, and custom tolerates
a second wife, even to common husbands, in case of sterility of the
first.[451] I shall have to speak again of these customs in treating of
concubinage.
If we now sum up the general sense of the numerous facts which I have
just passed in review, we see that with the entire human race polygamy
has succeeded to the sexual and conjugal anarchy of the first ages.
Like all other institutions, primitive polygamy has gradually become
regulated, but always while keeping the woman in a very humiliating
position. One fact of great importance, and which has by degrees
ruined the _régime_ of a plurality of wives, even when custom, law,
and religion authorised it, is that polygamy became a luxury within
the reach only of rulers, as soon as a tolerable social condition
restrained the too rapid mortality of males. Indeed, from this moment
the sexual equilibrium of births compelled the greater number of men to
practical monogamy, and thenceforth, as Herbert Spencer justly remarks,
a public opinion was necessarily formed in favour of monogamy. Often,
therefore, polygamy constituted a legal privilege; it was expressly
limited to kings, great men, and priests.
Besides this a hierarchy became established among the numerous wives,
and one of them had precedence of her companions.
Finally, legal monogamy was decreed, but this monogamy was in
appearance only. In practice the pain of it was softened by
compromises, notably by prostitution, which was at least tolerated, and
by concubinage, which received the consecration of law.
FOOTNOTES:
[394] Koran, Sourate, iv. 38.
[395] Koran, Sourate, iv. 26.
[396] _Ibid._ iv. 28.
[397] _Ibid._ lx. 10.
[398] _Ibid._ iv. 18.
[399] _Ibid._ iv. 3.
[400] Koran, xxxiii. 47.
[401] _Ibid._ lx. 12.
[402] _Ibid._ xxxiii. 49.
[403] _Ibid._ iv. 128.
[404] _Ibid._ iii. 13.
[405] Koran, lii. 20.
[406] _Ibid._ lv. 56-70.
[407] _Ibid._ lvi. 22.
[408] _Ibid._ lvi. 35.
[409] E. Meynier, _Études sur l’Islamisme_, p. 148.
[410] Sidi Khelil, t. ii. p. 434 (quoted by Meynier).
[411] E. Meynier, _loc. cit._ p. 159.
[412] E. Meynier, _loc. cit._ pp. 158-160.
[413] Sidi Khelil, t. ii. pp. 326, 327 (quoted by Meynier).
[414] _Ibid._ p. 157.
[415] E. Meynier, _loc. cit._ p. 158.
[416] Sidi Khelil, t. ii. p. 505.
[417] E. Meynier, _loc. cit._ p. 165.
[418] _Ibid._ p. 166.
[419] _Ibid._ p. 167.
[420] E. Sabatier, _Essai sur l’origine, etc., des Berbères
sédentaires_, in _Revue d’anthropologie_, 1882.
[421] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _La Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 148.
[422] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _La Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 148.
[423] _Id., ibid._ p. 149.
[424] _Id., ibid._ p. 150.
[425] _Id., ibid._ p. 162.
[426] _Id., ibid._ pp. 152, 153.
[427] _Id., ibid._
[428] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _La Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 161.
[429] _Id., ibid._ p. 151.
[430] _Id., ibid._ t. ii. p. 165.
[431] _Id., ibid._ p. 169.
[432] _Id., ibid._ t. ii. p. 146.
[433] _Id., ibid._ p. 151.
[434] Diodorus, book i. 80.
[435] W. Prescott, _Hist. of the Conquest of Peru_, vol. i. p. 46.
[436] W. Prescott, _Hist. of the Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p.
121.--Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 283.
[437] F. Müller, _Allgem. Ethnogr._, p. 263.
[438] Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 295.
[439] C. de Harlez, _Avesta_, Introd. clxxi.
[440] _Rig-Veda_, sec. viii., lect. viii., H. xx., ver. 45.
[441] _Rig-Veda_, sec. iii., H. ii., ver. 17.
[442] _Ibid._ sec. viii., H. xvii., ver. 5, 6.
[443] _Ibid._ sec. iii., lect. iv., ver. 3.
[444] _Ibid._ sec. vii., lect. viii., H. xxvi., ver. 2.
[445] E. Burnouf, _Essai sur le Véda_, p. 213.
[446] _Code of Manu_, ix. ver. 149-151.
[447] _Ibid._ xi. ver. 5.
[448] _Code of Manu_, vii. ver. 219, 221, and 224.
[449] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. ii. p. 241.
[450] _Lettres édif._, t. vi. p. 26; t. xv. p. 286; t. xii. p. 416.
[451] Wake, _loc. cit._, vol. ii. p. 230.
CHAPTER X.
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.
CHAPTER XI.
PRIMITIVE MONOGAMY.
I. _The Monogamy of Inferior Races._--The causes of monogamy--The
gynecocratic theory of Bachofen--Inferior monogamic races--Races
which are polygamic, although superior--Co-existence of monogamy and
polygamy.
II. _Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America._--Monogamy of
the common people in Mexico and Peru--Civil marriage in Peru.
III. _Monogamy in Ancient Egypt._--Gynecocracy in Egypt--Its _raison
d’être_.
IV. _Monogamy of the Touaregs and Abyssinians._--Gynecocracy among the
Touaregs--Fragility of Marriage in Abyssinia.
V. _Monogamy among the Mongols of Asia._--Monogamy in reality
in Thibet--Modified monogamy among the Tartars--Marriage in
China--Matrimonial legislation in China--Conjugal docility of the
Chinese women--Japanese marriage.
VI. _Monogamy and Civilisation._
I. _The Monogamy of Inferior Races._
After having successively studied the inferior forms of sexual and
conjugal unions, it now remains for us to investigate the most elevated
of them--the one that all, or nearly all, the great civilised societies
have ended by adopting, at least in appearance, in their legal
systems--monogamy.
Of the great causes which have led to the adoption of monogamic
marriage, the first is the sexual equilibrium of births as soon as
it was no longer disturbed by the casualties of savage life. Without
doubt, in a society composed sensibly of equal numbers of men and
women, the more powerful and rich may monopolise several women by the
right of the strongest, but in doing so they wrong the community, and
public opinion becomes hostile to the practice. It is thus that with
the Dyaks the chiefs lose their authority and see their influence
diminish when they indulge in polygamy, although no law forbids it.[499]
Another cause quite as powerful which contributed greatly to lead
to legal monogamy was the institution of individual and hereditary
property. L. Morgan does not hesitate to refer monogamic marriage to
this sole origin. Indeed, in all societies more or less civilised, the
desire for heritable property has quickly assumed a capital importance;
the more or less equitable regulation of questions of interest, and
the anxiety to safeguard these interests, form the solid basis of all
written codes. Now, nearly everywhere the heritage is transmitted
according to filiation, sometimes maternal, sometimes paternal; but it
is only in the monogamic _régime_ that the parentage of children is the
same for all in the paternal as well as the maternal line.[500]
Over and above this, moral motives have reinforced the great influences
resulting from the laws of natality and the all-powerful questions of
interest. In theory or ideal, the life-long union of two beings, giving
and devoting themselves to each other, engaging to share good and evil
fortune, is surely very noble; but, as we shall see, the realisation of
monogamic marriage has everywhere been most gross, and it is difficult
to refer it to elevated aspirations. Unless we are intoxicated with
sentimentalism, we cannot believe, with Bachofen,[501] that women,
naturally more noble and more sensitive than their gross companions,
grew tired of primitive hetaïrism, and, obeying powerful religious
aspirations, enthroned monogamic marriage by force, becoming by the
same stroke heads of the family, and inaugurating gynecocracy. These
Amazonian fables are very energetically contradicted by history and
ethnography.
Nearly in every age, and nearly in every place, woman, by reason of
her native weakness, has been subordinate to her companion, often
oppressed by him, and her subjection is the more severe as the
civilisation is the more primitive. It is a great error to believe
that in all times and places monogamic union is the sign and necessary
seal of an advanced civilisation. A number of primitive tribes are
monogamous; certain monkeys are so too. Among the inferior monogamous
races I will mention the Veddahs[502] of the woods of Ceylon, so low
in intelligence that they have not even names for the numbers; the
Bochimans of South Africa,[503] scarcely more developed; the Kurnais of
Australia, among whom monogamy, though not obligatory, is general.[504]
Certain aborigines of India,[505] less primitive, no doubt, than these
very humble specimens of our species, but still very savage, are also
monogamous. These are: the Nagas, who are contented to make their one
wife work very hard; the Kisans, who limit themselves to a single wife,
and have not even any concubines;[506] the Padans, who set a good
example to more than one superior race, for not only do they blame
polygamy and only practise it exceptionally, but they do not buy their
wives, and leave to their young people the liberty of marrying as they
please.[507]
The form of marriage is therefore not necessarily connected with the
degree of general civilisation. The contrary is well proved, since
very civilised peoples have adopted polygamy, sometimes openly, and
very often in a masked form. Man is willingly polygamous by instinct,
but he is often forced to bend to the necessities of social existence.
Therefore, in the same country, and in the same race, we may meet
with tribes and ethnic groups very analogous in everything else, but
practising very dissimilar conjugal forms. It is not rare, for example,
to see monogamy and polygamy elbowing each other. Thus the Redskins
are willingly polygamous, and yet the Pimas, the Cocomaricopas, and
a number of tribes on the banks of the Gilo, of Colorado and of New
Mexico, only marry one wife, whilst with the Navajos, the Comanches,
etc., a man has as many wives as he can buy.[508]
With the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec there is no polygamy;
it is forbidden.[509] On the contrary, with all the Indians of Columbia
polygamy is general; but the Otomacs, who are reckoned among the most
savage, are monogamous.[510] Necessity makes the law; and although
it may be the legal form of marriage adopted by the superior races,
monogamy does not imply in itself an advanced civilisation. Besides,
the numerous facts that I have previously quoted abundantly prove that
polygamy and monogamy can coexist in the same society--the former for
the sole use of the ruling classes, the latter for the common people.
II. _Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America._
It was thus in Mexico,[511] where, among the wives of the great men,
one alone was called lawful; her children inherited the paternal title
and wealth, to the exclusion of the others.[512] In Peru, as in Mexico,
the law, with the bold partiality which there is no attempt to disguise
in barbarous societies, permitted polygamy to the Inca and to the
enormous family of the Incas, while exacting a strict monogamy from the
poor. State communism, imposed on the country, regulated the sexual
unions somewhat as our rural proprietors regulate the coupling of their
domestic animals. Peruvian marriage was a civil act, very comparable to
enforced military service in modern Europe. Every year in the kingdom
of Cuzco it was the practice to assemble together in the squares of
the towns and villages all the individuals of marriageable age, from
twenty-four to twenty-six years for the men, and from eighteen to
twenty for the women. At Cuzco the Inca himself married the persons of
his own family, and always in a public square, by putting in each other
the hands of the different couples. In their respective boundaries
the chiefs of districts, resembling our mayors, fulfilled the same
function for the persons of their own rank or of an inferior rank. We
are indeed told that the consent of parents was necessary, but it was
not a question of the consent of the interested parties.[513] Besides,
it was strictly forbidden to marry outside the civil group of which the
individuals formed a part. In this case marriages must often have been
contracted between relatives more or less near. As to incest, there
was little severity, since the Inca was legally bound to marry one of
his sisters, with the reservation that she might not be his uterine
sister,[514] and the same rule was at last extended to the nobles of
the empire.
In sanctioning the civil marriage of the country, the public
functionary, the _Curaca_, administered to the couple the oath of
conjugal fidelity, which, according to P. Pizzarre, was generally kept;
perhaps because, as we shall see later, the Peruvian law was not tender
to adulterers.
There does not appear to have been the least nuptial ceremony in Peru.
In Mexico, on the contrary, marriage was celebrated with much show,
and it was religious. The bride was conducted in great pomp to the
house of the bridegroom, who came with his family to meet her. The
two processions mutually perfumed each other with boxes of burning
incense. After this the future spouses sat down on the same mat, and
a priest married them by tying the robe of the bride to the mantle of
the bridegroom. The precaution had previously been taken to consult
the diviners and augurs. Nuptial festivals followed, in which the
newly-married couple took no part. They lasted four days, and the
marriage was not to be consummated until their termination.
III. _Monogamy in Ancient Egypt._
In the ancient empires of central America the position of the wife was
very subordinate;--this is an ordinary fact in barbarous countries. But
in this respect, a singular exception seems to have existed in ancient
Egypt, which nevertheless offers so many analogies to ancient Peru.
This anomaly must be described with some details, because the believers
in a prehistoric gynecocracy complacently rely on it to support their
theory.
The general assertions of the writers of antiquity on this point have
been confirmed by the demotic deeds recently deciphered. I shall
briefly quote both.
Let us listen first to Herodotus on the subject of Egyptian women:
“They have established laws and customs opposite, for the most part,
to those of the rest of mankind. With them the women go to market and
traffic; the men stay at home and weave.... The men carry burdens on
the head, the women on the shoulders.... The boys are never forced to
maintain their parents unless they wish to do so; the girls are obliged
to, even if they do not wish it.”[1] From this last rule it is already
logical to infer that the women possessed and inherited property,
which is not ordinary in primitive monarchies. Herodotus adds that “no
woman performs sacerdotal duties towards a divinity of either sex; the
priests of all the divinities are men.”[515] In a country so profoundly
religious this interdict clearly proves that in public opinion, at
least, the woman was held to be an inferior being. Besides, polygamy
was permitted in Egypt, which suffices of itself to exclude the idea of
feminine domination in the family. However, Herodotus relates that many
Egyptians, especially “those that dwelt on the marshes,” have, like the
Greeks, adopted monogamy.[516]
Diodorus goes further than Herodotus. He affirms that in the Egyptian
family it is the man who is subjected to the woman: “Contrary to the
received usage of other nations, the laws permit the Egyptians to marry
their sisters, after the example of Osiris and Isis. The latter, in
fact, having cohabited with her brother Osiris, swore, after his death,
never to suffer the approach of any man, pursued the murderer, governed
according to the laws, and loaded men with benefits. All this explains
why the queen receives more power and respect than the king, and why,
among private individuals, the woman rules over the man, and that it is
stipulated between married couples, by the terms of the dowry-contract,
that the man shall obey the woman.”[517]
The assertion of Diodorus seems at first sight inadmissible;
nevertheless, the demotic deeds, in a measure, confirm it. If the
family subjection of the man was not general in Egypt, at least it
existed in a number of cases. In reality, the Egyptian law did not
deal with marriages, and the interested parties contracted them at
their will. Now, in virtue of the law of matriarchal inheritance,
the woman was often richer than the man. She could therefore dictate
how the marriage contract should be drawn up. The conjugal union was
manifestly before every thing a commercial agreement, since the word
_husband_ does not appear in the documents until after the reign
of Philopator.[518] The Egyptian woman generally married under the
_régime_ of the separate possession of property; she did not change
her condition, and preserved the right of making contracts without
authorisation; she remained absolute mistress of her dowry. The
contract also specified the sums that the husband was to pay to his
wife, either as nuptial gift, or as annual pension, or as compensation
in case of divorce.[519]
Sometimes even, by acts subsequent to marriage, the Egyptian wife could
succeed in completely dispossessing her husband, and therefore the
latter was careful to stipulate, as a precaution, that his wife should
take care of him during his life, and pay the expenses of his burial
and tomb.[520]
To sum up, it appears, indeed, that in ancient Egypt no marital power
existed, at least in the families of private individuals.
This state of things lasted till the time of Philopator, who, in the
fourth year of his reign, established the pre-eminence of the husband
in the family by deciding that thenceforth all the transfers of
property made by the wife should be authorised by the husband.[521]
These facts, certainly very curious, have seemed decisive to a number
of sociologists who, with Bachofen, like to believe that in prehistoric
times there has existed a gynecocratic period--an age of gold, when
women reigned as mistresses, and of which the mythic Amazons were
a survival. The very incomplete accounts that we possess of the
condition and _rôle_ of woman in Egypt do not seem to me to warrant
the importance that is attached to them.
In barbarous, as in civilised societies, there are three great means
of influence--religion, military power, and money. In ancient Egypt,
Diodorus tells us, woman was judged unworthy of the priesthood, and
therefore inferior from a religious point of view. She did not possess
any warlike power. Neither monuments, nor writings, nor traditions
make any mention of female warriors, analogous either to the Amazons
of fable or those of the king of Dahomey. There remains the influence
of money, doubtless an enormous influence in all societies where it
can accumulate in the hands of certain individuals to the detriment of
others. Now, everything proves that if in ancient Egypt women have more
or less enjoyed great independence, and have even abused it so as to
subject their husbands, they obtained it simply by the power of money.
Evidently the organisation of property and the laws of succession in
Egypt permitted women to be rich or to become so, and in consequence
to domineer over husbands less favoured in this respect. We shall see
that in ancient Greece and Rome the same causes produced the same
effects. Is it even necessary to go to ancient times to seek examples
of feminine emancipation, even very insolent emancipation, based only
on the dowry or fortune? We also have an abundance of plutocratic
Amazons. But these facts are not incompatible with the legal subjection
of women. If they seem to have been very common in ancient Egypt, it
is because legislation did not meddle with marriage; and it must also
be remembered that the demotic documents only mention, as is natural,
the contracts of the upper or middle classes, the propertied classes,
which, of course, are a minority.
So little was gynecocracy inscribed in the laws and customs of Egypt
that a simple royal decree depriving women of the disposition of their
property sufficed to cast them into the subordinate rank which they
have occupied until the present time in all human societies, but which,
perhaps, they will not always occupy.
Nevertheless, it is a noteworthy fact that in a society so rigid as the
Egyptian, a minority of women should have been able to obtain legally
a great amount of independence; it constitutes a remarkable exception,
and may, perhaps, be referred to the influence of the Berber races,
which, according to Egyptian traditions themselves, played an important
part in the foundation of primitive Egypt.
IV. _The Monogamy of the Touaregs and Abyssinians._
We have already seen that our contemporary Kabyles, although of
Berber origin, make the yoke of their wives very hard; but it may
be admitted that, in this respect, they have been influenced by
numerous conquerors. A certain emancipation of women seems to be a
characteristic trait of Berber societies. Even at the present time,
among the Touaregs of the Sahara, who have preserved their independence
and the purity of their race better than the Kabyles, the rich woman
enjoys a social position analogous to that of the ladies of ancient
Egypt.
In spite of the Mussulman law, the Targui woman practically imposes
monogamy on the man. She would immediately seek a divorce if her
husband attempted to give her a rival.
Amongst the Touaregs filiation is still maternal, and confers the rank.
“The child follows the blood of the mother;” the son of a slave or
serf father and a noble woman is noble. “It is the womb which dyes the
child,” they say in their primitive language.[522] “Absolute mistress
of her fortune, her actions, and her children, who belong to her and
bear her name, the Targui lady goes where she will and exercises a
real authority.”[523] She seldom marries before the age of twenty, and
she marries as she pleases, the fathers only intervening to prevent
_mésalliances_. She eats with her husband, to whom, however, she owes
obedience, and who can kill her in case of adultery.--(Duveyrier,
339-340.)
The Targui women know how to read and write in greater numbers than the
men. It is well known, besides, that rudimentary instruction in reading
and writing is widely spread among the Mahometan population of North
Africa.
It is to the Targui ladies, says Duveyrier, that is due the
preservation of the ancient Lybian and ancient Berber writing.[524]
Leaving domestic work to their slaves, the Targui ladies occupy
themselves with reading, writing, music, and embroidery;[525] they live
as intelligent aristocrats.
“The ladies of the tribe of the Ifoghas are renowned,” says again
Duveyrier, “for their _savoir-vivre_ and their musical talent; they
know how to ride _mehari_ better than all their rivals. Secure in their
cages, they can ride races with the most intrepid cavaliers, if one
may give this name to riders on dromedaries; in order, also, to keep
themselves in practice in this kind of riding, they meet to take short
trips together, going wherever they like without the escort of any
man.”[526] Targui gallantry has preserved for the women of the tribe of
Imanan, who are descended from the ancient sultans, the title of royal
women (_timanôkalîn_) on account of their beauty and their superiority
in the art of music.
They often give concerts, to which the men come from long distances
decked out like male ostriches. In these concerts the women sing while
accompanying themselves on the tambourine and a sort of violin or
rebâza. They are much sought after in marriage, because of the title of
cherif which they confer on their children.”[527]
The Targui lady often sings in the evenings, improvising and
accompanying herself on the rebâza. If she is married, says Duveyrier,
she is honoured all the more in proportion to the number of her
masculine friends, but she must not show preference to any one of
them. The lady may embroider on the cloak, or write on the shield of
her chevalier, verses in his praise and wishes for his good fortune.
Her friend may, without being censured, cut the name of the lady on
the rocks or chant her virtues. “Friends of different sexes,” say the
Touaregs, “are for the eyes and the heart, and not for the bed only, as
among the Arabs.”[528]
Such customs as these indicate delicate instincts which are absolutely
foreign to the Arabs and to the Kabyles. They strongly remind us of
the times of our southern troubadours, and of the _cours d’amour_,
which were the quintessence of chivalry. But it is important to notice
that with the Touaregs, as with the Provençals and the Acquitainers
of the twelfth century, who may well have had Berber ancestors, these
diversions and gallantries were for aristocrats and princes, and in no
way prevented the general slavery of women. These customs are curious;
they show a degree of moral nobility, and are worthy of note, but at
the same time we must guard against according them a general value
which they do not possess. It is important, also, to remark that the
independence of the Berber lady, who is saved the trouble of grinding
the corn, of cooking, etc., rests on the magic power of money. “By
means of accumulation,” says Duveyrier, “the greatest part of the
fortune is in the hands of women”--(p. 339). In short, it is only by an
extraordinary power of illusion that we can recognise in the relatively
favourable situation of the Berber lady a case of Amazonian gynecocracy.
In Abyssinia, which also is not a gynecocratic country, the women
enjoy very great liberty; their conduct is very dissolute, and their
marriage very easily broken. Bruce, who first made known to us these
curious customs, likens them to those of ancient Egypt. “In Abyssinia,”
he says, “the women live as if they were common to every one. They
pretend, however, to belong, by principle, to one man only when they
marry, but they do not act up to it.”[529] Divorce is so easy in
Abyssinia that Bruce says he has seen a woman surrounded by seven
former husbands.[530] The most distinguished Abyssinian ladies have
cicisbei, after the Italian fashion of old times. At their feasts,
according to Bruce again, the lovers yield themselves publicly to each
other. Their neighbours at table simply take care to hide them very
imperfectly by improvising with their cloaks a waving partition.[531]
The young women of the province of Samen, says Bruce, came alone to
trade with the travellers. “They were hard in their bargains, with the
exception of one only, in which they seemed very reasonable and very
generous. They agreed to give rather than sell their favours, alleging
that long solicitations on one side and refusals on the other wasted
time that might be more agreeably employed.”[532] It is clear from this
that the monogamic _régime_ of the Abyssinians is more apparent than
real, that it is much modified by the extreme cicisbeism, by the use of
concubines, of which I have already spoken, and lastly by the abuse of
divorce, turning it into a successive polygamy.
V. _Monogamy among the Mongols of Asia._
Among the Asiatic Mongols monogamy is also not very strict. In Thibetan
Himalaya polyandry seems to predominate. It is not rare, either, in
Thibet proper, where, on the other hand, polygamy is not forbidden,
for there is no rigid legislation in regard to marriage. Besides, in
these countries, as in many others, girls enjoy complete liberty before
marriage, and they use it without suffering at all in reputation.[533]
It is singular that in Lamaïc Thibet, in full theocracy, in a country
where the prayers and the practices of religion enter into nearly
all the actions of civil life, marriage escapes all ecclesiastical
interference. In fact, the priests have nothing to do with it, and
all the matrimonial ceremony, which is purely laïc, consists in a
simple mutual engagement entered into by the interested parties before
witnesses.[534]
This laïc anarchy of marriage in Thibet must no doubt be attributed
to Lamaïc bigotry itself. The Lamas avoid women, holding marriage in
contempt, and all the great functionaries, as well as many Thibetans
of the other classes, are of the same opinion.[535] Religion does not
concern herself with it; she disdains it, as in Egypt, which seems to
show that a sufficient degree of religious madness hinders theocratic
legislators from thinking of civil institutions.
But in regard to marriage, both civil and religious laws are always
subordinate to the necessities resulting from the social condition and
the proportion of the sexes. In Thibet, therefore, in spite of the
entire liberty allowed to individuals, the marriage of the greatest
number is monogamic quite as much as if the law had prescribed it.[536]
In Tartary the nomad Mongols have adopted for their matrimonial type
monogamy tempered by the domestic concubinate. I have spoken previously
of their “lesser wives,” of their marriage by purchase with the
ceremonial of capture. I need not, therefore, repeat all this. I will
only note in passing that their girls have also very loose manners,
which are not always corrected by marriage.[537] According to one of
the most recent explorers of Mongolia, the proportion of the sexes in
that country is the inverse of that in Europe. The women are much less
numerous than the men. This may probably be the principal reason of the
celibacy of the Lamas, and of the real monogamy of the greater number
of laymen who do not belong to the aristocracy.[538]
Chinese marriage essentially resembles Mongol marriage, but with a more
settled ritual and a more uniform legislation. It is also monogamic,
with the palliative of the concubinate, the “lesser wives” of whom I
have already spoken.[539] Besides this, the subjection of women in
China is extreme. When a Chinaman has only daughters he is said to
have no children.[540] The Chinese woman is submissive in all states,
as a daughter to her parents, as a wife to her husband, and as a widow
to her sons, especially to her eldest son.[541] (Pauthier, _Chine
Moderne_, p. 239). The young Chinese girl has not even an idea that
she may be consulted in the choice of a husband.[542] She is bought
from her parents, and a part of the sum agreed on is paid when the
contract is signed.[543] As in Mongolia, matrimonial arrangements
are often settled, not only from the infancy of the future wife and
husband, but even before their birth, on the hypothesis of a difference
of sex.[544] These agreements are made by the fathers and mothers, or,
in default of them, by the grandparents or nearest relatives.[545]
Lastly, the women are excluded by law from inheritance,[546] and kept
as much as possible in seclusion, so that they scarcely see any one
besides their parents.[547] By marrying, the young Chinese girl simply
changes masters. “The bride,” says a Chinese author, “ought only to be
a shadow and an echo in the house.” The married woman eats neither with
her husband nor with her male children; she waits at table in silence,
lights the pipes, must be content with the coarsest food, and has not
even the right to touch what her son leaves.[548]
China is a country of very ancient civilisation, where the laws and
rites have regulated everything, and consequently there exists a whole
legislation with regard to marriage.
To begin with, conjugal union is forbidden between persons having the
same family name,[549] and I shall have to return to this circumstance.
As in ancient Rome, the law prohibits marriage between slaves and free
persons.[550] It absolutely forbids marriage to the priests of _Fo_,
and to those of the _tao_ sect.[551] It orders public functionaries
not to contract marriage with actresses, comedians, or musicians.[552]
It seems that in ancient times, in China as in Greco-Latin antiquity,
the father had the excessive right to unmarry his daughter, for to
remedy this abuse the Chinese law pronounces the punishment of a
hundred strokes of bamboo on the father-in-law who should send away
his son-in-law in order to re-marry his daughter to another.[553] The
Chinese widow, no longer belonging to her original family, but to the
family of her husband, can be re-married by the latter.[554] Moreover,
the contract of betrothal concluded between the parents having a legal
value, the family of the betrothed man who dies before the conclusion
of the marriage has the right to marry the bereaved _fiancée_, or false
widow,[555] who, by-the-bye, is much honoured when she has the courage
to devote herself to a celibate life.[556]
We have seen that Chinese women are excluded from inheritance; they
have a right, however, in marrying, to a small dowry, either in money
or furniture, but the value of it is optional. It must be at least
a chest of drawers or a small _trousseau_, which the bridegroom is
obliged to supply if the parents fail to do so. Moreover, he must
also give the nuptial bed.[557] Primitive and even cruel as are the
conditions and rules of Chinese marriage, the Chinese women submit to
them not only without murmuring, but with a sort of devotion, broken
in as they are by a long ancestral education. And besides, for the
Chinese in general, it is a strict duty to marry, from a triple point
of view--social, political, and religious. Everybody marries in the
Celestial Empire, and the number of male celibates over twenty-four
years of age is quite insignificant. If a suitable opportunity of
marriage does not present itself, the parents, who are sovereign
arbiters in this matter, do not hesitate to go to an orphanage to seek
a son or daughter-in-law.[558]
In Japan, during the feudal age, the end of which we are now
witnessing, marriage was nearly identical with Chinese marriage, and
there would be nothing to say about it in particular, if during the
last few years the fever of reformation, with which Japan is carried
away, had not happily modified marriage, at least in practice, by
giving the young girl a voice in the matter,[559] and by awakening in
some Japanese consciences doubts on the subject of the prostitution
of young girls. At the present moment, everything in Japan is being
Europeanised, and the adaptation of our Civil Code to the old Japanese
customs is only a question of time.
VI. _Monogamy and Civilisation._
The foregoing facts are sufficiently numerous to enable us to deduce
certain conclusions from them. These facts, taken as they are from
nearly all the non-Aryan races, prove in the first place that the
monogamic _régime_ is in no way the appanage of the superior races,
for among the lowest of human races some are monogamic. In regard to
marriage, we find that primordial conditions impose the various forms
of sexual union, quite independently of the caprice of individuals, or
of the degree of culture and social development.
In attempting to estimate the moral worth of a people, a race, or a
civilisation, we are much more enlightened by the position given to
woman than by the legal type of the conjugal union. This type, besides,
is usually more apparent than real. In many civilisations, both dead
and living, legal monogamy has for its chief object the regulation
of succession and the division of property. With much _naïveté_ and
effrontery, many legislators have sanctioned polygamy in reality by
recognising the domestic concubinate by the side of legal monogamy. As
for the position of the wife who is reputed to be specially legitimate,
it is often much inferior to that enjoyed by the woman who lives under
other conjugal _régimes_ which are theoretically less elevated. In the
greater number of countries more or less monogamic, which I have just
passed in review, woman, whether married or not, has been subjected to
extreme subordination. In an exceptional case she acquires a certain
independence, where, thanks to maternal inheritance, she can become
possessed of personal or real estate. It is to money alone, and not to
the moralising influence of monogamy, that woman in barbarous countries
owes the power of attaining a certain independence, for the two peoples
who have granted it to her, the Egyptians in antiquity and the Touaregs
of our own day, lived or live under a legislation which authorises
polygamy. It is important also to notice that in the valley of the
Nile, and in the Sahara, feminine emancipation is only the privilege of
those women who belong to the ruling and propertied classes.
Upon the whole, in every country and in every time, woman, organically
weaker than man, has been more or less enslaved by him, unless in the
case where legislation has allowed her to use an artificial force to
serve her as a shield. This fictitious force, before which virile
brutality has lowered its flag, has been money, wherever the laws
regulating succession have permitted women to raise themselves to the
dignity of proprietors.
A similar lesson will be given us by the study of the monogamic
_régime_ among the white races of Asia and of Europe. There also
we shall see riches serve woman as a defensive, and sometimes even
offensive weapon, against the severity of laws and customs.
FOOTNOTES:
[499] Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 301.
[500] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. pp. 301, 302.
[501] _Das Mutterrecht._
[502] _Das Mutterrecht._
[503] Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 299.
[504] Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_.
[505] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 41.
[506] _Id., ibid._ p. 132.
[507] _Id., ibid._ p. 28.
[508] Doménech, _Voyage Pittoresque dans les Déserts du Nouveau Monde_,
p. 510.
[509] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. ii. p. 661.
[510] Mollien, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xlii. p. 416.
[511] Fr. Müller, _Allgem. Ethnogr._, etc., p. 263.
[512] _Id., ibid._ p. 263.
[513] W. Prescott, _Hist. of the Conq. of Peru_, vol. i. p.
121.--Garcilaso de la Vega, _Com. de los Incas_, pp. 25, 113, 218.
[514] _Id., ibid._
[515] Herodotus, bk. ii. p. 35.
[516] _Id._, bk. ii. p. 42.
[517] Diodorus, bk. i. p. 27.
[518] Révillout, _Revue égyptienne_, 1880.
[519] _Id., ibid._
[520] _Id., ibid._
[521] _Id., ibid._
[522] Duveyrier, _Toûareg du Nord_, 337.
[523] _Id., ibid._
[524] Duveyrier, _Toûareg du Nord_, p. 387.
[525] _Id., ibid._ p. 430.
[526] _Id., loc. cit._ p. 362.
[527] _Id., ibid._ pp. 345, 347.
[528] _Id., loc. cit._ p. 429.
[529] Bruce, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxiii. p. 358.
[530] Bruce, _Travels_, etc., vol. iv. p. 487.--A. d’Abbadie, _Douze
ans dans la haute Éthiopie_, t. I^{er.} pp. 100, 128.
[531] Bruce, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxiii. p. 365.
[532] Bruce, _loc. cit._, t. xxiii. p. 255.
[533] Turner, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 437.
[534] _Id., ibid._ t. xxxi. pp. 437, 454.
[535] _Id., ibid._ p. 435.
[536] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xv. p. 200.
[537] Préjévalsky, _Mongolia_, t. I^{er.} p. 69.--Huc, _Tartarie_, t.
I^{er.} p. 301.
[538] _Id., ibid._ t. I^{er.} p. 71.
[539] Huc, _L’Empire chinois_, t. ii. p. 258.--Sinibaldo de Mas, _Chine
et puissances Chrétiennes_, t. I^{er.} p. 51.
[540] Duhaut Cily, _Voyage autour du monde_, t. ii. p. 369.
[541] Milne, _Real Life in China_, p. 159.
[542] _Id., ibid._ p. 159.
[543] Huc, _Empire chinois_, t. ii. p. 255.
[544] Milne, _loc. cit._ p. 151.
[545] Huc, _loc. cit._ p. 255.
[546] G. E. Simon, _La famille chinoise_, _Nouvelle Revue_, 1883.
[547] Milne, _loc. cit._ p. 154.
[548] Huc, _Empire chinois_, t. I^{er.} p. 268.
[549] Pauthier, _Chine Moderne_, p. 238.
[550] _Id., ibid._ p. 238.
[551] _Id., ibid._
[552] _Id., ibid._
[553] _Id., ibid._ p. 288.
[554] E. Simon, _Famille Chinoise_, _Nouvelle Revue_, 1883.
[555] _Id., ibid._
[556] Milne, _loc. cit._ p. 153.
[557] E. Simon, _loc. cit._
[558] _Id., ibid._
[559] Masana Maeda, _La Société japonaise_, in _Revue Scientifique_,
1878.
CHAPTER XII.
HEBREW AND ARYAN MONOGAMY.
I. _Monogamy of the Races called Superior._--The monogamic ideal and
the monogamic reality.
II. _Hebrew Marriage._--Monogamy and concubinage--Position of
the wife--The virtuous woman of the Book of Proverbs--Obligatory
virginity--The levirate.
III. _Marriage in Persia and Ancient India._--Marriage in the
Avesta--Marriage in India--General monogamy--Extreme subjection of
the wife--Purchase of the wife--Matrimonial prohibitions--The ideal
spouse--Marriage in modern India.
IV. _Marriage in Ancient Greece._--Wives and concubines--Low position
of the wife--Marriage in Sparta--Celibacy chastised--The young Greek
girl assimilated to a thing--Dowry--The wife emancipated by money.
V. _Marriage in Ancient Rome._--Marriages of children--Relative
liberty of the Roman woman--The _Patria potestas_--The _Manus_--Three
kinds of marriage--The rights of the husband--The case of Cato the
Elder--The _jus connubii_--The dowry and its effects.
VI. _Barbarous Marriage and Christian Marriage._--Marriage among the
Germans in the Middle Ages, among the Saxons of England--Marriage
according to Christianity.
I. _Monogamy of the Races called Superior._
After a long journey of exploration through the inferior forms of the
sexual union amongst mankind, we have in the preceding chapter begun
the study of monogamy, which all the superior races have more or less
adopted in their legislation.
It is impossible to deny that monogamy is theoretically nobler than
the other matrimonial forms. Nothing can be more beautiful than
the union of two intelligent and refined beings freely associating
their lives after ripe reflection “for better, for worse,” as the
marriage service of England has it. But the reality is often very
different from this poetic ideal. Even amongst the most highly
civilised peoples, this spontaneous, disinterested, devoted union,
based on moral and intellectual sympathies, is very rare; it does not
exist in civilisations still partly barbarous, whose monogamy easily
accommodates itself to the subjection of women, however extreme. We
shall see that it is so, in studying this matrimonial type amongst
the Hebrews at first, and afterwards amongst the Aryan races, that is
to say, amongst the human types which are reputed _par excellence_
Superior.
II. _Hebrew Marriage._
The Hebrews seem to have been alone among the Semites in adopting
monogamy, at least in general practice. Moreover, the Bible tells us
that concubinage was not forbidden to God’s chosen people. In speaking
of the daughter sold by her father to a rich man, the book of Exodus
used language sufficiently explicit on this point--“If she please not
her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her
be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power.
And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after
the manner of daughters. But if he take to him another wife, her food,
her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.”[560] The
book of Genesis indeed tells us that “a man shall leave his father and
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they twain shall be one
flesh;”[561] but this famous verse seems to indicate the violence of
the love rather than monogamic and indissoluble marriage.
Doubtless the subjection of the Jewish woman was not extreme, as it is
in Kabyle; it was, however, very great. Her consent to marriage was
necessary, it is true, when she had reached majority, but she was all
the same sold to her husband. We must note, nevertheless, that she had
a recognised right of ownership, and that the property of the husband
was security for that of the wife and for her dowry; but the husband
none the less held the wife in strict dependence. The song of the
virtuous woman at the end of Proverbs is generally quoted as a sublime
portrait of the Jewish wife by all those who are still hypnotised by
the prestige of the so-called holy books. However, in reading these
celebrated verses with an unprejudiced mind, we hardly find more
than the portrait of a laborious servant, busy and grasping--“She
seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.... She
riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a
portion to her maidens. She considereth a field, and buyeth it; with
the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins
with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.... Her candle goeth not
out by night.... She eateth not the bread of idleness.” We shall see
later that the wife, though she might gain much money, which seems to
have been the ideal of the Hebrew husband 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. Let us listen to the sacred book--“If any man take a wife, and
go in unto her, and hate her ...” and seeking a pretext to repudiate
her, he imputes to her a shameful crime, saying, “I took this woman,
and when I came to her, I found her not a maid ... her father and
mother shall take her and shall represent to the elders of the city
in the gate the tokens of the damsel’s virginity.” Of what kind were
these proofs? The following verses tell us, “They shall spread the
cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall
take that man and chastise him, and they shall amerce him in an hundred
shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel.... But
if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for
the damsel, then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her
father’s house, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones
that she die; because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the
whore in her father’s house; so shalt thou put evil away from among
you.”[562] If we add to the preceding, that by the law of levirate,
the childless widow, whether she wished or not, was awarded to her
brother-in-law, we shall be enlightened as to the unenviable position
of the married woman under the Hebrew law.
III. _Marriage in Persia and Ancient India._
Of the conjugal customs of the ancient Persians we know little. The
only formal prescription that we find in the Avesta is a strict
prohibition against marrying an infidel. The Mazdean who commits such
a crime troubles the whole universe: “he changes to mud a third of the
rivers that rush down the mountain sides; he withers a third of the
growth of trees and of herbs which cover the earth; he takes from pure
men a third of their good thoughts, of their good words, of their good
actions; he is more noxious than serpents and wolves.”[563]
On Indian marriage we are better informed, at first by the Code
of Manu, and then by modern travellers. India has early practised
mitigated monogamy. Polygamy and concubinage were the privilege of the
Brahmins and rich Kchatriyas; but the mass of the nation generally
lived in monogamy, though nevertheless imposing on the married woman
a most humiliating position. Manu proclaims aloud the necessary
dependence and incurable inferiority of the weaker sex: “If women
were not guarded, they would bring misfortune to two families.” “Manu
has bestowed on women the love of their bed, of their seat, and of
adornment, concupiscence, anger, bad inclinations, the desire to do
evil, perversity.”[564] “A little girl, a young woman, and an old
woman ought never to do anything of their own will, even in their own
house.” “During her childhood a woman depends on her father; during
her youth, on her husband; her husband being dead, on her sons; if she
has no sons, on the near relatives of her husband; or in default of
them, on those of her father; if she has no paternal relatives, on the
sovereign. A woman ought never to have her own way.”[565]
Given such an utter subordination of woman, it is self-evident that
there would be no question of her choosing a husband. It is the
father’s duty to marry his daughter; and he need not wait till she
has reached puberty: “A father must give his daughter in marriage to
a young man of agreeable appearance, and of the same rank, according
to the law, although she may not have attained the age of eight years,
at which he ought to marry her.”[566] However, if the father neglects
the prime duty of marrying his daughter, the law ordains that the
latter shall proceed to do it. Marriage is a sacred duty: “Let a girl,
although adult, wait three years; but after that period, let her choose
a husband of the same rank as herself.”[567] The girl is then free, and
her husband in marrying her owes no payment to the father: “The father
has lost all authority over his daughter in delaying for her the time
of becoming a mother.”[568] Girls cannot be married too soon; at eight
years old they are given a husband of twenty-eight; at twelve years, a
man of thirty.[569] Some verses, in contradiction to that which I have
just now quoted, forbid the father from receiving any gratuity whatever
in marrying his daughter, not even a cow or a bull: “All gratuity,
small or large, constitutes a sale.”[570] But the prohibition to sell
his daughter, though still very little observed, is evidently of
posterior date; and in India, as in all other countries, the daughter
has been esteemed at first as merchandise. The law imposes at times
very curious restrictions on a man who is intending to marry. He must
not take a girl with red hair, or bearing the name of a constellation,
of a river, a bird, or a serpent.[571] He must not, under pain of hell,
marry before his elder brother.[572] Above all, he must not marry below
his rank. To marry a woman belonging to the servile class is, for the
Brahmin or the Kchatriya, an enormous crime, which lowers him to the
rank of the Soudras.[573] It is an unpardonable sin: “For him who
drinks the foam of the lips of a Soudra, or who has a child by her,
there is no expiation declared by the law.”[574] He descends to the
infernal abode, and his son loses caste. As for the son of a Brahmanic
woman and a Soudra, he is a Tchandala, the vilest of mortals.[575] The
young Brahmin, after having received the authorisation of his spiritual
director, and having purified himself by a bath, must marry a woman of
his own class, who is well made, who has a fine down over her body,
fine hair, small teeth, limbs of a charming sweetness, and the graceful
movement of a swan or a young elephant.[576] But, however the wife may
be chosen, she is held in a state of servile submission. “A wife,” says
the Code, “can never be set free from the authority of her husband;
neither by sale nor by desertion.” “Once only a young girl is given in
marriage; once only the father says, I give her.”[577]
Taken as a whole, these antique precepts are still observed in India.
In general, monogamy prevails, but the married woman is none the less
kept in a state of abject subjection. It is shameful, says Somerset,
for a virtuous woman to know how to read and dance; these futile
accomplishments are left to the bayadere. “Servant, slave,” are the
habitual appellations used by the husband in addressing his wife,
who replies by saying “Master, lord,” who must take care not to call
her husband by his name,[578] and has not the right to sit at his
table.[579] It is the parents who negotiate the marriage, without any
regard to the tastes of the future husband and wife, and thinking only
of rank and fortune.[580] A daughter is always married, or rather sold,
in infancy, often to a sexagenarian Brahmin, and before she is of age
to manifest any preference.[581]
These accounts, which are as authentic as possible, enable us to
estimate the Hindoo marriage. However monogamic it may generally be,
it is very inferior from a moral point of view. The tyrannical right
left to the husband, his unlimited power, the servitude of the wife,
yielded or negotiated in infancy, the pride of caste and the care for
wealth outweighing all other considerations, proclaim loudly enough
that matrimonial legislation in India has been the regulation, for the
man’s profit only, of instincts of a very low order.
IV. _Marriage in Ancient Greece._
In primitive Greece the position of woman was little better. On one
hand, the _Iliad_ tells us that the epithet “woman” thrown at a man
was the most contemptuous insult;[582] on the other hand, we have seen
that the girl was purchased by the husband, either by presents or by
services rendered to the father;[583] in short, that the husband might
have domestic concubines with the sole reservation that their children
did not inherit from him.[584] In the first chant of the _Odyssey_ the
severe apostrophe of Telemachus to his mother proves also that in the
absence of the husband the wife was humbly submissive to her sons. “Go
to thy chamber; attend to thy work; turn the spinning wheel; weave the
linen; see that thy servants do their tasks. Speech belongs to men,
and especially to me, who am the master here.”[585] Penelope, like a
well-trained woman, meekly allows herself to be silenced and obeys,
“bearing in her mind the sage discourse of her son.”
In later times the virtuous woman was shut up in the gyneceum, where
she could only receive her parents or the friends authorised by her
husband.[586] She was not even admitted to festivities. But, while
the wife was semi-cloistered in the conjugal house, the husband could
at will frequent and court the hetaïræ (ἑταίραι), and the strangers
(ξέναι) with whom the citizens of Athens had not the _jus connubii_,
and who were not admitted like the well-born or native Athenian woman
(ελευθέρα) to the thesmophors.[587]
It is evident that at Athens primitive marriage was regulated by the
man with very little heed to the tastes or preferences of the woman.
At Sparta it was the sentiment of strict and zealous patriotism
which inspired Lycurgus in all his regulations regarding marriage.
The obligation of marriage was legal, like the military service. The
young men were attracted to it by making them assist at the gymnastic
exercises of naked young girls. “This was an incentive to marriage,
and, to use Plato’s expression, drew them almost as necessarily by
the attraction of love as a geometrical conclusion is drawn from the
premises.”[588] In the supreme interest of population, love was forced
on young men, but it was for the sake of fertility. The young married
couple were not allowed to meet except in secret until the first
pregnancy.[589] It was praiseworthy for an old husband to lend his
young wife to a handsome young man, by whom she might have a child.
In our own day it is not very rare, particularly in France, to see poor
young men marry rich old women. Solon did not permit this conjugal
prostitution of man at Athens. “A censor,” says Plutarch, “finding
a young man in the house of a rich old woman, fattening as they say
a partridge fattens by his services to the female, would remove him
to some young girl who wanted a husband.”[590] At Sparta Lycurgus
went as far as to put hardened celibates under the ban of society. In
the first place, they were not permitted to see these exercises of
the naked virgins; and the magistrates commanded them to march naked
round the market-place in winter, and to sing a song composed against
themselves.... They were also deprived of that honour and respect which
the young pay to the old.[591]
The young Greek girl could not dispose of her person any more than
the Chinese or Hindoo woman could. She was married by her father; in
default of her father, by her brother of the same blood; in default of
a brother, by a paternal grandfather.[592] The right of brothers who
were heirs to their father to marry their sister was not even exhausted
by a first marriage.[593] The father of the family had the power either
to marry his daughter during his lifetime, or to bequeath her by will,
as well as her mother, who was assimilated, like her, to chattels or
property. “Demosthenes, my father, bequeathed his fortune, which was
fourteen talents, myself, aged seven years, my sister, aged five years,
and our mother. At the moment of dying, when asked what he would have
done with us, he bequeathed _all these things_ to this Aphobus and to
Demophontes, his nephews; he married my sister to Demophontes, and gave
at once two talents.”[594] “In the same way,” says Demosthenes again,
“Pasion dying, bequeathed his wife to Phormion.”[595] It might happen
that the daughter or the wife were by law one body with the estate.
Thus a daughter, in default of male heirs, belonged to the relation who
would have inherited in her stead and place, if she had not lived.
If there were several relatives in the same degree of succession,
the daughter was to marry the eldest of them. Further still, she was
obliged in this case to quit her husband, if previously, and even with
paternal authorisation, she had contracted marriage.[596] In Greece, to
safeguard or conquer her independence, a woman had no other resources
than the seduction of her sex and the love she could inspire. She
had early recourse to these defensive weapons, for Aristotle thinks
it his duty to put young men on guard against the excess of conjugal
tenderness and feminine tyranny, the habit which enchains the man to
his wife.[597] At length in Greece, as it had happened in Egypt, money
finished by protecting the woman much more efficaciously, and even by
giving her sometimes the advantage on the conjugal field of battle.
