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THE HISTORY
OF
HUMAN MARRIAGE
THE HISTORY
OF
HUMAN MARRIAGE
BY
EDWARD WESTERMARCK
LECTURER ON SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FINLAND,
HELSINGFORS
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1901
All rights reserved
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited
London and Bungay.
First Edition, 1891.
Second Edition, 1894.
Third Edition, 1901.
[INTRODUCTORY NOTE]
BY ALFRED R. WALLACE
Having read the proofs of Mr. Westermarck’s book I am asked by the publishers to say a few words by way of introducing the work to English readers. This I have great pleasure in doing, because I have seldom read a more thorough or a more philosophic discussion of some of the most difficult, and at the same time interesting problems of anthropology.
The origin and development of human marriage have been discussed by such eminent writers as Darwin, Spencer, Morgan, Lubbock, and many others. On some of the more important questions involved in it all these writers are in general accord, and this agreement has led to their opinions being widely accepted as if they were well-established conclusions of science. But on several of these points Mr. Westermarck has arrived at different, and sometimes diametrically opposite, conclusions, and he has done so after a most complete and painstaking investigation of all the available facts.
With such an array of authority on the one side and a hitherto unknown student on the other, it will certainly be thought that all the probabilities are against the latter. Yet I venture to anticipate that the verdict of independent thinkers will, on most of these disputed points, be in favour of the new comer who has so boldly challenged the conclusions of some of our most esteemed writers. Even those whose views are here opposed, will, I think, acknowledge that Mr. Westermarck is a careful investigator and an acute reasoner, and that his arguments as well as his conclusions are worthy of the most careful consideration.
I would also call attention to his ingenious and philosophical explanation of the repugnance to marriage between near relatives which is so very general both among savage and civilised man, and as to the causes of which there has been great diversity of opinion; and to his valuable suggestions on the general question of sexual selection, in which he furnishes an original argument against Darwin’s views on the point, differing somewhat from my own though in general harmony with it.
Every reader of the work will admire its clearness of style, and the wonderful command of what is to the author a foreign language.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
I need scarcely say how fully I appreciate the honour of being introduced to English readers by Mr. Alfred R. Wallace. I am also greatly obliged for his kindness in reading the proofs, and in giving me the benefit of his advice with regard to various parts of the subject.
It is difficult for me to acknowledge sufficiently my obligations to Mr. James Sime for his assistance in preparing this book for the press. The work, as originally written, naturally contained a good many foreign modes of expression. Mr. Sime has been indefatigable in helping me to improve the form of the text; and, in our discussions on the main lines of the argument, he has made several important suggestions. I am sincerely obliged for the invaluable aid he has given me.
My cordial thanks are due to Mr. Charles J. Cooke, British Vice-Consul at Helsingfors, who most kindly aided me in writing the first part of the book in a tongue which is not my own. I am indebted also to Dr. E. B. Tylor, Professor G. Croom Robertson, Mr. James Sully, and Dr. W. C. Coupland for much encouraging interest; to Mr. Joseph Jacobs for the readiness with which he has placed at my disposal some results of his own researches; and to several gentlemen in different parts of the world who have been so good as to respond to my inquiries as to their personal observation of various classes of phenomena connected with marriage among savage tribes. The information I have received from them is acknowledged in the passages in which it is used.
A list of authorities is given at the end of the book—between the text and the index, and it may be well to add that the references in the notes have been carefully verified.
E. W.
London, May, 1891.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
In this new edition of my book I have made no essential changes, but here and there the argument has been strengthened by the addition of facts which have come to my knowledge since the appearance of the first edition. The most important of these new facts will be found in the second chapter.
I take this opportunity of expressing my warm appreciation of the thorough way in which the ideas set forth in this book have been discussed by many critics in England and elsewhere. Translations of the work have appeared, or are about to appear, in German, Swedish, French, Italian, and Russian.
E. W.
London, January, 1894.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
I much regret that the demand for a new edition of this book should come at a time when circumstances prevent me from undertaking such a revision of the work as I feel to be required. Since the appearance of the Second Edition many important facts bearing upon the subject have been brought to light, new theories have been advanced, and old theories, supported by fresh arguments, have been revived. To all this, however, I can do no justice, as I am at present being engaged in anthropological research in Morocco. This edition is, in consequence, a mere reprint of the second. But I purpose, after my return to Europe, to issue an Appendix, in which the book will be brought more up to date and some criticism will be replied to.
E. W.
Mogador (Morocco),
August, 1901.
CONTENTS
ON THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION
History of human civilization a part of Sociology, p. [1].—Early history based on ethnography, p. [2].—Errors in method, pp. [2], et seq.—How we can from ethnographical facts acquire information regarding the early history of mankind, pp. [3]-6.—Dr. Tylor’s ‘method of investigating the development of institutions,’ pp. [4], et seq.—The causes of social phenomena, p. [5].—What we know about the antiquity of the human race, pp. [5], et seq.—Social survivals, p. [6].—‘Human marriage,’ ibid.
THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE
Tales of the origin of marriage, pp. [8], et seq.—The subject regarded from a scientific point of view, p. [9].—Parental care among Invertebrata, ibid.—The relations of the sexes and parental care among Fishes, p. [10].—Among Reptiles, ibid.—Among Birds, pp. [10], et seq.—Among the lower Mammals, p. [12].—Among the Quadrumana, pp. [12]-14.—Among savage and barbarous races of men, pp. [14]-17.—The father’s place in the family, pp. [15]-19.—Definition of the word marriage, pp. [19], et seq.—Marriage a product of natural selection, pp. [20], et seq.—Marriage rooted in family rather than family in marriage, pp. [22]-24.