Solon, who knew Egypt, began by decreeing the absolute poverty of
the married woman. “The bride was to bring with her only three suits
of clothes, and some household stuff of small value, for he wished
marriages to be made without mercenary or venal views, and would have
that union cemented by love and friendship, and not by money.”[598] But
this primitive legislation could not stand against the combined action
of the affection of the girl’s parents, her own desire of independence,
and lastly, the cupidity of the husband, and thus the practice of
the dowry became general. This dowry was constituted before marriage
by a public act.[599] Securities and bonds were given to assure the
dowry and the conditions of marriage. The dowry was mortgaged on the
husband’s property, and returned to the wife on the dissolution of the
marriage. When the woman could shelter herself behind the shield of the
dowry she was much more respected, and she even sometimes tyrannised in
her turn. Aristophanes, Menander, Lucian, etc., pour out endless bitter
criticisms on the haughty and extravagant rich woman.
In the comedy of _The Clouds_ the good Strepsiades cries: “I led so
happily in the country a good simple life, without vexation or care,
rich in bees, in sheep, and in olives! Then I married the niece of
Megacles, son of Megacles. I was of the country, she of the town; she
was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true Cesyra. The wedding day,
when I lay down by her, I smelt the wine, the cheese, and the wool;
she cares for perfumes, saffron, tender kisses, expense, good cheer,
and wanton transports. I will not say that she was idle--no--she
worked hard at ruining me.” According to Menander, religion served
as an excuse to women for enormous expenses. Under the pretext of
piety they ruined their husbands by religious sacrifices accompanied
with perfumes, with golden clasps for the sandals, and female slaves
ceremoniously ranged in a circle.[600]
One poor hen-pecked husband groans in these terms: “Cursed be the first
man who invented marriage, and then the second, and the third, and the
fourth, and all those who imitated them.” One old husband laments: “I
have married a witch with a dowry. I took her, to have her fields and
house, and that, O Apollo, is the worst of evils.”[601] Listen again to
this one: “If being poor, you marry a rich woman, you give yourself a
mistress and not a wife; you reduce yourself to be at the same time a
slave and poor”--(Anaxandrides).[602]
To sum up, in ancient Greece marriage implied at first the complete
slavery of the wife, who was treated as a thing; then by degrees
conjugal customs were mitigated, and the wife became a person, and
even a proprietor, whom her dowry or personal fortune could protect.
Thenceforward money produced its usual effect on inferior characters:
it debased or infatuated individuals who were without moral nobility;
cupidity blinded certain men; the insolence of money intoxicated
certain women. But this only occurred among the ruling classes, and the
fate of husbands reduced to conjugal servitude by love of a large dowry
does not concern us here.
The important feature in Greek marriage is, that the first legislators
regarded it solely from the point of view of increase of population,
and held individual liberty, especially that of the woman, very
cheaply. Whatever we may think of this legal tyranny, it attained
its end perfectly. The small republics of ancient Greece overflowed
with men; thus Attica had four thousand one hundred and sixty-six
inhabitants to the square league--that is to say, the population was
three times more dense than that of France at present.
V. _Marriage in Ancient Rome._
In its general features Roman marriage does not greatly differ from
Greek, but its evolution has been more complete, and the legislation on
the subject is better known to us. Marriages of children, especially
of little girls, were the rule at Rome, since the nuptial majority of
girls was fixed at twelve years. But they were often betrothed, and
even married, before that age. Vipsania Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa
and of Pomponia, was promised to Tiberius from her first year.[603] The
_Digest_ authorised betrothal at the age of seven.[604]
In betrothing his daughter the father contracted a civil obligation,
sanctioned at first by an action for damages, and later by infamy.
Every woman of twenty, if she was neither married nor a mother,
incurred the punishment decreed by Augustus against celibacy and
childlessness.[605] We are indeed told in Roman legislation that the
consent of the girl was necessary before passing finally to betrothal
and marriage. But it is evident that the consent of a child of twelve
years, or even less, was illusory; in reality, the young Roman girl was
married by her parents.[606] The young wife was still such a child,
that on the day of her wedding she took a ceremonious leave of her
playthings and dolls, offering them up to the gods. In reality, it was
not the wife who made the engagement, but the persons in whose power
she found herself.[607]
Nevertheless, Roman customs conceded to women a certain liberty of
manners which the Greeks would not have tolerated. The Roman woman
walked in the streets, went to the theatre with the men, shared in
banquets, etc.; yet she was, especially in primitive Rome, subjected
first to her father and then to her husband. And, besides, public
opinion obliged the woman to use in great moderation the practical
liberty that was left to her. The famous epitaph of the Roman
matron--_domum mansit; lanam fecit_--is well known. This epitaph may
perhaps exaggerate, but it does not lie. Thus Suetonius tells us that
the daughters and grand-daughters of Augustus were compelled to weave
and spin, and that the Emperor usually wore no other garments but those
made by the hands of his wife and sister.[608]
Legally, the Roman wife was the property of her husband, who treated
her, not as his equal, but as his child. At Rome, also, conjugal union
had been looked at chiefly from the point of view of procreation
(_Liberorum quærendorum causâ_). The wife who was the mother of three
children acquired a certain independence; she could make a will even
during the lifetime of her husband, and did not need to have recourse
to a trustee.[609] But the subjection of woman was very great. The
father, invested with the _potestas_, could sell his child to a third
party, _in mancipium_. The _mancipium_, which was almost a right of
propriety, passed afterwards to the heirs of the owner.
We have seen that the _pater familias_ had the right to marry his
daughter without consulting her, but he enjoyed a right more excessive
still, that of re-marrying her when his son-in-law had been absent
for three years.[610] It was Antoninus only who thought of depriving
the father of his right to annul the marriage of his daughter. To the
_potestas_ of the father succeeded the _manus_ of the husband. The
woman _in manu_ was considered legally as the daughter of her husband,
and therefore as the sister of her children. If the husband was himself
the son of a family, the wife _in manu_ was held as grand-daughter
of the father of the family. This entailed for her the extinction of
paternal power (on her own side), and of guardianship and the rights
of relationship with the male members of her father’s family. In the
marriage with _manus_ the husband became the proprietor of all the
dowry of his wife. The father, however, could stipulate that the dowry
should be returned to him if his daughter died without children or was
repudiated. The _leges Julia_ and _Papia_ had, in fact, imposed on the
father the obligation of giving a dowry to his daughter; but the dowry
could be appointed by third parties or by the woman herself, if she
was _sui juris_, and then also she had the right to stipulate for some
reservations.
This terrible right of _manus_ was acquired by the husband with every
form of marriage, even the grossest of all, the _usus_, or simple
cohabitation during one year; but the wife could avoid the _conventio
in manum_ by passing three nights in the year out of the conjugal
domicile. The _manus_ invested the husband with a large right of
correction over his wife, though in very grave cases he was to assemble
the family tribunal, which included the children of cousins-german.
These family tribunals took cognisance even of murder committed by
the wife, and they were still in use under the emperors.[611] On the
other hand, the Roman husbands did not let their legal right of beating
their wives fall into desuetude, for Saint Monica consoled the wives
of her acquaintance whose faces showed marks of marital brutality,
by saying to them: “Take care to control your tongues.... It is the
duty of servants to obey their masters.... You have made a contract of
servitude.”[612]
There were at Rome three kinds of marriages, which I have already
named--1st, The _usus_, resulting from a simple continuous
cohabitation, without contract or ceremony, a sort of Tahitian
marriage; 2nd, the _coemptio_ or purchase, of which I have spoken at
length--that is to say, the legal regulation of the primitive marriage
by purchase, in use all over the world at the origin of civilisations.
Coemption, without any palliatives, delivered the wife’s body and goods
to her husband; 3rd, the _confarreatio_, or aristocratic marriage,
in which the high Pontiff of Jupiter gave, in the presence of ten
witnesses, a cake made of flour, water, and salt to the bride and
bridegroom, who ate it between them. The _manus_ was conferred on the
husband in the marriage by confarreation, the same as in the marriage
by _usus_ and _coemptio_. We must note that at Rome, as in Greece, the
religious ceremony was in no way essential to the marriage, which was a
laic and civil institution in the first place.[613]
These three forms of marriage very probably represent the evolution of
the conjugal union in ancient Rome. The _usus_, or free cohabitation,
must have been the commencement; then came the purchase of the wife,
the _coemptio_, and at length the solemn marriage or _confarreatio_
of the patricians. But marriage with the husband’s right of _manus_
subsisted for a long time, and it conferred on him all the customary
licence of savages of every country, notably that of lending the wife,
and this exorbitant right endured till the best days of Rome, since the
virtuous Cato of Utica used it still in lending his wife Martia to his
friend Hortensius.
This fact is curious, and deserves attention. Hortensius began by
asking for the loan of Cato’s daughter, Portia, already married to
Bibulus, and the mother of two children. It was, says Plutarch, with
the object of selection, that he might have a child of good race; he
promised to return her afterwards to her husband. On the refusal of
Cato, Hortensius fell back on Martia, Cato’s own wife, who was at the
time _enceinte_. Cato was not at all shocked at the proposition,
but referred it, however, to Philip, his father-in-law, who also
saw no harm in it. A contract was therefore concluded between Cato,
Hortensius, and Philip; and Martia, whom no one thought of consulting,
was yielded to Hortensius, and afterwards taken back, at the death of
the latter, by Cato. She was then the heir of Hortensius, and Cato had
not the least scruple in receiving her back with her money at the same
time.[614]
To any one not versed in ethnographical sociology these customs seem
improbable. Doubt has been cast on this story of Hortensius and Cato,
though it is attested by the _Anti-Cato_ of Julius Cæsar, on which
Plutarch relies; but it has nothing extraordinary for us. We know that
at first woman was everywhere the absolute property of the man. The
_manus_ of the Roman husband was in the main only an attenuated form
of primitive conjugal right, which we know included the power to lend,
barter, or cede the wife without consulting her. The case of Cato is
then only a survival of preceding ages.
Necessarily brief and incomplete as the _résumé_ must be that I can
here give of conjugal legislation at Rome, it will suffice, I hope, to
give a clear idea of what Roman marriage was. I should add that the
law, inspired by the old patriotic spirit and the prejudices of caste,
limited the right of marriage, the _jus connubii_. The _justes noces_
were at first an aristocratic privilege. The plebeians coupled _more
ferarum_. At length the _jus connubii_ extended to marriages between
Latin and Roman, Latin and Latin, and even foreigner and foreigner.
The child followed the condition of the mother, which seems to be a
survival of the ancient maternal family. Another vestige of the same
kind is found in the legal position of _spurii_--that is to say, of
children born of a marriage which is either prohibited or incestuous or
bigamous. These children, irregularly conceived, have a mother, but no
legal father; they do not come under the paternal power of the father,
like the child of lawful marriage, and cannot be legitimated.[615]
The study of the transformations that Roman marriage underwent from
the time of Numa to that of the emperors is most interesting; for we
can follow a complete evolution in regard to it which has never been
so complete in any other country. At first we find conjugal anarchy,
the capricious union or _usus_, which could be, and which was in fact,
often polygamous, as the ulterior persistence of the concubinate
proves; then the marriage by capture, of which the trace remained in
the marriage ceremony; then the marriage by purchase, the coemptio,
with its ordinary consequence, the servitude of the wife, which even
the solemn marriage or confarreation did not abolish. At length this
brutal law of the primitive ages relaxes. The law which holds the
woman under paternal power (_patria potestas_) is turned round. The
father himself gives his daughter _in mancipium_ to a third party, who
afterwards enfranchises her. Sometimes it is the _patria potestas_
which is a check to the _manus_ of the husband. The wife, in marrying,
without being subject to the _manus_, remains subject to her father,
who can even claim her again.
But the institution of the dowry as obligatory and inalienable by
the husband, the power of the woman to marry while remaining in the
paternal family, to have her paraphernalia, to inherit property of
her father, to control both of these, and also the great facility
of divorce, ended by rendering the Roman, or at least the patrician
matron, almost independent. Under the empire Roman marriage had become
in fact a sort of free union, in which money considerations played the
predominant part. Plautus already speaks of the dotal-slave, a creature
of the wife’s, managing her property and ruling the husband--
“_Argentum accepi, dote imperium vendidi._”[616]
Horace mentions the wife ruling by means of her dowry--“_dotata regit
virum conjux_” (_Od._ iii. 18). Martial declares that he wishes no
rich marriage; it does not suit him, he says, to be married by his
wife--“_uxori nubere nolo meae_” (_Epig._ viii. 12). From Seneca to
Saint Jerome, who both speak of it, the dotal-slave is advantageously
replaced by the frizzed steward (_Procurator calamistratus_) managing
the affairs of my lady.[617] They went further still, and as it
happens in Russia at the present day, they concluded fictitious
marriages; but at Rome, these false marriages, contracted for ready
money, had no other object than to elude the laws against celibacy.[618]
VI. _Barbarous Marriage and Christian Marriage._
In order to avoid being too incomplete in this rapid survey of marriage
among all races, I will say a few words on barbarous marriage outside
the Greco-Roman world.
The barbarians of ancient Europe, more or less monogamous, have
differed little from any others. Their marriage resembles that of their
fellows of all races and all times; that which chiefly characterises it
is the subjection of woman.
Barbarous women, says Plutarch, neither ate nor drank with their
husbands, and never called them by their name.[619] Among the
Germans, who were more often monogamous, as Tacitus says,[620] the
wife was purchased; then the purchase-money was transformed into a
dower accorded to the bride under the name of _morgengabe_ or oscle
(_osculum_), the price of the first kiss.
German betrothals, which could only be annulled for a serious reason,
strongly resembled Latin ones--that is, they were a sale of the girl in
anticipation by her legal owners. It was necessary for the girl to have
the consent of her father, or her nearest relative, for her marriage.
As widow, having been purchased, she belonged to the relatives of her
dead husband, and could not marry again without their leave.[621] The
feudalism of the Middle Ages was careful not to emancipate the woman,
and she remained a minor, or even less, since the Code of Beaumanoir
says (titre lvii.)--“Every husband can beat his wife when she will
not obey his commands, or when she curses him or contradicts him,
provided that he does it moderately, and that death does not follow in
consequence.” Among the Saxons, the Burgundians, and the Germans in
general, the widow was subjected to the rule of her eldest son as soon
as he had attained the age of fifteen.
In the Middle Ages the woman surprised in committing adultery might
be executed by her husband, who even had the right to call in the aid
of her son.[622] In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, among the
Saxons in England, an advance that was quite exceptional took place.
The young girl could marry herself, was not repudiable at will, had
her own property and her keys, and the penal law of her husband ceased
to weigh upon her.[623] This progress was quite local, and operated
spontaneously, quite independently of Christian influence. In fact,
Christianity has only emancipated women spiritually, and its real
influence on marriage has been injurious. Doubtless the Christian wife
might hope to become a seraph in the next world, but in this she was
only a servant or a slave. In Greco-Roman antiquity marriage had been
considered, as it ought to be, a civil institution. Legislation, more
or less sensible and intelligent, regarded it simply from the point of
view of population.
Christianity, which taught that the earthly country was of no account,
and taxed with impurity all that related to sexual union, made marriage
a sacrament, and consequently an institution quite apart from humble
considerations of social utility. All sexual union outside marriage
was reputed criminal; the ideal preached to women was the mystic
marriage with God. The pious Constantine increased all the penalties
against sexual crimes. Adultery became again a capital offence; the
woman guilty of marrying a slave was condemned to death;[624] marriage
was declared indissoluble; second marriages were blameworthy. At the
same time the fathers of the Church and the preachers did not cease
to utter their thunders against woman, disparaging her, and abusing
her as an impure creature, almost devilish. This encouraged the severe
legislation of the barbarians in conjugal matters. I have previously
mentioned some traits of these brutal laws. I shall return to them in
speaking of questions connected with marriage, which remain still to
be treated of--adultery, divorce, and widowhood. We shall then see how
hurtful the influence of Christianity has been on marriage, and we
shall come to the conclusion that in order to manage earthly affairs
well, it is not good to keep our looks constantly raised to the skies.
FOOTNOTES:
[560] Exodus, xxi. 8-10.
[561] Genesis, ii. 24.
[562] Deut., ch. xxii., ver. 13-21.
[563] Hovelacque, _L’Avesta_, p. 396.
[564] _Code of Manu_, book ix. pp. 5-17.
[565] _Code of Manu_, v. pp. 147, 148.
[566] _Ibid._
[567] _Ibid._ ix. p. 90.
[568] _Ibid._ p. 93.
[569] _Ibid._ p. 94.
[570] _Ibid._ iii. pp. 51, 53.
[571] _Ibid._ book iii.
[572] _Ibid._ book iii. pp. 171, 172.
[573] _Ibid._ pp. 14, 15.
[574] _Code of Manu_, book iii. p. 19.
[575] _Ibid._ p. 17.
[576] _Ibid._ pp. 4-10.
[577] _Ibid._ ix. pp. 46, 47.
[578] Somerset, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 352.
[579] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 341.
[580] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 350.
[581] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 350.--_Lettres édifiantes_, t. x. p. 23.
[582] _Iliad_, ii., vii., viii.
[583] Goguet, _Orig. des Lois_, t. ii. p. 60.
[584] _Odyssey_, xiv.
[585] _Ibid._ i.
[586] Cavallotti, _La Sposa di Menecle_ (notes), p. 246.
[587] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 239.
[588] Lycurgus, xxvi.
[589] Plutarch, _Apophthegms of the Lacedemonians_.--_Demandes
Romaines_, lxv.
[590] Solon, xxxviii.
[591] Lycurgus, xxxvii.
[592] Demosthenes, cf. Step. ii.; in Cavallotti, _loc. cit._
[593] Isaeus, _Heritage of Menecles_, §§ 5-9.
[594] Demosthenes, _Against Aphobus_.
[595] _Id._, _For Phormion_.
[596] Isaeus, _Succession of Pyrrhus_.
[597] _Nic. Ethics_, viii. 14.--_Econom._, i. p. 4.
[598] Solon, xxxvii.
[599] Isaeus, _Succession of Pyrrhus_.
[600] _Mysogyne_, Fr. 3.
[601] Menander, _The Necklace_.
[602] Cavallotti, _La Sposa di Menecle_, p. 158.
[603] Friedländer, _Mœurs romaines_, etc., t. I^{er.} pp. 251-254.
[604] _Id._, _ibid._ t. xxiii. pp. 1-14.--_Avis de Molestion._
[605] Friedländer, _loc. cit._ p. 351.
[606] Plutarch, _Lycurgus and Numa compared_, 4, 2.
[607] Friedländer, _loc. cit._ p. 356.
[608] Suetonius, _Octavius_, lxiv.
[609] Plutarch, _Numa Pompilius_, xvii.
[610] Plautus, _Stichus_.
[611] _L’Italie ancienne_, par MM. Duruy, Filon, etc. (_passim_).
[612] Saint Augustine, _Confessions_, book ix. ch. ix.
[613] R. Cubain, _Lois civiles de Rome_, p. 179.
[614] Plutarch, _Cato of Utica_, xxxvi. lxviii.
[615] Domenget, _Institutes de Gaius_, i. 64.
[616] _Asinaria_, v. 70-72.
[617] Seneca, _De matrim._--Saint Jerome, _Letters_, 54, 13, 79, 9.
[618] Friedländer, _Mœurs_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 360.
[619] Plutarch, _On Herodotus_, xxi.
[620] _Germania_, xviii.
[621] Laboulaye, _Hist. de la succes. des femmes_.
[622] _Summa Cardinalis Hostiensis_, lib. v., _De Adulteris_.
[623] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 381.
[624] _Code Theod._, lib. vi., tit. I^{er.}.
CHAPTER XIII.
ADULTERY.
I. _Adultery in General._--Adultery considered as a theft.
II. _Adultery in Melanesia._--Indulgence and severity of Tasmanian and
Australian husbands--Adultery at New Caledonia.
III. _Adultery in Black Africa._--Among the Hottentots, at the Gaboon,
in middle Africa, in Abyssinia.
IV. _Adultery in Polynesia._--Punishment of unauthorised adultery--The
“fire-lighter” at Noukahiva.
V. _Adultery in Savage America._--Among the Esquimaux--Special penalty
among the Redskins--Obscene retaliation.
VI. _Adultery in Barbarous America._--Among the Pipiles in Yucatan, in
Mexico, in Peru, in Guatemala.
VII. _Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya._--Among the nomad
Tartars, in Thibet, in China, in Japan, in Malaya.
VIII. _Adultery among the Egyptians, the Berbers, and the
Semites._--Penalty of adultery in ancient Egypt; among the Hebrews,
the Arabs, and in Kabyle.
IX. _Adultery in Persia and India._--Penalty of adultery in
Persia--Adultery in the Code of Manu--Fraternal and authorised
adultery--The obligation of a double vengeance.
X. _Adultery in the Greco-Roman World._--Legal adultery according
to Lycurgus and Solon--Punishment of illegal adultery--Adultery in
primitive Rome--_Lex Julia_--Legal vengeance of the father--Obscene
retaliation--Laws of Antoninus, of Septimus Severus, and of
Constantine.
XI. _Adultery in Barbarous Europe._--Among the Tcherkesses, the
Visigoths, the Francs, under Charlemagne--Singular penalties of the
Middle Ages.
XII. _Adultery in the Past and in the Future._
I. _Adultery in General._
We will now pass in review some of the principal penalties (the
enumeration of all of them would be too long) with which the men of
all times and races have attempted to repress adultery. That the human
species, and especially the primitive, unpolished human species, is one
of the most ferocious of the animal kingdom, stands out strikingly from
these investigations; but it is perhaps in regard to adultery that the
cruelty and injustice of men are most strongly shown; and by the word
“men” here we mean the masculine half of mankind, for generally the
only adultery which has been punished has been that of the woman. As
for the adultery of the husband, men have been very slow in admitting
that it was a wrong of which the wife might complain.
The reason of this revolting partiality is very simple. Diderot makes
Orou tell it in his _Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville_; it is
that “the tyranny of man has converted the possession of woman into a
property.”[625]
On the whole, our long inquiry has abundantly proved that very
generally, in human societies, marriage has been, or is still, a
bargain, when not a capture. In all legislations the married woman is
more or less openly considered as the property of the husband, and is
very often confounded, absolutely confounded, with things possessed. To
use her, therefore, without the authority of her owner, is a theft; and
human societies have never been tender to thieves. Nearly everywhere
theft has been considered a crime much more grave than murder. But
adultery is not a common theft. An object, an inert possession, are
passive things; their owner may well punish the thief who has taken
them, but him only. In adultery, the object of the larceny, the wife,
is a sentient and thinking being--that is to say, an accomplice in
the attempt on her husband’s property in her own person; moreover, he
generally has her in his keeping; he can chastise her freely, and glut
his rage on her without any arm being raised for her defence. On the
contrary, in letting loose his vengeance the husband will frequently
have public opinion and law on his side, when the latter does not take
on itself the punishment of the guilty one. But let us listen once more
to the eloquent language of facts.
II. _Adultery in Melanesia._
In Tasmania and Australia the women were, or are, considered as the
property of the men. We have seen that in these countries there is
no care for decency or chastity, and that wives are often obtained
by brutal rape. Their proprietors also make no scruple of letting
them out, lending them, or bartering them; they have the fullest
right to use or abuse them. The Tasmanians felt very honoured if a
white man borrowed their wives, but they none the less chastised, and
very cruelly too, unauthorised infidelities, on the simple ground,
as their panegyrist, the Rev. Bonwick, tells us, of their right of
ownership.[626] In certain Australian tribes, organised in classes, the
women were reputed common to all the individuals of the same class,
but all intimate relation with a man of another group was a most grave
adultery for both the guilty ones--a social adultery.[627]
In the greater number of New Caledonian tribes the punishment of
adultery is left to the care of the injured husband, who kills the
thief, if he can, but often contents himself with giving a severe
punishment to his wife, sometimes inflicting a sort of scalping. At
Kanala, however, adultery has already become a social crime. The man
who commits it is led before the chief, judged by the council of elders
whom the chief presides over, and executed on the spot.[628] But in one
way or another, whether he incurs the social vengeance or that of the
offended one--the robbed one, rather--and of his relatives, the New
Caledonian who commits adultery risks his life. Sometimes, however, he
can get off by paying a fine, after the old German fashion. Often also,
in case of adultery committed by a married man, the New Caledonians
practise a singular retaliation: the adult men of the village simply
violate the wife of the delinquent.[629] The wives of the chiefs being
much more sacred than the others, the slightest attempt on the rights
of their proprietors risks being cruelly punished. M. Moncelon has seen
a man condemned to death merely for having looked at the wife of the
chief while she was picking up shells;[630] it was regarded as treason.
This ferocity in the repression of adultery is not at all special to
Melanesia. With some variations, it is found in all times and in all
countries. It is worthy of remark also that even when the adulterous
man is punished, it is simply because he has robbed another husband,
and not because he has failed in conjugal faith.
III. _Adultery in Black Africa._
We have previously seen that among the black populations of Africa
marriage is a simple bargain, and that the negresses are only
moderately chaste. Now, as the purchase of wives and the absence of
chastity in the women are factors eminently suited to produce adultery,
we shall not be surprised to find that it is very common in Africa; it
is nevertheless very severely punished there, but only because it is
a very grave outrage on property. Among the Hottentots, the husband,
having the right of life and death[631] over his wife or wives, and
being allowed to kill them for the smallest offence, naturally enjoys
the same right, with a much stronger reason, when they commit an
unauthorised infidelity, for he can lend or let them to strangers if he
likes.[632]
In the tribes where polygamy already inclines to monogamy, and where
there exists a chief wife ruling over the others, the gravity of the
crime of adultery is in relation to the position occupied by the
woman. Thus, at the Gaboon, Du Chaillu tells us, where the women are
extremely dissolute, a distinction is made in their infidelities.
The adultery of the chief wife is an enormous crime. The man who
has been an accomplice in it is, at the very least, sold as a slave;
but adultery with less important wives can be atoned for by a large
compensation.[633] As for the woman, her pecuniary value often protects
her. The husband-proprietor has bought his wife, and he cares very
little for the purity of her morals, since he has no scruple in making
her an object of traffic;[634] therefore, whenever she is unfaithful
without his permission, the consideration of the cost of purchase and
of the possible profit of letting her out, often restrains his vengeful
arm. He is free, however, to punish or to pardon, and sometimes the
chastisement of adultery is terrible. At Bornou, for example, the
guilty ones are bound hand and foot, and their heads are smashed
by being struck together.[635] At Kaarta, says Mungo Park, the two
guilty ones are put to death. With the Soulimas there is a singular
exception to this. The adulterous woman merely has her head shaved,
and she loses a privilege which is probably of Berber origin--viz.,
that of quitting her husband at will, simply by refunding him the
amount of purchase-money he has paid for her. All the vengeance of
the husband falls on the lover, and he makes him his slave.[636] At
Jouida, in Dahomey, the offended husband had still the right, in 1713,
of invoking judicial power in order to have his guilty wife strangled
or beheaded by the public executioner.[637] Her accomplice was not
spared, and sometimes, says Bosman, he was burned at a slow fire. This
cruel wish to make delinquents suffer a long time is found again in
Uganda, where King M’tesa caused adulterers to be dismembered, having
one limb at a time cut off and thrown to the vultures, who feasted
on it before the eyes of the sufferers.[638] With the Ashantees, the
husband, as sovereign justiciary, can either kill his wife, or marry
her to a slave, or cut off her nose, according to his pleasure.[639]
We find this last punishment specially applied to adultery in various
countries, and Diodorus will tell us the motive for it. On the
Senegal coast the all-powerful protection of money saved the life of
adulterers, and the offended husbands spared them in order to sell them
to European slave-traders.
In Abyssinia the conjugal bond is so frail, morals are so shameless,
and divorce is so easy, that adultery is rarely taken in a tragic
light. Formerly the injured husband often confined himself to
chasing from his house the adulterous woman, clothed in rags for the
occasion.[640]
IV. _Adultery in Polynesia._
Polynesian customs alone would suffice to prove that in primitive
countries adultery is simply punished as a robbery, or commercial
fraud. As regards sexual morality, or rather immorality, nothing can
be compared to what was practised in Polynesia, where all modesty was
unknown, where the husbands willingly let out their wives, and the
intimate friend of the husband (_tayo_) had the right to share his
wife with him. But dissolute as they were, these islanders were very
determined conjugal proprietors, and they sometimes punished adultery
with the most extreme severity. The missionary, Marsden, relates that a
New Zealand chief killed his adulterous wife by dealing her a blow on
the head with his club. Public opinion approved of the deed, and the
brother of the dead woman came to take the body, only making a feint of
retaliation, because the punishment was considered to be merited.[641]
Cook saw at Tahiti a native man punished in the same way for adultery,
by blows of the club; but in this case there was the aggravating
circumstance that the woman belonged to a class superior to his.[642]
In some islands, especially at Tahiti and Tonga, where the customs were
less savage, and licence was more unbridled than in New Zealand, the
women sometimes got off with a simple correction. We must again remark
that what was blamed and punished was not the adultery itself, but
adultery unauthorised, or not commanded by the legal owner--in short,
theft.
At Noukahiva, says Krusenstern, there was a functionary called the
“fire-lighter” who lived with the wife of a king. The duty of this
dignitary was, in the first place, to obey the queen, and in the next
to supply her husband’s place with her in case of prolonged absence on
his part.[643] Taking this fact by the side of others, as, for example,
the unlimited right of the friend, or _tayo_, over the wife, we see
clearly what the Polynesians understood by adultery.
V. _Adultery in Savage America._
The Esquimaux, who are as free from prejudices in their conjugal
customs as the Polynesians, have also, at least certain of them,
adopted the custom of joint husbands, _cicisbei_, who replace the
husband in case of absence.[644] There are some, however, who blame
the adultery of wives, and believe even that the fairies would kill
them if their wives were unfaithful during their absence.[645] But
all the Esquimaux are not equally easy going; some of them, the
reindeer Koriaks, for example, kill at once the man and woman taken in
adultery.[646]
The Redskins are always less tolerant; with them adultery is a very
serious affair, although they often also consider the exchange of wives
a mark of friendship. It is generally the husband who takes vengeance
as he pleases, and he often does so by cutting open with his teeth
the nose, and sometimes the ears, of the guilty woman. This was the
practice with the Comanches,[647] the Yumas,[648] and the Sioux.[649]
But the injured, or robbed, husband is at liberty to make a
composition with the seducer.[650] He can at will either pardon--as did
a Mandan husband who sent the wife to her lover, adding three horses
to the present[651]--or he can put to death the faithless wife and her
accomplice. By a rare exception, the Omahas recognised the right of the
wife to revenge herself on an adulterous husband and his mistress.[652]
With the Omahas, also, an adulterous wife was bound to a stake in the
prairie, abused by twenty or thirty men, and then abandoned by her
husband.[653] We have seen that this obscene mode of retaliation is in
use at New Caledonia, and we shall find it again in the Roman Empire.
The mode of vengeance with the Redskins, whether of the husband or the
tribe, varied according to locality, but was often atrocious. Thus the
Modocs of California publicly disembowelled the guilty woman.[654]
Among the Hoopsas, another tribe of Californian Redskins, the male
accomplice in the adultery lost one eye,[655] or, if he was married,
the injured man took his wife.
The natives of South America were not more clement than their congeners
in the north. The Caribees put both guilty ones to death.[656] The
Guarayos also punished with death the accomplice in adultery as if he
were a thief.[657]
From this rapid survey of savage countries we may conclude that
adultery is everywhere considered as a robbery only, but at the same
time as one of the gravest of robberies. The man who is guilty of
adultery suffers consequently, by virtue of the right of retaliation,
a punishment more or less severe. As for the adulterous woman, she is
generally chastised by the husband-proprietor with extreme cruelty, no
restraint existing to moderate his vengeance.
VI. _Adultery in Barbarous America._
In the barbarous monarchies of all countries the chastisement of
adultery is scarcely mitigated, and for a long time it is directly
inflicted on the guilty woman by the husband or the parents.
With the Pipiles of Salvador the man who committed adultery was put to
death, or became the slave of the offended husband.[658] In Yucatan the
guilty ones were stoned or pierced with arrows; before this they were
impaled or disjointed.[659] According to Herrara, among the Yzipecs the
injured husband cut off the nose and ears of the adulterous woman.[660]
The same author tells us that among the Guaxlotillans the woman was
taken before the Cacique, and if found guilty she was cut in pieces and
eaten.[661]
In ancient Mexico adultery was generally punished with stoning,[662]
and in certain districts this crime entailed the quartering of the
guilty woman; elsewhere, the judges simply ordered the husband to cut
off her nose and ears.[663]
In Peru the law also punished ordinary adultery with capital
punishment.[664] There was no chastisement terrible enough for adultery
committed with one of the wives of the Inca, the son of the Sun: the
guilty man was burnt, his parents were put to death, and his house
destroyed (Pizarro).
Guatemala offered an exception;[665] there the affair was arranged by
a composition--a fine of precious feathers paid to the husband. The
latter could also repudiate his wife, or pardon her, in which last
case he was much honoured. If the adultery was committed with the wife
of a great lord, the crime naturally acquired an exceptional gravity;
the guilty man was then strangled if he was noble, and if servile,
was thrown down a precipice. We shall find elsewhere this hierarchic
iniquity, for in this matter, as in others, various human societies and
races repeat themselves.
VII. _Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya._
Thus the Mongols of Asia seem to have copied the Mongoloids of America.
With the nomad Tartars a man of inferior class who has committed
adultery with a woman of his own class pays the injured husband
forty-five head of cattle; but the husband must revenge himself on the
inconstant wife. The law invites him to do so; for if he kills her,
the compensation of cattle remains his property; if not, it goes to
the prince. But if it happens that a man of low condition has illicit
intercourse with the wife of a prince, then the crime is terrible; the
man is cut to pieces, the faithless wife is decapitated, and the family
of the guilty man reduced to slavery.[666] If we may believe a modern
traveller, Mongol customs have become considerably modified on this
point, adultery being now extremely common in Mongolia, and so little
repressed that the women hardly take the trouble to conceal it.[667]
In lamaic Thibet they do not regard adultery as a tragedy. The wife is
corrected, and the lover pays a fine to the husband, or husbands, when
there are several.[668]
Chinese legislation is relatively moderate in regard to adultery. In
the first place it expressly forbids the husband to lend or let out
his wife, under pain of twenty-four strokes with the bamboo.[669] The
Chinese woman can certainly be imprisoned for adultery,[670] but she is
chiefly punished by repudiation, which is obligatory on the husband on
pain of twenty strokes of the bamboo.[671] She can, however, be sold
either by the husband or by the judge to whom the offended husband
remits her.[672] In contrast to certain barbarous legislations, the
Chinese law is more severe in regard to adultery for the strong than
for the weak. “Whoever, on the strength of his power or credit, shall
take away the wife or the daughter of a free man to make her his own
wife, shall be imprisoned for the usual time and put to death by
strangulation.”[673]
In Japan the law gives the offended husband the cruel and very general
right to kill the guilty ones if taken in adultery, and forbids him to
spare one.[674] We find this latter injunction, perhaps more humane
than it appears, in ancient Roman legislation and elsewhere.
Nothing is at once more monotonous and more ghastly than this
ethnographic review of the penalties against adultery.
Simple death has not sufficed to punish this crime, so enormous has
it everywhere seemed; and thus other refinements of cruelty have been
added--disembowelling, cutting in pieces, the stake, etc.
So far, among the races we have been investigating, Chinese legislation
has been the wisest and most just, since, contrary to usual custom, it
enacts the most severe penalties against the powerful man who takes
advantage of his social position to commit adultery. Here and there,
however, we find societies where adultery excites less fury. These
societies are rare, and they are not always the most civilised.
At Java, for example, adultery is treated with clemency, especially
if it is not committed with the chief wife. Even in this last case
the guilty one, at least the man, is often only punished by public
contempt.[675] The Dyaks punish conjugal infidelity with a fine only,
for both parties.[676] This is a rare example of clemency, and it is
given by a still barbarous race. We look in vain for such moderation
among much more civilised peoples, as we shall see in studying ancient
Egypt and the Berbers and Semites.
VIII. _Adultery among the Egyptians, the Berbers, and the Semites._
Diodorus tells us that in ancient Egypt the man who was guilty of
adultery received a thousand lashes, whilst the woman suffered the
amputation of her nose, a very special penalty, which we have seen
used in America and negro Africa, which we shall find also among the
Saxons of England, and for which Diodorus has given us the reason. “The
legislator,” he says, “has intended to deprive the woman of attractions
which she had only made use of for seduction.”[677]
The Bible, also, is not tender towards adulterers. But it makes no
distinction between the culpability of the man and the woman; stoning
is for both. This terrible punishment is not only inflicted on the
faithless wife, but on the inconstant _fiancée_. The accomplices
even are put to death. There are, however, some distinctions, and
precautions are taken to mitigate the rigour of the law; thus the
guilty woman is only condemned to be stoned if the crime has been
committed in the city. If in the fields, the man alone incurs
stoning;[678] it is thus admitted that the woman may have suffered
violence. Besides this, two witnesses are in all cases necessary to
establish the crime. Lastly, the slave woman is not punished with
death.[679]
The ancient Arabs were not more clement towards adultery than their
cousins of Palestine, and the Bedouins, who have preserved more of
the old customs, still consider adultery as the greatest of crimes.
Burckhardt tells us that with them the adulterous woman is beheaded
either by her father or her brother.[680] These are morals that go far
beyond the prescriptions of the Koran. It would seem that Mahomet,
much given to sexual pleasures himself, had not the courage to be too
severe on others. He, indeed, calls the adultery of woman the “infamous
action” _par excellence_, but he directs, nevertheless, that the crime
be proved by four witnesses.[681] Moreover, the woman can escape the
punishment by swearing four times before God that she is innocent,
and that her husband has lied.[682] If she is convicted, both she and
her accomplice receive a hundred lashes in public. Then the woman
must be shut up “until death visits her, or God finds her a means of
salvation,”[683] all of which is relatively mild enough.
Although Mussulmans, the Kabyles of Algeria do not keep to the somewhat
humane prescriptions of the Koran in regard to adultery. In general,
they are pitiless towards all infractions of morals. With them a
kiss on the mouth is equivalent to adultery, and costs more than an
assassination.[684] Every child born out of marriage is put to death,
as well as its mother.[685] If the family tries to spare the guilty
one, the Djemâa stones her and imposes a fine on the relatives.[686]
The child and mother are stoned by the Djemâa or the family. Even when
a woman is actually separated from her husband her adulterous child is
killed, but the fate of the mother is left to the discretion of the
relatives.[687]
Whoever carries off a woman, especially a married woman, and flees
with her, becomes a public enemy, and the village where the fugitives
have taken refuge must give them up under pain of war. The man is put
to death, and the woman is restored to her family, who do not spare
her.[688]
Custom authorises the deceived husband to sacrifice his wife, and if
he rarely does it he is only hindered by the loss of the capital she
represents; but usage requires the repudiation,[689] and the husband
must, besides, take a striking and bloody vengeance on the lover.[690]
At the very least he must simulate it, must fire, perhaps, on the
guilty one with a gun loaded only with powder, and strike or slightly
wound his wife’s lover. He has thus saved his honour; he is content
with little, as in our rose-water duels.[691] With the Kabyles, more
than elsewhere, marriage is a mercenary affair; consequently adultery
naturally has pecuniary consequences. Thus, in compensation for
adultery or the abduction of his wife, the husband has a right to the
amount of the purchase, the _thâmanth_, or to an indemnity, sometimes
arbitrary, sometimes tariffed;[692] but this compensation in money is
distinct from the retaliation, and in no way hinders it.[693]
Lastly, the Kabyle legislation formally interdicts the marriage of the
adulterous woman with her accomplice.[694]
Beginning with Melanesia and reaching Kabyle, I have sought among
very different races, forming altogether the major part of mankind,
the penalties used or decreed against adulterers. The result is a
lamentable enumeration of sanguinary follies. I have passed by in
silence the legendary or exceptional sufferings. I have not spoken
of women crushed under the feet of elephants, violated by stallions,
buried alive, etc. The common reality alone more than suffices to show
that man, still far from being very delicate in conjugal or amorous
matters, considers adultery as a great crime, especially for woman. It
remains for us to see how the races calling themselves _par excellence_
noble--the Indo-European races--have regarded this fault, so difficult
to pardon.
IX. _Adultery in Persia and India._
The Avesta does not mention adultery in ancient Persia. In modern
Persia it has been punished with ferocity, except, naturally, when it
was committed by the Shah, who chose, according to his fancy, any young
girls or women among his subjects, without any one daring to find fault
with him.[695] But for private individuals adultery was an abominable
crime; the man who had committed it was put to death; the woman,
treated of course more severely, was tied up alive in a sack and thrown
into the water.
The Code of Manu gives us very complete information in regard to
the penalty for adultery in ancient India. In the first place, it is
understood that the adultery of the husband ought not to trouble the
wife at all. “Although the conduct of her husband may be blameworthy,
and he may give himself up to other amours and be devoid of good
qualities, a virtuous woman ought constantly to revere him as a
god.”[696] The adultery of the woman is naturally quite another thing.
“If a woman, proud of her family and her importance, is unfaithful
to her husband, the king shall have her devoured by dogs in a very
frequented public place.”[697] If a woman of high rank, the lover
also is not spared. “The king shall condemn her accomplice to be
burned on a bed of red hot iron.”[698] For the less aristocratic
adultery the punishment varies according to the caste. “For adultery
with a protected Brahmanee, a Vaisya loses all his property, after
imprisonment for a year; a Kchatriya is condemned to pay a thousand
panas, to have his head shaved and watered with urine of an ass.” For
the Brahmin the penalty is very light. “An ignominious tonsure is
ordered instead of capital punishment for a Brahmin in the cases where
the punishment of the other classes would be death.”[699] The Soudra,
on the contrary, who holds criminal commerce with a woman belonging
to one of the three first classes, “shall be deprived of the guilty
member, and of all his possessions, if she was not guarded; but if it
was so, he loses both his goods and his existence.”[700] It must be
noticed, also, that very slight evidence suffices to prove adultery.
“To pay little attentions to a woman, to send her flowers and perfumes,
to frolic with her, to touch her ornaments or vestments, to sit with
her on the same couch, are considered by wise men as proofs of an
adulterous love.”[701]
On the other hand, the husband, if he has had no children, can oblige
his wife to give herself either to his brother or to another relative.
“Anointed with liquid butter and keeping silence, let the relative
charged with this office approach during the night a widow or a
childless woman, and engender one single son, but never a second.”
Then, in the following verse, the Code alters: “Some of those who
understand this question well, think that the aim of this precept
is not perfectly attained by the birth of a single child, and that
women may legally engender in this manner a second son.”[702] One
verse, certainly less ancient, contradicts these curious texts, which
are evidently survivals of primitive customs, according to which the
husband disposed as he pleased of his feminine property. More modern
Brahmanic legislation still authorises the husband to kill the wife
and her lover if taken in adultery, and there would be nothing new to
us in this, if, as in Japan, and as formerly at Rome, the law did not
formally interdict him from killing only one of the two culprits.[703]
X. _Adultery in the Greco-Roman World._
However Aryan India may be, she differs very remarkably from us. Let
us look now at the way in which adultery has been regarded in Europe,
and, to begin with, in the Greco-Roman world. We know that in classic
antiquity marriage was quite crudely considered as a civic duty, and
looked at from the single point of view of population. Lycurgus and
Solon encouraged the impotent husband to favour the adultery of his
young wife. Speaking of the laws of Lycurgus, Plutarch says--“He
laughed at those who revenge with war and bloodshed the communication
of a married woman’s favours; and allowed that, if any one in years
should have a young wife, he might introduce to her some handsome and
worthy young man, whom he most approved, and when she had borne a
child of this generous race, bring it up as his own. Also he permitted
that if a man of character should entertain a passion for a married
woman upon account of her modesty and the beauty of her children, he
might beg her husband that he might be allowed to plant, as it were,
in rich and fertile soil, excellent children, the congenial offspring
of excellent parents.”[704] This is marriage considered without the
least prejudice, from the strict point of view of social utility. Solon
imitates Lycurgus on this point, but with one restriction which recalls
the Code of Manu, that the wife of an impotent husband should, with his
permission of course, choose a lover from among the nearest relatives
of the said husband.[705]
Custom sometimes went further than the laws, and Plutarch relates that
Cimon of Athens, who was a model of goodness and greatness of soul,
lent his wife to the rich Callias.[706] But that did not prevent the
laws of Solon from authorising the husband to kill the adulterer.[707]
Further, the law punished with civil degradation the too indulgent
husband, and authorised the family tribunals to condemn to death the
guilty woman, whom the husband himself executed before witnesses.[708]
Lastly, a law of Draco, which was never abrogated, delivered the
adulterous lover to the discretion of the husband.[709] After all, save
for the good of the state, before which everything had to bend, this
Greek legislation only consecrates the old primitive right by which the
wife was the property of her husband.
In all that concerns marriage ancient Rome singularly resembles
ancient Greece.[710] Her customs and regulations regarding the wife
were at first of a savage atrocity. The term adulterer begins by being
applied to the woman alone, and the law of the Ten Tables arraigned
the guilty wife before the domestic tribunal; she was condemned and
executed by the relatives themselves--_Cognati necanto uti volent_.
Family tribunals continued to exist during the whole period of the
republic, and even later, concurrently with the law _Julia_; but
customs softened, and death was commuted to banishment to two hundred
miles from Rome at the least, with the obligation of wearing the toga
of the courtesan. The _flagrante delicto_ naturally authorised the
husband to kill the wife on the spot;[711] as for the lover, he could
keep him, torture him, mutilate him, _raffanise_ him (I dare not give
the sense of this picturesque word), and deliver him to the ferocious
lubricity of his slaves. Law and public opinion authorised the husband
to fleece the surprised lover, and thus torture could be made a means
of extorting money from him.
The _Lex Julia_, enacted either by Julius Cæsar or Augustus, attempted
a reform of morals. By the terms of this law, which was in force till
the time of Justinian, the husband could not kill his wife, taken in
adultery, without being punished as a murderer. Neither could he put
the lover to death unless he were a slave, a go-between (_leno_), a
comedian, or a freed man of the husband or of the family. But the
husband could hold him prisoner twenty hours in order to procure
witnesses. The father had more extensive rights than the husband; he
was authorised, in case of _flagrante delicto_, to kill his daughter
and her lover, but he was to kill them both, and immediately. However,
to enable him to act thus as justiciary, he must have the _potestas_
still, and the crime must have been committed in his house, or in
that of his son-in-law. The _Lex Julia_ punishes the adulterous man
by the confiscation of the half of his goods; it decrees the same
punishment for the woman, and, besides, forbids her to marry after
the repudiation, which was obligatory for the husband. The latter was
obliged even to drive away his wife at once for fear of being called
a go-between. This same _Lex Julia_ made adultery a public crime
which every citizen could bring before the tribunals, and it punished
with the sword the adulterous man.[712] By degrees, and towards the
Christian epoch, the legislation relative to adultery was amended.
In his quality of philosopher the Emperor Antoninus was more clement
and just than his predecessors; by one law he interdicted the husband,
who might himself be presumably guilty of adultery, to kill or sue his
wife surprised in _flagrante delicto_. By degrees the customs became in
time so free and so tolerant that, Septimus Severus having enacted new
laws against adultery, the consul, Dion Cassius, found at Rome three
thousand plaints on the register for this cause.[713] Theodosius, says
an ecclesiastical writer, mitigated the penalties against adultery; he
abolished an ancient Roman custom, inspired by the idea of retaliation,
according to which the guilty woman, shut up in a little hut, was
given to the passers-by, who even were to be furnished with little
bells to attract attention.[714] The same ignoble penalty was, we
have seen, in use among several of the Redskin tribes, and this fact
proves, with many others, the original equality of the most diverse
races in primitive savagery. Yielding to the ardour of a new convert,
Constantine legislated with fury against all moral outrages, and
decreed, without wincing, the punishment of death against adulterers of
both sexes.
Justinian reformed and moderated legal severities. His code condemns
the adulteress to be whipped, to have her hair shaved, and to be shut
in a convent for life, if her husband does not take her back before
the end of two years. In comparison with the excess of zeal shown by
Constantine, this is nearly merciful. We have already said enough of
the relaxation of manners under the wiser Pagan emperors. A marriage
which was almost free procured for young women of the aristocracy an
independence without much restraint; and in practice, at least, and in
spite of the laws, adultery had ceased to be the abominable crime which
it had begun by being.[715]
XI. _Adultery in Barbarous Europe._
Our ancestors of barbarous Europe have had, as regards adultery,
customs quite as ferocious as those of the savages of any other race.
These same customs were still found recently among the Tcherkesses of
the Caucasus, where the injured husband shaved the hair of the guilty
woman, split her ears, and sent her back to her parents, who sold her
or put her to death.[716] The lover was generally killed by the husband
or his relatives. With the Lesghis, the husband who had not killed his
adulterous wife in _flagrante delicto_ could have her judged by the
council of the tribe, and she was then condemned and stoned after the
Hebrew fashion.[717]
In the Germanic and Scandinavian countries adultery has primitively
been considered as an enormous crime. Thus the ancient Danes punished
adultery with death, whilst murder was only fined. The old Saxons began
by burning alive the adulteress, and on the extinct fire they hung or
strangled her accomplice. In England King Edmund assimilated adultery
to murder. King Canute ordered that the man should be banished, and the
woman should have her nose and ears slit.
Tacitus tells us that with the Germans the adulteress was made to walk
naked through the villages. Prior to the ordinances of Canute this old
German custom was still preserved in England. Her head shaved, and her
body bare to the waist, the woman was dragged out of her husband’s
house in the presence of her relations, and then whipped to death
through the streets. Her lover was hung on a tree.
According to the laws of the Visigoths, and in virtue of the law of
retaliation, the adulteress was given into the hands of the wife of her
lover, if the latter was married. And if the lover had no children, his
goods were confiscated to the profit of the injured husband (lib. iii.).
The penalties ended by becoming entirely pecuniary, especially for
the man. The fifth section of the Salic law, and the thirty-fifth
section of the Ripuarian law, both inflict a fine of two hundred pence
on whoever abducts a married woman. A law of Charlemagne orders the
ravisher to restore the wife and all that she has carried off. If the
husband does not exact a composition, the sheriff takes up the matter,
banishes the guilty man, and condemns him to pay a fine of sixty pence.
In the Middle Ages the adulteress was generally shut up for life in
a convent, and lost her dowry. Whipping was sometimes added to these
punishments, as is proved by an ordinance made in 1561.[718]
The laws of King John (1362), of Charles le Bel (1325), of Louis XI.
(1463), show that certain towns preserved the old custom of making
the adulteress run naked through the city. Lastly, until 1789,
legislation, although moderating its severity, remains undecided,
varies according to place, circumstance, and even social position; but
the atrocious and coarse penalties of ancient times are abolished and
forgotten.
XII. _Adultery in the Past and in the Future._
Like all our ethnographical studies, this also affirms the law of
progress. We have seen savagery pass into barbarism, and barbarism into
civilisation. We have seen adultery punished at first as a robbery--but
a most execrable robbery--and the chastisement falling chiefly on
the woman as being a property in revolt. For her alone fidelity is
obligatory. As to the adulterous husband, he is punished, if at all,
on the ground of having abused the property of another, and not in the
least because he has been unfaithful to his own wife. By slow degrees,
however, equity asserts certain rights, and at the same time customs
are humanised; marriage becomes less and less a “contract of slavery”
for the woman; and, in spite of the recoil caused by catholicism,
progress resumes its course, and we begin to foresee the time when,
marriage being instituted on rational and just foundations, adultery
will disappear, or nearly so, from our customs and our laws.
But surely that time is far distant. Our conscience is still so
impregnated with the morality of past ages that our public opinion and
our juries willingly pardon a man who murders his adulterous wife,
while they are full of mercy for the conjugal infidelities of this
ferocious justiciary. The antique morals which hold woman as a servile
property belonging to her husband still live in many minds. They will
be extinguished by degrees. The matrimonial contract will end by
being the same kind of contract as any other, freely accepted, freely
maintained, freely dissolved; but where constraint has disappeared
deception becomes an unworthy offence. Such will be the opinion of a
future humanity, more elevated morally than ours. Doubtless it will
have no longer any tender indulgence for conveniently dissimulated
adultery, but, on the other hand, it will no longer excuse the avenging
husband.
FOOTNOTES:
[625] Diderot, _Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, in Œuvres_, t.
ii. p. 245.
[626] Bonwick, _Daily Life_, etc., p. 72.
[627] Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi_, etc.
[628] De Rochas, _Nouvelle Calédonie_, p. 262.
[629] L. Moncelon, _Réponse au Questionnaire de Sociologie_, in _Bull.
Soc. d’anthrop._, 1886.
[630] L. Moncelon, _loc. cit._
[631] Burchell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvi. p. 479.
[632] Alexander, _Expedition into the Interior of Africa_, vol. i. pp.
98, 173.
[633] Du Chaillu, _Afrique équatoriale_, pp. 67, 435.
[634] Raffenel, _Nouv. Voy. aux pays des Nègres_, t. I^{er.} p. 402.
[635] Denham and Clapperton, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvii. p. 437.
[636] _Id._, _ibid._ t. xxviii. p. 106.
[637] Démeunier, _Mœurs des Différents Peuples_, t. I^{er.} p. 223.
[638] Speke, _Voy. to the Sources of the Nile_, p. 343.
[639] Bowdich, _English Mission to the Ashantees_.
[640] Démeunier, _loc. cit._ t. I^{er.} p. 218.
[641] _Journal of Marsden_, in _Voy. of the Astrolabe_, p. 360.
[642] Cook, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. x. p. 31.
[643] Cook, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvii. p. 12.
[644] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. i. p. 81.
[645] Élie Reclus, _Les Primitifs_.
[646] Démeunier, _loc. cit._, t. I^{er.} p. 216.
[647] Domenech, _Voy. pittoresque_, etc., p. 533.
[648] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. i. p. 514.
[649] Démeunier, _loc. cit._, t. I^{er.} p. 219.
[650] J. O. Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, p. 364, Smithsonian Institution,
1885.
[651] Wake, vol. i. p. 428.
[652] J. O. Dorsey, _loc. cit._
[653] _Id._, _ibid._
[654] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. i. p. 350.
[655] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 412.
[656] _Voyage à la Terre-ferme_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 304.
[657] D’Orbigny, _L’homme Américain_, t. ii. p. 329.
[658] Bancroft, _Native Races_, vol. ii. p. 675.
[659] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. ii. p. 674.
[660] Démeunier, _loc. cit._, t. I^{er.} p. 224.
[661] _Id._, _ibid._ t. I^{er.} p. 225.
[662] Prescott, _Hist. Conq. of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 26.
[663] L. Biart, _Les Aztèques_, p. 168.
[664] Prescott, _Hist. Conq. of Peru_, vol. i. p. 59.
[665] Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, vol. ii. p. 673.
[666] Timkowski, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxiii. p. 341.
[667] Préjévalsky, _Mongolia_, t. I^{er.} p. 69.
[668] Turner, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 437.
[669] Pauthier, _Chine moderne_, p. 238.
[670] Davis, _China_, vol. i. p. 322, etc.
[671] Pauthier, _Chine moderne_, p. 239.
[672] Sinibaldo de Mas, _Chine et puissances chrétiennes_, t. I^{er.}
p. 52.
[673] Pauthier, _loc. cit._ p. 239.
[674] Masana Maeda, _La Société japonaise_, in _Revue Scientifique_,
1878.
[675] Waitz, _Anthropology_, vol. i. p. 315.
[676] _Journal of James Brook, Rajah of Sarawak_, by Capt. Munday, vol.
ii. p. 2.
[677] Diodorus, i. p. 78.
[678] Deuteronomy, xxii.
[679] Leviticus, xix. 20-22.
[680] Burckhardt, _Notes_, etc., t. ii. p. 84.
[681] Sourate, iv. 8.
[682] Koran, Sourate, xxiv. 8.
[683] _Id._, _ibid._ iv. 19.
[684] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. iii. p. 209.
[685] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 186.
[686] _Id._, _ibid._ t. iii. p. 208.
[687] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 187.
[688] _Id._, _ibid._ t. iii. pp. 212, 213.
[689] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 74.
[690] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 187.
[691] _Id._, _ibid._ t. iii. p. 74.
[692] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 159.
[693] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 165.
[694] Chardin, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 251.
[695] G. Drouville, _Voyage en Perse_, t. I^{er.} p. 251.
[696] _Code of Manu_, v. 154.
[697] _Ibid._ book viii. 371.
[698] _Ibid._ p. 375.
[699] _Ibid._ viii. 379.
[700] _Ibid._ viii. 374.
[701] _Ibid._ viii. 357.
[702] _Code of Manu_, ix. 60, 61.
[703] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xiv. p. 378.
[704] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, xxix.
[705] Plutarch, _Solon_, xxxvi.
[706] _Id._, _Life of Cimon_.
[707] _Id._, _Solon_, xliv.
[708] Legouvé, _Hist. Morale des Femmes_, p. 182.
[709] Ménard, _Morale avant les Philosophes_, p. 303.
[710] Lecky, _Hist. of European Morals_, vol. i. p. 312.
[711] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. ii. p. 85.
[712] _Institutes_, iv., tit. 18.
[713] Friedländer, _Mœurs Romaines_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 367.
[714] Socrates, _Hist. Eccles._, lib. v., cap. xviii.
[715] Friedländer, etc., _Mœurs_, t. I^{er.} p. 367.
[716] Klaproth and Gamba, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xlv. p. 435.
[717] Klaproth and Gamba, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xlv. p. 448.
[718] Desmaze, _Curiosités_, etc.
CHAPTER XIV.
REPUDIATION AND DIVORCE.
I. _In Savage Countries._--The right of repudiation in New Caledonia,
among the Hottentots, the Bongos, the Soulimas, the Fantis, the
Ashantees--Divorce in Polynesia--The right of repudiation in America.
II. _Divorce and Repudiation among Barbarous Peoples._--In Abyssinia,
at Hayti--The _nefir_ of the Djebel-Taggale--Repudiation among
the Bedouins and the Touaregs--Repudiation among the Kabyles--The
“prevented” Kabyle woman--The “insurgent” Kabyle woman--Repudiation
among the Arabs--Divorce among the Arabs--Obligatory
divorce--Repudiation on account of non-virginity--Divorce by mutual
consent in Peru and Thibet--Repudiation among the Mongols--Repudiation
in China--Obligatory divorce in China--Repudiation in ancient
India--Repudiation among the Hebrews--Repudiation in Greece--Evolution
of repudiation and divorce in ancient Rome--Divorce and
Christianity--Repudiation in barbarous Europe, in France, in the
Middle Ages.
III. _The Evolution of Divorce._
I. _In Savage Countries._
I have no longer to demonstrate that woman has been treated with
extreme brutality among nearly all primitive peoples. In the lowest
stage of savagery--as, for example, in Australia and Tasmania--woman,
being exactly assimilated to a domestic animal, who can be beaten,
wounded, killed, and even eaten, her association with man does not
merit the name of marriage, and consequently there is no question among
these races of divorce, nor even of repudiation. The man, being able,
as master, to dispose of the life of his wife, has, in addition, the
right to send her away, or abandon her, if he chooses.
In New Caledonia, where the stage of the most brutal savagery is past,
where the wife is no longer carried off as in Australia, but bought
from her legal owners, the dissolution of the conjugal union is still
ill-regulated. The man can chase away or repudiate his wife. The couple
can also part by mutual agreement, the children following sometimes
the mother and sometimes the father; nothing is uniform.[719] But the
purchase of the woman protects her already somewhat against murder. As
she represents a capital, the husband often hesitates to kill her, or
even to drive her away.
The Hottentots of the Damara tribe have on this point similar customs
to the New Caledonians. They do not hesitate to send away the wives
of whom they are tired, and whom they can replace.[720] In Caffraria
the husbands have also every right, without exception, over the wives
they have bought.[721] In middle Africa, which is much more civilised,
divorce and repudiation are rather less simple, and often give place to
restitutions or indemnities.
With the Bongos, in case of divorce, the father must give back a part
of the utensils or fire-arms for which he had ceded his daughter. He is
even forced to a total restitution, if the husband keeps the children
while repudiating the wife. In the last case there is evidently an
idea of indemnifying the husband for the charge he undertakes, and
this view of the matter is not uncommon in Africa.[722] Among the
Bongos marriage is considered as a simple commercial transaction; and
it is the same in the whole of Central Africa, especially among the
Soulimas, where the women have the power of leaving their husbands to
unite themselves to another man, on the sole condition of returning
to their husband-proprietor the sum that he has paid to purchase them
from their parents. However, this rare and singular liberty is taken
from them if they commit adultery. But even in this last case they are
treated with relative mildness.[723] As we have previously seen, the
same custom is observed among the Fantis of the Gold Coast, where
the woman who quits her husband without a serious reason, taking her
children with her, need only pay him a fixed indemnity--four ackies
(twenty-two shillings and sixpence) for each child.[724] In the same
way the Ashantees consider children a value worth keeping; thus their
women can re-marry after a three years’ absence of their husband; and
in case of the traveller’s return, it is the second marriage which
holds good, only all the children that are his become the property of
the first husband.[725] In fact, that equals an indemnity, since in
Africa children are generally considered as a commercial value.
In Polynesia the conjugal bond could be untied, as it was tied, with
the greatest ease. In the Marquesas Isles the husband and wife parted
of mutual accord, in case of incompatibility of temper, and all was
over; but if without his authorisation the wife deserted the conjugal
hut to follow a lover, the husband watched for her and administered
furious and repeated corrections.[726] At Hawaï the marriage was
also dissolved at will, if the husband and wife were agreed on this
point.[727] At Tahiti the unions were of the frailest; the husband and
wife parted without ceremony, and the children were no obstacle, for
by a previous agreement they were made over to one or other of the
partners.[728] It was the same in the Caroline Isles, where, though the
race was different, the customs were analogous, and married couples
could divorce themselves at will.[729]
This fragility of marriages is common in savage countries. The man
always has the right of repudiation, and very often the reciprocal
right exists also. This fact seems even less rare among savages than it
is later, at the middle period of the development of civilisation, when
the patriarchal family is solidly established.
In North America, meaning, of course, savage America, the classic
land of the matriarchate, man nevertheless enjoys nearly always the
right of repudiation, often without limits; but certain tribes either
admit divorce by mutual consent, or limit the right of repudiation,
or recognise certain rights of the wife. The Malemoute Esquimaux
drive away their wives at will,[730] as do also the Kamtschatdales,
their congeners of Asia;[731] but, with the Esquimaux, hardly any
but a free and capricious union is known; there is as yet no durable
marriage. It is nearly the same in a certain number of American
tribes, where divorce is easy at the will of the two parties. Among
the Dakota Santals the wife who is ill treated by her companion has
the right to retire; but she cannot take the children without the
husband’s consent.[732] The marriage of the Iroquois, and of some other
neighbouring tribes, was also broken by mutual consent. These Redskins
lived in great common houses, each one inhabited by a fraction of the
tribe, a _gens_, and consequently, that one of the divorced couple
whose relations dominated in the _gens_, remained there; the other was
forced to depart.[733] The Redskins of California also practised this
easy and mutual divorce.[734] The Navajos still recognised the right
of the wife to leave her husband, but already the masculine point of
honour entered into play, and the deserted husband was obliged, under
pain of ridicule, to revenge himself by killing some one.[735] At
Guatemala the wife and husband could part at will and on the slightest
pretext.[736] The Moxos of South America only regarded marriage as an
agreement that could be dissolved by the will of the two parties.[737]
But in many other Redskin tribes the right of divorce seems far from
being reciprocal; it is replaced, to the detriment of the wife, by
repudiation, which the husband can pronounce with a word. According to
the Abbé Domenech, it is the fear of this terrible word which maintains
an appearance of harmony among the many women in the interior of the
Indian wigwams.[738] With the Chippeways a man takes or buys a girl of
twelve, and sends her back when he is tired of her.[739] The Chinook
husband can also repudiate his wife according to his caprice.[740]
In a tribe of the Nahuas, the husbands enjoyed the same rights, but
on condition of exercising them on the day after the marriage; the
experimental union preceded the durable one.[741] In New Mexico, the
husband repudiated at will, on condition only of restoring his wife’s
possessions.[742] A single word of the Caribean husbands also sufficed
to dismiss the wife.[743] The same rule is found with the Abipones
also, where the husband can repudiate his wife on the slightest
pretext.[744]
The conclusion to be drawn from all these facts is, that there are no
more fixed rules for divorce than for marriage in savage societies.
But, as the wife is more often bought or captured, it is quite natural
that her owner should send her away at his pleasure. Wherever divorce
is mutual, it is when the wife costs little to obtain, or where the
ties of relationship are well defined between the members of her and
her tribe, or her _gens_, who then think themselves bound to afford her
a certain protection.
II. _Divorce and Repudiation among Barbarous Peoples._
These free and fragile marriages are found in societies more civilised
than those of the Polynesians and the American Indians. Bruce tells us
that in Abyssinia marriage is in reality only a free union, without any
sanction or ceremony; couples unite, part, and re-unite as many times
as they like. There are neither legitimate nor illegitimate children.
In case of divorce the children are divided; the girls belong to the
father, and the boys to the mother.[745]
M. d’Abbadie affirms also that Abyssinian marriage is purely civil
and always dissoluble; he adds that it is dotal, and co-exists, for
rich men, with the concubinate.[746] It is quite certain that divorce
is largely used in Abyssinia, since Bruce says he has seen a woman
surrounded with seven former husbands. In Hayti, the only negro country
that is civilised in European fashion, we find either preserved or
instituted, by the side of legal monogamic marriage, free unions which
recall the Roman concubinate. The persons thus paired are called
“placed”; they suffer no contempt on this account, and their children
have the same rights as those of persons legally married. There are at
Hayti ten times more “placed” persons than married ones; they separate
less often than the latter are divorced, and have better morals.[747]
But in general the free union, or, what comes to the same thing, the
power of divorce, left to the two united parties, is rare enough in
countries more or less civilised. Most usually it is the husband who,
even without any cause of adultery in the wife, has the right to
repudiate her. It is thus, for example, at Madagascar, where, in order
to repudiate his wife, a husband need simply declare his resolution to
the magistrate who has received the notification of the marriage; it
is only necessary for him to pay for the second time the _hasina_, or
duty on marriage. When once he has declared his intention, the husband
has still twelve days’ grace to retract it; but if he exceeds this
delay the repudiated wife becomes her own mistress and free to marry
again.[748]
In Kordofan, among the Djebel-Taggale,[749] the great legal motive for
repudiation in all the primitive legislations, sterility, justified
proceedings that were absolutely savage. The ceremony was called the
_nefir_ (drum or trumpet). A woman being apparently sterile, the
husband, before repudiating her, called noisily together all his male
relatives, who, after a feast, all had intimacy with the barren wife.
If this heroic expedient did not result in pregnancy, the husband sold
his wife by auction, agreeing to return to his obliging relatives the
difference, if any, between the first price and the sum she would fetch
in the auction. Extraordinary as this custom of _nefir_ may seem to
us, it is, apart from the final sale, but the repetition with more
shamelessness of analogous practices in India, and even in ancient
Greece, in case of well-proved sterility in the wife.
The Bedouins and the Touaregs in general have nothing comparable to the
_nefir_ of the Djebel-Taggale, but among them the extreme facility and
excessive frequency of repudiations renders marriage nearly illusory.
According to Burckhardt, repudiation is so common with the former that
a man sometimes has fifty wives in succession.[750] With the Touaregs
of the Sahara the wives themselves can demand divorce, and we have
seen that they thus force their husbands to bend to monogamy, in spite
of the Koran and of their polygamic appetites.[751] It seems that in
certain of their tribes the women make it a point of honour to be often
repudiated. Only to have one husband is, in their eyes, a humiliating
thing, and they are heard to say: “Thou art not worth anything; thou
hast neither beauty nor merit; men have disdained thee, and would have
none of thee.”[752]
This is quite in accord with the _laisser aller_ habitual to the
primitive Berbers in regard to marriage. In this respect, however, our
Kabyles of Algeria contrast with the other ethnic groups of their race.
Their conjugal customs are most rigid; neither liberty nor libertinage
exist for the wife amongst them. Their customs in regard to repudiation
and divorce are consequently very curious, and are worth studying in
detail. In Kabyle, marriage is treated literally as a commercial affair
of the most serious kind, especially for the women, who are owned as
things by their husbands. The customs and the _Kanouns_, however,
forbid the exchange of wives, and the husband whose wife has fled from
the conjugal dwelling is forbidden to sell the fugitive except to a man
of the tribe, and even then he is not allowed to have the price.[753]
Still, the Kabyle husband has preserved the right of repudiation, and
this right he alone enjoys, and without restriction.
There are in Kabyle two kinds of repudiation. In one, the husband
simply says, “I repudiate thee;” and he repeats this formula three
times. The wife remains dependent on him until he sells her by means
of a price of redemption. If he accepts from the father or some other
man this price (_lefdi_) he must, when the sum is once counted out,
declare before witnesses that he gives up all rights over his wife.
Then, and only then, the marriage is dissolved.[754] Under the other
form of repudiation the husband says, “I repudiate thee, and I put such
a sum on thy head.” The formula is pronounced once, twice, and thrice.
In this case the husband is irrevocably bound, and by paying the sum
fixed, the wife has the power to marry again; at the same time, the
husband can specify the conditions, can say, for example, that if the
woman is married to such or such a man, the price of redemption will be
doubled or tripled. Sometimes the sum is so great that it amounts to
an absolute interdiction of any fresh marriage, and the woman is then
designated “a prevented one” (_thamaouok’t_).[755] When the formula of
repudiation has only been pronounced once or twice, the husband can,
by means of a fine paid to the _djemâa_, and with the consent of the
father-in-law, take back his wife; but he loses his reputation, and his
testimony is no longer legal. If the formula has been pronounced three
times, it is irrevocable. As for the other revocation, public opinion
does not admit that it may be revocable, unless it has only been
declared once, and that the husband find a priest who will consecrate a
fresh union.[756]
If, after repudiation, the Kabyle woman marries again, and becomes a
widow, the first husband can retake her without repayment and without a
fine.[757]
Without pronouncing the formula of repudiation, the Kabyle husband has
the power to send his wife back to her family, with the consent of the
said family. If the husband has serious reasons of displeasure he sends
her to her parents without forewarning them, mounted on an ass, and
conducted by a servant or a negro. This treatment is so ignominious
for the wife that it is equal to repudiation, and public opinion then
forbids the husband to take her back. Sometimes, in case of proved
adultery, the husband sends the wife back to her family, after having
shaved her head; the guilty one is then for ever dishonoured, and
however beautiful she may be, she never finds another husband.[758]
In case of repudiation, for any motive whatever, the Kabyle husband
has the right to keep all his children, girls and boys, even those
at the breast.[759] As for the repudiated woman, she always returns
to her parents, and it is to these last that a man must apply to
marry her; but the new marriage cannot be concluded until after the
payment to the first husband of the price of the redemption (_lefdi_),
which is sometimes more, sometimes less, than the _thâmanth_, or
price of the first acquisition. Generally, too, the parents profit
by the opportunity to claim a supplement, or gratification. The
father often agrees first with the husband, reimburses him for the
_thâmanth_, and afterwards negotiates his daughter as he pleases. In
a certain number of tribes the husband can directly sell his wife,
but Kabyle morality reproves this practice,[760] and permits the wife
in that case to retire to her father, where she remains “prevented”
(_thamaouok’t_); however, if the father is powerful, he risks sometimes
marrying his daughter, and the tribe at need stands by him.[761] In
any case, the repudiated Kabyle woman can only marry after a delay
(_aidda_), generally of four months,[762] which is conformable to the
prescriptions of the Koran. If she flees the country, the parents
must restore to the husband the _thâmanth_ or _lefdi_, for this
last can no longer gain them a new suitor.[763] The whole of this
_régime_ is very partial to the husband. However, as public opinion
in Kabyle is sovereign, it has decreed a few protective measures for
woman, recalling from afar the proverbial liberality of the Berbers
in conjugal matters. Thus, though the woman is deprived of the right
of divorce, she is allowed a “right of insurrection” if she has just
complaints to make. In this case she begins by telling one of her
relatives, who fetches her back to her father openly, the husband not
being permitted to oppose; it remains to him either to repudiate the
fugitive or to let her be a “prevented one.” It is understood that
custom protects an “insurgent” wife only when she takes refuge with her
relatives.[764] Some tribes have tariffed the _thâmanth_; and in case
of repudiation the husband can only exact or receive the ordained sum.
As for the tariff of the repudiated woman, it is nearly always more
than the _thâmanth_, or price of the virgin and the widow. This is done
counting on the avidity of the husband, to urge him to permit a fresh
marriage.[765] Lastly, it is the rule that after four years’ absence
on the part of the husband the union is dissolved and the woman is
free.[766] This is a wise law which certain European codes might borrow
with advantage from Kabyle legislation.
It is a veritable godsend for scientific sociology to be able to know
in its minute details all this curious regulation of Kabyle marriage.
Too often we are forced to content ourselves, in regard to savage or
barbarous peoples, with general assertions that have to be completed
as well as may be from accounts that are incoherent, sometimes
contradictory, and always fragmentary. Here we possess a whole
barbarous code, quite an assemblage of old Berber customs, which are
more or less confounded with the precepts of the Koran.
The law of Mahomet itself is only a sort of compromise between the
ancient customs of Arabia and the Biblical precepts relating to
marriage. On certain sides the Arab customs are superior to the
severity of the Kabyle kanouns, but on others they are inferior to
them, as, for example, in not affording to the wife the right of
“insurrection.”
It is necessary to distinguish between the text of the Koran and
practice, which has notably departed from it--sometimes for the
better, sometimes for the worse. The Koran leaves to the husband
the absolute right of repudiation. It orders that if the formula of
repudiation has been pronounced three times, the husband cannot take
back the wife until she has been married to another; it permits him
to do it, therefore, in the contrary case.[767] It specifies that the
repudiated wife should have a sufficient maintenance provided for
her, and that the husband should not keep the dower she brought with
her;[768] that the husband should have four months’ grace to retract
his decision;[769] that if the repudiated wife is suckling an infant,
the husband, or, in his default, the next heir, should supply her needs
during the two years that the suckling should last.[770]
The Koran orders repudiated wives not to re-marry before three
menstrual periods, not to dissimulate their pregnancy, “if they believe
in God and in the day of judgment;” and in the last case it advises the
husbands to take them back.[771] Lastly, the law of Mahomet encourages
amicable arrangements, and these by money payments between ill-assorted
couples; it authorises the husband to sell a divorce to his wife for a
cession, with her consent, of a portion of her dowry.[772] This is what
the texts, which are both legal and sacred, declare: this, then, is the
theory. We will now see what is the practice as regards repudiation and
divorce in Algeria at the present time.
There are three graduated formulas of repudiation: first, the
discontented husband says simply to the wife, “Go away,” and if he
has only said it once or twice, he may retract his decision; second,
but if he has said, “Thou art to me as one dead, or as the flesh of
swine,” it is forbidden to take back the repudiated wife until she has
been married to another, and then repudiated or left a widow; lastly,
there is a formula so solemn that it entails a separation for ever; it
is this, “Let thy back be turned on me henceforth, like the back of my
mother.”[773]
Any one of these senseless reasons, which have often the force of law
with unenlightened races, can be set aside, and the repudiation counted
null when it has been pronounced during a critical period of the
woman.[774] The woman with child, on the contrary, can be repudiated,
but she has a right to an “allowance during pregnancy.”[775] Actual
custom also admits voluntary divorce, at the proposal of the wife, for
a redemption paid by her to her master. Sometimes the initiative comes
from the husband, who, knowing that his wife desires her liberty, says
to her, “I repudiate thee, if thou givest me this _pallium_ of Herat,
or this horse, or this camel,” etc. It is then a sort of divorce by
mutual consent, and the two part as good friends.[776]
Lastly, there is obligatory divorce, pronounced by the Cadi, on the
plaint of the woman, when the husband is impotent, when in spite of
these matrimonial conventions he tries to compel the woman to quit
the house of her parents, or when he has corrected her with excessive
brutality.[777] Then the divorced wife goes away, taking her dowry with
her.
Taken altogether, these customs, while conforming to the spirit of
the Koran, have in a certain measure improved the position of the
married woman. This is because progress is the law of the social as
well as the organic world; more or less slowly, more or less quickly,
it ends by modifying in practice even theocratic legislations, which
are the most rigid of all. But the old customs are still found almost
intact in certain districts of Arabia which have remained more or less
completely isolated. Thus in nearly all Arab countries there is one
especial reason which justifies immediate repudiation of the marriage,
and that is the absence of virginity, when it has been affirmed in
the agreements preceding the union. But in Yemen this circumstance
justifies far more than mere repudiation; it excuses the murder of the
bride;[778] it is a practical return to the old law preserved in the
Bible ordering the guilty woman to be stoned.
After the manner of all barbarous legislations, that of Mahomet has
corrected, or at least tried to restrain, certain especially ferocious
customs; but, on the other hand, it has given the force of law to
some particularly crying abuses, and has thus rendered them more
difficult of redress. This is generally the case. In all barbarous
societies the subjection of woman is more or less severe; customs or
coarse laws have regulated the savagery of the first anarchic ages;
they have doubtless set up a barrier against primitive ferocity, they
have interdicted certain absolutely terrible abuses of force, but they
have only replaced these by a servitude which is still very heavy,
is often iniquitous, and no longer permits to legally possessed women
those escapes, or capriciously accorded liberties, which were tolerated
in savage life. We shall have to prove this fact more than once in
continuing our ethnographic study of divorce in barbarous societies.
In ancient Peru the liberal and reasonable custom of divorce by mutual
consent was adopted.[779] At Quito, at least, where marriage was not
civil and obligatory, the married pair had the power of separating by
mutual accord.
In Mexico divorce was merely tolerated. Before being allowed to break
the conjugal tie, the couple were obliged to submit their differences
to a special tribunal, which, after a minute examination of the facts,
and three hearings of the parties, sent them away without pronouncing
judgment, if they persevered in their design.[780] The tribunal could,
it seems, forbid the separation, but it did not expressly authorise it.
Its silence, however, equalled a sentence of divorce.
This luxury of legality, this pretence of placing the conjugal union
out of reach of the caprice or injustice of one of the parties, can
only be met with in societies already advanced in organisation.
In lamaic Thibet, where marriage is a simple civil convention, with
which the theocratic government of the country does not interfere,
marriages are dissolved, as they are made, by mere mutual consent;
but this consent is necessary, and there only results a separation
analogous to ours, and taking from the separated couple the power to
re-marry.[781] With the nomad Mongols we find, in spite of a relative
civilisation, the absolute right of repudiation left to the husband
alone, as it is in savage countries. The Mongol husband who is tired
of his wife, whom, besides, he has purchased, can send her back to her
parents without giving the least reason; he simply loses the oxen,
sheep, and horses that he has paid for her. On their side, the parents
make no difficulty of taking her back, for they have the right to sell
her again. The Mongol wife can also spontaneously quit her husband;
but this is not so simple a matter, because she represents a value.
It is a capital that has fled; therefore the parents must send her
back four times following to the husband-proprietor. If the latter
persists in not receiving her, the marriage is dissolved, but in that
case the parents must restore a part of the cattle previously paid
by the marital purchaser.[782] In short, repudiation and divorce are
considered in Mongolia entirely as commercial transactions, and always
arranged for the advantage of the husband.
The Chinese have regulated this still quite primitive divorce, and
while leaving to the husband the right of repudiation, they have
carefully specified the conditions of it.
A Chinese husband can repudiate his wife for adultery, sterility,
immodesty, disobedience to her father and mother or to him, loquacity
or propensity to slander, inclination to theft, a jealous disposition,
or an incurable malady. These motives, however, no longer suffice when
the wife has worn mourning for her father-in-law or her mother-in-law;
when the family has become rich in comparison with its former poverty;
and lastly, when the wife has no longer a father or mother to receive
her. If, heedless of these interdictions, the husband repudiates his
wife all the same, he becomes liable to receive eighty strokes of
bamboo, and must take her back.[783] To the husband alone belongs the
right of repudiation, but the law admits divorce by mutual consent. On
the other hand, it has taken good care to consecrate the servitude of
the wife by ordering that if she flees from the conjugal abode when
the husband refuses a divorce, she shall be punished by a hundred
strokes of bamboo, and may be sold by her husband to any one willing to
marry her.[784] Chinese legislation absolutely refuses the “right of
insurrection” to the wife, which the Kabyle _Kanouns_, rigorous as they
are to women, have granted. For divorce, as for everything else, China
is at the stage of mitigated or humane barbarism. The foundation of
her laws has remained savage, but a less ancient spirit has attempted
to modify their severity. It has limited the right of repudiation, at
first in the power of the master; it has specified the impediments;
lastly, it has sanctioned divorce by mutual consent, which still
terrifies our legislators.
Ancient India had also left the right of repudiation to the husband,
but she had no place for divorce in her legislation, and had imposed no
restriction on the good pleasure of the husband if there existed one
of the cases enumerated by the Code:--“A wife given to intoxicating
liquors, having bad morals, given to contradicting her husband,
attacked with an incurable disease, as leprosy, or who has been
spendthrift of his wealth, ought to be replaced by another.” “A sterile
wife ought to be replaced in the eighth year; the wife whose children
are all dead, in the tenth year; the wife who only bears daughters, in
the eleventh; the wife who speaks with bitterness, instantly.”[785]
“For one whole year let a husband bear with the aversion of his wife;
but after a year, if she continues to hate him, let him take what she
possesses, only giving her enough to clothe and feed her, and let him
cease to cohabit with her.”[786]
Here it is no longer a question of divorce by mutual consent, nor
of protective measures for the wife. If she is legally replaced
without being repudiated, and then if she abandons with anger the
conjugal abode, she must be imprisoned or repudiated in the presence
of witnesses.[787] The prolonged absence of the husband does not set
free the wife, even when she has been left without resources. She
must patiently await the return of the absent master, during eight
years if he is gone for a pious motive; six years if he is travelling
for science or glory; three years if he is roaming the world for his
pleasure. When these delays have expired, the deserted one is none the
less married; she has only the power to go to seek the traveller.[788]
Like the writers of the Code of Manu, those of the Bible have thought
very little of the rights of woman in legislating on divorce and
repudiation.
The book of Deuteronomy, very accommodating for the husband, authorises
him to repudiate his wife “when she find no favour in his eyes, because
he hath found some uncleanness in her;” he has only to put a “letter
of divorce” in her hand, and may not take her again, either if she
is repudiated by another husband or becomes a widow.[789] With much
stronger reason a man can repudiate an immodest wife.[790] As for
the wife, she could only demand a divorce for very grave causes: if
the husband was attacked by a contagious malady (leprosy); if his
occupations were too repugnant; if he deceived her; if he _habitually_
ill-treated her; if he refused to contribute to her maintenance; and
if, after ten years of marriage, his impotence was well established,
especially if the woman declared she needed a son to sustain her in her
old age.[791] But even then it was the husband who was reputed to have
sent away his wife, and she lost her dowry.
All these antique legislations bear on the woman with shameful
iniquity. The most humane have confined their efforts to placing a few
slight restrictions on the brutal good pleasure of man, which nothing
holds back in savage societies. But it is important to notice that
certain tribes, still more or less buried in savagery, have regulated
divorce with humanity enough and equity enough to put to shame the
theocratic legislators of the great barbarian societies.
We discover again this iniquitous spirit in regard to the respective
situations of the man and the woman in marriage in the Greco-Roman
world, but it becomes moderated as ancient civilisation progresses.
In primitive Greece the right of repudiation is left to the man, and
he uses it whenever he thinks he has legitimate motives for doing
so.[792] This right continued in more civilised Greece, but it was
gradually restricted. Nevertheless, it was always a great dishonour
for a woman to be repudiated. Euripides makes Medea say, “Divorce is
always shameful for a woman.” In _Andromachus_, Menelaus, speaking of
his daughter Hermione, said: “I will not that my daughter should be
driven from the nuptial bed; save that, all that a woman can suffer
is relatively without importance; but for her to lose her husband is
to lose her life.” At Athens repudiations were frequent, and they
would have been more so if considerations of interest had not often
hindered the good pleasure of the master. He was obliged, in fact, by
the conditions of the law, in repudiating his wife, to restore her
dowry, or pay interest at the rate of nine oboles.[793] Moreover, the
relatives who were guardians of the woman could claim by law a pension
for her maintenance.[794] A personage of Euripides cries mournfully:
“The riches that a wife brings only serve to make her divorce more
difficult.”[795] However, the right of divorce was recognised for
women, but custom held the laws in check by rendering it difficult
for wives to perform any public action, and by imposing on them the
confinement of the gyneceum.[796]
At Rome divorce evolved more rapidly and more completely than in
Greece. In primitive Rome we see at first, as usual, the right
of repudiation allowed to the husband and forbidden to the wife.
“Romulus,” says Plutarch, “gave the husband power to divorce his
wife in case of her poisoning his children, or counterfeiting his
keys, or committing adultery, and if on any other account he put her
away she was to have one moiety of his goods, and the other was to
be consecrated to Ceres.”[797] The Roman husband could also put away
his wife for sterility.[798] He was, however, obliged to assemble the
family beforehand for consultation. If the marriage had been contracted
by confarreation it had to be dissolved by a contradictory ceremony,
diffarreation.[799] In the ancient law, when the crime of the woman led
to divorce, she lost all her dowry. Later, only a sixth was kept back
by adultery, and an eighth for other crimes.[800] At length divorce by
consent (_bonâ gratiâ_) was introduced in spite of the censors; and
then both parties had liberty of divorce, only with certain pecuniary
disadvantages for the husband whose fault led to the divorce. Thus the
adulterous husband lost advantage of the terms which usage accorded for
the restitution of the dowry. In the last stage of the law the guilty
husband lost the dowry, or the _donatio propter nuptias_. Inversely,
if the wife divorced without a cause, the husband retained a sixth
of the dowry for each child, but only up to three-sixths.[801] The
formula of the Roman repudiation recalls by its energetic conciseness
the Kabyle formula, and it seems especially to relate to the property:
_Res tuas habeto_.[802] The wife, even though subjected to the _manus_,
obtained at last the power of divorce, by sending the _repudium_ to her
husband, who was then forced to set her free from the _manus_.[803] In
short, divorce became in time very easy. Cicero repudiated his wife
Terentia in order to get a new dowry. Augustus forced the husband of
Livia to put her away, although she was with child. Seneca speaks of
women counting their years, not according to the Consuls, but to the
number of their husbands. Juvenal quotes a woman who was married eight
times in five years. St. Jerome mentions another who, after having had
twenty-three husbands, married a man who had had twenty-three wives.
Constantine, humbly obedient to the Christian spirit which had invaded
his base soul, restricted the cases of divorce to three for each
spouse, but always admitted mutual consent, and under Justinian the
full liberty of divorce reappeared in the Code.[804]
From its origin Christianity combatted the morals called pagan, which
name even was a reproach. Abandoning the modest reality, it lost anchor
from the first, and was drowned in a sea of dreams. Marriage, instead
of being simply the union of a man and a woman in order to produce
children, became mystic; it was the symbol of the union of Christ
with his church; it was tolerated only, and the church especially
condemned divorce. Nevertheless, custom and good sense held out a
long time against ecclesiastical unreason, and it was very slowly, in
the twelfth century only, that the civil law prohibited divorce.[805]
St. Jerome had allowed, as did afterwards the Christians of the East,
that adultery broke the bond of marriage as well for the woman as
the man, which is simply just; but this sentiment was condemned and
anathematised by the Council of Trent,[806] which thus returned,
contrary to the opinion of Papinian and the ancient jurists, to savage
customs, which make the wife the slave, and not the companion, of her
husband.
Among the Germans and the Scandinavians, the man alone had the right
of repudiation according to the almost universal usage of barbarous
peoples; however, divorce by mutual consent was tolerated.[807] The
Salic law also permitted divorce, and we find in Marculphus the form
of an act of divorce by mutual consent. “The husband and wife, such
and such a one, seeing that discord troubles their marriage and that
love does not rule in it, have agreed to separate, and leave each other
mutually free, without opposition from either party, under pain of a
fine of one pound.”
The pagan Irish had rendered divorce useless by instituting marriages
of one year, at the end of which the wife could be repudiated by the
temporary husband and even ceded to another for a fresh year. These
experimental marriages were made or unmade, sometimes on the first of
May, and sometimes on the first of November of each year.[808]
Repudiations at the will of the husband are still in use among the
Tcherkesses of the Caucasus, whose customs have more than one feature
in common with those of our ancestors of barbarous Europe. With them
the husband can repudiate in two manners: either by sending away
his wife in the presence of witnesses, and leaving the dowry to the
parents, which implies the liberty to marry again for the repudiated
wife; or by simply driving the wife away, and then he can recall her
again during one year.[809]
In France, under the two first races, the man could put away the
woman; he could even, which is more rare and original, repudiate his
family, and leave it, after a declaration before the judge, and this
destroyed all rights of inheritance on both sides. Later, under the
influence of the Catholic clergy, who by reason, no doubt, of their
want of practical experience in the “things of the flesh,” claimed
energetically the right of regulating all conjugal questions, a
distinction was made between the separation of abode (_quoad thorum_)
and complete divorce (_quoad vinculum_); the first only was permitted.
The Church, always assuming to be immutable, maintained in theory the
indissolubility of the sacramental marriage, and it needed the great
movement of the French Revolution to shake for a moment the Catholic
prejudice against divorce, which was incompletely re-established in
our French code a few years ago. But the brutality of our ancient
conjugal customs survives still, and they are not up to the level of
our legislation, imperfect as that is. Many husbands always treat their
wives as slaves, against whom everything is lawful, since in a hundred
suits for separation or divorce there are ninety-one to ninety-three
made by wives on account of cruelties and serious injuries.[810] Above
all, our juries almost invariably acquit the husband who has murdered
his adulterous wife. So difficult is it to “put off the old man.”
III. _The Evolution of Divorce._
Our various researches on the subject of divorce have led us to nearly
uniform conclusions. They all show us that, however dissimilar may be
the countries or the epochs, the union of man and woman begins, with
very rare exceptions, by the complete slavery of the latter, and her
assimilation to domestic animals, over which man has all possible
rights, _a fortiori_ that of driving away. Then as the ages move on
their course we see societies which become by degrees civilised, and
in proportion to this advance the condition of the woman improves.
At first the man could kill her if she displeased him; then, cases
of adultery apart, he contented himself with repudiating her; next,
the severity of this right of repudiation, at first unlimited, was
mitigated; then it was restricted to certain well-defined cases;
some rights were even granted to the repudiated woman. At length
her own right was recognised to seek divorce in order to escape
from intolerable treatment. At last a return was made to divorce by
mutual consent, which had been allowed in a good number of primitive
societies, before a rigid legislation, generally theocratic, had
crystallised, in codifying them, some of the old barbarous customs.
The Catholic prejudice itself, absurd as it was in regard to marriage,
became humanised by time. Doubtless the Church continued in principle
to condemn divorce, but she allowed a good number of cases of nullity
of marriage, undoing thus with one hand what she attempted to build up
with the other, and, willingly or not, compounding and compromising
with “the world.”
FOOTNOTES:
[719] Moncelon, _Réponses au Questionnaire de Sociologie_, in _Bull. de
la Soc. d’anthrop._, 1886.
[720] Campbell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxix. p. 343.
[721] Burchell, _ibid._ t. xxvi. p. 479.
[722] Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_, vol. ii. p. 27.
[723] Laing, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxviii. p. 107.
[724] Brodie Cruikshank, _The Gold Coast_.
[725] Bowdich, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxviii. p. 425.
[726] M. Radiguet, _Derniers Sauvages_, p. 179.
[727] _Revue de l’Orient_, 1844.
[728] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 62.
[729] Freycinet, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xviii. p. 82.
[730] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 81.
[731] Beniouski, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 410.
[732] J. O. Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, Smithsonian Institution, 1885.
[733] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_.
[734] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 412.
[735] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 512.
[736] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. ii. p. 672.
[737] A. d’Orbigny, _L’homme Américain_, t. ii. p. 211.
[738] _Id._, _Voy. pittor._, etc., p. 511.
[739] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 117.
[740] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. i. p. 241.
[741] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. ii. p. 261.
[742] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. i. p. 511.
[743] _Voy. à la Terre-ferme_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 304.
[744] Dobritzhoffer, _An Account of the Abipones of Paraguay_, vol. ii.
p. 97.
[745] Bruce, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxiii. p. 365.
[746] D’Abbadie, _Douze ans dans la haute Éthiopie_, pp. 100, 128.
[747] Annie Besant, _Marriage, as it was, as it is, and as it should
be_.
[748] Dupré, _Trois Mois à Madagascar_, p. 153.
[749] D. Cuny, _Journal de Voyage à Siout et à El-Obéid, en 1857-58_.
[750] Burckhardt, _loc. cit._
[751] Duveyrier, _loc. cit._ p. 429.
[752] Raffenel, _Voy. au pays des Nègres_, t. I^{er.} p. 355.
[753] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 164.
[754] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 178.
[755] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 177.
[756] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 177.
[757] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 179.
[758] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 181.
[759] _Id._, _ibid._. t. ii. p. 184.
[760] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 159.
[761] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 180.
[762] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 173.
[763] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 180.
[764] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 182.
[765] _Id._, _ibid._
[766] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 180.
[767] Koran, ii. 229, 230.
[768] Koran, ii. 229.
[769] _Ibid._ ii. 226, 242.
[770] _Ibid._ ii. 233.
[771] _Ibid._ ii. 228.
[772] _Ibid._ iv. 127.
[773] Meynier, _Études sur l’Islamisme_, pp. 168, 169.
[774] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 178.
[775] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 174.
[776] Meynier, _Études sur l’Islamisme_.
[777] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 174.
[778] Niebuhr, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 330.
[779] Prescott, _Conquest of Peru_.
[780] _Id._, _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 28.
[781] Turner, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxxi. p. 437.
[782] Huc, _Voy. dans la Tartarie_, t. I^{er.} p. 301.
[783] Pauthier, _Chine Moderne_, p. 239.
[784] _Id._, _ibid._
[785] _Code of Manu_, ix. pp. 80, 81.
[786] _Ibid._ p. 77.
[787] _Ibid._ p. 83.
[788] _Ibid._
[789] Deuteronomy, ch. xxiv. ver. 1, 2.
[790] _Mischnah_ (third part).
[791] A. Weil, _La Femme juive_, _passim_.
[792] Goguet, _Orig. des Lois_, t. ii. p. 61.
[793] Demosthenes, _Against Aphobus_.
[794] _Id._, _Against Neera_.
[795] Euripides, _Melanippus_, Fr. 31 (quoted by Cavallotti).
[796] Lecky, _Hist. of European Morals_, etc., vol. ii. p. 287.
[797] Romulus, xxxv.
[798] Plutarch, _Demandes Romaines_, xiv.
[799] _Italie ancienne_ (_Univers pittoresque_), p. 487.
[800] _Ibid._ p. 488.
[801] _Italie ancienne_, p. 488.
[802] R. Cubain, _Lois Civiles de Rome_, p. 183.
[803] _Italie ancienne_, p. 487.
[804] Lecky, _loc. cit._, p. 352.
[805] _Id._, _ibid._
[806] Session xxiv., can. 17.
[807] Rambaud, _Hist. de la Civil. Franç._, t. I^{er.} p. 107.
[808] D’Arbois de Jubainville, Preface to _Hist. inst. primit._ of Sir
H. Maine.
[809] Klaproth et Gamba, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xlv. p. 435.
[810] M. Block, _Europe Politique et Sociale_, p. 216.
CHAPTER XV.
WIDOWHOOD AND THE LEVIRATE.
I. _Widowhood in Savage Countries._--Societies without widowhood--The
widow considered as property by the Hottentots and at the Gaboon,
etc.--Widowhood in Kouranko, at Kaarta, and in Madagascar--The wives
of Queen Ranavalo--Widowhood among the Redskins--Sacrifices and
mutilations of widows.
II. _Widowhood in Barbarous Countries._--Widowhood in
Bhootan--Polyandric widowhood--Widowhood in China--Traffic in the
widow--Glorification of widowhood--Suicides of widows--Widowhood
in India--Duties of widows--_Suttees_--Widowhood in Islamite
countries--Position given to the widow in the Koran--Position given
to the widow in the Bible--Widowhood in Kabylia--The sleeping
fœtus--Widowhood in ancient Rome--Opinion of the Christian Church on
second marriages--Widowhood in barbarous Europe and in the Middle Ages.
III. _The Levirate._--The levirate in Melanesia, among the Redskins,
the Ostiaks, the Kirghis, the Afghans, in the Code of Manu, among the
Hebrews.
IV. _Summary._
I. _Widowhood in Savage Countries._
We have very little knowledge as to the condition of widows in the
lowest human societies. It is one of those questions of social
organisation hardly noticed by the travellers to whom we look
especially for information.