A HUMAN PAIRING SEASON IN PRIMITIVE TIMES
Hypotheses as to the periodicity in the sexual life of animals, p. [25].—Every month or season of the year the pairing season of one or another mammalian species, pp. [25], et seq.—The rut not dependent upon any general physiological law, but adapted to the requirement of each species separately, pp. [26], et seq.—Wild species without a definite pairing season, p. [27].—Rutting season among the man-like apes, ibid.—Among our earliest human or half-human progenitors, p. [28].—Periodical increase of the sexual instinct among existing savages, pp. [28]-31.—Among civilized peoples, pp. [31]-33.— The increase of the sexual instinct at the end of spring or in the beginning of summer, probably a survival of an ancient pairing season, pp. [34], et seq.—The winter maximum of conceptions, pp. [35]-37.—Why man is not limited to a particular period of the year in which to court the female, pp. [37], et seq.—Domestic animals without a definite pairing season, p. [38].
THE ANTIQUITY OF HUMAN MARRIAGE
Marriage a necessary requirement for the existence of the human race, p. [39].—The hypothesis that the maternal uncle was the guardian of the children, pp. [39]-41.—The father the head of the family, p. [41].—The hypothesis that all the men of the tribe indiscriminately were their guardians, pp. [41], et seq.—Man originally not a gregarious animal, pp. [42], et seq.—The solitary life of the man-like apes, ibid.—Savage peoples living in families rather than in tribes, pp. [43]-47.—Insufficient food supply a hindrance to a true gregarious manner of living, pp. [47]-49.—The gregariousness and sociability of man sprang in the main from progressive intellectual and material civilization, pp. [49], et seq.
A CRITICISM OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF PROMISCUITY
The hypothesis of promiscuity, pp. [51], et seq.—The evidence adduced in support of it, p. [52].—Notices of savage nations said to live promiscuously, pp. [52]-55.—Some of the facts adduced, no instances of real promiscuity, pp. [55]-57.—Most of the statements obviously erroneous, pp. [57]-59.—The accuracy of the others doubtful, pp. [59], et seq.—Even if correct, they cannot afford any evidence for promiscuity having prevailed in primitive times, pp. 60, et seq.—The free cohabitation of the sexes before marriage, in some parts of the world, given as evidence of ancient promiscuity, p. [61].—Sexual intercourse out of wedlock rare, and unchastity on the part of the woman looked upon as a disgrace, among many uncivilized peoples, pp. [61]-66.—The wantonness of savages in several cases due chiefly to the influence of civilization, pp. [66]-70.—It is quite different from promiscuity, pp. [70], et seq.—Customs interpreted as acts of expiation for individual marriage, p. [72].—Religious prostitution, ibid.—Jus primae noctis accorded to the wedding-guests or to the friends of the bridegroom, pp. [72]-76.—The practice of lending wives to visitors, pp. 73-75.—Jus primae noctis granted to a chief, lord, or priest, pp. [76]-80.—Courtesans held in greater estimation than women married to a single husband, pp. [80], et seq.
A CRITICISM OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF PROMISCUITY
(Continued)
The ‘classificatory system of relationship,’ pp. [82]-84.—‘Marriage in a group’ and the ‘consanguine family,’ pp. [84], et seq.—Mr. Morgan’s assumption that the ‘classificatory system’ is a system of blood ties, p. [85].—Terms for relationships borrowed from the children’s lips, pp. [85]-87.—Other terms, pp. [87]-89.—Mr. Morgan’s assumption not consistent with the facts he has himself stated, p. [89].—The terms for relationships originally terms of address, ibid.—The names given chiefly with reference to sex and age, as also to the external, or social, relationship in which the speaker stands to the person whom he addresses, pp. [90]-95.—No inference regarding early marriage customs to be drawn from the terms for relationships, pp. [95], et seq.—The system of ‘kinship through females only,’ p. [96].—Supposed to be due to uncertain paternity, pp. [96], et seq.—A list of peoples among whom this system does not prevail, pp. [98]-104.—The inference that ‘kinship through females only’ everywhere preceded the rise of ‘kinship through males’ inadmissible from Mr. McLennan’s point of view, p. [105].—The maternal system does not presuppose former uncertainty as to fathers, ibid.—The father’s participation in parentage not discovered as soon as the mother’s, though now universally recognized, pp. [105]-107.—Once discovered, it was often exaggerated, p. [106].—The denomination of children and the rules of succession, in the first place, not dependent on ideas of consanguinity, p. [107].—Several reasons for naming children after the mother rather than after the father, apart from any consideration of relationship, ibid.—The tie between a mother and child much stronger than that which binds a child to the father, pp. [107], et seq.—Polygyny, p. [108].—Husband living with the wife’s family, pp. [109], et seq.—The rules of succession influenced by local connections and by the family name, pp. [110]-112.—No general coincidence of what we consider moral and immoral habits with the prevalence of the male and female line among existing savages, p. [112].—Occasional coincidence of the paternal system with uncertainty as to fathers, ibid.—Avowed recognition of kinship in the female line only does not show an unconsciousness of male kinship, pp. [112], et seq.—The prevalence of the female line would not presuppose general promiscuity, even if, in some cases, it were dependent on uncertain paternity, p. [113].—The groups of social phenomena adduced as evidence for the hypothesis of promiscuity no evidence, ibid.