To begin with, we may affirm that widowhood, regarded as a special
condition recognised by customs and laws, does not exist in very
anarchic societies. Voltaire has somewhere said that the origin of
divorce was doubtless posterior by some days to that of marriage. With
much stronger reason may we infer that the existence of some kind of
marriage is necessary before there can be any widowhood. Widowhood,
therefore, does not exist in societies where promiscuity or temporary
marriage prevails. No widowhood is possible, for example, in the tribe
of the Australian Kamilaroi, where all the women of a class are common
to all the men of the same class. It became otherwise from the time
that, either by capture, purchase, or any other means, woman became
the particular property of one man. Thenceforth it was necessary to
regulate in some way the condition of the widow or widows. Generally
the solution of the problem has been very simple: the widow, who has
been habitually captured or bought by the deceased, does not cease
after his death to be regarded as a thing or property; she is part of
the inheritance, by the same title as chattels or domestic animals.
Sometimes, however, special obligations or troubles are imposed on
her; Kolben tells us that in passing to a fresh husband, the Hottentot
widow must cut off a joint of the little finger; but to cut off a
finger-joint was a common custom with the Hottentots on the death of
a relative, and the women did it, or were forced to do it, more often
than the men. There is nothing in this particular to the condition
of the widow.[811] At the Gaboon a man’s wives belonged to his heir,
and if the deceased was of importance in the tribe, they must resign
themselves to a period of mourning and of widowhood, which lasts a year
or two. The end of this mourning is marked by a great festival or orgy,
which Du Chaillu has thus described--“The wives of the deceased (he had
seven) were radiant ... they were going to quit their widow’s clothes
and join the festival like brides. The heir had the right to marry them
all, but to show his generosity, he had ceded two to a younger brother
and one to a cousin.” They drank bumper after bumper (palm wine), and
then began to dance. “The wives danced. But what dances! The most
modest step was indecent.”[812]
In equatorial Africa, the son inherits the widows of his father: it
is thus in Yarriba.[813] Sometimes they are sold simply, if they have
had no children by the deceased husband.[814] In Kouranko, widows
have a milder fate. They are numerous; for, as young girls, they have
generally been sold by their parents to old husbands; but according
to Laing, the custom of the country renders them free, and makes them
their own mistresses as soon as they are widows, and they profit by
this immediately to choose themselves a young husband, and lavish cares
and attentions on him; it is then their turn.[815] Nevertheless, the
custom of classing widows with the heritage seems very general in negro
Africa. It exists with the Bambarras of Kaarta, where, at the death
of a prince, his successor puts the wives of the deceased monarch up
to auction. Even if old and horrible, they sell easily and dear, for
men like the honour of succeeding to a king.[816] We shall find the
same usage again in Madagascar, at least in the noble families of the
Hovas. On ascending the throne, Radama simply kept all his father’s
wives. So obligatory is this on the reigning sovereign, that at the
death of the same Radama, his widow Ranavalo was bound to keep, by the
title of _wives_, all her husband’s widows. Then, in a great council
held after her elevation to the throne, it was decided that the Queen
Ranavalo could not marry again, but would be free to take lovers at her
will, and that all the children born of these fugitive unions should
be considered as the legitimate posterity of Radama.[817] By this
ingenious measure all was conciliated--respect to custom, the liberty
of the queen, and the regular succession to the throne.
We shall find again in very different countries this savage custom of
considering widows as a simple property, transmissible by inheritance.
Sometimes the heir succeeds simply to the deceased husband; sometimes
he accepts and exacts an indemnity, in case the widow re-marries. Such
was already the custom with the Smoos of Central America. There the
widows belonged by right to the relatives of the deceased husband;
and in order to contract afresh, they had to pay to these relatives
what was called “widow money.”[818] Inversely, with the Kliketats, if
a woman happened to die very soon after her marriage, the husband who
had bought her could claim her price back from the parents;[819] he had
been deceived in the quality of the merchandise.
This was not all; as long as the mourning lasted, the widow was always
considered, in certain districts, as having duties to fulfil towards
her dead husband, or rather towards his shade. Thus, with the Sambos
of Central America, she had to furnish a sufficient quantity of food
during a year to the tomb of the deceased;[820] and it was the same in
Mexico.[821]
In many of the Redskin tribes second marriages are not tolerated by
custom till after a very long delay, exacted for reasons that have
nothing savage in them; it is simply that the children of the first
marriage may be grown out of their early infancy, and the custom is
obligatory for the man as well as for the woman. The Selish widow only
marries after two years;[822] but the delay is sometimes from two to
three years for the widower as well as for the widow.[823] With the
Nez-Percés of Columbia, the widower can marry again at the end of one
year.[824] With the Omahas the delay was much longer, from four to
seven years for the man and the woman. This rule was very strict, and
in case of its infraction, the parents of the dead husband had the
right to strike and wound, but without killing, the widow who might
be too hasty in marrying again. In a parallel case, they confined
themselves to taking a pony from the man;[825] this was because a man
could defend himself. On the contrary, if the widower waited much
beyond the legal time before marrying again, the parents or relatives
of the dead wife thought themselves obliged to intervene. “This man,”
said they, “has no one to sew his mocassins; let us seek a wife
for him.” When they did so, the widower was bound to accept their
offer.[826]
This question of widows has evidently been very embarrassing for
primitive societies. They have either been kept or sold, according as
it might be agreeable or advantageous. But another very simple way
of getting rid of the encumbrance has been to sacrifice them on the
tomb of the dead husband. Nothing is less rare than such immolations
in savage countries, and these atrocious acts are often inspired
by affectionate sentiments, by care for the fate which awaits the
deceased husband after death. How can they let him travel alone on that
dangerous journey beyond the tomb? This is the reason of the widely
spread custom of human sacrifices, which chiefly consist of women and
slaves. I quote a few facts of this kind, simply as specimens.
In certain tribes of New Zealand the widows were strangled on the tomb
of the deceased husband.[827] In equatorial Africa, at Yourriba, when
the king dies, four of his wives and a number of slaves are forced to
poison themselves. The poison is poured into a parrot’s egg for them,
and if it does not produce any effect the patients must supplement it
by hanging themselves. At Jenna, on the Niger, at the death of a chief,
one or two of his widows must commit suicide the same day, in order to
furnish him with pleasant company in the country beyond the tomb, of
which he is going to take possession.[828] At Katunga, the chief wife
of the deceased king is obliged to poison herself on the tomb of her
husband, in company with the eldest son and the principal personages of
the kingdom. All these victims must be buried with the dead master.[829]
The massacres by which the death of the king of Dahomey is solemnised
are well known, and in them also the wives play an important part as
victims. We know that the primitive Germans had analogous customs; for
savages of all countries, to whatever race they belong, resemble each
other and repeat themselves.
Among various peoples funeral sacrifices are replaced by mutilations
more or less voluntary, and especially obligatory on widows. As
examples, I may mention the amputation of the little finger by the
Hottentots, the Melanesians, and the Charruas; and the gashes which
Polynesian widows made on their faces and bodies. These bloody
demonstrations were obligatory, and far from corresponding to a real
grief. At Noukahiva Porter saw a widow, the funeral wounds still
fresh on her neck, breast, and arms, prostitute herself to American
sailors.[830]
This review of savage manners and customs in regard to widows has
only been a long enumeration of cruelties and iniquities, and these,
although much lessened in barbarous countries, do not, by any means,
disappear.
II. _Widowhood in Barbarous Countries._
The natives of Himalayan Bhootan are sometimes monogamous, sometimes
polygamous, and sometimes polyandrous, and these variations naturally
affect the conditions of widowhood. Among the monogamous and
polygamous, the widows can only marry again after a delay of three
years. This regulation, which we have already found among the Redskins,
has doubtless been dictated by the same reasons; and taken with many
other similarities existing in very dissimilar races and countries,
it tends to prove that scientific sociology can be more than a mere
name or imagination. In the Himalayan Bhootan, a widow who has no
repugnance to polygamy has many chances of marrying again, if she has
a younger sister still free, whom the new husband can marry at the
same time.[831] In polyandrous families there can hardly be any real
widowhood for the woman. Thus, at Ladak, if the eldest brother, the
husband in chief, happens to die, his property, authority, and share
of the wife pass to the next brother, whether the latter be or not
one of the husbands.[832] This is a sort of levirate which naturally
exists in polyandrous households, and obviates at once the question
of widowhood, so embarrassing to the other forms of marriage. This
question of widows has been solved very grossly, and sometimes very
cruelly, in the Middle Empire or China proper. Although on certain
sides the old Chinese civilisation puts ours to shame, it is very
backward in relation to all that concerns widows. We have previously
seen that during her whole life the subjection of the Chinese woman
is extreme, that she owes obedience first to her parents, then to
her husband, then to her son, and that she is married, or rather
sold, without being consulted at all. But widowhood does not even
set her free, for she represents a value which the relatives of the
husband inherit, and which they hasten to profit by. It often happens,
therefore, that the Chinese widow is made to marry again, or rather, is
sold again, and this time, also, no one dreams of asking her consent.
The child at the breast, if there is one, is included in the bargain.
In order to moderate the haste of covetous parents, the law has been
obliged to intervene, and prevent the sale of the widow before the
expiration of the time of mourning. The Chinese widow, if she wishes
to escape this traffic in her person, and is without fortune, has no
resource except to become a bonzess. Those widows only whose rank or
riches place them above the common, are able to pass the rest of their
days without being united to a fresh husband;[833] this posthumous
fidelity is much encouraged in China by public opinion, whenever
interest does not forbid it. The betrothed maiden, who may become a
widow before being a wife, is much esteemed if she buries herself for
ever in an enforced sorrow; but naturally, a reciprocal demand is not
made on the betrothed man who may lose his _fiancée_. If the rich widow
who remains inconsolable is much praised, she who refuses to survive
her husband receives greater honour. Tablets are erected in the temples
in memory of young girls who have killed themselves on the tombs of
their betrothed, and twice a year certain mandarins make oblations in
their honour.[834] With much stronger reason is this done for real
widows.
In 1857 the _Pekin Gazette_ published a decree, according a tablet
to the memory of the wife of a mandarin who had poisoned herself on
hearing of the death of her husband in a battle against the rebels.
These suicides of widows are performed in public, with great pomp and
solemnity. In January 1861 two young widows thus committed suicide
at Fou-Chow, in presence of several thousand spectators. Another did
the same at the end of December 1860.[835] It would seem, therefore,
that these suicides are frequent enough even at the present time. From
observations made during the Anglo-French Expedition to China, it
appears that they are generally widows without children or relations
who thus sacrifice themselves; they do it openly and with much
ceremony. A month beforehand, the widow goes in procession through
the town, as has been thus described:--“Two executioners headed the
procession; then came musicians; then men dressed in coarse linen
tunics with hoods, carrying parasols, little pagodas, boxes of
perfumes, and streamers. After them came a third executioner, followed
by a second group bearing poles, surmounted by figures of fantastic
animals. And lastly came a mandarin’s palanquin, surrounded by numerous
servants of both sexes, dressed in mourning, which consisted of grey
linen. In the palanquin was the heroine of the _fête_, a young woman
dressed in red (the imperial colour), and crowned with a blue diadem.
Her red satin robe was ornamented with lace and gold embroidery. This
solemn procession had no other object than to announce the suicide to
the public, and invite them to attend it on the following moon, day
for day. The young widow was exact in appearing at the rendezvous, and
tranquilly hung herself at the date fixed.”[836]
With differences of form and mode of execution, India devotes her
widows to a similar fate.
It seems, indeed, that in India also the widow is, or has been,
considered as the property of the relatives of her dead husband, for
a verse of the Code of Manu orders that if she has been sterile, a
relative shall endeavour to make her conceive. Very striking and
primitive is the inequality of the obligations imposed by Indian law
on the widower and on the widow.[837]
Here is the law for the husband: “Every Dwidja knowing the law, who
sees his wife die before him, if she has obeyed these precepts, and
is of the same class as himself, must burn her with consecrated fires
and with utensils of sacrifice.”--“After having accomplished thus
with consecrated fires the funeral ceremony of a wife who has died,
let him contract a new marriage, and light a second time the nuptial
fire.”[838] As for the widow, her duty is very different: “A virtuous
woman, who desires to obtain the same abode of felicity as her husband,
must do nothing which may displease him, either during life or after
death.”--“Let her willingly emaciate her body by feeding on flowers,
roots, and pure fruits; but, after losing her husband, let her not
pronounce the name of any other man.”--“But the widow, who, through
the desire of having children, is unfaithful to her husband, incurs
contempt here below, and will be excluded from the celestial abode
whither her husband has gone.”--“Nowhere in this Code is the right of
taking a second husband assigned to a virtuous wife.”[839]
The obligation not to marry again, and especially that of living on
flowers and fruits, are sufficiently vexatious, but they are nothing
to the suttees, or burning alive of widows, which were quite recently
common in Bengal. The Code of Manu does not speak of this abominable
custom, though it was very ancient, for Diodorus mentions it, and
relates how the two widows of Ceteus, an Indian general under Eumenes,
disputed the honour of burning themselves with the corpse of their
husband. The description which Diodorus gives corresponds in every
detail with what took place at the suttees quite recently; so slow
to change are these old theocratic societies. One of the wives, says
Diodorus, could not be burnt because she was with child. The other
advanced to the funeral pile crowned with myrtle, adorned as for a
wedding, and preceded by her relatives, who sang hymns in her praise.
Then after having distributed her jewels to her friends and domestics,
she lay down on the funeral pile by the side of her husband’s body,
and died without uttering a cry.[840]
At that time, according to Diodorus, the law only allowed the sacrifice
of one wife. In the eighteenth century it was more exacting. In fact,
the writers of the _Lettres édifiantes_ have described in detail
several sacrifices of this kind. The custom was no longer observed
except by wives of grandees, and especially of rajahs; but all of
these were burnt, save the women with child, whose suffering was only
deferred.
In 1710, at the death of the Prince of Marava, aged eighty years, all
his wives, to the number of forty-seven, were burnt with his corpse,
which was richly adorned and placed in a large grave filled with wood.
The victims, who were covered with precious stones, stepped at first
very bravely on the funeral pile; but the moment the flames reached
them, they uttered loud cries, and rushed on each other. The spectators
succeeded in calming them by throwing a number of pieces of wood at
them; afterwards their bones were gathered up and thrown into the sea,
and a temple to their honour was erected over the grave.[841] At that
date, and in that part of the country, even women with child were only
temporarily spared till after their delivery.[842] Two other princes,
vassals of Marava, having died at the same epoch, and leaving, the one
seventeen, the other thirteen widows, all these unfortunate creatures
were burnt together, except one, who, being with child, could not
sacrifice herself until later. The suttees were not a legal obligation;
relatives even tried to dissuade the widows from it; but the point of
honour, and the fear of public opinion, or rather of public contempt,
were stronger with them than love of life.[843] The mode of burning
varied in different provinces. In Bengal the woman was bound firmly to
the corpse, and the two bodies were covered with bamboos. In Orissa,
the widow threw herself on the pile, which was in a pit or grave. In
the Deccan, a country which was in great part Tamil, and where suttees
were much more rare, the widow sat on the pile, and placed the head
of her dead husband on her knees. She remained thus, motionless,
until she was suffocated by the smoke, or overthrown by the fall of
heavy logs of wood, previously attached with cords to posts placed at
the four corners of the pile. It is said that in certain provinces
the victim was intoxicated with opium beforehand. Sometimes also,
proper precautions not having been taken, it happened that she rushed
madly out of the flames, and was then brutally thrust back by the
spectators.[844]
These frightful customs, which have hardly yet disappeared from India,
are but survivals from the times of savagery: such brutalities were
habitual in a number of primitive societies, as I have previously shown.
In the Koran, in the Bible, and among the Arabs, or rather the
contemporaneous Islamites, we find nothing analogous to this; but the
position given to the widow is none the less unenviable.
A verse of the Koran shows us that before the time of Mahomet, sons
inherited all their father’s wives as a matter of course, in African
fashion: “Thou shalt not marry the women who have been thy father’s
wives; it is an abomination and a bad practice.”[845] We have seen
that this most gross custom, against which Mahomet inveighs, still
prevails in various countries, and especially amongst the negroes of
tropical Africa. It must have been general at the time of Mahomet, even
amongst the Arabs, since the prophet states that his law need not have
any retrospective effect: “Let that remain,” proceeds the same verse,
“which has already been done.”
There is one point, however, on which the Koran is in advance of the
greater number of barbarous societies, and even of the Bible. It
recognises, in fact, the right of a widow to inherit from her husband;
this right gives her a fourth, if there is no child, and an eighth only
in the contrary case.[846] But notwithstanding this the widow was often
abandoned, or, what is worse, confounded with the heritage. The Bible
was less kind to the widow. It specifies indeed that the fortune of
the husband is security for the personal effects and the dowry of the
wife, but it does not place her among her husband’s heirs. The Jewish
widow was a charge on her children, or, if she had none, on her own
family.[847] The abandoned widow had no other resource than her share
in the offerings and public charity.[848] The injunction is indeed
given not to afflict her;[849] it would certainly have been better to
grant her some rights.
In Judæa, the wife was bought by her husband; it is therefore probable
that, in primitive times, she formed a part of his wealth, as is the
case now among the Mussulman Afghans and among the Kabyles.
In Afghanistan, the widow, being a mortgaged property, cannot re-marry
until the price of purchase paid for her by her deceased husband has
been reimbursed to the parents of that husband.[850] In a great number
of Kabyle tribes, the widow remains “hung” to her dead husband--that is
to say, she is counted part of the heritage.[851] Generally she returns
to her family, and her father or her relatives sell her a second
time.[852] If, however, she has children, especially male children, she
cannot be forced to marry again; but then the son redeems her, or she
deducts from the property of her children the sum necessary to redeem
herself from paternal power.[853] In the tribe of Aït Flik, heirs have,
by pre-emption, the privilege of marrying the widow, and that without
having to pay the _thâmanth_.[854] It is understood that while awaiting
the day when she is to be disposed of again, the Kabyle widow is bound
to the strictest chastity. If she becomes with child, she is punished
by stoning.[855]
Like the Bible, and nearly all other legislations, the Koran only
allows the marriage of a widow after a certain term of delay. In the
Koran, this term is four months and ten days;[856] and if the woman is
with child, the delay must extend till after her delivery. But there
are some pregnancies that are either imaginary or fictitious, and which
come to nothing, yet in Arab countries successions are suspended on
account of them. If, at the moment of her husband’s death, a woman
thinks herself with child, she places her girdle on the body of the
deceased; note is taken of it, and the time awaited. If the waiting is
vain, at the end of eleven months the widow is visited and examined by
matrons; and if nevertheless the professed pregnancy has no result, the
child who refuses to be born is called “asleep” for an indefinite time.
Henceforth the widow is free, and if she ends by becoming a mother, her
child, awaited so long, is reputed to be the son of the husband dead
years before, and inherits from him.[857]
This singular prejudice is common to the Kabyles and to the Arabs. A
number of Mussulman legists have vainly tried to overcome it. All that
they have been able to do is to limit to four or five years, generally
to four, the duration of this pretended “sleep” of the fœtus.[858]
The widow has not been more worthily treated at the origin of
Greco-Roman civilisation than in the other barbarous civilisations. It
would be strange if it were so. We have seen that at Athens the woman,
even when married, was part of the paternal patrimony; that the dying
husband could leave her by will to a friend, with his goods, and by
the same title; that at Rome the wife was bought and subjected to the
terrible right of the marital _manus_.
For a long time at Rome, as in China at the present day, the widows who
did not marry were particularly honoured. The widower married again
immediately after his wife’s death; widows, on the contrary, were in
any case forbidden to marry before a delay of six months, afterwards
extended to twelve months, and that under pain of infamy for the father
who had made the marriage, for the husband who had taken the widow, and
later for the re-married woman also, when infamy also applied to women.
By degrees Roman customs and laws improved on this point as on others.
The _Leges Julia_ and _Papia Poppæa_ encouraged second marriages, in
opposition to the ancient prejudice; the _Institutes_ ordained that
when the widow was poor and without dowry, she could inherit from her
husband one-fourth if there were three children, and a full masculine
share if there were none.[859] But the triumph of Christianity was the
signal for a retrograde movement. Constantine returned to the old ideas
of primitive Rome, and went so far as to inflict on second marriages
pecuniary penalties, which were to be paid to the children of the first
marriage.[860] In acting thus, the neophyte emperor was acting up to
the logic of the Church, in whose eyes marriage itself was an evil
rendered necessary by the sin of Adam, and by whom second marriages
were emphatically condemned.[861]
From the fusion of Christian doctrines with the gross customs of more
or less barbarous European races, on the subject of women and marriage,
there resulted for the widow a position of extreme subjection. Among
the Germans, as among the Afghans and Kabyles, the widow became again
the property of her own family, and in order to marry her, it was
necessary to pay a special price, the _reipus_, which was double the
_mundium_ or price of the first purchase.[862] The Salic law decreed
that at the age of fifteen the son should be the guardian of his
widowed mother. The Lombard law decides also that the widow shall not
marry again without the consent of her son (section xxxvii.); and this
consent was necessary even for her to enter a convent. Thus Theodoric,
adopting with barbarous fury the opinions of the Church on second
marriages, promulgated a law interdicting widows from marrying again,
and condemning to the flames any man who should be convicted of having
had commerce with them.
These objections to second marriage, or at least the blame attached
to them by public opinion, are common in many ancient societies. We
have found them in India, in ancient Rome and Greece, etc. We can only
attribute this way of thinking, senseless and unjust as it is, to a
sort of delirium of proprietorship in the husband, who pretends still
to rule over and possess his wife from beyond the tomb, but chiefly to
the desire of avoiding disturbances in the transmission of hereditary
wealth, when the women were able to have possessions of their own.
The levirate, of which I am now going to speak, remedied the latter
inconveniences.
III.--_The Levirate._
The levirate is the name given to the obligation imposed by custom or
law on the brother of the deceased husband to marry his sister-in-law
when she became a widow. This custom of the levirate, which for a long
time has been thought peculiar to the Hebrews, is very widely spread,
and is found among races most widely differing from each other. There
is surely good reason for it in savage or barbarous societies where for
a woman abandonment would mean death.
I will enumerate some of the peoples who practise the levirate,
beginning as usual with the inferior races.
We meet the levirate first in Melanesia, at New Caledonia, where the
brother-in-law, whether he be already married or not, must marry his
brother’s widow immediately.
We also find the levirate among the Redskins, particularly the
Chippeways; and at Nicaragua, where the widow belongs either to the
brother or nearest relative of her deceased husband.[863]
With the Ostiaks, the next brother of the husband is obliged to marry
his widow or widows; for the Ostiaks, like the Redskins, often take for
wives a whole set of sisters.[864] It is the same with the Kirghis, and
in general with the nomad Mongols.[865] The Afghans also make it a duty
of the brother-in-law to marry his sister-in-law, on her becoming a
widow.[866]
The Code of Manu imposes the levirate even on the brother of a
betrothed man who dies: “When the husband of a young girl happens to
die after the betrothal, let the brother of the husband take her for
wife.”[867] The object of this legal precept in India is to give a
posterity to the deceased brother; for the following verse seems to
limit the duration of the cohabitation with the widowed _fiancée_,
and it seems indeed that all commerce is to cease after the first
pregnancy.[868]
We will now consider the Hebrew levirate, which is only a particular
case of a very general fact.
We find the levirate mentioned twice in the Bible. At first in Genesis:
“Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and perform
the duty of an husband’s brother unto her, and raise up seed to thy
brother.”[869] Again, in Deuteronomy: “If brethren dwell together,
and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not
marry without unto a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go in unto
her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s
brother unto her. And it shall be, that the first-born whom she beareth
shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name
be not blotted out of Israel.”[870] The Hebrew levirate was therefore
a sort of obligatory and fictitious adoption of a nephew by the
deceased uncle. We shall soon see that in all primitive or barbarous
societies this adoption is largely practised, and that it is absolutely
equivalent to a real filiation.
The verses which follow inform us that, with the Hebrews, the levirate
was rather a moral than a legal obligation; the brother-in-law could
even refuse it; but in refusing, he incurred the public contempt, and
had to submit to a degrading ceremony: “And if the man like not to
take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the
gate unto the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise
up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of
an husband’s brother unto me; then the elders of his city shall call
him, and speak unto him: and if he stand, and say, I like not to take
her; then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the
elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face,
and she shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that
doth not build up his brother’s house. And his name shall be called in
Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.”[871]
In India the principal object of the levirate, applied to the widowed
_fiancée_, was to furnish the deceased man with a fictitious son,
who could perform for him the sacrifices to the manes, a duty of the
highest importance in the religion of Brahma. For the Hebrews, a much
more practical people than the Hindoos, the levirate had only an
earthly object--that of keeping up the name or family of the deceased,
and all that belonged to it. It may be compared with the obligation
imposed at Athens on the nearest relative in the masculine line to
marry the heiress, or to supplement at need the impotence of the
husband.
The old practice of the levirate still exists in Abyssinia with this
curious detail, that it is applied during the lifetime of the husband
if he has been the victim of an accident, frequent in the Abyssinian
wars, of emasculation. The mutilated husband, being thus struck with
what might be called “virile death,” his brother succeeds him in his
marital rights and duties.[872]
Some sociologists, too much given to theorise, have tried to prove
that the levirate was a remnant of polyandry. Certainly the levirate
is practised under a polyandric _régime_, but polyandry has never been
more than an exceptional mode of marriage, and there is hardly any
trace of it among the New Caledonians, the Redskins, the Mongols, the
Afghans, the Hindoos, the Hebrews, the Abyssinians, etc., who, all of
them, practise different varieties of levirate.
The much more natural reasons that I have given above appear to me
quite sufficient and more probable.
IV. _Conclusions._
From a consideration of all these facts, we find that the fate of
the widow has varied according to the matrimonial form in use, and
according to the degree of civilisation, but that it has not always
been ameliorated in proportion to the general progress. Laws and
customs have ever been kind to the widower. It has been very different
for the woman, and her position has perhaps been better, from our
point of view, in certain primitive societies, than it became later.
Thus, in the confused state of primitive families, when men lived
either in a freedom almost bordering on promiscuity, or in groups
half polyandric or polygamic, and more especially in polyandrous
countries, there was no actual widowhood, or state of being a widow,
for woman. The disappearance of one of the men with whom she lived
in intimate relations made no great change in her position. Under
a polygamic _régime_ it is quite otherwise; for then the wives are
private property. Their master has nearly always bought them, and their
subjection is very great. Therefore, at the death of their master, they
are treated exactly like things; they follow the fate of the goods, and
pass into the hands of the heir, who can keep or sell them. Sometimes,
however, they are sacrificed in greater or less numbers on the tomb
of the dead husband, whom they must continue to serve and love in the
future life.
Under a monogamic _régime_ societies are generally more civilised, and
the dominating ideas are then the care of property, and sometimes the
perpetuation of the name. The widow cannot inherit, for the property
must not be divided. She is then a most embarrassing incumbrance.
Sometimes she is persuaded to follow still into the next world the
husband who has preceded her thither; this is the most radical
solution. Sometimes her relations marry her again, and obtain a second
price for her; sometimes she is provided for by the levirate.
Traces of these ancestral iniquities are still preserved in our modern
codes, which, though nearly emancipating the widow, push the fanaticism
of consanguinity so far as not to consider her as the relative of her
husband as concerns property. From a social point of view, the whole of
this survey of the treatment of widows is not flattering for humanity.
In short, from a moral point of view, the easy resignation with which
men and women bear widowhood, places mankind, as regards nobility of
sentiment, far below certain species of animals, as, for example, the
Illinois paraquet (_Psittacus Illinois_), for whom widowhood and death
are synonymous, as well for the male as the female. Doubtless it might
be alleged that even in so-called highly civilised societies people do
not marry as a rule from any lofty sentiment; but that is surely a poor
excuse.
FOOTNOTES:
[811] Burchell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvi. p. 321.--Thompson,
_ibid._, t. xxix. p. 163.
[812] Du Chaillu, _Voy. dans l’Afrique équatoriale_, p. 268.
[813] Clapperton, _Second Voyage_, p. 90.
[814] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 156.
[815] Laing, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxviii. p. 71.
[816] Raffenel, _Nouveau Voyage au Pays des Nègres_, t. I^{er.} p. 389.
[817] Dupré, _Trois Mois à Madagascar_, p. 124.
[818] Bancroft, _Native Races of Pacific_, etc., vol. i. p. 731.
[819] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. i. p. 277.
[820] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, p. 731.
[821] Démeunier, _Esprit des Différents Peuples_, t. I^{er.} p. 244.
[822] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, p. 277.
[823] Doménech, _Voyage Pittoresque_, etc., p. 516.
[824] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol i. p. 277.
[825] O. Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, in _Smithsonian Reports_, p. 267
(1885).
[826] O. Dorsey, _loc. cit._
[827] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 187.
[828] Clapperton, _Second Voyage_, vol. i. p. 94.
[829] R. and J. Lander, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxx. p. 54.
[830] Porter, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xiv. p. 331.
[831] _Voyage au Bootan_, by a Hindoo author, _Revue Britannique_, 1824.
[832] Moorcroft and Trebeck’s _Travels_, vol. i. p. 320.
[833] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xiii. pp. 349, 353.
[834] Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_, p. 78.
[835] Sinibaldo de Mas, _La Chine et les Puissances Chrétiennes_, t.
I^{er.} p. 55.
[836] Comte d’Hérisson, _Journal d’un interprète en Chine_, p. 132.
[837] _Code of Manu_, ix. 64.
[838] _Ibid._ v. 167, 168.
[839] _Ibid._ v. 156, 157, 161, 168.
[840] Diodorus, book xix. p. 34.
[841] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xiii. pp. 23, 28.
[842] _Ibid._ p. 30.
[843] _Ibid._ p. 32.
[844] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xiii. p. 27.
[845] Koran, iv. 26.
[846] _Ibid._ iv. 14.
[847] Leviticus, xxii. 13.
[848] Deuteronomy, xxvi. 12.
[849] Leviticus, xxii. 13.
[850] M. Elphinstone, _Picture of the Kingdom of Cabul_, vol. i. p. 168.
[851] Hanoteau and Letourneux, _Kabylie_, p. 156.
[852] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 156.
[853] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 158.
[854] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. p. 157.
[855] _Id._, _ibid._ t. iii. p. 77.
[856] Koran, t. ii. p. 234.
[857] Hanoteau and Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 174.
[858] _Id._ p. 175.--E. Meynier, _Études sur l’Islamisme_, p. 175.
[859] Domenget, _Institutes de Gaius_, p. 336.
[860] _Italie ancienne_, p. 488.
[861] Lecky, _loc. cit._, vol. ii. pp. 321, 324.
[862] Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. du Mariage_, etc., p. 336.
[863] Bancroft, _Native Races_, vol. ii. p. 671.
[864] Castren, _Reiseberichte und Briefe aus den Jahren_, 1845-1853, p.
56.
[865] McLennan, p. 158.
[866] M. Elphinstone, _Picture of the Kingdom of Cabul_, vol. i. p. 168.
[867] _Code of Manu_, ix. 69.
[868] _Code of Manu_, ix. 70.
[869] Genesis, xxxviii. 8.
[870] Deuteronomy, xxv. 5, 6.
[871] _Ibid._ xxv. 7-10.
[872] A. d’Abbadie, _Douze ans de séjour dans la haute Éthiopie_, p.
273.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FAMILIAL CLAN IN AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA.
I. _The Family._
II. _The Family in Melanesia._--Melanesian rape--First formation
of societies--Exogamy--The Australian clans--Native marriage
state--Marriage of clans among the Kamilaroi--Their social
incest--How a clan originates--Fictitious fraternity and the
_totem_--How individual marriage is made among the Kurnai--Maternal
filiation--Agnation tends to be constituted--Evolution of the family
in Melanesia.
III. _The Family in America._--The Redskin clans--Common
dwellings--Rights and duties--Exogamy of the clan--Clans of the
_Pueblos_--The family among the Indians of South America--Relationship
among the Redskins--Communism--Maternal filiation--Distinction between
the matriarchate and the maternal family--Origin of the ideas of
relationship.
I. _The Family._
I shall now attempt to retrace as clearly as I can the history of the
evolution of the family, first of all ascertaining the facts that
have been observed, and then using these facts as a touchstone to try
the solidity of the various sociological theories that have been put
forth on the subject. Among these theories, there are some which have
been very favourably received, and not without reason. Insufficient as
they might be, they reduced a chaos of facts into order, and contained
a certain amount of truth. All of them are open to criticism and
contest, both because they are the fruit of a too hasty generalisation,
and because their authors have claimed for them a certainty which
sociological facts do not easily bear out. Human groups have always
lived as they could, without caring about theories; their social
conduct inevitably results from a sort of compromise in the conflict
between their appetites, their aptitudes, and the necessities dictated
by their physical environment.
Before hazarding any general conclusions, I shall be careful, as
before, to refer to comparative ethnography, and to interrogate the
various human races, from the lowest to the most elevated. This inquiry
will enable us to form a rough idea, with a certain approximation to
truth, in regard to the probable evolution of the family in humanity.
But in order to approach this subject with sufficient impartiality,
it is absolutely necessary to clear our minds from all the current
theories in regard to the family. There is, in fact, no theme which
has inspired more empty oratorical lucubrations. The doctrine has been
firmly held that the family, as we have it instituted in Europe and
in European colonies, is the _beau idéal_, the sacred and immutable
sociological type. Ethnography, however, and even history, teach us
that the present familial type of Europe has not always existed, and
that it is the result, like everything else, of a slow evolution;
from whence it is reasonable to infer that it will still continue to
be modified. But facts are more eloquent than reflections; I will
therefore approach them, beginning with the lowest human races, the
Melanesians.
II. _The Family in Melanesia._
In my sketch of the family in the animal kingdom, I have already had
occasion to remark that the family, such as we understand it, is not
indispensable to the maintenance of societies, since the ants do
without it in their republics, in which we find neither paternity nor
maternity, in the sense we attach to them, but simply three classes of
individuals, the breeders, the young, and the educators.
With these last, the working ants, by a paradoxical contradiction,
maternal love has survived the atrophy of the generative function; it
is even purified and widened, for it is lavished without partiality on
all the young ones, which form the hope of the republic; and though
thus diluted, it seems to have lost none of its energy.
Nothing at all similar is seen in inferior human societies, but the
family is still, however, in a confused state; paternity, in the social
sense of the word, does not exist; filiation is especially maternal,
but the actual degrees of consanguinity are not well distinguished in
detail; parenthood is not yet individual, but is constituted in groups.
In the present day we may still study this familial confusion in
certain Australian tribes. We have seen that marriage, or what goes by
that name, resulted in Tasmania, Australia, Bali, etc., from a violent
and brutal rape, generally ratified by a compensation and a simulation
of retaliation between the tribe of the woman and that of the ravisher.
Among the least savage tribes of Melanesia, this rape is often
fictitious, in which case it is no more than a survival; but sometimes
it is still real, and it surely must always have been so at the origin
of the Australian societies. But however gross these societies may be,
they are none the less the result of a long evolution. In the interior
of Borneo there are still existing human beings compared with whom the
Australians are civilised people. These absolutely primitive savages of
Borneo are probably the remains of negroïd peoples, who must formerly
have been the first inhabitants of Malaya. They roam the forests in
little hordes, like monkeys; the man, or rather the male, carries off
the female and couples with her in the thickets. The family passes the
night under a large tree; the children are suspended from the branches
in a sort of net, and a great fire is lighted at the foot of the tree
to keep off the wild beasts. As soon as the children are capable of
taking care of themselves, the parents turn them adrift as animals
do.[873]
It is doubtless thus, after the manner of the great monkeys, that
primitive human societies have been formed. With the chimpanzees these
hordes can never become very large, for the male progenitor will not
endure rivals, and drives away the young males as long as he is the
strongest. The first men were surely more sociable, because of their
human nature. The young males of the human horde were able to remain,
in greater or less number, within the association, but the jealousy
of the progenitor-in-chief, the father of the family, must often have
obliged them to procure one or several females by capturing them from
neighbouring or rival hordes; they thus became more or less exogamous;
and, in their embryo societies, marriage, or rather sexual union, ended
by being prohibited between brothers and sisters, not because there was
the least moral scruple about incest, but because, within the limit of
the horde, the young women were claimed by the most robust males, who
would not yield them up. We know that this is still the case in the
Australian tribes.[874]
In this gross social state it is necessarily the mother who is the
centre of the family, just as she is in the families of mammifers; it
is, therefore, quite natural that the children should bear her name and
not that of their father, which, for that matter, is not always easy
to designate. When once the custom of exogamy was well established,
what was at first a necessity ended by becoming an obligation, and men
were forbidden to unite themselves with women of the group to which
they belonged, and which bore the same name as their own. Such is still
the general rule in Australia.[875] But in Australia this group is
often only a sub-tribe, a _gens_ or clan; for the hordes, becoming too
numerous, are subdivided into factions or large families, who unite
together for common defence or vengeance. The children of each group
belong sometimes to the clan of the mother, and there is then no legal
parenthood between them and their father;[876] also, in case of war,
the son must join the maternal tribe.[877] But this is not a universal
rule, and in many tribes the children now belong to the paternal
clan.[878]
These are general cases, common to the greater part of the Australian
tribes, but not to all. There are some who have organised their
marriage and their family into classes, thus regulating, in a certain
measure, the primitive confusion, and establishing by this very
regulation a sort of limited promiscuity. The word “classes,” employed
by travellers who have made us acquainted with these curious customs,
is improper, for neither social classes nor castes exist in Australia.
These so-called classes are simply sub-tribes or clans, analogous to
the Roman _gens_.
In certain of these tribes a sort of categorical promiscuity is kept
up. Thus, among the tribes of Mount Gambier, of the Darling River, and
of Queensland, each tribe is divided into two sub-tribes, and within
each of these clans all the men are reputed brothers, and all the
women are sisters, and all marriage between these brothers and these
sisters is strictly forbidden.[879] This is a primordial law; the
violation of it is an act of the deepest guilt, which not only stains
the individual, but the group to which he belongs; it is more than
incest, and the Australians, who have a very lively sentiment of duty,
feel intense horror of such an act. But if every man is brother to
all the women in his clan, on the other hand he is husband to all the
women of the other clan of his tribe. Consequently, all the men of one
group are called husbands by all the women of the other, and inversely.
Marriage with these Australians is not therefore an individual act,
as with us; it is a social condition, resulting from the fact of
birth.[880] However, the actual communal union is not obligatory in
the least. A man or woman may stop at the nominal or reputed marriage;
they may merely call each other husband and wife; but in principle,
the right is admitted, and the men sometimes offer temporary wives of
their own class to strangers who visit them.[881] Thus in the tribe of
the Kamilaroi, near Sydney, every man of the Kubi clan has the right
to call “my wife” every person of feminine sex belonging to the Ipai
clan, and to treat her as such. There is no need of proposals, or of
contract, or of ceremony; a man is a husband by right of birth, but the
intimate union does not imply association by couples; the woman passes
from one to the other, or even from several to several others. On the
other hand, within the limit of the clan, all the men and all the women
call each other brothers and sisters, and are bound to respect each
other. In uniting with the men of the other sub-tribe having conjugal
right over them, the women do not on that account cease to reside in
their own clan, the sub-tribe of their “brothers.”
Marriage within this sub-tribe is the abomination of desolation, the
sin for which there is no forgiveness. Whoever commits it is outlawed
from society, driven from the tribe, tracked through the woods like
game, and put to death. He has dishonoured the association, and the
children who are born of these social incests are exterminated.[882]
Thus, all real consanguinity has been set aside, and a fictitious
fraternity created between all the members of the same clan, similar
to paternity by adoption. Is this artificial parenthood the result of
practical exogamy, or has it, on the contrary, produced it? We cannot
tell; but wherever it exists, its rule is absolutely inflexible. If,
for example, as often happens in Australia, the important men, the
chiefs, the sorcerers, or the strong adults, seize a certain number of
women for their personal use, they only do it in conformity to the law
of exogamy between the sub-tribes. If one of the women thus confiscated
runs away and is re-taken, she is not restored to the man who had
usurped possession of her, but belongs by right to those who have
caught her.
Moreover, certain neighbouring tribes are subdivided into sub-tribes,
or clans of the same name; they have probably sprung one from the other
at some former period. If it happens that a man steals a woman from one
of these tribes, the captured woman is immediately incorporated into
the corresponding clan of the ravisher’s tribe, and she becomes the
“sister” of all the women of this clan, to which will also belong her
children. As for the ravisher, he is always a member of another _gens_,
or clan, of the same tribe. If the tribes of the captured woman and of
her captor are not symmetrical--that is to say, have not corresponding
clans--then the woman may become the founder of a new clan belonging to
the tribe of the man who has carried her off.[883]
If a woman is captured by a party of warriors, and not by one
individual only, the first care of the captors is to inflict on her
a collective violation, on the condition, however, that none of them
belong to a clan homonymous with that of the ravished woman; if any
one of their party is an exception to this, he must abstain from so
doing.[884]
The sign of the fictitious fraternity of the Kamilaroi, and of all the
Australian tribes organised in the same manner, is a common emblem,
the _totem_. All the men bearing the same _totem_ are united by the
bond of a conventional fraternity, which is none the less strict for
that reason. The _totem_ has evidently been invented in a primitive
epoch, when the different degrees of consanguinity were not easily
distinguished, and were therefore replaced by an artificial union far
wider than the limits of the natural family.
Whenever a single individual wished to escape from this tribal
marriage, he was obliged to resort to various artifices. One of these
transitional processes has remained in use in the Kurnai tribe, in
Gippsland, Victoria.
The terms still in use with them to designate kinship recall the
former existence of a fraternal marriage; but in practice they have
none the less adopted individual marriage. The manner in which these
individual marriages are contracted probably indicates what must have
happened in primitive times, when some innovators attempted to escape
from tribal marriage by carrying off the women they preferred, and
were only re-admitted to their tribe after having obtained pardon and
the ratification of their audacious enterprise. Among the Kurnai every
marriage must be made by the capture of one of the women of their
tribe, even when this rape has been preceded by a friendly exchange
of sisters, which is usual enough. This simulated rape is punished by
a simulation of vengeance. The fugitives are pursued; they are even
ill-treated, but short of being actually killed. Their punishment is
simply an act of obedience to ancestral customs. When all is concluded,
and the fugitive couple reinstated among their people, the woman
belongs to the man who has carried her off; he is no longer obliged to
offer her to the visitors of his clan, as old Australian hospitality
required;[885] she belongs to him alone. Sometimes the ravisher
legalises his right of sole proprietor by first giving notice to his
friends, and offering them the use of his wife, after which he can keep
her to himself.[886]
In proportion as tribal marriage was being transformed, owing to the
breaches made in it by individual instinct, the consanguineous family
was gradually arising in place of the collective and fictitious family.
It seems most likely that uterine filiation, or the maternal family,
was first established. The Australian Motas still have filiation by the
woman’s side, and among them the property of the uncle is transmitted
to the uterine nephew; but already the paternal family is beginning to
be constituted, and the relatives on the male side seek to redeem the
heritage by means of an indemnity.[887] With other and more advanced
Australian tribes, fanatical evolution is more complete; masculine
filiation is already instituted, and agnation adopted; there is even
a worship of the manes of male ancestors.[888] The Melanesians of
Australia and Tasmania present, therefore, a tolerably complete picture
of the evolution of marriage and of the family, from the primitive
rape, followed by a tribal period in which marriage is merely a limited
and regulated promiscuity, and in which real consanguinity is replaced
by a fictitious fraternity, down to the _régime_ of individual marriage
and masculine filiation, previously passing through uterine filiation,
or the maternal family. We shall find traces of this evolution among
other races, but nowhere is the lower stage so well preserved as in
Australia.
III. _The Family in America._
Nothing similar to the gross tribal marriage of the Australian
Kamilaroi is to be found among the American Indians, whose familial
organisation, however, strikingly recalls that of the Melanesian clans,
though already in a higher degree of evolution.
The tribes of the Redskins were, and are still, divided into phratries,
which are again subdivided into clans. Now these clans are composed of
real or fictitious relatives. In each phratry the corresponding clans
have the same _totem_, and it is strictly forbidden to marry a woman
belonging to the group bearing the same _totem_. This organisation is
very ancient; it existed in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest,
and the French found it in the eighteenth century among the Redskins of
Canada. The Hurons, Charlevoix tells us, were divided into three clans:
the wolf, the tortoise, and the bear.[889] The _totem_, or emblem of
the clan, served to sign treaties.[890] This is a general fact, and the
subdivision of the tribe into clans or _gentes_ is observed among the
Tinneh Indians, the Choctaws, the Iroquois, the Omahas, the Indians
of Columbia, etc., etc. Each clan forms one large family, inhabiting
sometimes a common house, as do still the Indians of the Pueblos, as
did the Iroquois at the time they were first discovered, and as did the
Mexicans at the epoch of the Spanish conquest. The “long houses” of the
Iroquois were buildings a hundred feet in length. A large corridor,
closed at the two extremities by a door, traversed its entire length.
To the right and left of this central corridor, and opening on it,
were stalls, or niches, each serving as the apartment of a family. The
number of these families varied from five to twenty.[891]
The members of a Redskin clan had common rights and duties. When a
man died, any personal objects he might possess were deposited in
his tomb, for they might be useful to him in the future life. The
remaining property of the deceased belonged principally to the clan,
or the _gentiles_; his near relatives, however, were considered first.
Thus, among the Iroquois, the widow, the children, and the maternal
uncles claimed the largest part, while a very small portion of the
heritage came to the brothers. The general principle was that the
property should remain in the clan. In the present day the old customs
are modified, and with the Iroquois, the Creeks, the Cherokees, the
Choctaws, the Crows, etc., there is no longer any gentile heritage; all
passes to the children.[892]
The political organisation was, or still is, republican. The members
of a Redskin clan have the right to elect and to depose the chief of
the community, and the liberty to adopt strangers. They are united
by a strict solidarity, and have a mutual duty to help and to avenge
each other. And lastly they have their council and their sepulture in
common.[893]
But the most rigorous obligation for the members of the same clan is
that of not marrying in it. To take a wife having the same _totem_ is
considered as a most culpable act; it is a crime sometimes punished by
death.[894] The Iroquois law regulating marriages recalls, in a certain
degree, that which takes place among the Kamilaroi of Australia. Thus
an Iroquois of the Seneca tribe and of the Wolf clan must not marry a
woman belonging, not only to his own clan, but to all the clans of the
same name in the five other tribes of the Iroquois. On the other hand,
he is perfectly free to marry in any of the seven other clans of his
own Seneca tribe.[895] In short, an Iroquois may be endogamous in the
tribe, but he must be exogamous from the point of view of the clan or
clans.
The motive of the prohibition of marriage within the clan is always the
supposed relationship. Thus the law of the Tinneh Indians forbids a man
of the Chitsang clan to marry a woman of the same clan because that
woman is his sister.[896]
The children always belong to the _gens_, or clan, of their mother.
These rules vary more or less from tribe to tribe, except the
prohibition of marriage within the clan, which is strict and general.
Thus, among the Omahas, a man may take a wife in another tribe, even
if this woman belongs to a clan of the same name as his own; but he
cannot marry within his own clan, because all the women of this clan
are reputed to be his relations--sisters, aunts, nieces, daughters,
etc. We shall see presently to what women these various appellations,
which among the Redskins have a much wider sense than with us, are
applied.[897]
These customs, or very analogous ones, were in force with a great
number of American tribes. At the present day the Indians of the Moqui
Pueblos still live in their common habitations, as at the time of the
conquest, and they are divided into nine clans.[898]
In the Pueblo of Orayba the relatives of a married woman who dies take
her property and her children, only leaving to the husband his horse,
his clothes, and his weapons;[899] for by marrying the woman does not
cease to belong to her original clan. Among the Pipiles of Salvador
a genealogical tree with seven branches was painted on the wall of
the common house, and save in the case of a great service rendered
to the clan, a man could not intermarry with any persons related up
to the degree indicated by the genealogical tree.[900] In reality,
this people had got beyond familial confusion, or of purely _totemic_
relationship, but the principle regulating conjugal unions had not yet
changed. In Yucatan marriage between persons of the same name--that is
to say, of the same clan--entailed the penalty of being considered as
a renegade.[901] The savage Abipones were also exogamous, according
to Dobritzhoffer. This rule naturally gives way in proportion as
civilisation develops. The Nahuas still prohibited marriage between
consanguineous relatives; but at Nicaragua the prohibition only applied
to relatives of the first degree.[902]
We have previously seen, in describing the family amongst the animals,
that it is habitually maternal; it is around the female that the young
group themselves. As for the male, if he does not abandon the family,
he exercises no other function but that of chief of the band. It must
surely have been thus that the first human hordes were formed, and when
man became intelligent enough to take note of filiation, it was uterine
parenthood alone that he considered worthy of account. The primitive
family was maternal, for in the confusion of sexual unions paternal
filiation would have been difficult to determine; no importance was
therefore attached to it in early times, and the father was not looked
upon as the parent of his children.
We shall find the maternal family, or at least traces of it, in many
countries, but it is especially among the Indians of North America
that it has been the best preserved and the best studied. In the
eighteenth century it was already remarked by Charlevoix, Lafitau, and
Lahontan,[903] that the Redskins always bear the name of their mother,
and that it is through a man’s sister that his name is transmitted
to descendants. The American clan is based on uterine filiation; it
comprehends all the descendants, in the female line of an ancestral
mother, real or hypothetical. It is therefore exactly the contrary of
the agnatic _gens_ of the Greco-Roman world.
The Redskin clan is composed of all the families reputed to be related
to each other; it is a little republic having the right to the service
of all the women for the cultivation of the soil, and of all the men
for the chase, war, and _vendettas_. It is to the woman that the wigwam
or family dwelling belongs, as well as all the objects possessed by
the family, and the whole is transmitted by heritage, not to the son,
but to the eldest daughter or to the nearest maternal relative,[904]
sometimes to the brother of the deceased woman. Nevertheless, this
heritage must be understood in the sense of a simple usufruct. It was
the maternal clan in reality who was the proprietor, and none of the
members of the community could seriously alienate the social property.
The husband alone, in most of the tribes, had no right over the goods
or over the children; they all remained in the maternal clan;[905]
it was maternal filiation which regulated the name, the rank, and
the hereditary rights in the clan.[906] A sort of communism reigned
there. All the provisions, whether they were the produce of the soil,
of the chase, or of fishing, were placed in public storehouses, under
the control of an aged matron; and if it ever happened that a family
had exhausted its provisions, another family immediately came to its
aid.[907]
But maternal filiation was, or is, in force even where the clans did
not live in common houses, as we find it still among the Mohicans, the
Delawares, the Narrangasetts, the Pequots, the Wyandots, the Missouris,
the Minnitaris, the Crows, the Creeks, the Chickasaws, the Cherokees,
etc.
With the Iroquois and the Hurons, the father, says Charlevoix, was
almost a stranger to his children. “Among the Hurons,” continues the
same observer, “dignity and succession are inherited through the women.
It is the son of the sister who succeeds, and in default of him the
next relative in the female line.”[908]
“With these peoples,” says Lafitau, “marriages are arranged in such
a way that the husband and wife do not leave their own family to
establish a family and a cabin independently. Each one remains at home,
and the children born of these marriages belong to the families that
have produced them, and are counted as members of the family and cabin
of the mother, and not at all as belonging to those of the father. The
possessions of the husband do not go to his wife’s cabin, to which
he is himself a stranger; and in his wife’s cabin the daughters are
heirs in preference to the males, who have nothing there but mere
subsistence.”[909]
“Besides this,” continues Lafitau, “the wife’s cabin has rights over
the product of the husband’s, hunting; all of this must be contributed
during the first year, and a half only afterwards.”[910]
The mothers negotiated the marriages, and naturally did so without
consulting the interested parties. When the affair was once settled,
presents had to be made to the gentile relatives of the bride. It
was the care of these relatives, in case of conjugal dissensions
between the married pair, to attempt a reconciliation and to prevent a
divorce.[911] At the present time, among the Santi-Dakotas, if a wife
is ill-treated by her husband, the mother-in-law has the right to take
back her daughter; the husband’s power must yield to hers.[912] Does
the institution of filiation by women, or the maternal family, entail,
as some have pretended, the _régime_ of the matriarchate? North America
being _par excellence_ the country of exogamy and of the maternal
family, the theorists of the primitive matriarchate have often drawn
arguments from thence which it is interesting to weigh.
At the epoch during which the Seneca-Iroquois still lived in their
“long houses,” it seems that the influence of the women in the
community was very great. The missionary, Arthur Wright, wrote in
1873:--“It was the custom for the women to govern the house. The
provisions were in common; but woe to the unfortunate husband or
lover too idle or clumsy to bring home from the chase a sufficient
booty. Whatever the number of his children or the value of the goods
he possessed in the house, he might be ordered at any moment to take
up his blanket and pack off.” After that, unless he obtained the
intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he was forced to obey, return
to his own clan, or contract an alliance elsewhere. “The women were the
chief power in the clans, and they did not hesitate, when necessary, to
depose a chief, and make him re-enter the ranks of simple warriors. The
election of the chiefs always depended on them.”[913]
Among the Wyandots there is in every clan a council composed of four
women elected by the female chiefs of the family. These four women
choose a chief of the clan from among the men; then the _totem_ of the
clan is painted on the face of this chief. The council of the tribe
is formed by an assemblage of the clan councils; four-fifths of it,
therefore, consist of women. The sachem, or chief of the tribe, is
chosen by the chiefs of the clans.[914]
Charlevoix relates that in 1721 the Natchez Indians were governed by
a very despotic chief, the Sun, who was succeeded by the son of his
nearest of kin. This was the female chief, and she had, like the Sun,
the power of life and death over the people. At the death of the female
chief in 1721, her husband, not belonging to the family of the Sun, was
strangled by her son, according to custom, and that without prejudice
to other human sacrifices.[915] The ancient Spanish chroniclers also
speak of the submission of the husbands to their wives in Nicaragua;
they seem to have been treated as servants (Herrera, Audogoya).
Lastly, among the Redskins the matrons had the right to baptise the
children--that is to say, to make them enter either the maternal or the
paternal clan.[916]
These facts are curious. They prove, indeed, that with the Redskins the
women enjoyed a notable influence, especially in ancient times. With
the Seneca-Iroquois they could expel the incapable hunter; but this
was evidently by their title of housekeepers of the clan. Among the
Wyandots, they figured numerously in the council; but nevertheless,
the supreme chief was a man. As for the woman-chief of the Natchez
Indians, we find an equivalent of it in certain little despotic
monarchies of black Africa. Among the Ashantees, and in Darfour, etc.,
the princesses dominate their husbands or their lovers by the prestige
of royalty. Nothing is more natural than that a plebeian husband should
be strangled on the tomb of his wife with other human victims, when we
consider the prevailing ideas of future life and the absolute servility
of the subject in primitive monarchical states. In fact, the power
of women among the Redskins was more apparent than real. Charlevoix
himself declares that their domination is fictitious,[917] “that they
are, in domestic life, the slaves of their husband,” that the men hold
them in profound contempt, and that, amongst themselves, the epithet of
“woman” is a cutting insult.
Important affairs were kept secret from them;[918] polygamy was
habitually permitted to the men, but polyandry was nearly always
prohibited to the women. In fact, among the Redskins the woman is the
slave of her husband, and the latter thinks so slightly of her, that
frequently the men live conjugally for years without communicating with
their wives otherwise than by signs, as owing to exogamous marriage
they speak different languages.[919] The authority that the husbands
concede to their wives in certain tribes is entirely domestic; it is a
household royalty.
Thus, with the Selisches, the cabins containing the provisions are
confided to the women, and the husband himself can take nothing without
their permission.[920] The husband or the son commands in the woods and
on the prairie; but in the interior of the wigwam it is the most aged
woman or the mother who governs and assigns to each one his place.[921]
These customs and the marriages by servitude have led several observers
to attribute to the women a considerable authority which they do not
really possess. In fact, they are nearly always purchased, and are very
submissive. The maternal family and the matriarchate are very different
things. The first is common; the second is very rare, if indeed it has
ever existed. The Australians, who have the maternal family, none the
less treat their wives as we should not dare to treat our domestic
animals. And again, in order that filiation by the female side should
give women a notable social influence, it is necessary that society
should be very civilised, that there should be exchangeable values,
and that women should become rich by inheritance. Then they are in a
position to exercise the power that fortune gives in every country. But
among the Redskins private property as yet hardly existed; the clans
preserved the prior claim; personal property had not a great value;
there were no domestic animals; it was difficult for any individual,
man or woman, to become rich. Lastly, the chief occupations, those
which were reputed noble, those also on which the existence of the
tribes depended, were the chase and war; now the women took no part
in these. They have not therefore been able to exercise a dominant
influence, even in the tribes where they were treated with relative
mildness. Among the Redskins in general, all the painful labours fall
to the women, except the fabrication of arms. It is she who takes care
of the home, who cooks, prepares the skins and the furs, gathers the
wild rice, digs, sows and reaps the maize and the vegetables, dries the
meat and the roots for the winter-provision, makes the clothes and the
necklaces, etc. She even works at the construction of bark canoes, but
in this, man comes to her aid. With that exception, he confines himself
to hunting and fighting, smoking, eating, drinking, and sleeping.
In his eyes work is a disgrace.[922] Such are the customs of living
Redskins. Were they different last century? Not at all, if we may
believe the authorities even who are invoked by the modern theorists
of the American matriarchate. Charlevoix tells us that the Huron
husbands prostituted their daughters and their wives for money,[923]
that the Sioux cut off the noses of their unfaithful wives and scalped
them,[924] and that all the hard work was left to the women, the men
glorying in their idleness.[925] Lafitau enumerates, with still greater
detail, the many and painful occupations of the women,[926] and he
narrates the story of a husband who burnt his adulterous wife at a
slow fire.[927] It is not then amongst the Redskins that we can find
the matriarchate. Their familial system is none the less very curious,
especially if we compare it with that of the Australians.
The familial clan of the Australians and of the Redskins enables us
to retrace the origin of the ideas of kinship. Nothing similar seems
to exist among the animals. In the best endowed species, the parents,
especially the females, have an instinctive love of their young, but
only as long as they are young. After that period they no longer
recognise them, and often even drive them away.
Man, who has certainly begun his existence in the same way as the
animals, has early attained, not to ideas of precise filiation, but to
a vague idea of consanguinity between all the members of his horde.
In these little primitive groups, no distinction has at first been
made between real and fictitious kinship. All the men of the same clan
have been brothers, all the women have been sisters, and by the help
of an inveterate habit of exogamy, a gross morality has been formed,
which condemned social incest. But as the life of the clan was, before
all things, communal, while marriages within the clan were prohibited,
it was decided that the clans of the same name--that is, those who
had sprung one from the other--should be united by a sort of social
marriage, all the women of the one being common to all the men of
the other. Then, in the course of time, the instinct of individual
appropriation having undermined the primitive community, the women
were distributed amongst the men; they formed families which were
often singular ones, and of which I shall have to speak again. There
was no longer promiscuity from clan to clan, but the wife was to be
taken from an allied clan. The first filiation which was established
was surely maternal filiation: primitive conjugal confusion would not
permit of any other. But at length, when the family became more or
less instituted, the relations could be classified, and the degrees of
consanguinity distinguished.
It was not without difficulty that man succeeded so far. A long period
of time was required to disentangle the skein of family relationships;
and fictitious kinship continued to be confounded with real kinship
for many ages. Change came only by a slow evolution, which we will now
proceed to study.
FOOTNOTES:
[873] Lubbock, _Orig. Civil._, p. 9.
[874] Lang, _Aborigines of Australia_.--Eyre, _Discoveries in Central
Australia_, vol. ii. p. 385.
[875] _Grey’s Journal_, vol. ii. ch. ii.
[876] Tylor, _Researches in Early History of Mankind_, vol. i. ch. ix.
[877] Giraud-Teulon, père, _Origine de la Famille_, p. 44.
[878] _Folklore, etc., of the Australian Aborigines_ (Adelaide,
1879), pp. 28, 50, 57, 58, 65, 67, 87, 89, 92, 93.--Fison and Howitt,
_Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 215.
[879] Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 50.
[880] _Id._, _ibid._
[881] _Id._, _ibid._
[882] Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 65, 66.
[883] Fison and Howitt, quoted by Giraud-Teulon, fils, in _Origines du
Mariage et de la Famille_, p. 120.
[884] Fison and Howitt, quoted by Giraud-Teulon, fils, in _Origines du
Mariage et de la Famille_, pp. 86-88.
[885] Fison and Howitt, _loc. cit._, p. 200.
[886] _Id._, _ibid._
[887] Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 447.
[888] Giraud-Teulon, fils, _loc. cit._, p. 446.
[889] _Hist. et descrip. générale de la Nouvelle-France_, etc.
[890] _Ibid._ t. v. p. 393.
[891] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 70.--Lahontan, _Voy._, etc.,
t. ii. pp. 104, 183.
[892] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, pp. 528-531.
[893] _Id._, _ibid._ pp. 70, 71.
[894] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 97.
[895] L. Morgan, _loc. cit._ p. 513.
[896] _Notes on the Tinneh_, Hardisty, in _Smithsonian Reports_, 1866.
[897] _Omaha Sociology_, p. 255, in _Smithsonian Reports_, 1885.
[898] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 178.
[899] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 535.
[900] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. ii. p. 665.
[901] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. ii. p. 665.
[902] _Id._, _ibid._ vol. ii. pp. 251, 666.
[903] _Voyages_, etc., t. ii. p. 154.
[904] A. Giraud-Teulon, fils, _Orig. du Mariage_, etc., p. 191.
[905] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 186.
[906] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 177.
[907] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. du Mariage_, p. 185.
[908] Charlevoix, _Hist. de la Nouvelle France_, t. v. p. 395.
[909] Lafitau, _Mœurs des Sauvages Américains_, t. I^{er.} p. 69, etc.
[910] _Id._, _ibid._ t. ii. pp. 252, 268.
[911] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 454.
[912] J. Owen Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, p. 261, in _Smithsonian
Reports_, 1885.
[913] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 455.
[914] J. W. Powell, _Wyandot Government_, in _Smithsonian Reports_,
1881.
[915] Charlevoix, _loc. cit._, t. vi. pp. 177-179.
[916] L. Morgan,_ Ancient Societies_, p. 169.
[917] Charlevoix, t. v. pp. 397-421.
[918] _Id._, _ibid._, t. vi. p. 172.
[919] Lubbock, _Orig. Civil._, p. 152.
[920] Doménech, _Voy. pitt. dans les déserts du Nouveau Monde_, p. 508.
[921] _Ibid._ p. 543.
[922] Doménech, _loc. cit._, pp. 338, 425, 467.
[923] Charlevoix, _Journal_, etc., t. vi. p. 39.
[924] _Id._, _ibid._, t. v. p. 271.
[925] _Id._, _ibid._, t. vi. p. 44.
[926] _Mœurs des Sauvages_, ii. 266; iii. 56, 69, 70, 72, 76, 92, 97,
98, 120.
[927] _Ibid._, t. ii. pp. 274, 275.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FAMILIAL CLAN AND ITS EVOLUTION.
I. _The Clan among the Redskins._--Primitive form of the Tribe--The
Clan.
II. _The Family among the Redskins._--Classes of relations among
the Omahas--The family among the Iroquois-Senecas, the Omahas,
etc.--Primitive familial stage of the Redskins--Adoption and
its miracles--Rise and evolution of masculine filiation in
America--Exogamy and endogamy.
III. _The Family in Polynesia._--Maternal filiation--Rarity of
exogamy--Hawaian marriage--The terms of kinship--The father humbling
himself to the male child--Adoption in Polynesia.
IV. _The Family among the Mongols_.--Familial exogamy among the
Mongols--Kinship by classes--Evolution of kinship by classes.
V. _The Clan and the Family._--The European family has not been the
“cellule” of societies--The primitive clan.
I. _The Clan among the Redskins._
In the preceding chapter we have seen the nature of Redskin exogamy, on
which it has sometimes been attempted to construct theories of conjugal
evolution applicable to the entire human race. As a matter of fact, the
North American Indians marry within their tribe; they are therefore
endogamous as regards the tribe, but they do not take their wives from
their own clan, and consequently they are exogamous as regards this
clan. But the clan being composed of real or supposed blood-relations,
the exogamy of the Redskins is actually nothing more than our own
prohibition, very much extended, of marriages within certain degrees of
kinship.
There is really nothing here which resembles marriage by capture, so
often classed with exogamy; but the latter may very easily co-exist
with the former, and may even be the general rule in more savage
tribes. It prevailed, we are told, among the Caribs[928] to such a
degree that the wives did not speak the same language as their husbands.
How was the American tribe originally formed? Either consanguineous
hordes have ranged themselves side by side, or, which is more
probable, a horde, becoming too numerous, has swarmed. Analogous
groups, proceeding from it, have formed large families, remaining
all the while attached to the original stock, but constituting,
nevertheless, distinct communities, confederated with each other and
with the primitive clan, which at length became indistinguishable
from the others. The whole of these clans taken together represent a
tribe. If the clans are too numerous, they group themselves in twos,
or threes, etc., within the bosom of the tribe, and thus form what in
primitive Greece were called _phratries_, the bond between them being
a lesser degree of kinship. At first, marriage was prohibited within
the phratry, and afterwards exogamy was restricted to the clans. The
clans composing the phratry had festivals in common, and considered
themselves bound to aid each other in revenging wrongs.[929] The clan,
or _gens_, is a group of persons united by a closer consanguinity, but
in the female line. The children of the women of the clan remain in
the clan of their mother. “The woman bears the clan,” say the Wyandot
Indians,[930] just as our ancestors said, “The womb dyes the child.”
Each clan has its _totem_ (a tortoise, bear, eland, or fox, etc.). In
the “long houses” of the Iroquois, or in the Pueblos, the members of
each clan even had a common habitation, in which each family had its
own cell; but the members of this cell-family belonged to different
clans, as the husband was not of the same clan as his wife, and
sometimes did not inhabit the same dwelling. We have heard it said many
times that “the family is the social cellule.” Now this is evidently
false in regard to the American tribe, and to all tribes that are
organised on the same plan. In them it is the clan which is the social
unit, or cellule, to keep to the metaphor favoured by H. Spencer, and
it is feminine filiation which determines the kinship. What is this
kinship in the female line in its details? That is what we must now
proceed to inquire.
II. _The Family among the Redskins._
The manner in which the different degrees of kinship are understood
and named varies somewhat among the diverse Redskin tribes; but, in
general, the similarity is very great, and great also is the confusion
between real consanguinity and fictitious kinship. Among the Omahas,
for example, five classes of kinship are recognised--1st, the _nikie_
kinship, arising from a very distant common ancestor; 2nd, the clan
kinship; thus the families whose tents adjoin each other when the
tribe is assembled, are of this kinship; 3rd, kinship by the calumet
dance--that is to say, by adoption; 4th, kinship by marriage, including
the husband, wife, son, and daughter’s husband; 5th, kinship of
blood-relation, including the clans of the mother, grandmother, and
father.[931]
The Omahas admit, therefore, entire groups of so-called kinsfolk quite
unknown in our individualist societies; and moreover, the adopted
kinsmen are held exactly on the same footing as the others.
If we confine ourselves to real kinship, we shall see that it is
understood in a very wide manner. I will simply give, as a detailed
example, a description of the family among the Iroquois Senecas and
the Omahas. With the Iroquois Senecas, the direct line, both ascending
and descending, is very short. It does not go farther than grandfather
and grandmother, and grandson and grand-daughter. The more distant
ancestors and descendants are all comprised without distinction in the
same categories; they form groups of grandfathers or grandsons. In a
collateral line, they proceed by groups, in the same manner. Thus, _for
a_ _woman_, the sons and daughters of a sister are reckoned as her
own sons and daughters, and their children are her grandchildren. The
collateral kinship is then confounded, at least in terminology, with
kinship in a direct line. On the contrary, the sons and daughters of
a woman’s brother are only her nephews and nieces. How can we explain
this familial confusion on one side, and this distinction on the other?
It may probably be attributed to the habit of the Redskins to marry a
lot of sisters at the same time. A woman counts her sister’s children
as her own, because the husband of that sister, whom we should call
her brother-in-law, is virtually her husband also. Inversely, _for a
man_, his brother’s children, or his fraternal nieces and nephews,
are reckoned as his own children; their children are his grandsons or
grand-daughters, whilst the children and grandchildren of his sister
are only his nephews and nieces.[932] Following our previous line of
reasoning, we are led to suppose that these denominations of kinship
go back to a distant epoch, when brothers had their wives in common,
but abstained from marrying their own sisters. This supposition is
confirmed by the examination of the collateral ascending kinship. Thus,
either in the case of a man or woman, the father’s brother, or the
paternal uncle, is reckoned as the father, and his sons and daughters
are reckoned as brothers and sisters.
The sisters of the father, or of any person bearing the title of
father, are called aunts. The children of these aunts are cousins.
For a man, the kinship of uncle is restricted to the brothers of the
mother, and the children of these uncles are cousins. The mother’s
sister, or the maternal aunt, is counted as a mother; her children are
not nephews and nieces, but sons and daughters. All sisters, real or
fictitious, are mutually mothers of all their children. The children
of a man’s brothers are not his nephews and nieces, but his sons and
daughters; his sisters’ children are his nephews and nieces,[933]
probably because these names have been given at an epoch when the
brothers married groups of sisters in common, but not their own sisters.
The Omaha Redskins distinguish the degrees of kinship almost in the
same way as the Iroquois Senecas. For them also the most distant
ascendants are all grandfathers or grandmothers. They class all their
relations in groups, formed of individuals virtually brought together
by similar degrees of consanguinity or alliance. Whole categories of
individuals, more or less numerous, are called brothers or fathers of
a man or woman; all those whom the father of a person calls brothers
are fathers to that person; all those whom the mother of a woman calls
husbands are also fathers to that woman. The name “mother” is given to
all the women reputed as sisters to the mother, to the aunts or nieces
of the mother, and also to the virtual wives of the father.
A man has virtually for wives all the wives of his brothers, and also
their widows, on account of the levirate.
If a man has a brother-in-law who is at the same time the husband of
a paternal aunt, the sister of that man is the grand-daughter of the
brother-in-law.
A man becomes your brother-in-law if he is merely the husband of a
paternal aunt, because he can marry your sister.
The husband of a daughter, of a niece, or of a grand-daughter, is a
son-in-law.[934]
All the sons and all the daughters of persons reputed as fathers and
mothers call each other brothers and sisters. All the wives, real or
virtual, of the grandfather are called grandmothers; so are also all
the mothers or grandmothers of the fathers and mothers, and all the
women that the fathers and mothers call sisters.
A man counts as his sons all the sons of his brothers or of his virtual
wives; but the sisters of these sons are his sisters. A woman calls
the sons and daughters of her brothers her nephews and nieces, but the
children of her sister are counted as her own children; because their
father is virtually her husband.
Among the Omahas a man calls his sister’s children nephews and nieces.
A person of either sex counts as grandchildren all those who are called
the children of his sons, daughters, nephews, and nieces, or reputed as
such.
A man counts as uncles all those whom his mothers call “brothers”; and
as aunts all the sisters of his father and the wives of his uncles. A
man has for brothers-in-law the husbands of his father’s sister; for
they are the real or virtual husbands of his sisters; a woman has them
for virtual husbands.[935]
Various prohibitions of marriage result from these conventional
kinships. A man may not marry the women that he calls daughters of a
sister, or grand-daughters, etc. A woman may not marry the men who are
her sons, the sons of her sister, of her aunt or of her niece, or who
are her brothers, etc.[936]
But an Omaha may marry any woman who is not a blood relation, provided
that she does not figure among the prohibited affinities.[937]
We have not such detailed information regarding the other Redskin
tribes; but we know enough of them to be certain that their systems of
kinship are very analogous to those of the Iroquois Senecas and the
Omahas. Filiation is everywhere maternal, except in certain tribes in
the course of evolution; nearly everywhere also it is a crime to marry
a woman having the same _totem_.[938]
Among the Mandans, Pawnies, and Arickaries, a man calls his brother’s
wife his wife also. Among the Crows a woman calls her husband’s
brother’s wife her “comrade”; but among the Winebagos she calls her
“sister.” In some tribes a man’s wife’s sister’s husband is called his
“brother.”[939]
Some very severe and inconvenient rules of decency have resulted from
these fictitious kinships, with their prohibitions of marriage.
Thus, among the Omahas, the young girls may only speak to their
father, brother, and grandfather. A woman avoids passing before her
daughter’s husband as much as possible; and, unless under extraordinary
circumstances, a woman does not speak directly to the father of her
husband. A man never addresses a word to the mother or grandmother of
his wife.[940] In the last century, among the Iroquois, a young man
was dishonoured if he stopped to converse in public with a young girl
who was certainly within the prohibited degree of kinship.[941] For a
young Iroquois girl to call the husband of her aunt by his personal
name was considered a grave act, indicating a culpable _liaison_.[942]
From the manner in which the Redskins understand kinship, we may infer
two things: first, that they must have passed through a familial stage,
in which groups of brothers married groups of sisters and possessed
them in common, thus combining polygamy and polyandry, since they
attach little value to real consanguinity, and their kinships are very
often fictitious; and secondly, that they make no difference between
real filiation and adoption, and in this they resemble savages and even
barbarians of all countries. Among the Omahas the word used to signify
adoption means literally “to take for one’s own son.”[943] The adopted
child is always treated as the first-born, and takes his place; the
father who adopts him refuses him nothing, and gives him a share in all
his wealth. The real father, on his side, makes presents to the adopted
father. And lastly, there is a prohibition of marriage during four
years between the two families, on account of the kinship created by
the adoption.[944]
Sometimes an entire clan adopts another. Thus the Wolf-Iroquois were
adopted by the Falcon-Iroquois, and the effect of this adoption was
that the two clans became completely assimilated, the new-comers taking
the kinships of the adoptive clan.[945]
The adoption of enemies, taken prisoners after a battle, is still more
curious. This adoption has almost miraculous effects; it extinguishes
the ferocious hatred which the Redskins always feel for men belonging
to rival tribes; more than that, it makes the captive warrior become
the husband of the woman whom he has perhaps rendered a widow, or
of the daughter whose father he may have killed. The Redskins have,
it should be said, very exaggerated ideas on the subject of warlike
valour. A combatant must never surrender unless very severely wounded.
Every warrior who is taken prisoner is dishonoured and held as
dead by his tribe, and his captors generally torture him to death.
However, in the last century, the most ferocious of the Redskins, the
Iroquois, sometimes spared a few prisoners to offer them to the wives
or daughters whose relations had been killed. The latter had the power
either to put them to death, in order that their shades might serve as
slaves to their father, brother, or husband, etc., who had fallen, or
to pardon them, and even adopt them. In this last case, the enemies of
the previous night took a place among the warriors of the clan, and
were no longer distinguished from the others.[946]
This system of kinship in the familial clan is curious, because it
holds real consanguinity very cheap, unhesitatingly confusing real with
fictitious kinship, and thus forming classes of fictitious relations.
It seems to prove the existence of an ancient period of promiscuity,
during which there was scarcely any thought of determining with
precision the degrees of consanguinity of individuals. Naturally,
the first form of the family which was more or less vaguely outlined
in the confused groups anterior to the familial clans, was the
maternal family; but this system of filiation by classes is in no way
incompatible with paternal filiation.
Up to the present time kinship in the female line prevails among most
of the Redskin tribes. Certain of them, however, are evolving in
the direction of masculine filiation, and this movement was already
commencing at the close of the last century.[947] The transformation
began with the chiefs and more powerful men. Among the Thlinkits of
Russian America the great men already give the paternal name to their
children; but the poorer people are still in the stage of uterine
filiation.[948] Certain tribes have quite recently adopted the system
of paternal filiation. It is owing to European influence that this
change is operating, and its accomplishment is only a question of time.
The Ojibways have only taken two generations to effect the adoption
of agnatic filiation.[949] A similar evolution was spontaneously
accomplished in the great states of Central America. In Peru maternal
filiation was still in general use, but the paternal family was
beginning to appear. In the mass of the nation, says Gomara, the
heritage was transmitted to nephews and not to sons; but in the family
of the Incas direct male descendants alone had the right to avail
themselves of their origin, and sons inherited.[950] It seems that in
Mexico the familial evolution may have been more advanced, for there
it is always the paternal personality which predominates, and it is
the father who dictates to the children rules of conduct and moral
precepts. The mothers exhort their daughters to be submissive to their
husbands, to obey them and strive to please them.
The familial customs which I have just described are general in
America; they are not universal as regards exogamy, for Hearne tells us
that many Chippeways frequently take to wife their sisters, daughters,
and even mothers.[951] We know, on the other hand, that the Peruvian
Incas married their sisters, and that throughout the Peruvian empire no
one married outside the administrative district.
In some parts of America the diversity is still greater. The Caribs
married their relatives, with the exception of sisters,[952]
indiscriminately; the Indians of Guiana, on the contrary, practised
totemic exogamy, like the Redskins.[953]
The Indians of Guatemala were unacquainted with maternal kinship. They
willingly married their sisters, provided they were not children of the
same father, and among them the children belonged to the class of the
father even when the mother was a slave.[954] Among the Mayas descent
was also reckoned in the male line.[955] In various savage tribes of
Mexico the women did not inherit. Among the Ityas and in Yucatan the
name of the child was formed by combining the names of the father and
mother; the mother’s name, however, had the precedence.[956]
The monk Thevet relates that the Indians of Brazil already pushed the
agnatic system, at least in theory, to its most extreme limits; for
they affirmed, he says, that in procreation the part of the father is
predominant, and that of the mother only secondary.[957] The general
conclusion to be drawn from these very dissimilar facts is, that we
should abstain from forming any absolute theories on these great
sociological questions of marriage and the family, which are still so
far from being elucidated.
III. _The Family in Polynesia._
Filiation by the female line seems to be generally adopted, not only in
Polynesia, but in many Melanesian or Micronesian archipelagoes. It has
been found in the Fiji Islands, at Tonga and the Carolines,[958] etc.
But exogamy, even the exogamy of the clan, after the American fashion,
appears rare. It existed at Samoa, but in any case it seems not to have
been a general custom.[959]
In New Zealand endogamy predominated, and marriage with a woman of
another tribe was even prohibited, unless an important political motive
could be given as an excuse.[960] Endogamy was also practised in the
Hawaian Islands. In the Mulgrave Islands every marriage required the
sanction of an assembly of all the friends and relatives, or rather of
the whole clan,[961] for the interest of the community was involved in
it.
In the Hawaian Islands there existed a confused kinship by classes,
analogous to that of the familial clan among the Redskins, but much
more gross. Group-marriage of brothers and sisters prevailed, but
generally the brothers did not marry their own sisters. As for the
names expressing the degrees of kinship, they were names of classes.
The Hawaians had no words to express “father” or “mother.” They used
the word “_mkûa_,” which signifies “parents.” To say “father,” they
added the word “_kana_,” which signifies “male”: _Mkûa kana_, male
parent. To say “mother,” they used the combination, _Mkûa ouahina_,
female parent. There was no expression for “son” or “daughter.” They
used the word _keiki_, child, or little one, to which they added _kana_
or _ouahina_, as before, according as the child was male or female. The
language had no terms for “brother” or “sister.”[962] The word employed
to express “wives” is collective; it applies to the wife’s sister as
well as to the wife proper, and signifies literally “female”; in the
same way, for “husband” they used the word _kana_ (male), and applied
it also to the husband’s brother and sister’s husband. All the sisters
of a woman were called “the wives of the husband of that woman,” even
when they were not actually so.[963] The Hawaians had no expressions
for “grandfather” or “grandmother.” Their word _kapuna_ signifies an
ancestor of any degree beyond the father and mother (_mkûa_). Neither
had they any special denomination for “grandson” or “grand-daughter.”
As brothers and sisters did not generally intermarry, the women called
the husband or husbands of their sisters, not “husbands,” but “intimate
companions” (_punalua_).[964]
It was possible for either the paternal or maternal family to evolve
from this confused system of kinship, based at first apparently on the
promiscuity of brothers and sisters; but it was the latter which at
first arose, and in the time of Cook the rank and dignity of the chiefs
were transmitted in the female line.[965] A singular custom noticed
by Cook in the Society Isles may perhaps be interpreted in the sense
of maternal filiation. They spoke of the transmission of the title
and dignity of the chiefs to their first-born, and that even at the
moment of birth. As soon as the wife of a chief had given birth to a
son, the father was reckoned as deposed, and became a simple regent; he
owed homage to his son, and might not remain in his presence without
uncovering to the waist.[966] At Tonga maternal filiation was well
established; rank was transmitted by the women, who sometimes even
reigned,[967] and the father was not counted as the parent of his
child.[968]
Of late years, and manifestly under European influence, the familial
system has become modified in Polynesia. At Tonga masculine filiation
is being substituted by degrees for feminine filiation.[969] The Maoris
of New Zealand have also adopted agnatic filiation, but this new system
still jars against ancient usages, which formerly harmonised with the
maternal family.
This evolution of the family in Polynesia has probably had for its
starting-point a confused promiscuity, and afterwards a system of
classification of relations, in which real and fictitious ties were
hardly distinguished from each other. With the slight importance
attached to real consanguinity might very naturally coexist a great
facility to practise adoption. This was abused to such a degree in
the Marquesas Islands that it was not uncommon to see aged persons
getting themselves adopted by children, and even animals were adopted
also. Thus a chief had adopted a dog, to which he had ceremoniously
offered ten pigs and some precious ornaments; he had him constantly
carried by a _kikino_; and at the banquets of the chiefs, the animal
had his appointed place by the side of his adoptive father.[970] There
was no distinction generally made between the real and the adoptive
parent,[971] and we may hence conclude that the degrees and bonds of
kinship were not well distinguished.
IV. _The Family among the Mongols._
The family of the Polynesians, and more especially of the Hawaians, may
well have been, as L. Morgan supposes, the primitive familial type of
the American Redskins. It has for its basis a marriage which is at once
polyandric and polygynic, between groups of sisters and corresponding
groups of brothers, and it results quite naturally in a system of
kinship by classes, holding real consanguinity very cheap.
It seems probable that analogous systems of kinship may have been
adopted by the greater number of the Asiatic Mongols. This may at
least be inferred from the fragmentary but significant accounts with
which explorers have supplied us. Among the Yourak Samoyedes, it is
forbidden to marry a woman of the same tribe (or rather clan).[972]
The people among the Kalmucks are subject to restrictions of the same
kind in regard to marriage, which must not take place within three or
four degrees of kinship. The great men, however, for whom the laws
are more lenient in all countries, sometimes obtain immunity from
these inconvenient obligations, but the populace is very much shocked
at their laxity. “Great men and dogs,” they say, “have no kin.”
Nevertheless, the sons of the great men, who often also marry their
sisters-in-law, always take a wife in another clan.[973] Kinship by
classes surely existed among the Mongols only a few centuries ago,
for Baber, the founder of the Mongol Empire of Delhi, speaks in his
_Memoirs_ of one of his lieutenants, named Lenguer Khan, who possessed
a whole tribe of maternal uncles, the Djendjouhah, forming a people who
lived in the mountains of the Punjaub.[974]
V. _The Evolution of the System of Kinship by Classes._
These facts, and the inferences they suggest, enable us to solve a
difficulty which has embarrassed an eminent sociologist, L. Morgan, to
whom we owe our acquaintance with the details of the curious systems of
kinship by classes prevailing among the Polynesians and the Redskins.
Morgan, in comparing, term for term, the denominations indicating
kinship among the Iroquois-Senecas and the Tamils of India, found
them identical as to meaning and number, and he admits, but not
without hesitation, that there has been, in both races, a parallel and
spontaneous evolution.[975] This way of explaining ethnic similarities
is certainly in general very legitimate. At first sight it often
appears trustworthy, and saves the trouble of inventing fantastic
migrations. In thousands of cases men of every period, every country,
every race have conducted themselves in the same way, had the same
ideas, realised the same inventions, adopted the same practices,
without knowing each other, without even supposing the existence of
the other peoples, and this simply because all of them were part of
the great human family. But between the Mongoloids of North America,
their cousins of Northern Asia, and the Hawaians, there is probably
the bond of a distant and common origin, and, besides this, the nomad
Mongols of Asia have more than once penetrated into India. Up to the
present time, half-savage Mongol tribes occupy entire regions of the
Himalaya. Mongols and Tamils have had wide and long communications with
each other during prehistoric ages; it has therefore been possible
for them to borrow mutually their system of kinship. There exists
quite a chain of peoples, including the Tamils of India, the least
civilised Mongols, the American Redskins, and lastly the greater
number of the Polynesians, all of whom have formerly adopted, or still
practise systems of kinship, based, not on consanguinity, but on a
classification more or less fictitious.
The fact is interesting; but it is somewhat bold to attach to it, as
Morgan has done, a universal value, and to pretend that all human
races have passed through this phase of kinship by classes. Even in
the countries where this familial form prevails, it is subject to more
than one exception, and it is probable that each great human type,
having had its special centre of creation, has evolved physically
and psychically in its own manner, sometimes unconsciously imitating
the others, but quite as often deviating from them, according as the
environment, the difficulties to be overcome, and the necessities
of the struggle for existence imposed on it such or such a line of
conduct.
However it may be, if we condense, by classification, all the notions
that have been collected in relation to kinship by classes among the
Australians, the Tamils, the primitive Mongols, the Mongoloids of North
America and those of Polynesia, we may retrace the evolution of kinship
by classes with sufficient appearance of truth.
To begin with, there must have existed hordes, which, though doubtless
human, were still very bestial as regards their instincts and
intelligence. In these hordes, which were not very numerous, the women
being taken possession of by the most robust old males, the young ones
were obliged either to quit the group or to remain in it by ravishing
one or two women from rival hordes; for exogamy was a necessity. The
least advanced of the Australian tribes seem to be still in this
primitive stage. At length a little order was put into this disorder
by the horde breaking up into clans; it was then decided that all the
men and all the women of each clan should be brothers and sisters, and
should not intermarry, and that on the other hand, all the men of a
clan should be the husbands of all the women of the neighbouring clan,
simply by right of birth. The Kamilaroi of Australia may represent the
second stage.
In Polynesia the principle is the same, but the idea has become
restricted and defined. Groups of real brothers marry groups of women
actually sisters, thus forming households at once polyandric and
polygamic; but traces of the antique marriage by fictitious groups
of brothers and sisters appear again in the terms used to designate
the various degrees of kinship. These terms are in reality purely
classificatory, and take little account of real consanguinity.
Among the Redskins a new and important restriction has been
established. Marriage outside the clan is continued, but not marriage
by groups of sisters and brothers. That this was done in primitive
times, however, is proved by the familial vocabulary. On the other
hand, they have clearly renounced polyandry, and adopted polygamy with
not less clearness; but this polygamy is special, and it is generally a
group of sisters who marry the polygamous husband.
As for the terms of kinship, they are always general and
classificatory. The relations are denominated by groups, and the titles
of kinship do not in the least correspond to the ties of blood.
Lastly, among certain nomad Mongols of Asia, the strict prohibition to
marry within the clan, and the terms of kinship applying to groups,
show that formerly a familial system, analogous to that of the American
Redskins, has been in use.
Moreover, this classificatory system is preserved entire in the
denominations of kinship by the Tamils of India. But among these last,
and also among certain Mongol populations of Thibetan Himalaya, the
primitive family, at once polygamic and polyandric, that of the Hawaian
islanders, has evolved after its own manner, which it is interesting to
notice.
The Polynesian, or rather the Hawaian family, formed essentially by
the conjugal union of a group of brothers with a group of sisters,
may evidently be restricted in two ways. Either, in the long run,
polyandry is found irksome; the men will no longer share their wives,
even with brothers, but find polygamy very convenient; in this case the
brothers contract isolated marriages, preserving nothing of the old
ways but the custom of marrying, when possible, a group of sisters:
the Redskins have done and still do this. Or, on the contrary, for
one reason or another, and most often on account of the relative
scarcity of women, the Hawaian marriage evolves in another direction.
The brothers continue to marry in a group; but, instead of marrying
simultaneously several sisters, they take only one wife and possess her
in common: this time it is in the direction of polyandry that primitive
group-marriage has evolved. From the Himalaya to Ceylon we find a long
track of ethnic groups who have thus transformed their marriage. The
mountaineers of Bhootan, the Naïrs, certain other aboriginal tribes
of India, and a part of the population of Ceylon, where the Tamils
have largely immigrated, are all of them the remains or landmarks of
an ancient layer of polyandric population traversing the whole of
Hindostan.
All these facts can be classed in a satisfactory manner. Thus united,
and placed in a series, they complete and throw a light on each other,
and show us the reason of customs which before appeared inexplicable.
All this evolution is quite admissible, but it is important to restrict
it to the populations with which it actually appears to be connected,
and not to make of it a universal law, applicable to the whole human
race.
VI. _The Clan and the Family._
Independently of their intrinsic interest, the facts that I have so
rapidly enumerated have a very wide bearing. Taken alone, they suffice
to destroy altogether the generally accepted ideas as to the origin
of human societies. The current doctrine, so often asserted, and
manifestly inspired by the Edenic tradition of a terrestrial Paradise
and by the memory of the Roman family, insists that human societies
have always and everywhere started with the family, and by this word is
understood the patriarchal family, essentially composed of the father
and the mother, or at most the mothers and the children. From this
first family, grouped submissively around one august chief, the father,
similar families are supposed to have sprung, which, side by side,
constituted tribes, cities, and states. This familial unit, supposed to
be primordial, this “cellule” of societies, is held to be particularly
respectable; the chief who governs it despotically, the father, has
something enchanting about him. At his voice the celestial wrath bursts
without mercy on the child bold enough to brave it. Even as late as
the last century, the paternal malediction had the effect of a moral
thunderbolt; in romances and theatrical plays the writers often had
recourse to it in order to effect the catastrophes of their plots.
We are forced in the present day to renounce this traditional notion.
We must bid adieu to the primitive patriarchate. The patriarchal, or
even simply paternal family, does not date, at least in most cases,
from the origin of societies.
The truly primitive stock is no other than the clan, that is, a small
consanguine group in which the kinship is still very much confused.
It was not in a day that the first men succeeded in constructing
genealogical trees, or even in determining with any precision the
degrees of consanguinity. Not only does the father not stand out as
a principal personage from the background of the familial clan; he
has not even yet any recognised social existence in the little group;
in short, the actual physiological father has had in principle no
ascertainable relationship with his children, for marriage was anything
but monandric.
Within the primitive social unit, the familial clan, every one was
consanguine, but in a confused way; the wives had several husbands, and
the husbands several wives; the degrees of kinship were not individual,
but applied to classes of individuals. At this period of social
development it was difficult to distinguish as yet the real from the
possible, fictitious consanguinity from real consanguinity. Every one
had groups of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters: filiation and
the true ties of consanguinity in numerous cases could not be discerned.
In these groups of consanguine individuals, these clans with
kinship still confused, the first thing that became most habitually
differentiated was not the paternal family, for that could scarcely
exist, seeing that the father of a child was not easy to designate; it
was the maternal family, which we will now proceed to examine.
FOOTNOTES:
[928] McLennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 71.
[929] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 170-172.
[930] Powell, _Reports of Smithsonian Institution_, 1881.
[931] Owen Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, p. 252, in _Reports of
Smithsonian Institution_, 1885.
[932] Lewis Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 436.
[933] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 438.
[934] Owen Dorsey, _loc. cit._, p. 255.
[935] Owen Dorsey, _loc. cit._, pp. 254, 255.
[936] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 256.
[937] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 257.
[938] McLennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 97.
[939] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 440.
[940] Owen Dorsey, _loc. cit._, pp. 262, 263.
[941] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xii. p. 130.
[942] _Ibid._ p. 144.
[943] Owen Dorsey, _loc. cit._, p. 265.
[944] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 281.
[945] Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 81.
[946] _Voyages du baron de Lahontan_, etc., t. ii. pp. 203, 204 (1741).
[947] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 196.
[948] Holmberg, _Skizzen über die Völker des Russischen Amerika_, p. 32.
[949] L. Morgan, _loc. cit._, pp. 166, 344.
[950] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 340.
[951] _Id._, _ibid._, vol. ii. p. 218.
[952] Squier, _States of Central America_, p. 237.
[953] Brett, _Indian Tribes of Guiana_, p. 98.
[954] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, pp. 664, 665.
[955] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 538.
[956] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. ii. p. 680.
[957] Thevet, _Singularités de la France antarctique_, p. 215.
[958] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 167.
[959] Hubner, _Six semaines en Polynésie_ in _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
1886.
[960] Yate, _New Zealand_, p. 99.
[961] Paulding, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xvi. p. 459.
[962] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 374.
[963] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 428.--McLennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 375.
[964] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 428.
[965] De Varigny, _Quatorze ans aux îles Sandwich_, p. 14.
[966] Cook (Second Voyage), _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. vii. p.
417.--Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. pp. 13, 15.
[967] Th. West, _Ten Years in South Central Polynesia_, p. 260.
[968] Mariner, _Voy. to the Friendly Islands_, etc., vol. ii. p. 165.
[969] Erskine, _Islands of the Western Pacific_.
[970] M. Radiguet, _Derniers Sauvages_, p. 181.
[971] Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, vol. ii. p. 98.
[972] Latham, _Descriptive Ethnology_, vol. ii. p. 455.
[973] McLennan, _loc. cit._, pp. 78, 79.
[974] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. du Mariage_, p. 268.
[975] L. Morgan, _Conjectural Solution of the Origin of the
Classificatory System of Relationship_, in _Proceedings of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences_, 1868.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MATERNAL FAMILY.
I. _The Familial Clan and the Family properly so-called._--The
probable evolution of the family--It cannot have been uniform--Why the
uterine family has been common.
II. _The Family in Africa._--The maternal family among the negroes of
Africa, in Egypt, in Abyssinia, in Madagascar, among the Arabs and
Kabyles.
III. _The Family in Malaya._
IV. _The Family among the Naïrs of Malabar._--The female progenitrix,
the mother-bee--The uncle among the Naïrs.
V. _The Family among the Aborigines of Bengal._--Co-existence of the
maternal and paternal family; exogamy and endogamy.
VI. _The Couvade._--It exists in very different countries--The couvade
in antiquity--The couvade in contemporary Europe--Signification of the
couvade.
VII. _The Primitive Family._
I. _The Familial Clan and the Family properly so-called._
At the conclusion of the preceding chapter I have ventured to sketch
the probable evolution of the family, or at least that which must have
been effected among the greater number of Melanesians, Polynesians,
American Redskins, Tamils, and ancient Mongols. The small primitive
societies founded by these races seem to have begun, not with the
family, in the sense we give to this word, but by groups of consanguine
individuals with still very confused filiation. The familial form which
first emerged from this primitive clan was most often a matrimonial
association between several sisters on the one hand and several
brothers on the other. Then, from this household, at once polygamic
and polyandric, sprang sometimes the polyandric family, when several
brothers had a single wife in common, and sometimes the polygynic
family, when a single man married or bought several women, who might,
or might not, be sisters to each other.
But has the familial group evolved in the same manner all over the
earth and among all races? Except for the countries previously
enumerated, precise and detailed information is wanting, and we
are reduced to conjectures which are more or less probable. With
rare exceptions, the races which it remains for us to examine have
definitely emerged from primitive familial confusion, and they have
adopted either maternal or paternal filiation. Have they first passed
through the familial clan with classes of fictitious or real relations?
We cannot certainly affirm it. The existence of a _totem_ and the
custom of exogamy seem to bear witness in favour of this hypothesis;
but these are insufficient proofs. The _totem_ does not necessarily
imply consanguinity; and exogamy may be dictated by very diverse
reasons, for we often find exogamic tribes living side by side with
endogamic tribes.
What is still more general than the clan, is the institution of the
maternal family, or uterine filiation; but this familial type is not
invariably deduced from a previous familial clan. Among many animal
species the maternal family exists without there ever having been
either clan or _gens_. As a matter of fact, in humanity as well as
in animality, the uterine family establishes itself spontaneously,
whenever the male abandons the female and her progeny. This familial
type will therefore necessarily appear in every horde where there is no
durable pairing of males and females, of men and women. In every ethnic
group living in promiscuity, for example, uterine filiation shows
itself, and it will be the same under a polyandric _régime_, unless
fictitious paternity is established. In short, for the adoption of the
paternal family, it is imperative that the wives should be appropriated
by a particular man, though it is of no importance whether the marriage
be monogamic or polygamic. But this possession of one or more women by
one man to the exclusion of all others, presupposes already a complex
social condition, which has necessarily been preceded by a period of
gross savagery, when only uterine filiation was possible. Now, it is
a rule that ancient customs endure for a long time, and survive the
social condition which had given birth to them.
II. _The Family in Africa._
The uterine family is far from being rare in negro Africa, but this
does not in any way hinder the man from exercising a discretionary
power over his wife or wives, and still more over his children. We
have previously seen how lamentable the fate of woman is among the
negro Africans, and how excessive are “the rights of the father of
the family,” since he can traffic in his children without rebuke.