A CRITICISM OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF PROMISCUITY
(Concluded)
Promiscuous intercourse between the sexes tends to a pathological condition unfavourable to fecundity, p. [115].—The practice of polyandry does not afford evidence in an opposite direction, pp. [115]-117.—The jealousy of man and other mammalian species the strongest argument against ancient promiscuity, p. [117].—Jealousy among existing peoples, pp. [117]-121.—Punishments inflicted for adultery, pp. [121], 122, 130.—Man’s requirement of virginity from his bride, pp. [123], et seq.—A wife considered to belong to her husband, not during his lifetime only, but after his death, pp. [124]-130.—Widows killed, pp. 125, et seq.—Duties towards deceased husbands, pp. [126], et seq.—Widows forbidden to marry again, pp. [127], et seq.—Prohibition of speedy remarriage, pp. [128]-130.—The practice of lending or prostituting wives no evidence for the absence of jealousy, pp. [130], et seq.—Contact with a ‘higher culture’ misleading natural instincts, pp. [131], et seq.—No reason to suppose that the feeling of jealousy ever was restrained by conditions which made it necessary for a man to share his wife with other men, pp. [132], et seq.—The hypothesis of promiscuity essentially unscientific, p. [133].
MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY
Voluntary abstinence unheard of in a state of nature, p. [134].—Celibacy rare among savage and barbarous races, pp. [134]-136.—Savage views on celibacy, pp. [136], et seq.—Savages marry early in life, pp. [137]-139.—Celibacy rare among several civilized races, pp. [139]-143.—Celibacy caused by the practice of purchasing wives, and by polygyny, pp. [143]-145.—Celibacy in Europe, and its causes, pp. [145]-150.—Sexual relations considered impure, pp. [151], et seq.—Religious celibacy, pp. [152]-155.—Hypothesis as to the origin of the notion of sexual uncleanness and of sexual bashfulness, pp. [155], et seq.
THE COURTSHIP OF MAN
Males active, females comparatively passive, in courtship, pp. [157], et seq.—Courtship by women among certain peoples, pp. [158], et seq.—Courtship by proxy, p. [159].—Fighting for females among the lower animals, ibid.—Among men, pp. [159]-163.—Making love, p. [163].—Fights by women for the possession of men, p. [164].—Female coquetry, ibid.
MEANS OF ATTRACTION
Savage predilection for ornaments, pp. [165], et seq.—For self-mutilation, pp. [166], et seq.—For dressing the hair, p. [167].—For showy colours and paint, p. [168].—For tattooing, pp. [168], et seq.—Practices supposed to have a religious origin, pp. [169]-172.—Mr. Frazer’s theory as regards the origin of tattooing, &c., pp. 170, et seq.—Other theories, p. [172].—Men and women began to ornament, mutilate, paint, and tattoo themselves, chiefly in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex, pp. [172]-182.—Savage women less decorated than savage men, pp. [182]-185.—Opinions as to the origin of dress, p. [186].—Nakedness and want of modesty among many savage peoples, pp. [186]-189.—Ornamental ‘garments’ among savages, pp. [189]-192.—Covering a means of attraction, pp. [192]-200, 211, et seq.—Practices serving a similar end, pp. [201]-206.—Circumcision, ibid.—Different ideas of modesty, pp. [206]-208—The power of custom and the feeling of shame, pp. [208]-211.
THE LIBERTY OF CHOICE
Females ‘engaged’ in infancy, pp. [213], et seq.—The right of giving a girl in marriage, pp. [214], et seq.—Considerable liberty of selection allowed to women among the lower races, pp. [215]-221.—It was even greater in primitive times,
pp. [221], et seq.—Bride-stealing and elopement, p. [223].—The position of sons among uncivilized peoples, pp. [223]-225.—Paternal authority based on ancestor worship, in the ancient and Eastern World, pp. [225]-235.—The patria potestas of the Aryan races, pp. [229]-235.—The decline of the patria potestas, pp. [235]-239.
SEXUAL SELECTION AMONG ANIMALS
Mr. Darwin’s theory of ‘Sexual Selection,’ pp. [240], et seq.—Contradiction between the theories of natural and sexual selection, pp. [241], et seq.—The colours of flowers, pp. [242], et seq.—Mr. Wallace’s theory of the sexual colours of animals, p. [243].—The sexual colours make it easier for the sexes to find each other, pp. [243], et seq.—They occur exactly in those species whose habits and manner of living make these colours most visible, pp. [244], et seq.—The odours of flowers, p. [246].—Sexual odours and sounds among animals, pp. 246, et seq.—The sexual colours, odours, and sounds of animals complementary to each other in the way that is best suited to make the animals easily discoverable, pp. [247]-249.—The untenableness of Mr. Darwin’s theory, p. [249].—The secondary sexual characters due to natural selection, pp. [249], et seq.—Mr. Wallace’s views, p. [250].—Animal ‘ornaments,’ pp. [250], et seq.—Further arguments against Mr. Darwin’s theory, p. [251].—The variability of the secondary sexual characters, pp. [251]. et seq.—Their stability in wild species, p. [252].
THE SEXUAL SELECTION OF MAN: TYPICAL BEAUTY
Female selection among animals and the indifference of the males, p. [253].—Woman more particular in her choice than man, pp. [253], et seq.—Female appreciation of manly strength and courage, pp. [255], et seq.—Men attracted by healthy women, p. [256].—The connection between love and beauty not peculiar to the civilized mind, p. [257].—Different notions of personal beauty, pp. [257], et seq.—Mr. Spencer’s theory of ‘facial perfection,’ pp. 258, et seq.—Men find beauty in the full development of the visible characteristics belonging to the human organism in general, p. [259].—Of those peculiar to the sex, pp. [259], et seq.—Of those peculiar to the race, pp. [261]-264.—The connection between love and beauty due to natural selection, pp. [265], 273, et seq.—Individual deviations from the national type less considerable among savages than among civilized men, pp. [265], et seq.—Racial peculiarities in some way connected with the external circumstances in which the various races live, pp. [266]-271.—Acclimatization, pp. [268]-270.—Professor Weismann’s theory of heredity applied to the origin of the human races, pp. 271-273.—Physical beauty the outward manifestation of physical perfection, pp. [273], et seq.—Rejection of Mr. Darwin’s opinion on the connection between love and beauty, pp. [274], et seq.—Rejection of his theory as to the origin of the human races, pp. [275], et seq.—The hairlessness of man, pp. [276], et seq.—The influence of sexual selection on the physical aspect of mankind, p. [277].