This virile despotism may easily coexist with the adoption of uterine
filiation. In one Kaffir tribe, the men used their own children to
bait their traps for catching lions,[976] and yet maternal filiation
prevails in Kaffraria; only it does not govern inheritance. This mode
of filiation is adopted by other races as well as Kaffirs. “In Guinea,”
says Bosman,[977] “if it pleases the daughter of a king to marry a
slave, her children are free.” Among the Fantees, the chief slave has
the rights of succession, to the exclusion of the son; but the latter
is only deprived of paternal succession; the property of his mother, as
distinct from that of his father, comes to him.[978] At Dahomey there
seems to be, in the royal family, a symbolic survival of the maternal
family. At the death of the king, his sister exercises a regency of
several days, and her duty is to occupy the throne in reality, and to
remain seated on it as long as a successor has not been appointed.[979]
But this does not in any way hinder the populations of Dahomey from
adopting as a general custom, not only masculine succession, but even
the right of primogeniture.[980] Barbarous as Dahomey may be, it is
already a society of too complex a structure to accommodate itself
easily to the maternal family. Has this savage mode of filiation been
formerly in use there? It is possible; but the short regency of the
king’s sister is a very insufficient proof of it. In eastern Africa,
among the Vouazegouras, and also among the Bangalas of Cassanga, the
uncle has the indefeasible right to sell his nephews, and in so doing
he has the strong approval of public opinion. “Why,” say they, “should
a man remain in need while his brothers and sisters have children?” Yet
this relates to tribes long under Arab influence. In the same region,
the Vouamrimas generally consider the son of their sister as their
heir, in preference to their own children.[981] Among the Bazes and the
Bareas, succession is also in the maternal line, and the heirs are,
in the first degree, the eldest son of the eldest sister; and in the
second degree, the second son of the same sister,[982] etc. In southern
Africa the children belong to the maternal uncle, who also has the
right to sell them.[983] It is the same among the Basuto Kaffirs. With
these last, as a Kaffir chief informed me, it is again the nephew who
succeeds to the throne.[984] The Makololo Kaffirs, however, seem to be
in process of adopting paternal filiation; or at least they combine
it with maternal filiation, by compelling the husband, as Livingstone
informs us, to redeem his children by the payment of a tax, without
which they would belong to the maternal grandfather.
In short, there is no uniform rule among the Kaffirs, for Levaillant
has seen a tribe with whom the inheritance was transmitted at a
man’s death to his wife and male children, to the exclusion of the
daughters,[985] which is again a transitional _régime_.
In some districts of central Africa, among populations that are
half-civilised, and more or less converted to Mahometanism, matriarchal
customs still persist. On the Niger, at Wowow and at Boussa, it is the
grandmother who grants or refuses to her grand-daughter the permission
to marry.[986] The curious privilege that, according to Laing, the
Soulima have, to quit their husband when they please, is perhaps of
matriarchal origin also.[987]
The exogamy of the clan, which frequently coexists with uterine
filiation, is met with here and there in Africa. Burton has proved
the existence of it among the Somals,[988] and Du Chaillu has found
it at the Gaboon.[989] Traces of the maternal family still exist, or
have existed, in African societies that are more or less barbarous,
but which have, however, emerged from savagery; in Madagascar,
Nubia, Abyssinia, and especially in ancient Egypt. Among the Hovas
of Madagascar, not only wealth, but political dignities, and even
sacerdotal functions, are transmitted to the nephew, the sister’s son.
The Saccalavas do the same as the Hovas, and among them the women of
high rank willingly take husbands of inferior rank, who simply become
their servants. As for the children, they inherit the rank and rights
of their mother.[990] The same customs prevail among the Nubians, or
did formerly prevail; the Arab chroniclers tell us that among them the
heritage belonged, not to the son of the deceased, but to the nephew,
the sister’s son. The Nubians justified this custom pertinaciously, by
saying that the consanguinity of the sister’s son had the advantage of
being incontestable.[991] And lastly, Nicholas of Damascus says the
same thing of the Ethiopians.[992]
Without the proof of any absolutely precise text, we have an
accumulation of facts which render it very probable that, in ancient
Egypt, maternal filiation was in force. In a preceding chapter I have
spoken of the exceptional position granted to the free woman in the
kingdom of the Pharaohs. I will recall, in passing, that until the time
of Philometor, who deprived women of the right to dispose of their
property, the word _husband_ never occurs in marriage deeds.[993]
Besides this, public deeds often only mention the mother, up to the
time of this same King Philometor, who, being evidently a determined
partisan of the patriarchate, ordered the names of contractors to be
registered according to the paternal name.[994] Also, in the valley of
the Nile, the hieroglyphic funeral inscriptions frequently bear the
name of the mother without indicating that of the father, and it is
only in demotic inscriptions that paternal filiation is mentioned.[995]
We must add that in Egypt women could reign, and that during the
lifetime of the monarch who was their husband they divided with him the
sovereign honours, and even, according to Diodorus,[996] received the
larger share of them. All these facts seem to attest that in Egypt free
women enjoyed an exceptionally favourable position, and they render
probable the ancient existence of uterine filiation in the valley of
the Nile. There are, however, some contradictory facts, especially the
genealogy of the chief priests, of which Herodotus speaks, and also
the incestuous endogamy customary in the royal families. According to
Herodotus, the Egyptian priests showed him, at Thebes, three hundred
and forty-one wooden statues representing high-priests, all born one
of the other in the masculine line: “Each of these statues,” he says,
“represents a Piromis born of a Piromis.”[997] From which it would
result that in Egypt, at least in the sacerdotal caste, masculine
filiation was established from the highest antiquity, for a hundred and
forty-one generations represent something like ten or eleven thousand
years. Maternal filiation is also generally connected with exogamy,
while the Pharaohs habitually married their sisters. According to
Diodorus, this was even obligatory.[998] In the ancient royal records
the qualities of sister and wife of kings are often found united.
Under the Ptolemies, all the queens have borne both these titles;
and we may perhaps refer to an ancient tradition of Egyptian origin
certain customs which recently existed in the Soudan, Abyssinia, and
Madagascar. At Massegna, in the Soudan, Barth tells us that Othman
Bougoman, Sultan of Massegna, had among his wives one of his sisters
and one of his daughters. At the end of the seventeenth century, the
sister of the king of Abyssinia displayed a sumptuous style of living
peculiarly feminine: “The sister of the emperor appears in public
mounted on a mule richly caparisoned, having by her side her women
bearing a daïs over her. From four to five hundred women surround her,
singing verses in her praise, and playing the tambour in a lively and
graceful manner.”[999] And at the present time, among the Malagasy
nobility, marriage between brother and sister is very common.[1000]
There is certainly nothing farther from exogamy than marriages between
brothers and sisters; but, to say the truth, there is no logical and
necessary connection between the form of filiation and exogamic or
endogamic customs.
The Malagasy contract what we should call incestuous marriages,
while preserving maternal filiation; the Arabs and Kabyles, on the
contrary, in obedience to the prescriptions of the Koran, have a
horror of incest. The sacred book prohibits a man from taking to wife
his mother, daughter, sister, his paternal or maternal aunt, his
grand-daughter, his mother-in-law, his daughter-in-law, or even his
nurse and foster-sister. A man was not to marry two sisters at the
same time.[1001] This is indeed a limited exogamy; and yet the Koran
establishes the paternal and even patriarchal family very clearly.
The study of the family in Malaya and among the aborigines of India
will complete the proof that in the same country, and in the same
race, various systems of marriage, family, and filiation, may coexist,
and that consequently we must guard against formulating too strict
sociological laws in regard to them.
III. _The Family in Malaya._
At Sumatra there were three kinds of marriages--1st, the wife, or
rather the family of the wife, bought the man, who henceforth became
her property, worked for her, possessed nothing of his own, was liable
to be dismissed, and could commit no fault without the proprietary
family being responsible for it, exactly as the Roman master answered
for his slaves; 2nd, the man and the woman could marry on a footing of
equality; 3rd, the man bought his wife or wives.[1002] The first form
of marriage, that of servitude of the man, who, instead of marrying,
is married by the family of his wife, has fallen into desuetude in
Malaya, but it has left behind it, in certain districts, the system of
maternal filiation. It is the maternal uncle who is the head of the
family, or, in default of him, the eldest son of the wife’s family.
If there is neither uncle nor son old enough, it is the mother who
becomes the head of the family, and the father only takes her place
in case she has disappeared, and when all the children are minors. At
the death of a man, his property does not go to his wife or children,
but to his maternal family, and in the first place to his brothers
and sisters. The married man also continues to live in his maternal
family; it is the field of his own family that he cultivates, and he
only accidentally assists his wife.[1003] In short, under this system
the individual, whether man or woman, is not set free in the least from
the family in which he is born; it is for this family that the woman
bears children; filiation and inheritance must therefore follow the
maternal line. But it is not at all the same throughout Malaya. Marsden
tells us that a man sometimes buys his wife by giving a sister in
exchange;[1004] he must therefore be the proprietor of his sister, and
consequently of the wife whom he procures by means of this barter.
In the Arroo Isles the men buy their wives, by giving gongs, clothes,
etc., to the parents of the women.[1005]
At Timor the son-in-law buys his wife thus from his father-in-law, and
the latter can remain owner of the children if they are not included
in the bargain;[1006] but these customs are not easily compatible with
the system of the maternal family, and, taken altogether, they prove
that in Malaya the family is not by any means constituted in a uniform
manner. We shall see that it is the same with the primitive races of
India.
IV. _The Family among the Naïrs of Malabar._
In the first place, we have to inquire what the family is among the
Naïrs of Malabar, whose curious polyandry I have previously described.
The Naïrs of Malabar are not by any means savages; they form an
aristocratic caste. We have seen how, from a very early age (ten
to twelve years), the young Naïr girls, after having been solemnly
deflowered by a stranger, who has been paid to perform this task,
practised the widest polyandry, without any other restriction than
the prohibitions relative to caste and tribe. As is usual and even
natural, Naïr polyandry coexists with a system of maternal filiation.
Precautions are taken in order that the free and numerous unions of
the Naïr ladies should not destroy the family. The Naïr husbands are
reduced to the modest _rôle_ of progenitors; and it is to the wife that
the fortune of the family belongs. It is not, however, the mother who
governs the family, but her brother. To this brother belongs the duty
of bringing up his nephews, of protecting them, and of mourning for
them, if they happen to die; in reality, he is an avuncular father, and
when he dies his nephews inherit his personal property. In the Naïr
family the polyandrous mother is much respected, and the next in honour
to her is her eldest daughter, who will replace her in her _rôle_ of
mother-bee, the producer of children. The Naïr husbands, the fathers,
only enter the house of their common wife by turns and on certain days;
they have not even the right to sit down by the side of their wife or
their children; they are mere passing guests, almost strangers.[1007]
If we regard these facts on a certain side, it appears as if we may at
last have found among the Naïrs, in a country where the matriarchate
incontestably reigns, the legal pre-eminence of woman over man, or the
_materna potestas_. It is, in fact, the Naïr woman who possesses; it
is through her that wealth is transmitted, and, given the _régime_ of
free polyandry, it is difficult for Naïr children to know their own
father. Moreover, in various polyandric countries of Malabar, the
pre-eminence of the woman in the family has influenced the political
organisation, and thus an entire female feudal system has arisen, the
bonds of suzerainty and vassalage reposing on a fictitious polyandry.
Thus, in February 1887, the English journals announced that the Sultan
of the Laccadives, having become the vassal of England, had notified
to his subjects his new position by means of a proclamation, in which
he explained that he had ceased to be the _husband_ and subject of his
ancient suzerain, the Bibi of Cannanor; for by a special favour the
government of Ceylon had consented to admit him to the number of the
_husbands_, that is to say, of the direct vassals, of the Queen of
England. We must note that for the Indians of this region the Queen
of England is “the daughter” of the East India Company, and lives in
a palace in London with many men. And now what is the real value of
this polyandric matriarchate? It is surely more apparent than real.
Among the Naïrs, as everywhere else, property assures to the man or
woman who possesses it an importance in proportion to its value. The
Naïr lady then, being a proprietor, is highly esteemed. But it does not
follow that this esteem is equal to undisputed domination. Doubtless
among the Naïrs the man, as husband, does not exist; nevertheless he
is a warrior, and even a very fierce one. But military force has this
in common with money, that it is nowhere despised. Therefore, in the
family of his sister, the Naïr man is anything but a subordinate. We
have just seen this. It is he who governs and brings up the children of
his sister by her numerous husbands. He is, in reality, the chief of
his sister’s family, and what he loses as husband he gains as uncle.
Reduced to their true value, the polyandry and the familial _régime_ of
the Naïrs still remain a sociological fact of the greatest interest.
It is at once the most complete and the most logical of polyandric
systems. In reality, the Naïr marriage does not only or specially
include groups of brothers or sisters; full liberty is given to the
woman, save only the restrictions of class. There is no attempt, as
in Thibet, to create a masculine pseudo-filiation, by arbitrarily
attributing such or such children to such or such husbands. Among
the Naïrs, the maternal family is instituted in all its plenitude;
and lastly, their polyandry is in no way thwarted by the proportion
of the sexes, for if the woman may contract marriage with several
men, each one of the latter in his turn has power to enter several
conjugal associations. This matrimonial _régime_ is therefore perfectly
compatible with the maintenance of the population and the equilibrium
of the sexes.
V. _The Family among the Aborigines of Bengal._
If we proceed with our investigations by studying the familial and
matrimonial _régime_ of the aborigines of Bengal, we shall find, among
populations having probably a common origin, systems of family and
marriage which are very dissimilar.
Here and there we discover the maternal family, or customs proving that
this familial fashion has formerly been in force.
According to Buchanan, among the Buntar, who are neighbours to the
Naïrs, a father is free during his lifetime to make presents to his
children, but at his death all that he possesses goes to his sisters
and their children. The Kochh, also, have no kinship or succession
except through the women. The mothers arrange the marriages; the
fathers never interfere, and the husband goes to live with his wife and
his mother-in-law, whom he obeys. As for widows, they choose themselves
young husbands when they are rich. Among the Yerkalas of Southern
India, the maternal uncle has the right to claim for his sons the two
eldest daughters of his sister.[1008] Among the Khasias, it is to the
son of the sister that the power of the Rajah is transmitted; but
this princess (_Kunwari_) has not the right to marry herself; she is
subject to reasons of state, and her husband is chosen by the assembled
people.[1009] The Garos have established the rule, that in marriages
the right of initiative belongs to the woman; it is the young girl who
distinguishes the man of her choice, tells him so, and invites him to
follow her. Any advance made by a man is considered as an insult to all
the clan (_mahari_) of the girl, and in order to expiate it, libations
of beer and sacrifices of pigs are required, all of them at the expense
of the _mahari_ of the man. The marriage of the Garos answers exactly
to the ceremony of capture, only the actors change parts; it is here
the bridegroom who pretends to refuse the bride, runs away and is
conducted by force to his future wife amidst the lamentations of his
relations.[1010] At the death of a man, among the Garos, the widow
remains mistress of the house, but the other property passes to a
collateral heir, who marries the widow and sometimes her daughter also.
If we were to confine ourselves to the consideration and interpretation
of these facts only, we might naturally conclude that the familial
_régime_ of the aborigines of Bengal is maternal; but contradictory
facts are not wanting. Among the Bhuiyas, although the demand in
marriage is made by the girls, as with the Garos, the sons receive the
names of their male ascendants; the eldest son takes the name of the
grandfather; the second son takes that of the great-grandfather, and
the names of collaterals are given to the other sons.[1011] Among the
Muasis, it is the father who negotiates the marriage of his daughter,
or who sells her, rather, for a certain number of measures of rice
solemnly measured and delivered.[1012]
Among the Malers of Rajmahal, it is again the father who places his
daughter’s hand in that of her future husband and exhorts him to love
his wife.[1013] The Kandhs have adopted succession in the masculine
line, with a division of property amongst the sons.[1014] The servitude
of the women amongst the Korwas is very great; they are oppressed with
work, and till the fields and gain the daily bread, whilst the men
hunt or repose.[1015] The Mishmis buy their wives, have as many as
they can procure, and own them like chattels, since at a man’s death
all his wives, except the mother of the heir, pass to the nearest male
relation.[1016] Among the Mundas, after the decease of the father of
a family, the sons live together until the majority of the youngest
of them; they then proceed to divide the property, including their
sisters, who are exactly assimilated to cattle.[1017] The Oraons share
the widows amongst the brothers and cousins in the same way as the
Mundas share their sisters.[1018]
We find, therefore, no uniformity in the familial organisation of the
Bengalese aborigines; and it is the same in regard to their exogamy
or endogamy. Exogamy is common. Thus the Juangas are divided into
exogamous tribes.[1019] The Khonds think it humiliating to marry the
women of their own tribe. It is more manly, in their opinion, to go
and _take_ a wife from a distant neighbourhood.[1020] The Munniporees
are divided into four clans, who do not intermarry.[1021] Among the
Santals, it is forbidden to men to marry in their own clan; but
their children belong to the paternal clan.[1022] The Limboos (near
Darjeeling) are also exogamous, but evidently oscillate between the
maternal and paternal family; for the daughters remain in the tribe
or rather in the clan of their mother, whilst the sons belong to the
paternal clan, but only after the father has paid a certain sum to the
mother.[1023] The Garos are divided into several clans or _maharis_,
and, amongst them, a man must not marry in his own clan, but in another
appointed clan, in which from time immemorial his family has been
accustomed to take wives.
Other aborigines of Bengal are endogamous. Thus it is imperative for
the daughters of the Abors to marry in their own clan, or the sun and
moon would cease to shine.[1024] According to Heber, the Karens of
Tenasserim are more than endogamous, for among them marriages between
brother and sister, father and daughter, are frequent enough in the
present day.[1025]
What may we deduce from these contradictory facts? A general
conclusion, which I have expressed several times over: namely, that in
what concerns the evolution of marriage and of the family, there is no
absolute law. Nevertheless, by reason of the familial and matrimonial
confusion usual in the greater number of primitive societies, maternal
filiation has been adopted more often than paternal, and has frequently
preceded it.
VI. _The Couvade._
There is a custom, at first sight extraordinary but still common
enough, which must have arisen during transitional epochs, when,
polygamic or monogamic marriage having become established, the husbands
have exerted themselves to affirm their parental rights, and to
substitute masculine filiation for the ancient uterine filiation. In
the same way as in certain countries, Abyssinia,[1026] for example,
in order to proclaim an adoption, the adoptive father simulates some
maternal practice, sometimes goes so far as to offer his breast
solemnly to his adoptive son, so, in very different countries, the
husband has found no better way to prove his paternity than to simulate
childbirth; and hence the very singular custom of the couvade.
At first sight, it seems very foolish for the husband to take to his
bed immediately after the delivery of his wife, and for a certain
number of days to be nursed and tended by the mother herself.
The existence of the custom has often been questioned. It will not be
out of place, therefore, to quote authentic facts which put all doubt
to silence. These facts are numerous enough, and have been observed in
various parts of the globe; in America, Asia, and Europe.
In New Mexico, among the Lagunero and the Ahomana, when a woman is
delivered of a child, the father goes to bed for six or seven days,
and scrupulously abstains from eating fish or meat.[1027] As soon as a
Carib became a father, he at once went to bed and simulated childbirth
by suitable cries and contortions; the women of the hamlet hastened
to his side and congratulated him on his happy delivery.[1028] The
Choctaw Redskins formerly had an analogous custom. Brett and Im Thurn
have observed this “lying-in” among the Indians of Guiana. The father,
Brett says, goes to his hammock quite naked, taking the most indecent
posture, and he remains there some days as if he were ill, receiving
the congratulations of his friends and tended by the women of the
neighbourhood, whilst the mother of the new-born infant goes about her
cooking without receiving any attention.[1029]
The testimony of the Jesuit Dobritzhoffer, in regard to the Abipones,
is not less explicit: “Among the Abipones of South America,” he says,
“as soon as the wife has given birth to a child, the husband is put to
bed, and carefully tended; he fasts for a certain time. You would swear
that it is he who has just been delivered. I had formerly read of this
and smiled at it, not being able to credit such folly, and supposing
that this barbarous custom was related more as a joke than seriously,
but at last I have seen it with my own eyes amongst them.”[1030] More
recent testimony confirms what I have just quoted. In 1842 M. Mazé,
Commissioner-General in French Guiana, himself proved the custom of
couvade among the Indian tribes on the river Oyapok. In 1852 M. Voisin,
justice of the peace in a commune of French Guiana, ascending in a
canoe the river Mana, received hospitality one night in the hut of some
Galibi Indians. On awaking he learned that during the night, and behind
a partition of foliage which separated his hammock from the household
of his hosts, a child had been born. The mother had uttered no sound,
and at daybreak M. Voisin saw her go to the river-side and make her
toilet, then take her new-born child and throw it several times into
the water, catching it as it rose to the surface, and then wiping it
with her hands. The husband, on the contrary, remained all the while
in his hammock, acting the invalid, and receiving with the greatest
seriousness the attention lavished on him by his wife.[1031]
The couvade comedy is not always so complete. In certain tribes it is
attenuated, and becomes more symbolic.
Thus in California, when the mother is delivered, the father is content
to keep to the house and abstain from eating fish and meat.[1032]
Among various tribes of South America the husband of the woman limits
the practice to a few hygienic precautions; this is the couvade reduced
to its simplest expression.[1033]
This custom was found in Asia, among the Tartars, by Marco Polo. It
still exists in Bengal, among the Larkas, although attenuated; on
the occasion of a birth the parents quit the house, the wife and
husband are both declared unclean for eight days, and during that
time the husband cooks the food. After which the masculine filiation
of the child is proclaimed by solemnly giving him the name of his
grandfather.[1034] We shall be mistaken if we imagine that the couvade
is special to very inferior races. The Greco-Roman writers have quoted
a certain number of examples observed among the barbarians of the
ancient world. Strabo relates that the Iberian women, after the example
of those of the Celts, Thracians, and Scythians, quit their beds as
soon as they are delivered, and give them up to their husbands, whom
they tend.[1035] Diodorus tells us that in Corsica, after a woman
has given birth to a child, the husband goes to bed as if he were
ill, and he remains there an appointed number of days like a lying-in
woman.[1036]
In his _Argonautica_ Apollonius of Rhodes speaks of a people of
Tibarenedes, on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, who had the custom
of the couvade: “As soon as the married women are delivered, their
husbands groan, lie on beds, and cover their heads. All this time their
wives give them strengthening food, and prepare baths for them suitable
for lying-in women.”[1037] It is probable that more than one trace of
this “lying-in” still exists in Europe, in superstitious and popular
practices. Quite recently a Russian has informed me that it is still in
use in the Baltic provinces, but naturally in a form of survival in
which the meaning is lost. It is, however, complete enough; the husband
goes to bed, utters groans and cries, and his neighbours hasten to his
side. And lastly, M. Léon Donnat told me lately that he had discovered
the couvade still practised in the little island of Marken, in the
Zuydersee.
However strange it may be, a custom that is thus widely spread in
countries, races, and epochs extremely diverse must have had a serious
_raison d’être_. It cannot be attributed to mere caprice.
Now the only plausible explanation is that which gives to the couvade
the value of our registry of birth. Not, perhaps, all over the world,
but here and there, at the moment when the effort was being made
to found the paternal family, or at least to determine masculine
filiation, some very simple-minded tribes conceived the idea of
symbolising the share of the man in procreation by the gross mimicry
of childbirth. By this practice, so well calculated to strike the
attention, the father openly affirmed his paternity, and doubtless
acquired certain rights over the new-born child. Let us note that the
custom has been especially preserved among the American Indians, that
is to say, in a country where the system of the maternal family has
been, and still is, widely spread. The couvade probably represents
an effort to emerge from it. It shows that the man will no longer
share his wife or wives, that he claims to have children which are
certainly his own, and who will doubtless inherit his possessions. It
is, in short, a revolt of individualism against primitive communism.
The mimicry is gross and strange, but in a social condition where
there exists neither lawyer, nor mayor, nor register of civil acts,
testimonial proof is the great resource, and, in order to make it
sure and durable, men have willingly had recourse to striking and
complicated practices which are calculated to engrave the remembrance
of a fact on the memory of those present.
The procedure of primitive Rome offers us many examples of the same
kind; and notably in the formalities of emancipation, when the Roman
father made, three times in succession, a simulation of selling his
son.
VII. _The Primitive Family._
In the preceding pages I have collected together, with as much
exactitude as I could, all that we know of the familial clan and the
maternal family. It would be bold to assert that such have been the
primitive and always necessary forms of the family. It is indisputable,
however, that they are or have been very common in all countries and
in all races. But these are types of familial association already
regulated and complicated. Anterior to them there must have existed, in
the little human hordes, a complete anarchy, most often characterised
by the despotism of the strongest male, dominating a small flock of
women and children, who were meekly submissive to his caprices--in
fact, a sort of bestial patriarchate. Among thinly-scattered races,
without intelligence or industry, practical monogamy was established at
the very outset. We know that this was the case with the stupid Veddahs
of Ceylon, when they wandered in simple families in the virgin forests
of their island, incapable of constituting even the smallest horde. As
soon as men have grouped themselves in small societies, regulated even
in a slight degree, the familial clan with its confused kinship must
frequently have been constituted, but on plans which were necessarily
variable according to the conditions and exigencies of the social life.
All that was possible has surely been attempted; sometimes regulated
promiscuity, for each man claimed his rights, sometimes the mixed
polyandric and polygynic household, elsewhere simple polyandry, when
the women were scarce, and at other times monogamy.
I repeat, all that was compatible with the maintenance of the little
social group must have been tried at first; and then selection assured
the permanent adoption of such or such a system. As soon as men began
to take note of descent, it was always uterine filiation that they held
in account; paternal descent was less evident, and less easy to prove;
it has been nearly everywhere the latest, and the widely-spread custom
of the couvade proves that it was not established without difficulty.
It has ended, however, by triumphing, all over the world, in the
states that are still barbarous, but which have a complex social and
political structure, where the primitive tribal _régime_ has more or
less disappeared, and where a line of demarcation sufficiently strong
separates the interests of the individual from those of the group to
which he belongs. In short, the social transformation from which the
paternal family has arisen has nearly always coincided with a radical
change in the _régime_ of property, which has simultaneously become
individual or, at least, familial.
FOOTNOTES:
[976] Layland, _Journal of Ethnological Society_, 1869.
[977] Bosman, _Voyage en Guinée_, p. 197.
[978] Bowdich, _Observations sur le Gouvernement des Achantis_
(collection Walkenær, t. xii.).
[979] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 216.
[980] Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 340.
[981] Burton, _Journey to the Great Lakes_, p. 37.
[982] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 211.
[983] L. Magyar, _Reisen in Süd-Africa_, pp. 256, 284.
[984] Ch. Letourneau, _Bull. Soc. d’Anthrop._, 1872.
[985] Levaillant, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxiv. p. 210.
[986] R. and J. Lander, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxx. p. 244.
[987] Laing, _Hist. Univ. des Voyages_, t. xxviii. p. 106.
[988] Burton, _First Footsteps_, etc., p. 420.
[989] _Equatorial Africa._
[990] Noël, _Bull. Soc. de Geogr._, t. xx. p. 294 (quoted by
Giraud-Teulon).
[991] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 209.
[992] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 208.
[993] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 248.
[994] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 233.
[995] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 232.
[996] Diodorus, i. 27.
[997] Herodotus, ii. 143.
[998] _Id._, i. 27.
[999] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. iv. p. 327 (_Voyage en Éthiopie du
médecin, Ch. J. Poncet_, en 1698-1700).
[1000] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, p. 258.
[1001] Surat, iv. 27.
[1002] Marsden, _Hist. of Sumatra_, p. 262.
[1003] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. de la Famille_, pp. 199, 200, etc.
[1004] Marsden, _Hist. of Sumatra_.
[1005] Wallace, _Malay Archipelago_, vol. ii. p. 169.
[1006] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 265.
[1007] Bachofen, _Antiq. Briefe_, pp. 216, 278 (quoted by A.
Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, pp. 150, 154).
[1008] Schortt, _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, vol. vii. (New Series).
[1009] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 54.
[1010] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 63.
[1011] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 142.
[1012] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 233.
[1013] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 273.
[1014] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 294.
[1015] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 226.
[1016] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 16.
[1017] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 200.
[1018] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 272.
[1019] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 158.
[1020] Macpherson, _Report on the Khonds.--Account of the Religion of
the Khonds in Orissa_, p. 57.
[1021] MacCulloch, _Account of the Valley of Munniporees_, etc., pp.
49, 69.
[1022] Hunter, _Annals of Rural Bengal_, p. 236.
[1023] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. du Mariage_, p. 266.
[1024] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 28.
[1025] Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 218.
[1026] D’Abbadie, _Douze ans dans la haute Éthiopie_, p. 272.
[1027] Bancroft, _Native Races_, etc., vol. i. p. 585.
[1028] Du Tertre, _Histoire des Antilles_ (1667), t. ii. p. 371.
[1029] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. du Mariage_, p. 138.
[1030] _Historia de Abiponibus_ (1784), vol. ii. p. 231.
[1031] _Bull. Soc. d’Anthrop._ (July 1884).
[1032] Bancroft, _Native Races_, vol. i. p. 412.
[1033] A. d’Orbigny, _L’homme Américain_, t. i. p. 237.
[1034] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 190.
[1035] Strabo, iii. 16.
[1036] Diodorus, v. 14.
[1037] _Argonautica_, ii.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FAMILY IN CIVILISED COUNTRIES.
I. _The Family in China._--Filiation in Japan--Traces of ancient
fraternal filiation in China--Fictitious kinship in China--The
patriarchate in China--The Chinese clan--The idea of the family in the
political organisation.
II. _The Family among the Semitic Races._--The primitive clan among
the Arabs--The primitive clan among the Hebrews--Laws of inheritance
among the Hebrews--The uterine sister and the german sister--The
maternal family in Phœnicia.
III. _The Family among the Berbers._--Meaning of the word
“Berber”--Maternal filiation among the ancient Berbers and
Touaregs--Traces of the ancient organisation of the clan among the
Kabyles--The actual patriarchate among the Kabyles--Categories of
heirs.
IV. _The Family in Persia._--No trace of the familial clan and of
exogamy--Incestuous endogamy--Marriage by rent in modern Persia--The
right of primogeniture.
V. _The Family in India._--The family in Vedic India--The patriarchate
in the Code of Manu--The right of primogeniture--Paternity by
suggestion--Traces of the familial clan and of the maternal family in
Tamil India and Ceylon.
VI. _The Greco-Roman Family._--The primitive _gens_--Maternal
filiation in Crete, in primitive Athens--Uterine fraternity and german
fraternity--Paternal filiation in the _Orestes_--The _Patria potestas_
at Rome.
VII. _The Family in Barbarous Europe._--The Celtic clan--Incestuous
endogamy of the Irish--The Slav _mir_--Traces of maternal filiation in
Germany and among the Picts.
I. _The Family in China._
In order to study the family under the latest forms that it has
assumed, we must set aside all strict distinction of race. Doubtless
the white races have ended by excelling the others, and by attaining
a higher degree of moral, social, and intellectual development.
Nevertheless, the ethnic groups, belonging to the races classed
together _en bloc_ as inferior, have emerged from savagery, and formed
large societies, which have been veritable training schools for the men
of their race.
Now, in all the States which have succeeded in attaining some degree
of civilisation, the paternal family is the type that has been finally
adopted. It was thus in Peru, in Mexico, and even in ancient Egypt,
where King Philometor gave the finishing stroke to the maternal family
which had so long flourished in the valley of the Nile. With much more
reason in China, a country very civilised after its own fashion, an
analogous evolution must have been effected. Indeed, in China proper,
there are scarcely any traces of the maternal family left; but they are
still visible in Japan, whose civilisation has been entirely borrowed
from China.
In Japan, as formerly among the Basques, filiation is subordinated to
the transmission of the patrimony whole and inalienated. It is to the
first-born, whether boy or girl, that the inheritance is transmitted,
and he or she is forbidden to abandon it. At the time of marriage
the husband or wife must take the name of the heir or heiress, who
marries and personifies the property. Filiation is therefore sometimes
maternal and sometimes paternal; but the maternal uncle still bears the
name of “second little father”; the paternal aunt is called “little
mother,” the paternal uncle is called “little father,” etc.[1038]
Marriage between groups of brothers and other groups of sisters has
been common enough in primitive societies to enable us to see in this
familial nomenclature the traces of one of those ancient unions at once
monogamic and polygamic.
In China the language itself attests the ancient existence of a
marriage contracted by a group of brothers having their wives in
common, but not marrying their sisters. A Chinaman always calls the
sons of his brother his “sons,” whilst he considers those of his
sister as his nephews;[1039] but the virtual, or rather fictitious
fathers, brothers, and sons, are distinguished from the real fathers,
brothers, and sons, by the epithet “class” added to their appellation.
Thus they say, “class-father, class-son, class-brother”--that is to
say, the man who belongs to the class of the father, to that of the
son, or to that of the brother. It is therefore simply the American
nomenclature perfected.[1040] We have previously seen that in China
proper, not only the paternal family, but the patriarchate, are
rigorously established; that woman is in extreme subjection, and always
disinherited;[1041] but certain impediments to marriage can only relate
to an ancient familial organisation which has now disappeared. In all
the vast Chinese empire there are scarcely more than from one to two
hundred family names, and the Chinese call themselves the “people of a
hundred families.” Now in China all marriage between persons bearing
the same name is prohibited.[1042] In certain villages every one has
the same family name; two or three thousand persons, for example, are
called “sheep,” “ox,” “horse,” etc., all of them appellations agreeing
well with clans having corresponding _totems_.[1043] But however it
may have been in the past, at the present day masculine filiation is
well established in China, and nine degrees of kinship in the direct
line are distinguished, which an old Chinese author has enumerated
as follows:--“All men who come into the world have nine degrees of
kinship--namely, my own generation in the first place, then that of
my father, of my grandfather, and of the father and grandfather of my
grandfather. In a descending line come the generation of my son, that
of my grandson, then that of his son and his grandson. All the members
of one same generation are brothers to each other.”[1044] Let us note
that this filiation, short as it is, is still associated with kinship
by classes.
Doubtless these accounts, taken alone, would be insufficient, but
united with those which the study of the family among the Australians,
the Redskins, the Tamils, etc., has furnished us with, they warrant us
in believing that the Chinese paternal family is the last term of an
evolution having for its starting-point the familial clan, and having
passed through the maternal family.
Let us add, in conclusion, that the system of fictitious kinships is
reflected throughout the governmental organisation of China. In reality
the political structure of China is only an enlarged copy of the
family. The emperor is the reputed father and even mother of all the
empire. The mandarin who governs a town is the “father” of that town,
and he himself has for “governmental father” the mandarin of a superior
grade, whom he obeys.[1045]
We shall now discover traces of a similar evolution of the family among
the Semites and Berbers.
II. _The Family among Semitic Races._
When we read the word “patriarch” in our current literature, our
thoughts instantly fly to the chief of the ancient Semitic, and
especially the Hebraic family, the little tyrant holding grouped
under his despotic sway his wives, children, and slaves--that is to
say, the patriarchate in all its severity, with the power of life and
death attributed to the patriarch. But this Semitic patriarch has
not existed from the beginning; he is the result of a long anterior
evolution, and, like so many other peoples, the Semites have begun with
the confused kinship of the familial clan. We have previously found,
in studying primitive marriage among the Arabs, an ancient _régime_ of
free polyandry, analogous to that of the Naïrs. At this distant epoch
the woman still bore children for her clan, and this clan was so much
like a large family, that in the present day even, in certain parts of
Arabia, the word used for clan literally signifies “flesh.”[1046] To be
of the same clan, therefore, was to be of the same flesh.
It was in a relatively recent epoch that paternal filiation was
established among the Arabs. In the time of the prophet the
prohibitions of marriage were still on the maternal side,[1047] and
in all ages the collateral kinship with uncles and aunts has been
considered very close in Arabia.[1048]
Among the Hebrews, individual property was instituted in very early
times, for it is alluded to in Genesis.[1049] But various customs show
clearly the ancient existence of communal clans. Thus the inheritance,
especially the paternal inheritance, must remain in the clan. Marriage
in the tribe is obligatory for daughters: “Let them marry to whom they
think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they
marry. So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove
from tribe to tribe; for every one of the children of Israel shall keep
himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers.”[1050]
Moses instituted three classes of heirs: first the children, then the
agnates, and then the members of the clan or gentiles.[1051] The Hebrew
father did not inherit from his son, nor the grandfather from his
grandson, which seems to indicate an ancient epoch, when the children
did not yet belong to the clan of their father.
For a long time among the Hebrews the german sister was distinguished
from the uterine sister; the kinship with this last was considered much
closer. In primitive Judæa a man could marry the first, but not the
second. To the King of Egypt and to Abimelech, who reproached Abraham
for having passed Sarah off as his sister, the patriarch replies: “For
indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, _but not
the daughter of my mother_, and she became my wife.” In the same way
Tamar could become the wife of Amnon, for she was only his paternal
sister.[1052] The father of Moses and Aaron married his father’s
sister, who was not legally his relation.[1053] Abraham himself could
marry his paternal sister, and his brother Nabor took to wife his
fraternal niece, the daughter of his brother.[1054] But by degrees
paternal kinship was recognised by the same title as maternal kinship,
and Leviticus advances as far as to expressly forbid marriage with
father’s sisters as well as with mother’s sisters,[1055] “whether
they be born at home or abroad.” Doubtless all these indications have
their value; they are, however, only indications, and it is especially
in placing them by the side of similar facts observed amongst other
peoples where the existence of the maternal family and the familial
clan is indisputable, that we are inclined to accord to them the same
significance. In short, it is clear that the Hebrews early adopted
paternal filiation and the patriarchate.
The memory of a distant epoch of confused kinship and of free sexual
unions had, however, remained in Semitic tradition. Sanchoniathon,
indeed, in his _History of Phœnicia_, says that the first men bore the
name of their mother, because then the women yielded themselves without
shame to the first comer.[1056] Among the Berbers familial evolution is
much easier to follow than with the Semites, and its lower phases are
more evident.
III. _The Family among the Berbers._
During late years the meaning of the word “Berber” has become
considerably widened. We are now inclined to consider as varieties of
the same very old race the men of Cro-Magnon, the ancient inhabitants
of the cave of Mentone, the ancient Vascons, the Cantabrians, Iberians,
Guanchos, Kabyles, Berbers, and Touaregs, etc. All these peoples are
thought to belong to one great human type, which we may call Berber,
and of which numerous representatives still exist. Anterior to all
Asiatic migration, and from the time of the stone age, this race seems
to have occupied the south of Gaul and Spain, the Canary Isles, and
Northern Africa. At the present day the most important epigonic groups
of the Berber race are the Kabyles and the Touaregs of the Sahara.
Several writers of antiquity have told us how the family of the ancient
Berbers was formerly instituted, and we know _de visu_ what it is
among contemporary Berbers. We are therefore able to give a rough
outline of it.
The general characteristics of the Berber family seem to have been a
privileged position accorded to women and maternal filiation, with
tendencies even to the matriarchate. Speaking of the Cantabrians,
Strabo writes: “Among the Cantabrians usage requires that the husband
shall bring a dower to his wife, and the daughters inherit, being
charged with the marriage of their brothers, which constitutes a kind
of gynecocracy.”[1057] The word gynecocracy is surely too strong. We
have here probably an account of a custom which still exists in Japan,
and which existed quite recently in Basque countries, that of leaving
to the first-born, whether boy or girl, the administration of the
inalienable patrimony of the family, and of obliging his or her wedded
partner to take the name and abode of the family. This is what M. le
Play has formerly called the family-stock; but this family-stock may,
and doubtless must, have co-existed primitively with maternal filiation.
This last is still in force among the Touaregs of the Sahara, and I
have previously spoken of the great independence which their women
enjoy, and especially the rich and noble ladies. At Rhât, for example,
by inheritances and by the accumulation of productions, it has come to
pass that nearly the whole of the real property has fallen into the
hands of the women.[1058] We know that in ancient Egypt, where the
Berbers were largely represented, the women also enjoyed a very similar
position. As a consequence of this _régime_, the rights and pretensions
of the Berber ladies have become so inconvenient for the men, that many
of them prefer to marry slaves.[1059] The family among the Touaregs
will surely evolve, as it formerly did in Egypt, and as it has done
with the Kabyles, where the most rigorous patriarchate has at length
replaced the ancient maternal family. In Kabyle, however, traces of the
ancient organisation, anterior to Rome and to Islamism, still exist.
The Kabyle village has, in its tribe, a political personality which
strongly recalls the clan. Many customs, indeed, are evident survivals
of an ancient communal organisation. Thus, with the Kabyles, mutual
assistance between fellow-citizens is a strict duty. Even in a foreign
land the fellow-citizen must be helped, at the risk of all interests
and at the peril of one’s life. Whoever fails in this duty incurs
public contempt; he is even punished with a fine, and made responsible
for the losses suffered by the deserted compatriot. Even the Kabyle of
another tribe must, at need, be succoured, or his tribe may bring a
plaint before the _djemâa_ of the tribe to which the egoist belongs,
and the latter is punished or reprimanded.
In a Kabyle village, when an individual erects a building, he has
a right to the assistance of all the inhabitants. In the same
way the greater part of the field labour is performed by mutual
assistance.[1060] But all this refers to the men; for women there
remains no trace either of the maternal family or of the more or less
serious advantages which it generally confers on wives and mothers. One
custom, however, and one only, still recalls ancient manners; this is
“the right of rebellion,” of which I have spoken elsewhere.
We are acquainted with the date at which the last seal was placed on
the subjection of the Kabyle woman. It was only a hundred and twenty
years ago that the men refused henceforth a legal position to women in
the succession of males.[1061] At present the Kabyle woman, whether
married or not, no longer inherits.[1062]
The Kabyle _Kanouns_ admit six categories of heirs: 1st, the _açeb_
or universal heirs--that is to say, all the male descent, the direct
line through males, and all the collaterals descending through males of
the paternal branch; 2nd, the ascendants through males on the paternal
side--the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather; 3rd, the uterine
brother, heir to a legal portion; 4th, the master and the freed man,
_açeb_ heirs of each other; 5th, the _karouba_--that is to say, the
community having its assembly of major citizens, the _djemâa_, and
being a civil personage;[1063] 6th, the _ensemble_ of the _karoubas_,
constituting the village. However, the collaterals of all degrees may
inherit in default of ascendants and descendants.[1064] In all this
list there is no mention of women.
In fact, whatever property a Kabyle woman may have been able
laboriously to amass, it falls to the male descent, to the ascendants,
or to the husband, or to the collaterals in the paternal line. It is
only in default of this cloud of male heirs that the succession to the
property gained by a Kabyle woman devolves at last on her daughters,
or her mother or grandmother.[1065] From all the preceding facts, and
in spite of gaps in our information, we may, however, suppose that in
the Berber world also the family has evolved in passing through three
degrees, which we have already found amongst various races, and which
are the communal clan, the maternal family, and the patriarchate.
IV. _The Family in Persia._
This evolution seems therefore very common; it is a general fact, but
we are not yet warranted in calling it a law. Thus, as far as our
information goes, which it is true is not very complete, no trace of it
is to be found among the ancient Persians, with whom we will now begin
our interrogation of the Aryan races, from the point of view of their
familial organisation. If the familial clan with confused kinship has
ever existed in ancient Persia, it can only have been at an extremely
remote epoch; there is no trace of it in the _Avesta_. And more than
this, the most ancient accounts show us the patriarchal family, in the
Hebraic sense of the word, instituted among the Mazdeans: a legitimate
wife, purchased from her parents, and by the side of her a greater or
less number of concubines; and lastly, dominating all the rest, the
father of the family, having the right of life or death over the wives
and children.[1066]
Not only does the clan not exist, but exogamy is replaced by the
most incestuous of endogamies. Thus Strabo relates that, following
a very ancient custom, the Magi might have commerce with their own
mothers.[1067] According to Ctesias, marriage between mother and son
was a common thing in Persia, and this not from sudden passion, but
by deliberate proposal, “by false judgment.”[1068] Lucian, on his
part, says expressly that marriage between brother and sister among
the Persians was perfectly legal. Indeed, in various passages of the
_Avesta_, consanguineous unions are recommended and praised.[1069]
In the eyes of the Mazdeans, whose sacred code expressly forbade all
alliance with infidels, endogamy, even when excessive, was evidently
moral; and they encouraged it to such a degree as to approve of the
kind of incest which is regarded as the most criminal by nearly all
other peoples. Neither is there any trace of the matriarchate in
ancient Persia, unless we choose to see a vestige of it in the legend
according to which, in the time of the mythic monarchies, the eldest
daughter of the king had the right to choose her husband herself.
For this purpose all the young nobles of the country were assembled
together at a festival, and the princess signified her preference by
throwing an orange to the man who pleased her best.[1070] I mention
this tradition that I may omit nothing, but it evidently constitutes a
most insignificant proof. Modern Persia, being Mahometan, has regulated
marriage and the family in accordance with the Koran. We find, however,
by the side of the perpetual marriage which only death or divorce can
dissolve, a form of conjugal union less solemn and more ephemeral, and
which is not generally recognised by law in countries even slightly
civilised. I speak of marriages for a term, or rather the hiring of a
wife for a time and for a fixed price. Unions of this kind are legal in
Persia. They are agreed on before the judge, and at the expiration of
the contract, or rather the lease, the interested parties may renew the
engagement if they think well. In a contrary case, the woman can only
contract another union of the same kind after a delay of forty days. If
before the expiration of the conjugal lease the man desires to break
it, he can do so, but only on condition of placing in the hands of the
woman the total sum stipulated in the contract.[1071] The offspring
of these temporary unions, or of any sort of union, are all equal
before the Persian law, which merely subjects them to the right of
primogeniture. At the death of the father, the eldest son, though born
of a slave mother, takes two-thirds of the succession. The remaining
third of the property is divided amongst the other children, but in
such a way that the share of the boys is half as large again as that
of the girls.[1072] This right of primogeniture and these advantages
granted to boys exclude all idea of maternal filiation in the customs
of modern Persia, and we have seen that there was no trace of it in
ancient Persia; this race therefore seems not to have passed through
the phase of the maternal family, nor perhaps through that of the clan.
V. _The Family in India._
In India, on the contrary, certain customs and traditions appear to be
true survivals, relating to an ancient organisation of exogamic clans
with maternal filiation. But of these old customs the sacred books
retain no trace. In Vedic India the family is already patriarchal,
since the husband is called _pati_, which signifies master; but this
Vedic family is of a most restricted kind. It is composed, essentially
and simply, at first of the husband and wife, who become the father
and the mother; then of the son and of the daughter, who are mutually
brother and sister. The grandparents belong to the anterior family; the
uncles and aunts are part of the collateral families.[1073] The Code
of Manu is already less exclusive, for it admits, as we shall see, a
fictitious filiation; but it is still patriarchal, and, according to
Manu, the daughters occupy an entirely subordinate position. It is
a son and a chain of male descendants that it is important to have;
religion even makes it an obligation; for the ancestors of any man
who has not a son to perform in their honour the sacrifice to the
manes, or the _Srâddha_, are excluded from the celestial abode. It
is necessary to have a son to “pay the debt of the ancestors.” “By a
son, a man gains heaven; by the son of a son, he obtains immortality;
by the son of this grandson, he rises to dwell in the sun.”[1074] The
Code of Manu already proclaims the right of primogeniture. It is by
means of the eldest son that a man pays the debt of the ancestors; it
is therefore he who ought to have everything; his obedient brothers
will live under his guardianship, as they have lived under that of the
father,[1075] on condition, however, that if the sons are of different
mothers, the mothers of the younger ones are not of superior rank to
that of the mother of the eldest son.[1076] The son of a brahmanee,
for example, would not yield precedence to the son of a _kchâtriya_:
caste is always of the first consideration. But the quality of son
may be acquired otherwise than by community of blood. Thus a husband
may, as we have seen, have his sterile wife fertilised by his younger
brother. The child thus conceived is reputed to be son of the husband;
nevertheless, in the succession, he is given the share of an uncle
only, and not the double share to which he would have had a right if he
had been the real son[1077] by flesh and blood. If a man has the great
misfortune to have only daughters, he can obviate this by charging
his daughter to bear him a son. For this purpose, it suffices for him
to say mentally to himself: “Let the male child that she gives birth
to become mine, and fulfil in my honour the funeral ceremony.”[1078]
The son thus engendered by mental incest and by suggestion, as we
should say to-day, is perfectly authentic. He is not a grandson, but
a real and true son, and he inherits all the fortune of his maternal
grandfather, with the light charge on it of offering two funeral
cakes--one to his own father, his father according to the flesh,
the other to his maternal grandfather, or father according to the
spirit.[1079] The law of Manu does not totally disinherit daughters,
but it cuts down their share considerably. Under pain of degradation,
brothers must give their sisters, but only to their german sisters,
the fourth of their share, to enable them to marry.[1080] Another
verse[1081] accords to the daughter the inheritance of the maternal
property, composed of what has been given to the mother at her
marriage. But to be capable of inheriting, this daughter must still
be celibate. In the contrary case, she merely receives a present. In
short, the whole Brahmanic code is based, in what concerns the family,
on masculine filiation and the patriarchate. Nevertheless, customs that
are kept up by the side of it, and doubtless in spite of it, prove that
in certain parts of India there must formerly have existed exogamic
clans and a system of maternal filiation.