THE LAW OF SIMILARITY
Instinctive aversion among animals to pairing with individuals belonging to another species, pp. [278]-280.—Infertility of first crosses and of hybrids, pp. 279, et seq.—‘The Law of Similarity,’ p. [280].—Bestiality, pp. [280], et seq.—The various human races said to have an instinctive aversion to intermingling, pp. [281], et seq.—Intermixture of races, pp. [282], et seq.—Its effects on fertility, pp. [283]-288.—Rejection of M. Broca’s theory as to the infertility of the connections of Europeans with Australian women, pp. [284]-287.—The doctrine of the unity of mankind independent of the degree of fertility of first crosses, and of mongrels, pp. [288], et seq.
PROHIBITION OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN KINDRED
The horror of incest almost universally characteristic of mankind, p. [290].—Intercourse between parents and children, pp. [290], et seq.—Between brother and sister, pp. [291]-294.—Between half-brother and half-sister, pp. [294], et seq.—Between uncle and niece, and aunt and nephew, pp. [295], et seq.—Between first cousins, pp. [296], et seq.—The prohibited degrees among peoples unaffected by modern civilization more numerous, as a rule, than in advanced communities, pp. [297]-309.—Prohibition of marriage between relatives by alliance, pp. [309], et seq.—Early hypotheses as to the origin of the prohibitions of marriage between near kin, p. [310].—Criticism of Mr. McLennan’s hypothesis as to the origin of exogamy, pp. [311]-314.—Criticism of Mr. Spencer’s views, pp. [314], et seq.—Of Sir John Lubbock’s, p. [316].—Of Professor Kohler’s, pp. [316], et seq.—Of Mr. Morgan’s, &c., pp. [318], et seq.—The prohibition of incest founded not on experience, but on instinct, p. [319].
PROHIBITION OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN KINDRED
(Concluded)
No innate aversion to marriage with near relations, p. [320].—Innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, pp. [320]-330.—Local exogamy, pp. [321]-323.—Connection between the prohibited degrees and the more or less close living together, pp. [324]-329.—Connection between the ‘classificatory system of relationship’ and exogamy, p. [329].—The one-sidedness of prohibitions due in part directly to local relationships, in part to the influence of names, pp. [330], et seq.—The prohibitions of marriage between relations by alliance and by adoption due to an association of ideas, p. [331].—The prohibitions on the ground of ‘spiritual relationship’ due to the same cause, ibid.—Endogamy seldom occurs in very small communities, p. [332].—Marriage between half-brothers and half-sisters not contrary to the principle here laid down, ibid.—Incestuous unions due to pride of birth, to necessity, to extreme isolation, and to vitiated instincts, p. [333].—Incest among the lower animals, p. [334].—The effects of cross- and self-fertilization among plants, p. [335].—Evil effects of close interbreeding among animals, pp. [335]-337.—A certain amount of differentiation favourable for the fertilisation or union of two organisms, pp. 337, et seq.—Difficulty of adducing direct evidence for the evil effects of consanguineous marriages among men, pp. [338], et seq.—Close intermarrying among the Veddahs, pp. [339], et seq.—The effects of marriage between first cousins, pp. [340]-343.—The experience of isolated communities does not prove consanguineous marriages to be harmless, pp. [343]-345.—The bad consequences of self-fertilization and close interbreeding may almost fail to appear under favourable conditions of life, pp. [345], et seq.—Consanguineous marriages more injurious in savage regions than in civilized society, p. [346].—Tendency of endogamous peoples to die out, pp. [346]-350.—Peoples who ascribe evil results to close intermarriage, pp. [350]-352.—The horror of incest due to natural selection, pp. [352], et seq.—Exogamy arose when single families united in small hordes, p. [353].—Love excited by contrasts, pp. [353]-355.
SEXUAL SELECTION AS INFLUENCED BY AFFECTION AND SYMPATHY, AND BY CALCULATION
The compound character of love, p. [356].—Conjugal affection, at the lower stages of civilization, less intense than parental love, pp. [356]-358.—Conjugal affection among savages, pp. [358], et seq.—Among primitive men, pp. [359], et seq.—Mutual love as the motive which leads to marriage, pp. [360], et seq.—Sexual love has developed in proportion as altruism has increased, ibid.—Sexual love among the Eastern nations, ibid.—Sexual selection determined by intellectual, emotional, and moral qualities, p. [362].—Sexual selection influenced by sympathy, pp. [362]-376.—By age, p. [362].—By the degree of cultivation, pp. 362, et seq.—Racial and national endogamy, pp. [363]-365.—Tribal- communal- and clan-endogamy, pp. [365]-368.—The origin of castes and classes, pp. [368], et seq.—Want of sympathy between different classes, pp. [369], et seq.—Class- and caste-endogamy, pp. [370]-373.—The decline of national- and class-endogamy in modern society, pp. [373], et seq.—Religion a bar to intermarriage, pp. [374]-376.—The increase of mixed marriages, p. [376].—Desire for offspring, pp. 376-378.—Appreciation of female fecundity, p. [378].—Sexual selection influenced by the desire for offspring, pp. [378], et seq.—The causes of this desire, pp. [379], et seq.—With the progress of civilization this desire has become less intense, p. [381].—A wife chosen because of her ability as a labourer, pp. [381], et seq.—A husband chosen because of his ability to protect and provide for a wife and offspring, p. [382].—Wife-purchase and husband-purchase in modern society, ibid.
MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE AND MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE
Marriage by capture as a reality or as a symbol among uncivilized races, pp. [383]-386.—Among peoples of the Aryan race, pp. [386], et seq.—No evidence that marriage by capture has prevailed among every race, p. [387].—Marriage with capture, p. [388].—Marriage by capture and exogamy, pp. [388], et seq.—The origin of marriage by capture, p. [389].—Marriage by capture once the normal, never the exclusive form of contracting marriage, ibid.—Marriage by exchange, p. [390].—Wives obtained by service, pp. [390]-392.—Wives obtained by actual purchase, pp. [392]-394.—Marriage on credit, p. [394].—Marriage by purchase among civilized races, pp. [394]-397.—Lower peoples among whom marriage by purchase does not exist, pp. [397]-399.—Marriage by purchase a more recent stage than marriage by capture, pp. [399]-401.—Barter a comparatively late invention of man, pp. [400], et seq.—Transition from marriage by capture to marriage by purchase, p. [401].—The bride-price a compensation for the loss sustained in giving up the girl, p. [402].—Bargain about women, ibid.—Savage views on marriage by purchase, ibid.
THE DECAY OF MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE. THE MARRIAGE PORTION
The decay of marriage by purchase among civilized peoples, pp. [403]-405.—Marriage by purchase transformed into a symbol, pp. [405], et seq.—Arbitrary presents and sham sale, p. [405].—Return gift, pp. [405], et seq.—The purchase-sum transformed into the morning gift and the dotal portion, pp. [406]-408.—The decay of marriage by purchase among uncivilized races, pp. [408]-410.—The marriage portion does not in every case spring from a previous purchase, p. [411].—It serves different ends, ibid.—The marriage portion as a settlement for the wife, pp. [411]-414.—The marriage portion among uncivilized races, pp. [414], et seq.—Fathers bound by law or custom to portion their daughters, pp. [415], et seq.—Husband purchase, p. [416].
MARRIAGE CEREMONIES AND RITES
Peoples who have no marriage ceremony, pp. [417], et seq.—The rise of marriage ceremonies, pp. [418]-421.—When the mode of contracting a marriage altered, the earlier mode, from having been a reality, survived as a ceremony, p. [418].—Wedding feasts, pp. [418], et seq.—Ceremonies symbolizing the relation between husband and wile, pp. [419]-421.—Religious ceremonies connected with marriage among uncivilized nations, pp. [421]-424.—Assistance of a priest, pp. [422], et seq.—Omens and ‘lucky days,’ pp. [423], et seq.—Religious marriage ceremonies among civilized nations, pp. [424]-428.—Civil marriage, pp. [428], et seq.—The validity of marriage, pp. [429], et seq.
THE FORMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE
Polygyny permitted by many civilized nations and the bulk of savage tribes, pp. 431-435.—Among many savage peoples developed to an extraordinary extent, pp. [434], et seq.—Among not a few uncivilized peoples almost unknown, or even prohibited, pp. [435]-437.—Among certain peoples permitted only to the chief men, pp. [437], et seq.—Almost everywhere confined to the smaller part of the people, pp. [438]-442.—Modified in a monogamous direction through the higher position granted to one of the wives, generally the first married, pp. [443]-448.—Through the preference given to the favourite wife as regards sexual intercourse, pp. [448], et seq.—Bigamy the most common form of polygyny, p. [450].—The occurrence of polyandry, pp. [450]-455.—Polyandry nowhere the exclusive form of marriage, pp. [455]-457.—Modified in directions towards monogamy, pp. [457], et seq.—The first husband the chief husband, ibid.—Monogamy the most common form of human marriage, p. [459].
THE FORMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE
(Continued)
The proportion between the sexes varies among different peoples, pp. [460]-464.—Causes to which the disparity in the numbers of the sexes is due, pp. [465]-482.—The higher mortality of men, dependent upon war, &c., pp. [465], et seq.—The higher mortality of women, dependent upon female infanticide, &c., p. [466].—Disproportion between the sexes at birth, pp. [466]-469.—Hypotheses as to the causes which determine the sex of the offspring, pp. [469]-476.—The law of Hofacker and Sadler, pp. [469], et seq.—Dr. Düsing’s hypothesis, pp. [470]-476.—Polyandry dependent upon an excess of male births, pp. [472]-474.—Coincidence of polyandry with poverty of material resources, pp. [474]-476.—Mixture of race produces an excess of female births, pp. [476]-480.—Unions between related individuals or, generally, between individuals who are very like each other, produce a comparatively great number of male offspring, pp. [480]-482.—The form of marriage influenced by the numerical proportion between the sexes, pp. [482], et seq.—Several reasons why a man may desire to possess more than one wife, pp. 483-492.—Monogamy requires from him periodical continence, pp. [483]-485.—He is attracted by female youth and beauty, pp. [485], et seq.—At the lower stages of civilization women become old sooner than in more advanced communities, pp. [486]-488.—Man’s taste for variety, p. [488].—Man’s desire for offspring, pp. [488]-491.—Women generally less prolific among savage than among civilized nations, pp. [490], et seq.—A man’s fortune increased by a multitude of wives through their labour, pp. [491], et seq.—A man’s authority increased by a multitude of wives, p. [492].—Hindrances to polygyny, pp. 493-503.—The difficulty in maintaining a plurality of wives, p. [493].—The necessity of paying the purchase-sum or of serving for a wife, pp. [493], et seq.—Polygyny practised chiefly by the principal men of the people, pp. 494, et seq.—Polygyny a violation of the feelings of women, pp. [495]-500.—Marrying sisters, pp. [499], et seq.—Coincidence of monogamy with a higher status of women, pp. [500]-502.—The form of marriage influenced by the quality of the passion which unites the sexes, p. [502].—The absorbing passion for one, pp. [502], et seq.—The causes of polyandry, pp. [503], et seq.—The chief immediate cause a numerical disproportion between the sexes, p. [504].
THE FORMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE
(Concluded)
Monogamy more prevalent at the lowest stages of civilization than at somewhat higher stages, pp. [505]-508.—Polygyny favoured by social differentiation, pp. 505, et seq.—The very lowest races either strictly monogamous, or but little addicted to polygyny, pp. [506], et seq.—Polygyny adopted under the influence of a higher civilization, pp. [507], et seq.—Monogamy prevails among the man-like apes, p. [508].—Civilization in its higher forms leads to monogamy, pp. [508], et seq.—Will monogamy be the only recognized form of marriage in the future? pp. [509], et seq.—Criticism of Mr. McLennan’s theory as to the general prevalence of polyandry in early times, pp. [510]-515—The Levirate affords no evidence for this theory, pp. [510]-514.—Polyandry always an exception in the human race, pp. [514], et seq.—It presupposes an abnormally feeble disposition to jealousy, p. [515].—It seems to presuppose a certain amount of civilization, pp. [515], et seq.—Polyandry an expression of fraternal benevolence, p. [516].—The origin of the group-marriage of the Toda type, ibid.
THE DURATION OF HUMAN MARRIAGE
The time during which marriage lasts varies, p. [517].—Peoples among whom separation is said to be unknown, ibid.—Human marriage, as a general rule, not necessarily contracted for life, pp. [518]-520.—Divorce dependent upon the husband’s decision, pp. [520], et seq.—Divorce among a great many peoples exceptional, pp. [521]-523.—A man permitted to divorce his wife only under certain conditions, pp. [523]-526.—Marriage dissolved by the wife, pp. [526]-529.—The causes by which the duration of human marriage is influenced, pp. [529]-535.—The duration of marriage among primitive men, p. [535].—The development of the duration of human marriage, pp. [535], et seq.
SUMMARY
PP. 537-550.
| [Authorities Quoted] | pp. 551-580 |
| [Index] | pp. 581-644 |
THE
HISTORY OF HUMAN MARRIAGE
[INTRODUCTION]
ON THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION
It is in the firm conviction that the history of human civilization should be made an object of as scientific a treatment as the history of organic nature that I write this book. Like the phenomena of physical and psychical life those of social life should be classified into certain groups, and each group investigated with regard to its origin and development. Only when treated in this way can history lay claim to the rank and honour of a science in the highest sense of the term, as forming an important part of Sociology the youngest of the principal branches of learning.
Descriptive historiography has no higher object than that of offering materials to this science. It can, however, but very inadequately fulfil this task. The written evidences of history do not reach far into antiquity. They give us information about times when the scale of civilization was already comparatively high—but scarcely anything more. As to the origin and early development of social institutions, they leave us entirely in the dark. The sociologist cannot rest content with this. But the information which historical documents are unable to afford him, may be, to a great extent, obtained from ethnography.
The admirable works of Dr. Tylor, Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. Herbert Spencer have already made us familiar with the idea of a history of primitive civilization, based on ethnographical grounds. This new manner of treating history has, since the publication of their writings on the subject, gained adherents day by day. Immeasurable expanses have thus been opened to our knowledge, and many important results have been reached. But it must, on the other hand, be admitted that the scientific value of the conclusions drawn from ethnographical facts has not always been adequate to the labour, thought, and acumen bestowed on them. The various investigators have, in many important questions, come to results so widely different, that the possibility of thus getting any information about the past might easily be doubted. These differences, however, seem to me to be due, not to the material, but to the manner of treating it.
“The chief sources of information regarding the early history of civil society,” says Mr. McLennan, “are, first, the study of races in their primitive condition; and, second, the study of the symbols employed by advanced nations in the constitution or exercise of civil rights.”[1]
Yet nothing has been more fatal to the Science of Society than the habit of inferring, without sufficient reasons, from the prevalence of a custom or institution among some savage peoples, that this custom, this institution is a relic of a stage of development that the whole human race once went through. Thus the assumption that primitive men lived in tribes or hordes, all the men of which had promiscuous intercourse with all the women, where no individual marriage existed, and the children were the common property of the tribe, is founded, in the first place, on the statements of some travellers and ancient writers as to peoples among whom this custom is said actually to prevail, or to have prevailed. Dr. Post has gone still further in his book, ‘Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit und die Entstehung der Ehe.’ Without adducing any satisfactory reason for his opinion, he considers it probable that “monogamous marriage originally emerged everywhere from pure communism in women, through the intermediate stages of limited communism in women, polyandry, and polygyny.”[2] Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, in his ‘Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,’ has suggested no fewer than fifteen normal stages in the evolution of marriage and the family, assuming the existence and general prevalence of a series of customs and institutions “which must of necessity have preceded a knowledge of marriage between single pairs, and of the family itself, in the modern sense of the term.”[3] According to him, one of the first stages in this series is the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, as evidence of which he adduces, besides other facts, the historical statements that one of the Herods was married to his sister, and Cleopatra was married to her brother.[4]
Again, in the study of symbols, or survivals, the sociologists have by no means always been so careful as the matter requires. True enough that “wherever we discover symbolical forms, we are justified in inferring that in the past life of the people employing them, there were corresponding realities.”[5] But all depends upon our rightly interpreting these symbols, and not putting into them a foreign meaning. The worst is, however, that many customs have been looked upon as survivals that probably are not so. Thus, for instance, I think that Mr. McLennan is mistaken in considering the system of the Levirate, under which, at a man’s death, his wife or wives pass to his brother, as a test of the former presence of polyandry, the brothers of a family having a common wife.