But it is important to remark that these survivals are, or were, met
with especially in Tamil districts, in Malabar or Ceylon, which were
in great measure colonised by Tamils. In certain small kingdoms of
Malabar, as late as the seventeenth century, the right of succession
was transmitted through the mother; a princess could also, if she
pleased, marry an inferior.[1082] Custom still designated as brothers
to each other the children either of two brothers or two sisters,
but the children of the brother and of the sister were only german
cousins.[1083] Certain families never made any partition, thus
preserving the custom of the ancient familial clan.[1084] Wherever
feminine filiation prevailed, it was the sister’s son who succeeded
the defunct Rajah.[1085] So also in the eastern part of Ceylon, the
property was transmitted to the sister’s son, to the exclusion of the
sons.[1086] To conclude, I will mention the custom, also very widely
spread in India, of not marrying a woman of the same name.
We must beware of exaggerating the value of these partial facts; they
permit us, however, to infer that in certain parts of India, and
especially among the Tamils, the family has at first been maternal, and
has slowly evolved from the primitive clan.
VI. _The Greco-Roman Family._
The chief object of this book being to study the evolution of the
family and of marriage, I need not describe in detail the Greco-Roman
family, which has, besides, served as a theme for so many writers. It
certainly appears, contrary to the opinion of the Romans themselves,
to have emerged tardily enough from the primitive clan or _gens_. This
Roman _gens_ was composed, really or fictitiously, of consanguine
individuals, living under an elected chief, and having the same name.
The union of several _gentes_ formed the _curia_ or the _phratry_.
Grouped together, the phratries or curiæ constituted _tribus_.
And lastly, the assembly of the tribus formed the nation: Rome or
Athens.[1087] It is therefore the clan, or _gens_, and not the family,
which has been at Rome, and at Athens the _cellule_, according to the
fashionable expression, of ancient society.
At the dawn of history, these clans were already agnatic; they had
adopted paternal filiation, and each of them claimed a common masculine
ancestor; but the right of the _gens_ to the heritage, and in certain
cases the possession of an _ager publicus_, still proved the antique
community of property; and a number of indications and traditions
bore witness in favour of the existence of a prehistoric phase of the
maternal family, preceding agnation. Bachofen goes much further, and
not without a show of reason. He insists, for example, that kinship in
the Latin clan may at first have been confused. He alleges, on this
point, that in the time of Numa the word _parricide_ signified, not
the murder of a father, but that of a free man of some sort; that in
the family tribunal the cognates of the wife figured, and that the
cognates wore mourning for each other; that the cognates of the wife,
and those of the husband of a wife, had over her the _jus osculi_, or
the right of embracing her, etc.; lastly, that the Etruscan Servius,
the founder of plebeian liberty, was conceived, says the legend, during
a great annual festival, when the people reverted to primitive sexual
disorder.[1088]
The Greek γένος resembled the Roman _gens_. Its members had a common
sepulture, common property, the mutual obligation of the _vendetta_,
and an archon.[1089]
In the protohistoric clans of Greece maternal filiation was first
of all established. The Cretans said motherland (μητρίς), and not
fatherland (πατρίς). In primitive Athens the women had the right of
voting, and their children bore their name--privileges which were taken
from them, says the legend, to appease the wrath of Neptune, after an
inundation.[1090] Tradition also relates that at Athens, until the time
of Cecrops, children bore the name of their mother.[1091]
Among the Lycians, says Herodotus, the matriarchate endured a long
time, and the children followed the status of their mother. Uterine
brothers were carefully distinguished from german brothers for a long
period in Greece; the former are called ὁμογάστριοι in Homer, and the
latter ὄπατροι; and uterine fraternity was regarded as much more close.
Lycaon, pleading with Achilles, says, in order to appease him, that he
is not the uterine brother of Hector.[1092] At Athens and Sparta a man
could marry his father’s sister, but not his mother’s sister.[1093] In
Etruria the funeral inscriptions in the Latin language make much more
frequent mention of the maternal than the paternal descent. Sometimes
they mention only the name of a child and that of his mother (Lars
Caius, son of Caulia, etc.); sometimes they indicate the father’s name
by simple initials, whilst that of the mother is written in full.[1094]
As in so many other countries, the paternal family succeeded the
maternal family in the ancient world, but not without difficulty. To
begin with, the fact of marriage did not suffice alone to establish
paternal filiation; the declaration of the father was necessary,
as well in Greece as in Rome. In his _Oresteia_, Æschylus puts in
opposition before Minerva the old maternal right and the new paternal
right. The chorus of the Eumenides, representing the people, defends
the ancient customs; Apollo pleads for the innovators, and ends by
declaring, in a fit of patriarchal delirium, that the child is not
of the blood of the mother. “It is not the mother who begets _what
is called her child_; she is only the nurse of the germ poured into
her womb; he who begets is the father. The woman receives the germ
merely as guardian, and when it pleases the gods, she preserves
it.” The Orestes of Euripides takes up the same theory when he says
to Tyndarus--“My father has begotten me, and thy daughter has given
birth to me, as the earth receives the seed that another confides to
it; without a father, there could be no child.” These patriarchal
theories naturally consecrated the slavery of woman. The laws of Solon
still recognised the right of women to inherit, in default of paternal
relations of the male sex, to the fourth degree, but in the time of
Isæus the law refused to the mother any place among the heirs of her
son.[1095]
In fact, throughout the historic period the Greco-Roman world is
patriarchal. In Greece and at Rome woman is despised, subjected, and
possessed like a thing; while the power of the father of the family is
enormous. It is especially so at Rome, where, nevertheless, the family
is not yet strictly consanguineous, for it includes the wife, children,
and slaves, and where agnation has for its basis the _patria potestas_.
“All those are agnates who are under the same paternal power, or who
have been, or who could be, if their ancestor had lived long enough to
exercise his empire.... Wherever the paternal power begins, there also
begins kinship. Adoptive children are relations.... A son emancipated
by his father loses his rights of agnation.”[1096] At the commencement
of Roman history, we see, therefore, clans, or _gentes_, composed of
families, of whom some are patrician--that is, able to indicate their
agnatic lineage--and the others plebeian. The “justæ nuptiæ” are for
the former; the latter unite without ceremony, _more ferarum_. The
family is possessed by the _pater familias_; he is the king and priest
of it, and becomes one of its gods when his shade goes to dwell among
the manes. In this last case, the family simply changes masters;
“the nearest agnate _takes the family_,” says the law of the Twelve
Tables. Something very similar existed in Greece, for we have seen
that at Athens the right of marrying their sisters, left to brothers
who were heirs, was not even exhausted by a first marriage.[1097]
The institution of individual, or rather familial property, that of
masculine filiation, and of patriarchal monogamy, dismembered the
_gens_, which at length became merely nominal. The law of the Twelve
Tables, however, still decides that the succession shall be vacant if,
at the death of the father, the nearest agnate refuses to “take the
family,” and in default of an agnate the _gentiles_ shall take the
succession. The nominal _gens_ persisted for a long time in the ancient
world; thus every Roman patrician had three names--that of his _gens_,
that of his family, and his personal name.[1098] At Athens, in the time
of Solon, the _gens_ still inherited when a man died without children.
The long duration of Greco-Roman society enables us to follow the
whole evolution of the family in it. It would be going beyond the
facts to affirm the existence of a still confused consanguinity in
the ancient _gens_; but it seems very probable that this _gens_ first
adopted the maternal and then the paternal family, which last became
somewhat modified, in the sense of the extension of feminine rights.
This extension was slow, and it was not till the time of Justinian that
equal shares were given to sons and daughters in succession, or even
that widows were entrusted with the care of their children.
VII. _The Family in Barbarous Europe._
Organisation into clans more or less consanguineous, then into
phratries and tribes, seems natural in many primitive societies; and
outside the Greco-Roman world the barbarous populations of Europe had
all adopted it. In these clans, has kinship begun by being confused?
Has exogamy prevailed? On these particular points precise information
is wanting; doubtless evolution cannot everywhere have been uniform.
One thing is, however, certain, namely, that the Celtic populations
have preserved the institution of the clan much longer than any
others. In Wales and Ireland the clan was still the social unit; it
was responsible for the crimes of its members, paid the fines and
received the compensations. In Ireland, and surely elsewhere, there
was an _ager publicus_ allotted amongst the members of the clans.
Individualism prevailed in the end, as it did everywhere. A certain
portion of the common soil, reserved in usufruct for the chiefs, was at
last seized by them as individual property; but all the members of a
clan were reputed as of kin, and at a man’s death his land was allotted
by the chief amongst the other families of the clan or _sept_.[1099]
These clans, however, were anything but exogamous, if we may believe
Strabo, who affirms that the ancient Irish, like the Mazdeans,
married, without distinction, their mothers and sisters.[1100] Irish
marriage had in no way the strictness of the Roman marriage; temporary
unions were freely allowed, and customs having the force of law
safeguarded the rights of the wife.[1101] Other European barbarians,
on the contrary, were exogamous, and prohibited under pain of severe
punishment, as whipping or drowning, marriage between members of the
same clan.[1102] The _mir_ of the southern Slavs may be considered as
a survival of these ancient barbarous clans, sometimes endogamous,
sometimes exogamous.
In becoming subdivided into families, have these little primitive
clans adopted maternal filiation? This is possible; but when they came
in contact with the Roman world the greater number had already the
paternal family. Let us notice, however, that the Irish law, far from
subjecting the mother, accorded her a position equal to that of the
father.[1103] Let us also recall the following passage of Tacitus[1104]
_à propos_ of the Germans: “The son of a sister is as dear to his uncle
as to his father; some even think that the first of these ties is the
most sacred and close; and in taking hostages they prefer nephews, as
inspiring a stronger attachment, and interesting the family on more
sides.” We may add to this that in Germany the mother could be the
guardian of her children;[1105] that the Salic law, _non emendata_,
admitted to the succession, in default of children, the father and
mother, the brothers and sisters, and then the sister of the mother
in preference to that of the father. Let us remember, also, that in
Slav communities women have a right to vote, and may be elected to the
government of the community;[1106] but this is still a long way off the
matriarchate, or even uterine filiation. The Saxon law (tit. vii.), the
Burgundian law (tit. xlv.), and the German law (tit. lvii. and xcii.)
only admit women to the succession in default of male ascendants; the
law of the Angles prefers paternal agnates, even to the fifth degree,
before women.
To sum up, there are only two precise testimonies that may be quoted
in favour of the ancient existence of maternal filiation among the
barbarians of Europe--that of Strabo, relating to the Iberians; and the
case of the Picts, amongst whom the lists of kings show that fathers
and sons had different names, and that brothers succeeded instead of
sons.[1107] From this absence, or rather rarity, of proofs in favour of
the ancient existence of the maternal family among the barbarians of
Europe, must we conclude that it has never existed? Not at all; we can
only say that this ancient filiation is possible, and even probable,
but as yet insufficiently established.
What cannot be disputed is, that always and everywhere peoples who are
in process of civilisation have adopted the paternal family, according
even excessive powers to the father of the family. What is probable
is, that in the majority of cases paternal filiation has succeeded to
maternal filiation and to more or less confused familial forms. Is
this paternal or even patriarchal family the final term of familial
evolution? Has evolution, never as yet arrested in its course, said its
last word in regard to marriage and the family?
FOOTNOTES:
[1038] Lubbock, _Orig. Civil._, p. 177.
[1039] L. H. Morgan, _Systems of Consanguinity_, etc., in _Smithsonian
Contributions_, vol. xvii. pp. 416, 417.
[1040] Morgan, _loc. cit._, p. 422.
[1041] G. Eugène Simon, _La Famille Chinoise_, in _Nouvelle Revue_,
1883.
[1042] Davis, _The Chinese_, vol. i. p. 282.--Pauthier, _Chine
moderne_, p. 238.
[1043] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. du Mariage_, p. 363.
[1044] L. Morgan, _loc. cit._, pp. 416, 425.
[1045] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xv. p. 164.
[1046] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc., p. 148.
[1047] R. Smith, _Kinship_, etc., pp. 147, 151.
[1048] _Id._, _ibid._, p. 159.
[1049] Genesis, xxiii. 13.
[1050] Numbers, xxxvi. 4-8.
[1051] Numbers, xxxii. 8-11.
[1052] 2 Samuel, xiii. 16.
[1053] Exodus, vi. 20.
[1054] Genesis, xi. 26-29.
[1055] Leviticus, xviii. 9.
[1056] Eusebius of Cæsarea, _Preparation of Gospel_, i.
[1057] Strabo, iii. 18.
[1058] Duveyrier, _Touâreg du Nord_, p. 339.
[1059] _Id._, _ibid._
[1060] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. p. 59.
[1061] _Id._, _ibid._, t. ii. p. 283.
[1062] _Id._, _ibid._, p. 286.
[1063] E. Sabatier, _Essai sur l’origine des Berbères sédentaires_, in
_Revue d’Anthropologie_, 1882.
[1064] Hanoteau et Letourneux, _Kabylie_, t. ii. pp. 287, 288.
[1065] _Id._, _ibid._, t. ii. p. 297.
[1066] Dareste, _Sur l’ancien droit des Perses_, in _Bull.
de l’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques_, 23rd Oct.
1886.--Strabo, xv. 17.
[1067] Strabo, xv. 20.
[1068] _Sancti Joannis Chrysostomi_, Op. i. 384, and x. 573.
[1069] A. Hovelacque, _Avesta_, p. 465.
[1070] L. Dubeux, _La Perse_, p. 262.
[1071] L. Dubeux, _La Perse_, p. 468.
[1072] Chardin, _Hist. Univ. des Voyages_, t. xxxi. pp. 230, 236.--L.
Dubeux, _loc. cit._, p. 468.
[1073] E. Burnouf, _Essai sur le Véda_, p. 190.
[1074] _Code of Manu_, ix. 137.
[1075] _Ibid._, 105, 106.
[1076] _Ibid._, 125.
[1077] _Ibid._, 120, 121.
[1078] _Ibid._, 127.
[1079] _Ibid._, 132.
[1080] _Code of Manu_, ix. 118.
[1081] _Ibid._, 131.
[1082] _Lettres édifiantes_, t. xiv. p. 387.
[1083] _Ibid._, p. 320.
[1084] _Ibid._, t. xiv. p. 396.
[1085] McLennan, _loc. cit._, p. 189.
[1086] O. Sachot, _l’Île de Ceylan_, p. 27.
[1087] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, pp. 35, 67.
[1088] Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 411.
[1089] Grote, _Hist. of Greece_, vol. iii. p. 95.
[1090] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 289.
[1091] Varro, quoted by St. Augustine, _City of God_, vol. xviii. p. 9.
[1092] McLennan, _loc. cit._, p. 244.
[1093] _Id._, _ibid._ pp. 177, 275.
[1094] Ott. Müller and Bachofen (quoted by A. Giraud-Teulon, pp. 283,
284).
[1095] Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 548.--McLennan, _Primitive
Marriage_, p. 255.
[1096] H. Maine, _Ancient Law_, pp. 141, 142.
[1097] Isæus, _Heritage of Menecles_.
[1098] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, p. 372.
[1099] H. Maine, _Early Institutions_, pp. 113, 116, 124.
[1100] Strabo, iv. 4.
[1101] H. Maine, _loc. cit._, p. 76.
[1102] Bell, _Journal of a Residence in Circassia_, vol. i. p. 347.
[1103] H. Maine, _loc. cit._
[1104] _De moribus Germanorum_, xx.
[1105] Laboulaye, _Recherches sur la condition civile et politique des
femmes_, etc., pp. 166, 167.
[1106] A. Giraud-Teulon, _loc. cit._, pp. 41, 42.
[1107] McLennan, _Primitive Marriage_, p. 101.
CHAPTER XX.
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY IN THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE.
I. _The Past._--Sociology and evolution--Sociology and scientific
method--The biological reason of marriage and the family--Primitive
forms of marriage--Its evolution--Consanguineous primitive groups--The
evolution of the family--The stages of this evolution--From communism
to individualism--Advantages of the primitive clan--Polygamy and
statistics of births.
II. _The Present._--Present marriage in Europe--The dangers of
celibacy according to A. Bertillon--They marry who can--Imperfect
categories of celibates--Money and matrimony--Selection by
money--Marriages by purchase.
III. _The Future._--Prehistoric peoples still surviving--Progress
is the law of the world--The meaning of matrimonial and familial
evolution--Sociological rhythms--Future collective societies--The
family and society--Progress of conjugal discord--The marriage
of the future--Herbert Spencer and Montaigne--Slowness of social
evolutions--Conservatives and innovators--Nothing dies; everything is
renewed.
I. _The Past._
In the preceding chapters I have attempted to describe how men of all
countries and all races have more or less constituted and organised
their marriage and their family, and for this purpose I have patiently
classified a multitude of facts collected singly by an army of
observers.
Moreover, in conformity with the method of evolution, and in order not
to neglect the most distant sources, I have prefaced my minute inquiry
into marriage and the family among men by an investigation of the same
kind in regard to animals. Man is neither a demi-god nor an angel; he
is a primate more intelligent than the others, and his relationship
with the neighbouring species of the animal kingdom is more strongly
shown in his psychic than in his anatomical traits.
More than once, I fear, the accumulation of detailed facts which forms
the groundwork of this book may have fatigued my readers; but this is
the only condition on which it is possible to give a solid basis to
sociology. It is, in fact, nothing less than a matter of creating a
new science. We are scarcely beginning to be really acquainted with
mankind, to take a complete survey of it in time and space. Now this
would be quite impossible without the help of comparative ethnography.
We must regard the existing inferior races as survivals, as prehistoric
or protohistoric types that have persisted through long ages, and are
still on different steps of the ladder of progress; it is this view
alone which we shall find suggestive and enlightening; and it is in
strict correlation with the method of evolution, to which, indeed, it
owes its value.
The innumerable dissertations on the history of marriage and of the
family which appeared previous to the rise of scientific method, have
necessarily been devoid of accuracy and especially of breadth of
thought. A thick veil concealed the real origin of these institutions;
religious legends, that had become venerable on account of their
antiquity, paralysed scientific investigation. To submit our social
institutions to the great law of evolution, by means of disagreeable
researches, was not to be tolerated by public opinion. In fact, if
marriage and the family have been constantly modified in the past,
we cannot maintain that these institutions will remain for ever
crystallised in their present state. Until this revolutionary idea had
taken root and become sufficiently acclimatised in public opinion, all
so-called social studies were scarcely more than empty lucubrations.
From time to time, no doubt, a few bold innovators, braving scoffs or
even martyrdom, have dared to construct theories of new societies;
but, being insufficiently informed, they could only create Utopias
contemned by the mass of the public. Scientific sociology builds
its edifice stone by stone; its duty is to bind the present to the
most distant past; its honour will lie in furnishing a solid basis
of operation to the innovators of the future; but this new branch
of human knowledge can only grow by submitting to the method of the
natural sciences. Before everything else, it is important to classify
the facts that have been observed. This course is imperative. It is
dry, and lends itself with difficulty to oratorical effusions, but no
other path can lead to the truth. My constant anxiety has been to be
faithful to it, and as an anthropologist I have especially borrowed
my materials from ethnography. Step by step, and following as much as
possible the hierarchic order of human races and of civilisations, I
have described the modes of marriage and of the family adopted by the
numerous varieties of the human type; I have endeavoured to note the
phases of their evolution, and to show how superior forms have evolved
from inferior ones. Now that I am at the end of my inquiry, it will be
well to sum up clearly its result.
The prime cause of marriage and the family is purely biological; it is
the powerful instinct of reproduction, the condition of the duration
of species, and the origin of which is necessarily contemporaneous
with that of primal organisms, of protoplasmic monads, multiplying
themselves by unconscious scissiparity. By a slow specialisation
of organs and functions, in obedience to the laws of evolutionary
selection, various animal types have been created; and when they have
been provided with separate sexes and conscious nervous centres,
procreation has become a tyrannic need, driving males and females to
unite in order to fulfil the important function of reproduction.
In this respect man is strictly assimilable to the other animals, and
with him as with them all the intoxication of love has for its initial
principle the elective affinity of two generating cellules of different
sex. So far, this is mere biology, but it results, among superior
animals, in sociological phenomena, in pairings which endure after the
satisfaction of procreative needs, and produce in outline some forms
of human marriage, or rather, of sexual union in humanity--namely,
promiscuity, polygamy, and even monogamy. Our most primitive ancestors,
our precursors, half men and half apes, have certainly had extremely
gross customs, which are still in great measure preserved among the
least developed races.
The study, however, of contemporary savage societies proves to us that
absolutely unbridled promiscuity, without rule or restraint, is very
rare even in inferior humanity. In exceptional cases, individuals
of both sexes may have abandoned themselves, of common accord, to
promiscuity, as did the Polynesian _areoïs_; but these instances
relate to acts of debauchery, and not to a regulated social condition
compatible with the maintenance of an ethnic group. The conjugal form
nearest to promiscuity is the collective marriage of clan to clan--as,
for example, that of the Kamilaroi, amongst whom all the men of one
clan are reputed brothers to each other, and at the same time husbands
of all the women of a neighbouring clan, reputed also sisters to each
other. Other varieties of sexual association are more common, and
may be arranged under the general heads of promiscuity, polygamy,
polyandry, and monogamy. We hear also of temporary unions, marriages
for a term, and partial marriages concluded at a debated price for
certain days of the week only, etc. Every possible experiment,
compatible with the duration of savage or barbarous societies, has
been tried, or is still practised, amongst various races, without the
least thought of the moral ideas generally prevailing in Europe, and
which our metaphysicians proclaim as innate and necessary. Having
elsewhere demonstrated at length the relativity of morality, I will
not go over the ground again, but will quote on this point some lines
of Montaigne:--“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived
from nature, proceed from custom; every one having an inward veneration
for the opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own
people, cannot without very great reluctancy depart from them, nor
apply himself to them without applause.... The common fancies that we
find in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our mind with the
seed of our fathers, appear to be most universal and genuine. From
whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges of custom
is believed to be also off the hinges of reason.”[1108] The partial
marriages of the Hassinyeh Arabs are surely off the hinges of our
custom; and it is the same with polyandry, which borders on these
partial marriages, but is much more widely spread. Like everything else, polyandric
marriage has evolved, from its most complete form, that of the Naïrs,
to the polyandry in use in Thibet, which already inclines towards
monandry and the paternal family. Primitive polyandry has easily arisen
from the marriage by classes practised by many savage clans; but most
often it is polygamy which has sprung from it. And the latter must
frequently have been established from the first in primitive hordes,
simply by the right of the strongest.
Man may be monogamous in the very lowest degree of savagery and
stupidity; certain animals are so; but in humanity it is more often the
instinct of polygamy which predominates; and therefore, when in the
course of the progressive evolution of societies monogamy at length
became moral and legal, men have been careful to soften its rigour
by maintaining together with it concubinage and prostitution, and by
generally leaving to the husband the right of repudiation, which has
nearly always been refused to the wife. This injustice appeared quite
natural, for as the wife had usually been captured or bought, she was
considered as the property of the man, and held in strict subjection.
At length, in its last form, monogamic marriage, which had at first
been the association of a master and a slave, tended more and more to
become the union of two persons, living on a footing of equality.
The family has undergone a similar evolution. Apart from a few
exceptional cases of precocious monogamy (Veddahs, Boshimans, etc.),
ethnography shows us the greater number of savage races living in
little consanguine groups, in which the kinship is still confused
and the solidarity strong. The degrees of consanguinity are not well
defined; real kinship is easily confounded with fictitious kinship, and
classes of relations are created, ranged under the same title, although
very differently united by ties of blood. The woman nearly always bears
children for her group, or clan, and this clan is very often exogamic;
this exogamy is practised from clan to clan, and only within the tribe.
There is no absolute rule, however, and it is not unusual to see
endogamy elbow exogamy.
In the large and confused family of the clan, all the members of which
were bound together by a strict solidarity of interests and a real or
fictitious kinship, the restricted family became gradually established
by a reaction of individual interests. On account of the more or less
complete confusion of sexual unions, the first to become detached
from the consanguine clan was the maternal family, based on uterine
filiation, the only filiation capable of sure proof; but the great
association of all the members of the clan still existed. By the simple
fact of birth in this little ethnic group, the individual had rights to
the territory of the clan and his share in the common resources; his
clan were bound to give him aid, assistance, and, at need, vengeance
also. In proportion as the family assumed more distinct proportions
in the clan, it tended to become separate from it, and then, nearly
always, it was based not on maternal but on paternal filiation. This
did not come to pass in a day; it took a long time to arrive at the
point of attributing to such or such a man the ownership of one or
more women and their progeny. The ridiculous ceremonial of the couvade
was probably invented during this period of transition, when it was no
easy matter for a man to obtain the recognition of his paternal title
and rights by the other men of the clan. For a long time the maternal
family resisted the enthronisation of the paternal family, and here
and there it succeeded in maintaining its existence, and in serving as
a basis for the transmission of inheritance. For, whether paternal or
maternal, the institution of the family, when well consolidated, had
for its result the parcelling out of the possessions of the ancient
clans, and the creation of familial or individual property on the ruins
of the ancient common property. Finally, nothing more remained of the
clan, or _gens_, but the sign or _totem_, the name, and a kinship, also
nominal, between the various families that had come from it.
The system and the vocabulary of kinship were then renewed; to the
classificatory mode, grouping the relations by classes, without much
care as to consanguinity, has succeeded the descriptive mode, which
carefully specifies the degree of consanguinity of each person, and
distinguishes a direct line from collateral lines, and in which each
individual is the centre of a group of relations.
In a remarkable book, which has not yet had all the success it
deserves, Lewis Morgan believes he has recognised five stages in the
evolution of the family: 1st, the family is consanguineous--that is
to say, founded on the marriage of brothers and sisters of a group;
2nd, several brothers are the common husbands of their wives, who
are not sisters; 3rd, a man and woman unite, but without exclusive
cohabitation, and with faculty of divorce for one or the other; 4th,
then comes the pastoral family of the Hebrews, the marriage of one man
with several women; but this patriarchal form has not been universal;
5th, at last appeared the family of civilised societies, the most
modern, characterised by the exclusive cohabitation of one man and one
woman. Not taking this classification too literally, and reserving a
place for varieties and exceptions, we have here five stages which mark
tolerably well the evolution of the family in humanity.
The moral direction of this slow transformation is evident; it proceeds
from a communism more or less extensive to individualism; from the
clan, where all is solidarity, to the family and the individual, having
their own interests, which are as distinct as possible from those
of other families and other individuals. Each one has endeavoured
to get for himself as large a share as possible of that which was
formerly held in common; each man has aimed at obtaining a more and
more exclusive right over property, wife, and children. From these
appetites, more economic than ethereal, have at length proceeded
the patriarchal family, monogamy, and familial property, and later,
individual property;[1109] the _régime_ of the family and that of
property have evolved in company. But this transformation has been
effected by extremely slow degrees; for a long time the new _régime_
bore the mark of the old one in certain rights reserved to the clan, in
certain prohibitions, in certain obligations, which still imposed some
solidarity on individuals--as, for example, the legal injunction to
help a man in peril, to hasten to the assistance of a village plundered
by robbers, the general duty of hospitality, etc.--all of them precepts
formulated by the codes of Egypt and India, and still to be found in
Kabylie, and which have disappeared from our frankly individualistic,
or rather egoistic, modern legislations.
It is indisputable that this evolution has everywhere coincided with
a general progress in civilisation, and the advance has been sensibly
the same among the peoples of all races, on the sole condition that
they should have emerged from savagery. Everywhere, in the end, the
paternal family and monogamic marriage have become a sort of ideal to
which men have striven to conform their customs and institutions. It
has very naturally been concluded that these last forms of the family
and of conjugal union have an intrinsic sociologic superiority over the
others, that in all times and places they strengthen the ethnic group,
and create for it better conditions in its struggle for existence. But
this reasoning has nothing strict in it; civilisation is the result
of very complex influences, and if a certain social practice has been
adopted by inferior races, it does not logically follow that it is,
for that reason only, bad in itself. What seems indisputable is, that
man tends willingly towards individualism, and yields himself up to
it with joy as soon as that becomes possible to him, thanks to the
general progress of civilisation. At the origin of civilisations, in
a tribe of savages, surrounded with perils, and painfully struggling
for existence, a more or less strict solidarity is imperative; the
co-associates must necessarily form as it were a large family, in which
a more or less communal _régime_ is essential. The children, the weak
ones, and the women have more chance of surviving if in some measure
they belong to the entire clan; perpetual war soon cuts down a great
number of men; it is therefore necessary that their widows and children
should find support and protection without difficulty, and the _régime_
of the clan, with its wide and confused kinship, lends itself better to
this helpful fraternity than a strict distinction of _tuum_ and _meum_
applied to property and persons. The same may be said of patriarchal
polygamy, which often flourished on the ruins of the clan. For this
_régime_ to become general, it is necessary that, in the ethnic group,
the proportion of the sexes should be to the advantage of the feminine
sex; in this case it is imperative, and evidently becomes favourable to
the maintenance of the social body; in fact it guarantees the women
against desertion, augments the number of births, and assures to the
children the care of one or more adoptive mothers, if the real mother
happens to die. The opinion of Herbert Spencer, who quite _à priori_
attributes to monogamy a diminution in the mortality of children,[1110]
is a most hazardous one. By the last census taken in Algeria we learn,
not without surprise, that the increase in the indigenous Mussulman and
polygamic population was much superior to that of the most prolific
of the European monogamous states. Polygamy may therefore have its
utilitarian value, and this is the case as soon as it adapts itself to
the general conditions of social life.
II. _The Present._
It is many centuries since Europe adopted monogamic marriage as the
legal type of the sexual union. That there exists by the side of
regular marriage a considerable margin, in which are still found
nearly all the other forms of sexual association, we do not deny; but
in France, for example, two-thirds of the population live so entirely
under the _régime_ of legal monogamy, that it would be evidently
superfluous to describe it here; it is, in substance, the Roman
marriage, the bonds of which Christianity has striven to lighten. In
the general opinion, marriage such as our laws and customs require it
to be, is the most perfect type possible of conjugal union; and this
current appreciation has not been a little strengthened by a learned
treatise, frequently quoted, and of which I cannot dispense with saying
a few words.
In 1859, a justly celebrated demographer, whom I have the honour to
call friend, Dr. Adolphe Bertillon, published a monograph on marriage,
which made a great sensation.[1111]
This work, bristling with figures, scrupulously collected and strictly
accurate, proves or seems to prove that the celibate third of the
French population is, by reason of its celibacy, struck with decay,
and plays the part of an inferior race by the side of the married
two-thirds. In comparative tables, which are extremely clear, A.
Bertillon follows step by step the different fates of the married and
unmarried, and he shows us that at every age the celibate population
is struck by a mortality nearly twice as great as the other; that its
births merely make up 45 per cent. of its annual losses; that it counts
every year twice as many cases of madness, twice as many suicides,
twice as many attempts on property, and twice as many murders and acts
of personal violence. Consequently, the State has to maintain for this
celibate population twice as many prisons, twice as many asylums and
hospitals, twice as many undertakers,[1112] etc. These revelations,
absolutely true as raw results, caused a great commotion in the little
public specially occupied with demography and sociology. Their alarm
was soon calmed.
From his interesting work A. Bertillon had drawn conclusions which were
very doubtful, taking surely the effect for the cause, by attributing
the inferiority of the celibate population solely to its celibacy. If
this be so, we have only to marry these weak ones in order to raise
them; but the superiority of the married population, which on the whole
is indisputable, does not necessarily imply the superiority of the
marriage state.
It is in consequence of economic hindrances, and of physical or
psychical inferiority, that, in the greater number of cases, people
resign themselves to celibacy. Those who wish to marry cannot always
do so, and A. Bertillon knew better than any one that the number of
marriages, the age at marriage, the number of children by marriage,
etc., depend in the mass not on individual caprice, but on causes
altogether general. Setting aside money considerations--which are so
powerful, and to which I shall presently return--and confining our
calculation to persons of normal endowment, it is probable that there
is more energy, more moral and intellectual vitality, in those who
bravely face the risk of marriage than in the timid celibates; but it
is certain that the celibate population, taken as a whole, includes the
majority of the human waste of a country. At the time when A. Bertillon
wrote his learned treatise, in 1859, statistics prove the existence in
France of 370,018 infirm persons,[1113] of whom the greater number were
evidently condemned to celibacy by the very fact of their infirmity.
On the other hand, it is probable that among the beggars, properly so
called, there is a large proportion of celibates, without counting the
infirm; now in 1847 there were 337,838 beggars in France.[1114]
To these lists of unwilling celibates must be added, especially, the
virile population in the army, the mortality in which was, as we well
know, double that of the civil population. Now, on the 1st January
1852, the French army counted 354,960 men.[1115] To these matrimonial
non-values, contributing a larger tithe to sickness and death, must
be further joined the celibates from religious vows. The census shows
52,885 of the latter. Without any ill-feeling towards the Catholic
clergy, we may be allowed to hold the opinion that the very fact of
a man’s vowing himself to celibacy--that is to say, of setting at
nought the desires of nature and the needs of the society of which
he forms a part--merely for metaphysical motives, often implies a
certain degree of mental inferiority. The special statistics of the
little ecclesiastical world are not published in France; but M. Duruy
having once had the happy thought of ascertaining from the judicial
pigeon-holes the number of crimes and misdemeanours committed by the
members of religious orders engaged in teaching, compared with those
of lay schoolmasters, during a period of thirty months, the result of
the inquiry showed that, proportionally to the number of schools, the
former were guilty of four times as many misdemeanours and twelve times
as many crimes as the latter.[1116] Short as the period of observation
was, this enormous difference gives matter for reflection, although it
may not have the value of a law.
But the principal causes which influence matrimony are the greater or
less facility of existence, and the extreme importance attached to
money. As a general rule, life and death tend to balance each other,
and the populations whose mortality is great have, as compensation, a
rich birthrate. We invariably see the number of marriages and births
increasing after a series of prosperous years, and _vice versâ_.
General causes have naturally a greater influence on the population
living from hand to mouth. The well-to-do classes escape this, and we
even find that the chances of marriage for the rich increase during
years of high prices.[1117]
We can scarcely attribute to anything else but an excessive care for
money and a forethought pushed to timidity some very disquieting traits
in our marriage and birth rates in France. I will merely recall, by the
way, the continually decreasing excess of our births, which, if not
stopped by radical social reforms, can only end in our final decay.
The fear of marriage and the family is the particular feature of
French matrimoniality. The desirable age for marriage, says A.
Bertillon,[1118] is from twenty-two to twenty-five for men, and from
nineteen to twenty for women. In England more than half the marriages
for men (504 in 1000) and nearly two-thirds of those of women are
contracted before the age of twenty-five. Now, this is only the case
in France for 0.29, and in Belgium for 0.20 of the marriages. A
demographical phenomenon of the same kind is observed in Italy, where
only 232 men out of 1000 marry before the age of twenty-five.[1119]
At Paris, where the struggle for existence is more severe, and where
the care for money is more predominant, late marriages abound, and
it is only above the age of forty for men and thirty-five for women
that the marriage rate equals, and even exceeds, that of the whole
of France;[1120] it is self-evident that the result of this must be
a decrease in the total of births by marriage. Whether these facts
proceed from the growing difficulties of existence, or from a fear,
always augmenting also, of trouble and care, or from these two causes
combined and mutually strengthening each other, the consequence is
the same: marriages are becoming more and more simple commercial
transactions, from whence arises the worst and most shameful of
selections--selection by money. As a moral demographer, A. Bertillon
thunders against what he calls “the system of dower” more peculiar
to the Latin races, since we get it from Rome, where recourse was
doubtless had to it in order to emancipate patrician women from strict
conjugal servitude. But the remedy has become an evil, and it is
surely to the love of the dowry rather than to “the beautiful eyes of
the casket” that must be attributed a whole list of true marriages
by purchase, much more common in our own country than elsewhere.
Sometimes it is old men who conjugally purchase young girls, and
sometimes old women who buy young husbands. I will especially notice
this last category of marriages by purchase. As regards them, France
is unworthily distinguished beyond other nations. In our tables of
statistics, for example, the proportionate number of marriages between
bachelors from eighteen to forty years and women of fifty and upwards,
is ten times greater than in England.[1121]
_Marriages with Women of Fifty Years and upwards. (In a million
marriages.)_
IN FRANCE. IN ENGLAND.
Age of Number of | Age of Number of
Bachelors. Marriages. | Bachelors. Marriages.
18 to 20 years 64 | 16 to 20 years 0
20 ” 25 ” 109 | 20 ” 25 ” 5
25 ” 30 ” 151 | 25 ” 30 ” 12
30 ” 35 ” 188 | 30 ” 35 ” 22
35 ” 40 ” 257 | 35 ” 40 ” 40
--- | ---
769 | 79
We must remark, in comparing these tables, that the first group,
including the married men from eighteen to twenty years with women of
fifty and upwards, is unknown in England; and that the second group,
that of the married men of twenty to twenty-five years with women of
fifty years and upwards, is scarcely represented. The comparison is not
flattering for us. It is important to note, also, that these figures
only refer to first marriages. Tables of the same kind, showing the
marriages between young girls and old men, or between aged widows
and young men, would add to our confusion, and bring to our thoughts
the picturesque exclamation which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of
King Lear--“Fie! Fie! Fie! Pah! Pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good
apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.”[1122]
_Marriages with Men of Sixty Years and upwards._
IN FRANCE. | IN ENGLAND.
Age of Girls. Number of | Age of Girls. Number of
Marriages.| Marriages.
15 to 20 years 94 | 15 to 20 years 2
20 ” 25 ” 139 | 20 ” 25 ” 15
25 ” 30 ” 176 | 25 ” 30 ” 32
30 ” 35 ” 242 | 30 ” 35 ” 49
--- | ---
651 | 98
III. _The Future._
What will marriage and the family become in the future? For one who
is not a prophet by supernatural inspiration, it is hazardous to make
predictions. The future, nevertheless, is born from the womb of the
past, and, after having patiently scrutinised the evolution of bygone
ages, we may legitimately risk a few inductions with regard to the ages
to come. Doubtless the primitive forms of marriage and the family will
persist, if not for ever, as Herbert Spencer believes, at least for a
very long time among certain inferior races, protected and at the same
time oppressed by climates which the civilised man cannot brave with
impunity. These backward prehistoric races will continue to subsist in
unwholesome regions, as witnesses of a distant past, recalling to more
developed races their humble origin. But with these last the form of
marriage and of the family, which has incessantly been evolving, cannot
evidently remain immutable in the future. The little human world knows
no more repose than the cosmic environment from whence it has sprung,
and which encloses it. Among peoples, as among individuals, vital
concurrence and selection do their work. Now, when it is a matter of
institutions so essentially vital as marriage and the family, the least
amelioration is of the highest importance; it has an influence on the
number and quality of fresh generations, and on the flesh and spirit of
peoples. All things being equal, the preponderance, whether pacific or
not, will always fall to the nations which produce the greatest number
of the most robust, most intelligent, and best citizens. These better
endowed nations will often absorb or replace the others, and always
in the long run will be docilely imitated by them. Ethnography and
history show us the true sense of evolution in the past. Societies have
constantly advanced from confusion to distinction. Monogamic marriage
has succeeded to various more confused modes of sexual association.
So also the family is the ultimate residuum of vast communities of
ill-defined relationships. In its turn, the family itself has become
restricted. At first it was still a sort of little clan; and then
it was reduced to be essentially no more than the very modest group
formed by the father, the mother, and the children. At the same time
the familial patrimony crumbled, just as that of the clan had been
previously parcelled out; it became individual. What is reserved for
us in the future? Will the family be reconstituted by a slow movement
of retrogression, as Herbert Spencer believes?[1123] Nothing is less
probable.
Institutions have this in common with rivers, that they do not easily
flow back towards their source. If they sometimes seem to retrograde,
it is generally a mere appearance, resulting from a sort of sociologic
rhythm. In truth, the end and the beginning may assume a superficial
analogy, masking a profound difference. Thus the unconscious atheism of
the Kaffirs has nothing in common with that of Lucretius, and nothing
can be less analogous than the anarchic equality of the Fuegians
and American individualism. If, as is probable, the individualist
evolution, already so long begun, continues in the future, the
civilised family--that is to say, the last collective unit of
societies--must again be disintegrated, and finally subsist no longer
except in genealogy scientifically registered with ever-increasing
care; for it is, and always will be, important to be able to prejudge
how “the voice of the ancestors” may speak in the individual. But even
from the crumbling of the family will result the reconstitution of a
larger collective unit, having common interests and resuscitating under
another form that solidarity without which no society can endure.
But this new collectivity will in no way be copied from the primitive
clan. Whether it be called State, district, canton, or commune, its
government will be at once despotic and liberal; it will repress
everything that would be calculated to injure the community, but
in everything else it will endeavour to leave the most complete
independence to individuals. Our actual family circle is most often
very imperfect; so few families can give, or know how to give, a
healthy, physical, moral, and intellectual education to the child,
that in this domain large encroachments of the State, whether small or
great, are probable, even desirable. There is, in fact, a great social
interest before which the pretended rights of families must be effaced.
In order to prosper and live, it is necessary that the ethnic or social
unit should incessantly produce a sufficient number of individuals
well endowed in body, heart, and mind. Before this primordial need all
prejudices must yield, all egoistic interests must bend.
But the family and marriage are closely connected; the former cannot be
modified so long as the latter remains unchanged. If the legal ties of
the family are stretched, while social ties are drawn closer, marriage
will have the same fortune. For a long time, more or less silently, a
slow work of disintegration has begun, and we see it accentuated every
day. Leaving aside morals, which are difficult to appreciate, let us
simply take the numerical results which statistics furnish us with in
regard to divorce and illegitimate births.
In the five countries compared as follows, the increase of divorces has
been continuous and progressive during thirty years, and in France the
number has doubled.
The number of illegitimate births followed simultaneously an analogous
progression. In France, during the period 1800-1805, it was 4.75 per
100; now, wrote M. Block in 1869, it has gradually risen to 7.25 per
100.[1124] At the same time, and as a consequence of this demographic
movement, the proportion of free unions has considerably increased.
INCREASE OF DIVORCES.[1125]
_The frequency of divorces in 1851-55 being 100, what has it become
during the following years?_
France. Saxony. Belgium. Holland. Sweden.
Separations. Divorces. Divorces. Divorces. Divorces.
1851-55 100 100 100 100 100
1856-60 128 83 140 100 98
1861-65 150 75 160 112 109
1866-70 190 72 190 115 113
1871-75 163 80 280 139 132
1876-80 225 105 420 151 161
A. Bertillon calculated this proportion for Paris at about a tenth.
But these results are simply the logical continuation of the evolution
of marriage. It is in the sense of an ever-increasing individual
liberty, especially for woman, that this evolution is being effected.
Between men and women the conjugal relations have at first been
nearly everywhere from masters to slaves; then marital despotism
became slowly attenuated, and at Rome, for example, where the gradual
metamorphosis may be traced during a long historic period, the power
of the _paterfamilias_, which at first had no limit, at length became
curbed; the personality of the woman was more and more accentuated, and
the rigid marriage of the first centuries of the Republic was replaced
under the Empire by a sort of free union. Doubtless this movement
necessarily retrograded under the influence of Christianity; but, as
always happens in the logic of things, it has, nevertheless, resumed
its course; it will become more and more evident, and will surely pass
the point at which it stopped in imperial Rome.
Monogamic marriage will continue to subsist; it is the last-comer,
and much the most worthy, and besides, the balance of the sexes makes
it almost a necessity; but it will have more and more equality in it,
and less and less of legal restraint. On this point I am glad to find
myself in accord with the most celebrated of modern sociologists,
Herbert Spencer, who is not very bold, however, on these delicate
points. “In primitive phases,” he says, “while permanent monogamy was
developing, union in the name of the law--that is, originally, the
act of purchase--was accounted the essential part of the marriage,
and union in the name of affection was not essential. In the present
day union in the name of the law is considered the most important,
and union by affection as less important. A time will come when union
by affection will be considered the most important, and union in the
name of the law the least important, and men will hold in reprobation
those conjugal unions in which union by affection is dissolved.”[1126]
Montaigne once wrote: “We have thought to make our marriage tie
stronger by taking away all means of dissolving it; but the more we
have tightened the constraint, so much the more have we relaxed and
detracted from the bond of will and affection.”[1127]
It is therefore probable that a future more or less distant will
inaugurate the _régime_ of monogamic unions, freely contracted, and, at
need, freely dissolved by simple mutual consent, as is already the case
with divorces in various European countries--at Geneva, in Belgium,
in Roumania, etc., and with separation in Italy. In these divorces of
the future, the community will only intervene in order to safeguard
that which is of vital interest to it--the fate and the education of
the children. But this evolution in the manner of understanding and
practising marriage will operate slowly, for it supposes an entire
corresponding revolution in public opinion; moreover, it requires as a
corollary, profound modifications in the social organism. The _régime_
of liberty in marriage and the disintegration of our actual familial
type are only possible on condition that the State or the district, in
a great number of cases, is ready to assume the _rôle_ of guardian and
educator of children; but, before it can take on itself these important
functions, it must have considerable resources at its disposal which
to-day are wanting. In our present _régime_, the family, however
defective it may be, still constitutes the safest, and almost the only
shelter for the child, and we cannot think of destroying this shelter
before we have constructed a larger and better one.
Transformations so radical as these cannot evidently be wrought
instantaneously, by a mere change of view, after the fashion of
political revolutions. Nothing is more chimerical than to fear or
to hope for the sudden destruction of our actual forms of marriage,
of the family, and of property; but there is no doubt that all this
is tottering. The alarm and the lamentations of so many moralists,
both lay and religious, are not therefore without some foundation.
Societies have always evolved, but the rapidity of this evolution is
accelerating; it is, in some sort, proportionate to the square of the
time elapsed. I fear that in the eyes of our descendants we shall
appear slaves of routine, as our ancestors are in ours.
For those who have not firmly rallied to the side of the great law
of progress, the future is full of terror. It has always been thus;
the apostles of progress have always had to overcome the resistance
of the sectaries of the past. From time immemorial, certain Dyak
tribes were accustomed to fell trees by chopping at the trunk with a
hatchet, perpendicularly to the fibres. One day some revolutionaries
proposed making V-shaped cuttings, in the European method. The Dyak
conservative party, inspired by the regard due to custom, were wroth at
this, and punished the innovators by a fine.[1128] Nevertheless, I do
not doubt that the new method has triumphed in practice; it was found
advantageous. But this incident is, in miniature, the history of all
transformations, small or great.
It is very certain that in societies where marriage by groups half
polyandric and half polygamic had been instituted for centuries,
the bold agitators who attempted to substitute individual union
were considered at first as dangerous revolutionaries, and those
who dismembered into families the communal clan only succeeded at
the cost of great difficulty and peril. Thus in the _Oresteia_ of
Æschylus, of which I have spoken in the last chapter, the chorus of
the Eumenides gives voice to the protestations of public opinion
against the establishment of the paternal family in Greece. The
prospects which alarm the conservative spirits of to-day are, in truth,
but the last consequence of that ancient evolution. Statisticians
who are not evolutionists prove, without understanding it, that the
indissolubility of marriage becomes more and more intolerable for
individuals.[1129]There is, as it were, a tide of discord continually
rising which renders conjugal stability more and more precarious. This
grievous state of things distresses, on the other hand, the moralists,
for neither do they see the reason of it. The surprise of the former is
not more justified than the lamentation of the latter. It is nothing
more than the future, which, with its habitual effrontery, persists in
rising out of the past. The faint-hearted cry to us that everything is
coming to an end. It is not so; on the contrary, everything is about to
be renewed. From the most distant stone age, the history of humanity
has only been a long series of regenerations. Far from mourning when
the world seems to be entering a period of fresh life, let us rather
rejoice and say again with Lucretius--
“Cedit enim rerum novitate extrusa vetustas
Semper et ex aliis aliud reparare necesse est.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1108] Montaigne, _Essays_; _Custom_.