Similar conclusions being of common occurrence in modern Sociology, it is not surprising that different writers dissent so frequently from each other. This should be a strong reason for every conscientious investigator first of all putting to himself the question: how can we from ethnographical facts acquire information regarding the early history of mankind?
I do not think that this question can be correctly answered in more than one way. We have first to find out the causes of the social phenomena; then, from the prevalence of the causes, we may infer the prevalence of the phenomena themselves, if the former must be assumed to have operated without being checked by other causes.
If, then, historical researches based on ethnography are to be crowned with success, the first condition is that there shall be a rich material. It is only by comparing a large number of facts that we may hope to find the cause or causes on which a social phenomenon is dependent. And a rich material is all the more indispensable, as the trustworthiness of ethnographical statements is not always beyond dispute. Without a thorough knowledge of a people it is impossible to give an exact account of its habits and customs, and therefore it often happens that the statements of a traveller cannot, as regards trustworthiness, come up to the evidences of history. As the sociologist is in many cases unable to distinguish falsehood from truth, he must be prepared to admit the inaccuracy of some of the statements he quotes. What is wanting in quality must be made up for in quantity; and he who does not give himself the trouble to read through a voluminous literature of ethnography should never enter into speculations on the origin and early development of human civilization.
Often, no doubt, it is extremely difficult to make out the causes of social phenomena. There are, for instance, among savage peoples many customs which it seems almost impossible to explain. Still, the statistical ‘method of investigating the development of institutions,’ admirably set forth in the paper which Dr. Tylor recently read before ‘The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,’[6] will throw light upon many mysterious points. Dr. Tylor has there shown that causal relations among social facts may be discovered by way of tabulation and classification. The particular rules of the different peoples are to be scheduled out into tables, so as to indicate the “adhesions,” or relations of coexistence of each custom, showing which peoples have the same custom, and what other customs accompany it or lie apart from it. If, then, starting with any two customs, the number of their “adhesions” is found to be much greater than the number of times they would coexist according to the ordinary law of chance-distribution—which number is calculated from the total number of peoples classified and the number of occurrences of each custom—we may infer that there is some causal connection between the two customs. Further on, I shall mention some few of the inferences Dr. Tylor has already drawn by means of this method.
The causes on which social phenomena are dependent fall within the domain of different sciences—Biology, Psychology, or Sociology. The reader will find that I put particular stress upon the psychological causes, which have often been deplorably overlooked, or only imperfectly touched upon. And more especially do I believe that the mere instincts have played a very important part in the origin of social institutions and rules.
We could not, however, by following the method of investigation here set forth, form any idea of the earlier stages of human development, unless we had some previous knowledge of the antiquity of mankind. Otherwise we should, of course, be quite ignorant whether the causes in question operated or not in the past. Fortunately, in this respect also, modern science has come to results which scarcely admit any longer of being considered as mere hypotheses. It teaches us, to quote Sir John Lubbock, “that man was at first a mere savage, and that the course of history has on the whole been a progress towards civilization, though at times—and at some times for centuries—some races have been stationary, or even have retrograded;”[7] that, however, all savage nations now existing are raised high above primitive men; and that the first beings worthy to be called men, were probably the gradually transformed descendants of some ape-like ancestor. We may, further, take for granted that all the physical and psychical qualities that man, in his present state, has in common with his nearest relatives among the lower animals, also occurred at the earlier stages of human civilization. These conclusions open to us a rich source of new knowledge.
Finally, as to social survivals, I agree, certainly, with Mr. McLennan that they are of great importance to Sociology. But we must be extremely careful not to regard as rudiments customs which may be more satisfactorily explained otherwise.
It is only by strictly keeping to these principles that we may hope to derive information touching the early history of man. In doing so, the student will be on his guard against rash conclusions. Considering that he has to make out the primary sources of social phenomena before writing their history, he will avoid assuming a custom to be primitive, only because, at the first glance, it appears so; he will avoid making rules of exceptions, and constructing the history of human development on the immediate ground of isolated facts. It is true that the critical sociologist, on account of the deficiency of our knowledge, very often has to be content with hypotheses and doubtful presumptions. At any rate, the interests of science are better looked to, if we readily acknowledge our ignorance, than if we pass off vague guesses as established truths.
It is one of the simplest of all social institutions the history of which forms the subject of this book. Indeed, next to the family consisting of mother and offspring only, marriage is probably the simplest. I shall not, however, treat this subject in all its aspects, but confine myself to human marriage, though before dealing with it I must, of course, touch upon the sexual relations of the lower animals also.
The expression “human marriage” will probably be regarded by most people as an improper tautology. But, as we shall see, marriage, in the natural history sense of the term, does not belong exclusively to our own species. No more fundamental difference between man and other animals should be implied in sociological than in biological and psychological terminology. Arbitrary classifications do science much injury.
I shall examine human marriage from its different sides, giving, in accordance with my method, an historical account of each separately. The reader may find much that will outrage his feelings, and, possibly, hurt his sense of modesty; but the concealment of truth is the only indecorum known to science. To keep anything secret within its cold and passionless expanses, would be the same as to throw a cloth round a naked statue.