[1109] A. Giraud-Teulon, _Orig. du Mariage_, etc., p. 428.--L. Morgan,
_Ancient Societies_, p. 389.
[1110] _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 304.
[1111] Article, “Mariage,” in the _Dictionnaire encyclopédique des
sciences médicales_.
[1112] A. Bertillon, _loc. cit._
[1113] M. Block, _Statistique de la France_, t. ii. p. 55.
[1114] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 298.
[1115] _Id._, _ibid._ p. 506.
[1116] A. Bertillon, article “Mariage,” _loc. cit._
[1117] A. Bertillon, article “Mariage,” _loc. cit._
[1118] _Id._, _ibid._
[1119] _Id._, _ibid._
[1120] _Id._, _ibid._
[1121] A. Bertillon, _loc. cit._
[1122] _King Lear_, Act iv. Sc. 6.
[1123] _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 418.
[1124] M. Block, _Europe politique et sociale_, p. 204.
[1125] J. Bertillon, _Étude démographique du divorce_, p. 61.
[1126] Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 410.
[1127] Montaigne, _Essays_, vol. ii. p. 15.
[1128] _Journal Ind. Archip._, vol. ii. p. 54.
[1129] J. Bertillon, _loc. cit._, p. 61.
INDEX
Abyssinia, The concubinate in, 162
Monogamy in, 179
Dissolute morals of women in, 181
Facility of divorce in, 181
Cicisbei in, 181
Divorce in, 232
Levirate by emasculation in, 265
Adoption in, 316
Abyssinian women, Licentious manners of, 51
Adoption among the Redskins, 291
in Polynesia, 296
in Abyssinia, 316
Adultery in the Middle Ages, 204, 226
Of, in general, 208
considered as a theft, 208
in Melanesia, 209
in New Caledonia, 209
in negro Africa, 210
among the Hottentots, 210
at the Gaboon, 210
in Bornou, 211
at Kaarta, 211
among the Soulimas, 211
at Youida, 211
in Uganda, 211
in Senegal, 212
in Abyssinia, 212
in Polynesia, 212
in New Zealand, 212
at Tahiti, 212
at Noukahiva, 213
in the American savage, 213
among the Esquimaux, 213
among the Redskins, 213
among the Omahas, 214
in South America, 214
in barbarous America, 214
in ancient Mexico, 215
in Peru, 215
in Guatemala, 215
among the Mongols, 216
in Thibet, 216
in China, 216
in Japan, 217
in Malaya, 217
in Egypt, 218
among the Hebrews, 218
among the Arabs, 218
among the Kabyles, 219
in Persia and India, 220
in the Greco-Roman world, 222
at Sparta, 222
at Athens, 223
at Rome, 222-225
among the Tcherkesses of the Caucasus, 225
in barbarous Europe, 225
among the ancient Saxons, 226
among the Germans, 226
in feudal France, 226
The evolution of, 227
and Christianity, 245
Africa, The concubinate in middle, 161
Adultery in negro, 210
The family in, 305
Agathyrses, Promiscuity of the, 40
Akilisenus, Sacred prostitution in, 46
Amazons, The so-called age of, 105
_Amblyornis inornata_, Love architecture of, 14
America, Prostitution in central, 156
Concubinate in, 163
Familial clan in, 267
The family in, 274
Amorous combats of sticklebacks, 10
_Analis crystellatus_, Amorous combats of, 11
Andamanites, Promiscuity of, 43
Prostitution of girls amongst the, 58
Animals, Love among, 10
Amorous preferences of, 17
Grossness of the male among, 18
Durable pairing among, 18
Marriage and the family among, 20
Matriarchate among, 21
Patriarchate among, 21
Divers types of sexual association among, 21
Marriage among, 21
Inferior, have not maternal love, 21
Various forms of sexual association among, 26
The family among, 26
Shortness of love for the young among, 31
Variation of the matrimonial type among, 35
Divers types of marriage among, 35
Ansarians, Religious promiscuity of, 43
Anses, Promiscuity of, 41
Anthropophagy, Familial, of the Redskins, 26
Ants, Originality of Republics of, 23
Workers, ancestral forms, 23
Arabs, Fraternal polyandry of the ancient, 39
Loan of wife among the, 52
Temporary marriages among, 68
Causes of polyandry of the, 82
Polyandry of ancient, 82
Infanticide of daughters among the ancient, 83
Caïs, legend of infanticide, 83
Community of wives among the, 84
Fraternal polyandry of the, 84
Term-marriage among the, 85
Patriarchal marriage among the, 86
Marriage by capture among the, 99
Polygamy of the, 139
Concubinate among the, 161
Adultery among the, 218
Repudiation among the, 237, 239
Widowhood among the, 259
Areoïs in Polynesia, 61
Aryas, Polygamy among Vedic, 135, 150
Infanticide among, 150
Aryomania, 134
Association, Singular forms of sexual, 56
Assyria, Concubinate in, 165
Athens, Dotal marriage in, 120
Prostitution at, 156
Adultery at, 222
Widowhood at, 261
Attica, Density of population in, 198
Australia, Licentious morals of young girls in, 50
Rape in, 90
Capture of women in, 90
Loan of wife in, 123
Familial clan in, 261, 270
Communal marriage in, 270, 272
Fraternity of clan in, 271
_Totem_, amongst the Kamilaroi of, 273
Communal marriage transitory in, 273
Maternal family in, 274
Australians, Law of amorous battle among the, 58
_Avesta_, Marriage in the, 191
Avunculate, The, among the Naïrs, 311
Babylon, Hetaïrism at, 45
Religious prostitution at, 45
Battas, Monogamic tendencies of, 134
Battle, Law of, among vertebrates, 16
Law of, 11
Amorous, among the _Analis cristellatus_, 11
of blue herons, 12
of Canadian geese, 12
of gallinaceæ, 12
of grouse, 12
of _Tetras urogallus_, 12
of _Tetras umbellus_, 13
Bees, Republic of, 23
Workers, ancestral forms, 23
Matriarchate of, 24
Death of Queen of, 24
Berbers, The family amongst, 327
Meaning of the word, 328
The maternal family amongst, 328
Birds, Love amongst, 11
Æsthetic tournaments of, 13
Love dances of, 13
Love parades of, 13
Intentional love parades of, 13
_Cours d’amour_ of, 13
Decorated nests of humming, 14
Preliminaries abridged with old, 15
Females of certain, stronger than males, 15
Males more ardent, 15
Amorous attempts of males of, 15
more delicate in love than other vertebrates, 15
Amorous selection among the females of, 17
Monogamy among, 27
Fickle monogamy of certain, 28
Amorous fancies of certain, 28
The family amongst, 29
Absence of paternal love amongst certain males of, 29
Polygamous, often devoid of paternal love, 30
Paternal love developed among many, 30
Shortness of love for the young amongst, 31
Births, Sexual relation of, and marriage, 73
Sexual relation of, 74
Bitches, Amorous preferences of, 18
Blackcock, Amorous battles of, 12
Bochimans, Loan of woman among the, 58
Californian Indians, Promiscuity of, 43
Celibacy, Disadvantages of, according to A. Bertillon, 349
Celibates comprise the waste of the population, 350
Celts, Warlike rape among the, 93
Ceylon, Polyandry in, 78
Child marriages in Rome, 198
China, Primitive promiscuity in, 42
Marriage by capture in, 116
Prostitution in, 156
Concubinate in, 164
Monogamy in, 183
Marriage by purchase in, 183
Submission of woman in, 185
Adultery in, 216
Repudiation in, 245
Widowhood in, 255
Widowhood of brides in, 255
The family in, 322
Family nomenclature in, 323
Trace of fraternal marriage in, 323
Traces of familial clan in, 324
The paternal family in, 324
Fictitious kinship in, 324
_Chlamydera maculata_, Love bowers of, 14
_Chorda dorsalis_, 6
_Chromis paterfamilias_, Paternal love of, 24
Civilisation depraves certain birds, 25
Clan, Familial, in America, 267
Familial, in Australia, 267, 270
Fraternity of, in Australia, 271
Exogamy of, among the Redskins, 275
Duties of, among the Redskins, 275
Common house of the, among the Redskins, 275
The, of the _Pueblos_, 277
Communism in the Redskin, 278
The familial, and its evolution, 285
among the Redskins, 285
and the family, 301
“Social cellule,” 301
Familial, and the family, 303
Traces of the familial, in China, 323
Traces of communal, among the Hebrews, 326
Traces of ancient, among the Kabyles, 328
Not found in Persia, 330
Vestiges of ancient, in India, 334
Primitive, at Rome, 334
Primitive, in Greece, 334
Primitive, in Ireland, 338
Clergy, The concubinate among ancient Catholic, 168
Clergymen, Sexual relation of births among, 75
_Coemptio_ at Rome, 201
Communism in the Redskin clan, 278
From, to individualism, 347
Concubinage in general, 154
Concubinage and prostitution, 154
Various forms of, 160
in Europe, 168
Absence of, in Kabylie, 169
Evolution of, 169
and morality, 170
Concubinate, 160
among the Hebrews, 161
among the Arabs, 161
in primitive Greece, 161
in modern Peru, 162
in Livonia, 162
in middle Africa, 162
in Abyssinia, 162
in Central America, 163
in ancient Mexico, 163
in Mongolia, 164
in China, 164
in ancient Assyria, 165
at Mecca, 165
in ancient Persia, 166
in Greece, 166
at Rome, 166
among the Catholic clergy, 168
Concubine bought by labour of wife among Zulus, 125
offered by wife at Fiji, 124
_Confarreatio_ at Rome, 201
Conjugation, 4
among algæ, 4
Conservation of species, 20
Coquetry among insects, 10
The law of, 10
among butterflies, 10
among fishes, 10
among vertebrates, 11
Couvade, 316
in New Mexico, 316
among the Redskins, 317
among the Abipones, 317
among the Galibis, 317
in California, 318
in South America, 318
among the Tartars, 318
in Bengal, 318
among the Celts, 318
among the Thracians, 318
among the Scythians, 318
in Corsica, 318
in the Tibarenede, 318
in Europe of to-day, 318
Reason of the, 319
Crete, Sodomy in, 63
_Culage, Droit de_, 48
Cynicism, Erotic, in India, 40
of the Massagetes, 40
Debauchery, Savage, and that of civilised peoples, 72
Decency, Rules of, among Redskins, 290
Defloration, Religious, in Cambodia, 47
Maternal, with the Saccalaves, 67
in India, 67
Divorce, Facility of, in Abyssinia, 181
in savage countries, 228
among the Bongos, 229
among the Soulimas, 229
among the Fantees, 230
in Polynesia, 230
in the Caroline Islands, 230
among the Moxos, 231
in Abyssinia, 232
among the Arabs, 238
in ancient Peru, 240
in lamaic Thibet, 240
among the Mongols, 241
among the Hebrews, 242
in Greece, 243
at Rome, 244
and repudiation, 228
among barbarous peoples, 232
condemned by Christianity, 245
The evolution of, 247
and Christianity, 247
among the Germans, 246
among the ancient Irish, 246
Modern, 247
Increase in number of, in Europe, 357
Dogs, Sexual coarseness of, 18
Dower and its results in France, 352
Duck, Love at first sight in a wild, 28
Egypt, Polygamy in, 149
Royal incest in, 66
Monogamy in ancient, 175
Pretended gynecocracy in ancient, 176, 177
Adultery in, 218
The maternal family in, 308
The paternal family in, 308
Emasculation in Abyssinia, 265
Endogamy in New Zealand, 294
in Bengal, 315
Incestuous, in Persia, 330
Esquimaux, Licentious morals of, 58
Letting of wives among the, 58
Sodomy among the, 58
Marriage by capture among the, 94
Etruscans, The maternal family among the, 336
Europe, Increase of illegitimate births in, 169
Exogamy in Bengal, 315
of the clan among the Redskins, 276
at Samoa, 294
Family, _Rôle_ of the male in the animal, 21
Maternal, amongst the animals, 21
amongst the mammifers, 25
amongst the animals, 29
Maternal, amongst the Naïrs, 81
Maternal, at Rome, 202, 233
in Melanesia, 268, 335
Origin of the, 267
Maternal, in Australia, 274
in America, 274
Maternal, among the Redskins, 278
Origin and evolution of the, 284
Maternal, and the matriarchate, 282
among the Omahas, 287
among the Redskins, 287
among the Iroquois Senecas, 287
Nomenclature of, among the Redskins, 288
Evolution of the, among the Redskins, 292
Genesis of the paternal family among the, 292
The paternal, among the Incas, 293
Maternal, in Peru, 293
Paternal, in Peru, 293
Paternal, in Mexico, 293
in Polynesia, 294
Nomenclature of the, at Hawaii, 295
Genesis of the maternal, at Hawaii, 295
Genesis of the paternal, in Polynesia, 295
among the Mongols, 296
among the Tamils, 296
and the clan, 301
The maternal, 303
and the familial clan, 303
Genesis of the uterine, 301
in Africa, 305
The maternal, In Kaffirland, 305
among the Fantees, 305
in eastern Africa, 306
among the Nubians, 307
in Egypt, 307
The paternal, in Dahomey, 305
The maternal, in Africa, 305
The maternal, in Madagascar, 307
The paternal, in Egypt, 308
in Malaya, 309
among the Naïrs, 311
among the aborigines of Bengal, 313
The maternal, in Bengal, 313
The paternal, in Bengal, 314
The primitive, 320
in civilised countries, 322
in China, 322
in Japan, 323
The paternal, in China, 323
among the Semites, 325
Traces of the maternal, among the Hebrews, 326
The maternal, in Phœnicia, 327
among the Berbers, 327
The maternal, among the Berbers, 327
in Persia, 330
in India, 332
The patriarchal, in Vedic India, 332
The maternal, in India, 333
The maternal, among the Tamils, 334
The Greco-Roman, 334
The maternal, in Greece, 335
The maternal, in Etruria, 336
Genesis of the paternal, in Greece, 336
Evolution of the, at Rome, 347
in barbarous Europe, 338
The paternal, in barbarous Europe, 339
The maternal, in Germany, 339
in the past, present, and future, 341
in the past, 341
Stages of the, according to L. Morgan, 347
Actual state of the, 349
Father, The _potestas_ of, at Rome, 199
Fecundation, 4
among superior animals, 7
Feudality, Polyandric, in Malabar, 311
Filiation, Maternal, among the Touaregs, 179
Fishes, Paternal love in certain, 24
Coquetry in, 10
France, Prostitution in mediæval, 160
Adultery in feudal, 226
Repudiation in feudal, 246
Late marriages in, 352
Malthusianism in, 352
Dowry and its results on marriage in, 352
Disproportionate marriages in, 323
Gallinaceæ, Amorous combats of, 12
Vertigo of love in, 27
_Gasterosteus leiurus_, Paternal love of, 25
Gauls, Polygamy of, 135
Geese of Canada, Amorous battles of, 12
Generation by budding, 4
by division, 4
a product of nutrition, 4
among animals, 18
by ovulation, 5
by conjugation, 4
the aim of life, 5
in the cochineal, 5
Evolution of, 5
in the paramœcia, 6
Essential phenomenon of, 6
_Gens_ in Greece, 335
at Rome, 334
Germans, Polygamy of, 135
The maternal family among the, 339
The paternal family among the, 339
Laws of succession among the, 339
Marriage by purchase among the, 204
Subjection of women among the, 204
Adultery among the, 225
Repudiation among the, 246
Divorce among the, 246
Widowhood among the, 262
Girls, Prostitution of, among the Andamanites, 58
Prostitution of, in Polynesia, 59
married by the father in India, 192
Marriage of little, in India, 193
Gymnastic exercises of naked, in Sparta, 195
Marriage of little, at Rome, 198
Conjugal sale of little, 107
married by the grandmother at Boussa, 112
Free conjugal choice of, at Nicaragua, 115
Consent of the, in Mussulman marriage, 144
How, inherit in India, 334
Greece, Loan of wife in ancient, 53
Sodomy in, 63
Marriage by capture in, 100
Concubinate in primitive, 161
Concubinate in, 166
Subjection of women in, 195
Hetaïræ in, 166
Subjection of women in, 194
Marriage in ancient, 194
Dotal marriage in, 196
Evolution of marriage in, 197
Adultery in, 222
Repudiation in, 243
Divorce in, 243
The primitive clan in, 334
The maternal family in, 335
The _gens_ in, 335
Genesis of the paternal family in, 336
Greeks, Promiscuity of the ancient, 41
Guaranis, Qualities exacted of the husband among the, 115
Gynecocracy according to Bachofen, 172
Pretended, in ancient Egypt, 175
Pretended, among the Touaregs, 179
Hawaii, Kinship by classes in, 294
Familial nomenclature at, 295
Genesis of the maternal family in, 294
Hebrews, Concubinate among the, 161
Marriage among the, 189
Monogamy among the, 189
Virginity among the, 190
Levirate among the, 190
Adultery among the, 218
Divorce among the, 242
Repudiation among the, 242
Widowhood among the, 259
The levirate among the, 263
Laws of succession among the, 326
Traces of communal clans among the, 326
Herons, Amorous battles of blue, 12
Hetaïræ in Greece, 166
Hetaïrism, 45
No primitive, 45
at Babylon, 45
Hiring out of wives in Polynesia, 60
Humming-birds, Decorated nests of, 14
Husbands, Brutality of, at Gaboon, 125
Jealousy of, unknown in Africa, 128
Duties of Mussulman, 145
Rights of punishment of Kabyle, 147
_Manus_ of, at Rome, 200
_Icterus pecoris_, Promiscuity of the, 26
Immodesty, Primitive, 56
Immorality, Primitive sexual, 56
Incas, Polygamy of the, 148
Incest permitted among various American peoples, 65
permitted among the Karens, 66
among the Parthians, 66
in ancient Persia, 66
among the Scythians, 66
Royal, in Egypt, 66
of the Incas, 66
in ancient Ireland, 66
Royal, in Siam, 66
in Bhootan, 133
among the Malagasies, 309
Horror of, in Kabylie, 309
India, Primitive promiscuity in, 42
Religious prostitution in, 46
Marriage by capture in, 93
Polygamy in Brahmanic, 151
Prostitution in, 159
Polygamy among the aborigines of, 135
Monogamic tendencies in the aborigines of, 133
Repudiation in, 242
Widowhood in, 256
Mitigated monogamy in, 191
Inferiority of women in, 191
Daughter married by the father in, 192
Marriage by purchase in, 192
Prohibitions to marriage in, 192
Subjection of woman in, 192
Marriage of little girls in, 193
Adultery in, 220
The levirate in, 263
The family in, 332
The patriarchal family in Vedic, 332
The patriarchate in, 332
Primogeniture in, 333
Paternity by suggestion in, 333
How daughters inherit in, 333
The maternal family in, 334
Vestiges of ancient clans in, 334
Individualism has succeeded to communism, 347
Infanticide committed by male mammifers, 34
of girls among the ancient Arabs, 83
Legend of Caïs, 83
The paternal right of, in Polynesia, 113
among the Vedic Aryans, 150
Innovators, Fate of, 359
Insects, Maternal prescience of, 22
Coquetry amongst, 10
Ireland, The primitive clan in, 338
Irish, Promiscuity of the ancient, 41
Incest among the ancient, 66
Temporary marriages among the, 246
Divorce among the ancient, 246
Japan, Prostitution of young girls in, 51
Prostitution in, 157
Marriage in, 185
Adultery in, 217
The maternal family in, 322
Familial nomenclature in, 324
Jews of Morocco, Temporary marriages among the, 67
_Jus primæ noctis_, 45
Religious, in Malabar, 47
among the Nasamons, 47
in the Balearic Isles, 47
Seignorial, 47
in Cochin-China, 48
of parents and friends, 50
Kabyles, Adultery amongst the, 219
Repudiation amongst the, 234
Right of insurrection of the wife, 236
Widowhood among the, 260
Horror of incest among the, 309
Traces of the clan among the, 328
Mutual assistance amongst the, 329
Disinheritance of the wife, 329
Laws of succession among the, 329
Kabylie, Marriage by purchase in, 145
Tariff of the woman in, 146
Essential condition of marriage in, 146
Loan of jewels to the wife in, 146
Subjection of the wife in, 145
Rights of correction of the husband in, 147
The wife a thing possessed in, 147
Fate of woman in, 147
Absence of concubinage in, 169
Kaffirs, Right of the chief among the, 47
Kamilaroi, Regulated promiscuity of the, 44
Marriage among the, 271
Kinship, Origin of ideas of, 283
by classes in the Hawaii Isles, 294
The evolution of, by classes, 297, 301
Fictitious, in China, 325
Koran, The, and the inferiority of women, 140
Restrictions on polygamy in the, 140
Celestial polygamy in the, 142
Purchase of the wife in the, 141
Kurnai, Marriage among the, of Australia, 273
Lark, Loves of, 12
Larva, The, is a survival, 23
Larvæ, Fertile, 23
Maternal love in sterile, 23
Law of amorous battle among the Australian women, 57
Levirate, The, among the Hebrews, 191
and widowhood, 191
The, 263
in Malaya, 263
in New Caledonia, 263
among the Redskins, 263
among the Mongols, 263
among the Afghans, 263
in India, 263
among the Hebrews, 263
in Abyssinia, 265
Loan of the wife among savages, 52
among the Redskins, 52
among the Arabs, 53
in antique Greece, 53
in antique Rome, 53
in Australia, 57
among the Bushmen, 58
Love, The snare of, 3
according to Haeckel, 6
and rut, 7, 8
according to Schopenhauer, 9
and pairing, 9
according to Imitation of Christ, 10
in insects, 10
in birds, 11
in the lark, 12
dances of birds, 13
parades of _Tetras phasaniellus_, 13
parades of birds, 13
Intentional, parades of birds, 13
courts of birds, 14
bowers of _Chlamydera maculata_, 14
house of the _Amblyornis inornata_, 14
tourneys of nightingales, 14
songs of weaver birds, 15
The instinct of, is not blind, 17
Choice in, among animals, 17
Selection in, among females, 17
Selection in, among female birds, 17
Exclusive, of bitches, 18
Essential identity of, with animals and man, 19
Maternal, wanting in lower animals, 21
Maternal, in spiders, 22
Paternal, wanting in spiders, 22
Biological reason of maternal, 22
Maternal, in the sterile larvæ, 23
Paternal, in certain fishes, 24
Paternal, of Chinese _Macropus_, 24
Paternal, of _Chromis paterfamilias_, 24
Paternal, of the _Gasterosteus leiurus_, 25
Paternal, of toads, 25
Paternal, in the _Pipa_, 25
Maternal, in reptiles, 25
Vertigo of, in gallinaceæ, 26
at first sight in a wild duck, 28
Passion of, analogous in animal and man, 29
Paternal, absent in certain male birds, 29
Paternal, wanting in polygamous birds, 31
Paternal, developed in many birds, 31
Paternal and maternal, is brief in duration with birds, 31
Conjugal, in female chimpanzees,33
_Macropus_, Chinese, paternal love of, 24
Madagascar, The maternal family in, 307
Incest in, 309
Mahomet, Conjugal freedom of, 141
and the _debitum conjugale_, 142
Malagasies, Civil marriage among the, 129
Malaya, Adultery in, 217
The levirate in, 263
The family in, 309
Marriage by purchase in, 310
Malays of Sumatra, Three modes of marriage with the, 119
Male, Part of the, in the animal family, 21
Malthusianism, Natural, 20
in France, 352
Mammals, Marriage among, 25
Marriage and the family among, 25
Promiscuity in the, 31
No polyandry in the, 31
Polygamous societies of, 32
Conjugal devotion of females of, 32
Male infanticides amongst, 34
Man, The taxonomic place of, 2
Grandeur and inferiority of, 2
Real place of, 2
Origin of, 71
Manus, The, of husband at Rome, 200
Marquette, Right of, 48
Marriage, Biological origin of, 1
Object of, 2
among animals, 20
among mammals, 25
Various types of, among animals, 35
Primitive evolution of, 54
Strange forms of, 64
a simple pairing with many savages, 64
Experimental, 67
Experimental, in Canada, 67
Experimental, among the Otomies, 67
Experimental, among the Sonthals, 67
Experimental, among the Tartars, 67
Experimental, at Ceylon, 67
Temporary, among the Jews of Morocco, 67
Temporary, among the Tapyres, 68
Free, at Noukahiva, 68
Free, among the Hottentots, 68
Free, in Abyssinia, 68
Partial, of the Hassinyehs, 68
Temporary, in Persia, 68
Temporary, among the Arabs, 69
the right of the strongest among many savage peoples, 69
and the sexual proportion of births, 73
Initiation into, by the Naïrs, 80
Term, _mot’a_, with the Arabs, 85
Patriarchal, with the Arabs, 85
by capture, 89
by capture in India, 93
by capture, 93
by capture among the Esquimaux, 95
by capture among the Redskins, 95
among the Kamstchatdales, 95
among the Kalmucks, 96
among the Tannganses, 96
among the Turcomans, 97
among the aborigines of Bengal, 97
in New Zealand, 98
in Arabia, 99
in Java, 100
among the Bœotians, 100
at Sparta, 100
at Rome, 100
in Circassia, 101
in Wales, 101
among the Slavs, 101
by capture, Signification of, 102
by purchase at Fiji, 103
by purchase of servitude, 106
Premature, by girls in New Caledonia, 107
among the Hottentots, 107
in Ashantee, 107
in Polynesia, 107
in South America, 107
in India, 108
in ancient Italy, 108
Premature, of little boys among the Reddies, 108
in Russia, 108
of deceased children among the Tartars, 108
by servitude, 109
among the Redskins, 109
in Central America, 109
among the aborigines of Bengal, 110
among the Hebrews, 110
by purchase, 110
among the Hottentots, 111
among the Kaffirs, 111
in Central Africa, 111
at Sackatoo, 112
at Kouranko, 112
in Polynesia, 113
among the Redskins, 113
in California, 114
in New Mexico, 114
in Central America, 115
among the Guaranis, 115
among the Mongols, 115
among the Turcomans, 116
in China, 116
among the aborigines of India, 117
among the Arabs, 118
among the Afghans, 118
in Brahmanic India, 119
among the Scandinavians, 119
among the Germans, 119
in primitive Greece, 120
at Rome, 120
by capture in China, 116
by _usus_ at Rome, 120
Dotal, at Athens, 120
Dotal, at Rome, 120
by coemption at Rome, 120
by confarreation at Rome, 120
State, among the Bongos, 129
by purchase, Signification of, 120
Civil, with the Malagasies, 129
Mussulman and laic, 143
by purchase with the Mussulmans, 143
Mussulman, is a contract of sale, 143
Virginity in the Mussulman, 143
Consent of girl in Mussulman, 144
_Debitum conjugale_ in Mussulman, 144
Marital rights in Mussulman, 145
by purchase in Kabylie, 145
Essential condition of Kabyle, 146
Free, at Paris, 169
The form of, and civilisation, 173
Civil, in Thibet, 182
by purchase in China, 183
in Japan, 185
Hebrew, 184
in ancient India and Persia, 191
in the _Avesta_, 191
by purchase in India, 191
Prohibitions of, in India, 192
in ancient Greece, 194
obligatory at Sparta, 195
Dotal, in Greece, 196
in ancient Rome, 198
Evolution of, in Greece, 198
by _confarreatio_ at Rome, 201
by _coemptio_ at Rome, 201
by _usus_ at Rome, 201
Dotal, at Rome, 200
The evolution of, at Rome, 201
Barbarous and Christian, 204
by purchase with the Germans, 204
Christian, 205
Free, at Hayti, 233
Temporary, among the Irish, 246
Communal, in Australia, 270
Communal, transitory in Australia, 273
among the Redskins, 275
Incestuous, with the Redskins, 293
Three sorts of, at Sumatra, 309
by purchase in Malaya, 309
by purchase in Bengal, 315
Traces of fraternal, in China, 323
Term, in Persia, 331
in the past, present, and future, 341
Influence of money on the frequency of, 351
The age of election of, 352
Late, in France, 352
Disproportionate in France, 353
The future of, 354
by affection in the future, 358
Matriarchate in animals, 24
in bees, 24
and the maternal family, 202
Pecuniary, of the Touareg women, 328
Mecca, The concubinate in, 165
Melanesia, Adultery in, 209
The family in, 268
Menstruation and ovulation, 8
Mexico, Polygamy of the great in, 148
Monogamy of the people in, 149
The concubinate in ancient, 163
Monogamy in, 174
The paternal family in, 293
Adultery in, 215
Modesty, Genesis of, 56
Mongols, Polygamy of the, 133
The concubinate among the, 164
Monogamy among the, 182
Adultery among the, 216
Repudiation among the, 240
Divorce among the, 240
The family among the, 296
Monkeys, Polygamy of certain, 33
Monogamy in certain, 33
Polygamy of anthropomorphous, 33
Monogamy of, 33
Conjugal love of females amongst, 33
Monogamy of golden woodpeckers, 27
of the Illinois parrot, 27
of rapacious animals, 27
of anthropomorphous apes, 33
of certain apes, 42
in Polynesia, 129
dawning among the Battas, 133
dawning among the Redskins, 131
dawning among the aborigines of India, 133
Proletarian, obligatory in Peru, 149
of the populace in Mexico, 149
Primitive, 171
of inferior races, 171
Causes of, 171
Ideal of, 171
in Central America, 174
Administrative, in Peru, 174
in Mexico, 175
in ancient Egypt, 175
of the Touaregs and Abyssinians, 179
among the Mongols, 182
in Thibet, 182
in China, 185
and civilisation, 186
Hebraic and Aryan, 189
of superior races, 189
Hebrew, 189
Ideal, and in reality, 189
mitigated in India, 191
in the future, 357
Advantages of, according to A. Bertillon, 349
Montaigne, Origin of laws of conscience according to, 349
Morality, Variability of, 73
various amongst birds, 27
Morgan, L., Stages of the family according to, 347
Moses and rape in war, 93
_Mumbo Jumbo_, 128
Naïrs, Polyandry of, 80
Initiation in marriage among the, 80
The maternal family among the, 81
The avuncular family among the, 311
The family among the, 311
Rational polyandry of the, 312
Namaquois, Promiscuity of chiefs of the, 44
Natality, unregulated, among fishes, 24
Nature, the personification of natural forces, 5
Absence of design in, 34
_Nefir_, The, among the Djebel-Taggalé, 233
_Nemesia Eleonora_, Rearing of young with the, 22
Nests, Decorated, of humming-birds, 14
New Caledonia, Sodomy in, 62
Adultery in, 209
The levirate in, 263
Nightingale, Amorous song of, 14
_Noces, justes_, at Rome, 202
Nutrition the basis of generation, 3
Omahas, The family amongst the, 287
Paramœcia, Generation in the, 6
Parents, The power of, 105
Right of propriety of, over children, 106
Paris, Free marriages at, 169
Parrot, Conjugal fidelity of Illinois, 27
_Paterfamilias_ at Rome, 333
Paternity by suggestion in India, 333
_Patria Potestas_ at Rome, 337
Patriarchate among the animals, 21
Semitic, 325
in India, 332
at Rome, 337
Persia, Incest in ancient, 66
Polygamy in ancient, 150
The concubinate in ancient, 166
Adultery in, 220
The family in, 330
No clans in, 330
Incestuous endogamy in, 330
Term-marriage in, 331
Laws of succession in, 332
Peru, Sodomy in, 62
Proletarian monogamy obligatory in, 149
Concubinage in, 162
Administrative monogamy in, 174
Adultery in, 215
Divorce in ancient, 240
The paternal family among the Incas of, 293
Pigeons, Maternal love in, 30
_Pipa_, Paternal love in, 25
Polyandry does not exist in mammals, 31
Fraternal, of the ancient Arabs, 39, 73
and the sexual proportion of births, 74
and infanticide of girls, 76
and sale of girls, 76
has not been general, 76
The ethnography of, 77
of the ancient Britons, 77
of the Arabs, 77
of the Guanches, 77
of the New Zealanders, 77
of the Marquesas Islanders, 77
in America, 77
of the aborigines of India, 77
of the Hindoos, 77
at Ceylon, 78
Fraternal, in Thibet, 78
among the Todas, 80
of the Naïrs, 80
of Thibet and of Naïrs, 81
in ancient Arabia, 82
Causes of Arab, 84
Fraternal, in Arabia, 84
in general, 86
Matriarchal, 87
Patriarchal, 87
The evolution of, 88
and polygamy in Bhootan, 133
Feudal, in Malabar, 311
Rational, of the Naïrs, 312
Polygamy of gallinaceæ, 26
favoured by sociability, 31
of mammals, 32
of certain monkeys, 33
of anthropomorphous apes, 33
Primitive, 122
in Oceania, Africa, and America, 122
Causes restraining, 122
Object of, in New Caledonia, 123
and concubinage at Fiji, 124
the measure of wealth on the Zambesi, 125
Economic motives for, in Africa, 125
restrained by the dearness of women amongst the Bongos, 126
Excessive, in Central Africa, 127
in Polynesia, 129
of the Indians in South America, 130
among the Redskins, 131
a sign of wealth among the Redskins, 131
in Asia and in Europe, 132
and polyandry in Bhootan, 133
of the Vedic Aryans, 135
of the Gauls, 135
of the Germans, 135
Primitive, 136
Evolution of, 137
of civilised peoples, 138
The stage of, 138
Arab, 139
Islamism and, 139
Restrictions on, in the Koran, 140
Celestial, in the Koran, 142
in Egypt, in Mexico, and in Peru,148
and the subjection of women, 148
in Egypt, 148
of the great in Mexico, 148
in ancient Persia, 150
among the Vedic Aryans, 150
in Brahmanic India, 151
The evolution of, 152
Genesis of the instinct of, 155
may favour the growth of population, 349
Polynesia, Licentious morals of young girls in, 50
Licentious morals in, 59
Prostitution of girls in, 59
Leasing of wives in, 60
Freedom of women in, 60
Shameless language of the women in, 61
The Areoïs of, 61
Sodomy in, 61
Paternal right of infanticide in, 113
Polygamy in, 129
Monogamy in, 129
Adultery in, 212
The family in, 294
Genesis of paternal family in, 295
Adoption in, 296
Population, density of, in Attica, 198
Increase of, favoured sometimes by polygamy, 349
_Potestas_, The, of the father at Rome, 199
Prelibation, Right of, 48
The right of, and the right of conquest, 48
Prescience, Maternal, of insects, 22
Primogeniture, Right of, 333
Procreative instinct, Origin of, 9
Promiscuity among sociable animals, 26
of the _Icterus pecoris_, 26
among the mammals, 31
If there has been a stage of, 37
is the lowest form of sexual association, 38
rare amongst vertebrates, 38
is exceptional in humanity, 39
Case of human, 39
in the Troglodyte, 39
of the Agathyrses, 40
of the Anses, 41
of the ancient Irish, 41
of primitive Greeks, 42
in the _Timæus_, 42
Primitive, in China, 42
Primitive, in India, 42
of the Andamanites, 43
of the Indians of California, 43
of certain aborigines of India, 43
of the Zaporog Cossacks, 43
Religious, of the Ansarians, 43
of the Yazidies, 44
of the Namaquois chiefs, 44
Regulated, of the Kamilaroi, 44
No universal stage of, 44
Property, Right of, of parents over children, 106
Prostitution, Religious, in India, 46
Religious, at Babylon, 46
Religious, in the Akilisenus, 46
of young girls in Japan, 51
Dotal, in ancient Rome, 51
honourable in Tasmania, 57
of girls among the Andamanites, 58
of girls in Polynesia, 59
Religious, among the ancient Semites, 86
Evolution of, 155
in primitive Athens, 156
in Central America, 156
in Japan, 157
in Brahmanic India, 159
in Buddhist India, 159
in modern India, 159
in France in the Middle Ages, 160
and concubinage, 154
Pueblos, Marriages of love in the, 114
The clans of the, 277
Rapacious animals, Monogamy of, 27
Rape, 89
in Australia, 90
among the negroes of Africa, 92
The expiation of, in Australia, 91
in New Guinea, 91
among the Indians of America, 92
among the Tartars, 93
among the Hebrews, 93
in war, and Moses, 93
in war among the Celts, 93
Rearing of young among animals, 21
with the _Nemesia Eleonora_, 22
Redskins, Familial anthropophagy of the, 26
Sodomy among the, 62
Marriage by capture among the, 95
Right of protection of relations over women of, 114
Polygamy among the, 131
Sister wives among the, 131
Polygamy a sign of wealth among the, 132
Conjugal submission of women among the, 132
Monogamic tendencies among the, 130
Subjection of women among the, 132
Adultery among the, 213
Widowhood among the, 252
Rules of decency among the, 298
The levirate among the, 263
The _totems_ of the, 275
The clan among the, 275
The common house of the clan among the, 275
Duties of the clan among the, 275
Exogamy of the clan among the, 276
Marriage among the, 276
Inheritance among the, 275
The maternal family among the, 277
Communism in the clan of the, 278
The power of the women among the, 278
Subjection of woman among the, 283
The clan among the, 285
The family among the, 286
Familial nomenclature among the, 287
Adoption among the, 291
Incestuous marriages among the, 294
The evolution of the family among the, 292
Genesis of paternal filiation among the, 293
Repudiation and divorce, 228
in savage countries, 228
in New Caledonia, 229
among the Hottentots, 229
among the Redskins, 231
among the Esquimaux, 231
at Madagascar, 233
among the Djebel-Taggalé, 233
among the Touaregs, 234
among the Kabyles, 234
among the Arabs, 237
among the Mongols, 240
in China, 241
in India, 242
among the Hebrews, 242
in Greece, 243
at Rome, 244
among the Germans, 246
among the Scandinavians, 246
among the Tcherkesses, 246
in feudal France, 246
Rome, Loan of the wife in ancient, 53
Marriage by capture at, 100
The wife assimilated to a slave at, 104
Marriage by confarreation at, 120
Marriage by purchase at, 120
Marriage by _usus_ at, 120
Marriage by _coemption_ at, 120
Dotal marriage at, 120
The concubinate at, 166
Marriage in ancient, 198
Marriages of children at, 198
Relative liberty of the wife at, 198
The wife considered as a daughter of her husband at, 198
The _potestas_ of the father at, 199
The _manus_ of the husband at, 200
Dotal marriage at, 200
Marriage by _usus_ at, 201
Marriage by _coemptio_ at, 201
Marriage by _confarreatio_ at, 201
Loan of women at, 201
The evolution of marriage at, 201
The _jus connubii_ at, 202
The maternal family at, 202
The _spurii_ at, 202
Divorce at, 244
Repudiation at, 244
Widowhood at, 261
The _gens_ at, 335
The primitive clan at, 335
The patriarchate at, 337
The right of succession of the _gentiles_ at, 338
The evolution of the family at, 338
The evolution of marriage at, 357
Rut and love, 7
Sociologic importance of, 7
The madness of, 8
a sort of puberty, 8
among toads, 8
among mammals, 8
The physiological reason of, 9
and human love, 9
Moral position of, 17
Salmon, Battles of amorous, 11
Maternal love among, 24
Savages, Loan of the wife among, 52
Schopenhauer and his theory of love, 9
Scythians, Incest among the, 66
Seignor, Right of the, among the Kaffirs, in New Zealand and New
Mexico, etc., 47
Selection, Sexual, by females, 17
Semites, The family among the, 325
The patriarchate of the, 325
Senecas, The family among the Iroquois, 287
Sexes, Proportion of the, 75
The proportion of the, and infanticide, 75
Sociability often comes from weakness, 31
engenders altruism, 31
favourable to polygamy, 31
Sociology, Biological origin of, 3
The animal sources of, 10
The rhythms of, 355
The method of, 342
Sodomy among the Esquimaux, 58
in New Caledonia, 62
in New Zealand, 62
among the Redskins, 62
in Peru, 62
at Mecca, 63
in the East, 63
repressed by the Celts and the Germans, 63
in Greece, 63
in Crete, 63
Sparta, Gymnastic exercises of naked girls at, 195
Obligatory marriage at, 195
Adultery at, 322
Species, Preservation of, 20
Spiders, Maternal love of, 22
_Spurii_ at Rome, 202
Sticklebacks, Amorous battles of, 11
Suttees of widows in India, 257
Suttees, Indian, in the time of Alexander, 257
in modern times, 258
Succession, Customs of, among the Redskins, 277, 278
Laws of, among the Kabyles, 329
Laws of, in Persia, 331
The right of, of the _gentiles_ at Rome, 338
Laws of, among the Germans, 339
Tamils, The family among the, 296
The maternal family among the, 334
Tasmania, Honourable prostitution in,57
Tatoways, Coupling of the, 16
_Tchin-than_, Cambodian, 49
Termites, Republics of, 3
_Tetras phasaniellus_, Amorous parades of, 13
_Tetras umbellus_, Amorous combats of, 13
_Tetras urogallus_, Amorous battles of, 12
Thibet, Polyandry in, 78
Civil marriage in, 182
Monogamy in, 182
Adultery in, 216
Divorce in, 240
Widowhood in, 254
Toads, Paternal love of, 25
Todas, Polyandry among the, 80
_Totem_, The, among the Kamilaroi of Australia, 273
of the Redskins, 275
Touaregs, Paternal right redeemed by prostitution among the, 118
Monogamy among the, 179
Maternal filiation among the, 179
Independence of woman among the, 179
Pretended gynecocracy of, 181
Repudiation among the, 234
The pecuniary matriarchate of the women, 328
Tournaments, Æsthetic, of birds, 13
Troglodytes, Promiscuity among the, 39
Turkeys, League of female, against the males, 30
_Usus_ at Rome, 200
Vertebrates, Coquetry among the, 10
Strength greater in males among the, 15
Law of battle among the, 16
Promiscuity rare among the, 38
Virginity among the Hebrews, 190
Weaver bird, Amorous music of, 15
Widowhood and the levirate, 249
in savage countries, 249
Societies without, 250
among the Hottentots, 250
at the Gaboon, 250
in equatorial Africa, 250
at Madagascar, 251
in Central America, 251
among the Redskins, 252
in Bhootan, 254
in Thibet, 254
in China, 255
of brides in China, 255
in India, 256
in the Koran, 259
in the Bible, 259
in Afghanistan, 260
among the Kabyles, 260
among the Arabs, 260
at Athens, 261
at Rome, 261
among the Germans, 262
among the Lombards, 262
in general, 265
Widows, Right of, at Kouranko, 112
Immolation of, 253
Suicides of, in China, 255
Suttees of, in India, 257
Wives, Loan of, in America, 52
Loan of, among the Esquimaux, 52
Loan of, 52
Loan of, among the Redskins, 52
Loan of, among the Arabs, 53
Loan of, in antique Greece, 53
Loan of, in antique Rome, 53
Loan of, in Australia, 57
Loan of, among Bushmen, 58
Lease of, among the Esquimaux, 58
Lease of, in Polynesia, 60
Community of, among Arabs, 84
Assimilated to slaves at Rome, 104
Right of refusal of the, among the Moors of Senegambia, 112
Subjection of, 105
Food in reserve in Melanesia, 106
Seizure of, in Australia, 123
Servility of, in Africa, 126
the “oxen” of the husband, among Kaffirs, 128
Labour of, among the Guaranis, 130
Sister, among the Redskins, 131
Conjugal submission of Redskin, 132
Subjection of, by Redskins, 132
Sisters, in Bhootan, 133
Sisters, among the Ostiaks, 133
Purchase of, in the Koran, 141
Rights of the, in Mussulman marriage, 144
Subjection of, in Kabylie, 145
Loan of jewels to the Kabyle, 146
Price of the, tariffed in Kabylie, 146
Kabyle, is a thing possessed, 146
Fate of the Kabyle, 147
Independence of Touareg, 149
considered as daughters of husband at Rome, 199
Loan of, at Rome, 201
Christian subjection of, 205
Independence of, among the Saxons of England, 205
Subjection of, among the Germans, 204
Kabyle, have “right of insurrection,” 236
Power of, among Redskins, 280
Subjection of, among Redskins, 282
Women, Freedom of, in Polynesia, 60
Shameless language of, in Polynesia, 61
Shamelessness of, in Africa, 127
Inferiority of, in the Koran, 140
Dissolute morals of, in Abyssinia, 181
Submission of, in China, 185
Emancipated by money, 187
Virtuous, of Proverbs, 190
Inferiority of, in India, 191
Subjection of, in India, 192
Subjection of, in primitive Greece, 194
Subjection of, in Greece, 195
Relative liberty of, in Rome, 198
Yazidies, Promiscuity of, 44
Young girls, Licentious manners of, in Australia, 50
Licentious manners of, in Polynesia, 50
Licentious manners of, in savage countries, 50
Zaporogs, Promiscuity of, 43
THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious errors in punctuation, accents and spacing have been corrected.
The original table of contents was missing V. The Evolution of the
System of Kinship by Classes. in Chapter XVII. This has been added and
The Clan and the Family. has been renumbered to VI.
Page 2: “terrestial animals” changed to “terrestrial animals”
Page 12: In the footnote, “_Scènes de la Nature dans les Etats Unis_”
changed to “_Scènes de la Nature dans les États-Unis_”
Page 29: “Amor ch’a null’” changed to “Amor ch’a nullo”
Page 32: “Asaitic _antilope saiga_” changed to “Asiatic _antilope
saiga_”
Page 43: In the footnote, “_Bemark. über Russland_” changed to
“_Bemerk. über Russland_”
Page 44: In the footnote, “_Les Bédouins ou Arabes du Desert_” changed
to “_Les Bédouins ou Arabes du Désert_”
Page 50: “aux iles” changed to “aux îles”
Page 67: “to deflour their daughters” changed to “to deflower their
daughters”
Page 83: “the noses and ears” changed to “the nose and ears”
Page 96: “the husband captured slaves” changed to “the husband of
captured slaves”
Page 100: “without confarrearation” changed to “without confarreation”
Page 116: In the footnote, “_Journal d’un interprète en China_” changed
to “_Journal d’un interprète en Chine_”
Page 122: “sociable of amimals” changed to “sociable of animals”
Page 125: In the footnote, “_Voy. dans l’Afrique equatoriale_” changed
to “ _Voy. dans l’Afrique équatoriale_”
Page 143: “all that that concerns marriage” changed to “all that
concerns marriage” “hands of the women” changed to “hands of the woman”
Page 164: “has precedence and rule over them” changed to “has
precedence and rules over them” In the footnote on this and the
subsequent page, _L’Empire Chinoise_ changed to “_L’Empire Chinois_”
Page 171: “monogamy and pologamy” changed to “monogamy and polygamy”
Page 174: “Déserts du Nouvean Monde” changed to “Déserts du Nouveau
Monde”
Page 179: “Duveyrier, 339-430” changed to “Duveyrier, 339-340”
Page 184: A missing footnote anchor was added after “law from
inheritance,”
Page 200: In the footnote, “Stychus” changed to “Stichus”
Page 201: “Tahitan marriage” changed to “Tahitian marriage” and “at the
time _enciente_” changed to “at the time _enceinte_”
Page 219: A missing footnote anchor was added after “rose-water duels.”
Page 228: “In Abyssinia, at Haïti” changed to “In Abyssinia, at Hayti”
Page 246: “among the Teherkesses” changed to “among the Tcherkesses”
Page 254: In the footnote, “Revue Brittanique” changed to “Revue
Britannique” and “Morcroft and Trebeck’s” changed to “Moorcroft and
Trebeck’s”
Page 256: In the footnote, “_Chine et les Puissances Chretiennes_”
changed to “_La Chine et les Puissances Chrétiennes_”
Page 292: In the footnote, “Völker des Russichen” changed to “Völker
des Russischen”
Page 298: “of the Himalayah” changed to “of the Himalaya”
Page 314: “The Michmis buy their wives” changed to “The Mishmis buy
their wives”
Page 315: “The Ooraons share” changed to “The Oraons share”
Page 328: “In Kabylie, however” changed to “In Kabyle, however”
Page 329: “for woman there remains” changed to “for women there remains”
Page 334: “_l’Ile de Ceylon_” changed to “_l’Île de Ceylan_”
Page 349, 351 & 352: In the footnote, “Article, “Marriage”” changed to
“Article, “Mariage””
A few minor adjustments were made to the index to match the spelling
and page numbers in the rest of the text.
The spelling of MacLennan, author of _Primitive Marriage_, was
corrected to McLennon.
The spelling of Moerenhaut, author of _Voy. aux îles_, was corrected to
Moerenhout.
The spelling of Shortt, author of _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, was corrected to
Schortt.
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