[CHAPTER I]
THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE
From remote antiquity we are told of kings and rulers who instituted marriage amongst their subjects. We read in ‘Mahâbhârata,’ the Indian poem, that formerly “women were unconfined, and roved about at their pleasure, independent. Though in their youthful innocence, they went astray from their husbands, they were guilty of no offence; for such was the rule in early times.” But Swêtakêtu, son of the Rishi Uddâlaka, could not bear this custom, and established the rule that thenceforward wives should remain faithful to their husbands and husbands to their wives.[8] The Chinese annals recount that, “in the beginning, men differed in nothing from other animals in their way of life. As they wandered up and down in the woods, and women were in common, it happened that children never knew their fathers, but only their mothers.” The Emperor Fou-hi abolished, however, this indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes and instituted marriage.[9] Again, the ancient Egyptians are stated to be indebted to Menes for this institution,[10] and the Greeks to Kekrops. Originally, it is said, they had no idea of conjugal union; they gratified their desires promiscuously, and the children that sprang from these irregular connections always bore the mother’s name. But Kekrops showed the Athenians the inconvenience to society from such an abuse, and established the laws and rules of marriage.[11] The remote Laplanders, also, sing about Njavvis and Attjis, who instituted marriage, and bound their wives by sacred oaths.[12]
Popular imagination prefers the clear and concrete; it does not recognize any abstract laws that rule the universe. Nothing exists without a cause, but this cause is not sought in an agglomeration of external or internal forces; it is taken to be simple and palpable, a personal being, a god or a king. Is it not natural, then, that marriage, which plays such an important part in the life of the individual, as well as in that of the people, should be ascribed to a wise and powerful ruler, or to direct divine intervention?
With notions of this kind science has nothing to do. If we want to find out the origin of marriage, we have to strike into another path, the only one which can lead to the truth, but a path which is open to him alone who regards organic nature as one continued chain, the last and most perfect link of which is man. For we can no more stop within the limits of our own species, when trying to find the root of our psychical and social life, than we can understand the physical condition of the human race without taking into consideration that of the lower animals. I must, therefore, beg the reader to follow me into a domain which many may consider out of the way, but which we must, of necessity, explore in order to discover what we seek.
It is obvious that the preservation of the progeny of the lowest animals depends mainly upon chance. In the great sub-kingdom of the Invertebrata, even the mothers are exempted from nearly all anxiety as regards their offspring. In the highest order, the Insects, the eggs are hatched by the heat of the sun, and the mother, in most cases, does not even see her young. Her care is generally limited to seeking out an appropriate place for laying the eggs, and to fastening them to some proper object and covering them, if this be necessary for their preservation. Again, to the male’s share nothing falls but the function of propagation.[13]
In the lowest classes of the Vertebrata, parental care is likewise almost unheard of. In the immense majority of species, young fishes are hatched without the assistance of their parents, and have, from the outset, to help themselves. Many Teleostei form, however, an exception; and, curiously enough, it is the male on which, in these cases, the parental duty generally devolves. In some instances he constructs a nest, and jealously guards the ova deposited in it by the female; while the male of certain species of Arius carries the ova about with him in his capacious pharynx.[14] Most of the Reptiles place their eggs in a convenient and sunny spot between moss and leaves, and take no further trouble about them. But several of the larger serpents have a curious fashion of laying them in a heap, and then coiling themselves around them in a great hollow cone.[15] And female Crocodiles, as also certain aquatic snakes of Cochin China, observed by Dr. Morice, carry with them even their young.[16]
Among the lower Vertebrata it rarely happens that both parents jointly take care of their progeny. M. Milne Edwards states, indeed, that in the Pipa, or Toad of Surinam, the male helps the female to disburthen herself of her eggs;[17] and the Chelonia are known to live in pairs. “La femelle,” says M. Espinas, “vient sur les plages sablonneuses au moment de la ponte, accompagnée du mâle, et construit un nid en forme de four où la chaleur du soleil fait éclore les œufs.”[18] But it may be regarded as an almost universal rule that the relations of the sexes are utterly fickle. The male and female come together in the paring time; but having satisfied their sexual instincts they part again, and have nothing more to do with one another.
The Chelonia form, with regard to their domestic habits, a transition to the Birds, as they do also from a zoological and, particularly, from an embryological point of view. In the latter class, parental affection has reached a very high degree of development, not only on the mother’s side, but also on the father’s. Male and female help each other to build the nest, the former generally bringing the materials, the latter doing the work. In fulfilling the numberless duties of the breeding season, both birds take a share. Incubation rests principally with the mother, but the father, as a rule, helps his companion, taking her place when she wants to leave the nest for a moment, or providing her with food and protecting her from every danger. Finally, when the duties of the breeding season are over, and the result desired is obtained, a period with new duties commences. During the first few days after hatching, most birds rarely leave their young for long, and then only to procure food for themselves and their family. In cases of great danger, both parents bravely defend their offspring. As soon as the first period of helplessness is over, and the young have grown somewhat, they are carefully taught to shift for themselves; and it is only when they are perfectly capable of so doing that they leave the nest and the parents.
There are, indeed, a few birds that from the first day of their ultra-oval existence lack all parental care; and in some species, as the ducks, it frequently happens that the male leaves family duties wholly to the female. But, as a general rule, both share prosperity and adversity. The hatching of the eggs and the chief part of the rearing duties belong to the mother,[19] whilst the father acts as protector, and provides food, &c.
The relations of the sexes are thus of a very intimate character, male and female keeping together not only during the breeding season, but also after it. Nay, most birds, with the exception of those belonging to the Gallinaceous family, when pairing, do so once for all till either one or the other dies. And Dr. Brehm is so filled with admiration for their exemplary family life, that he enthusiastically declares that “real genuine marriage can only be found among birds.”[20]
This certainly cannot be said of most of the Mammals. The mother is, indeed, very ardently concerned for the welfare of her young, generally nursing them with the utmost affection, but this is by no means the case with the father. There are cases in which he acts as an enemy of his own progeny. But there are not wanting instances to the contrary, the connections between the sexes, though generally restricted to the time of the rut, being, with several species of a more durable character. This is the case with whales,[21] seals,[22] the hippopotamus,[23] the Cervus campestris,[24] gazelles,[25] the Neotragus Hemprichii and other small antelopes,[26] reindeer,[27] the Hydromus coypus,[28] squirrels,[29] moles,[30] the ichneumon,[31] and some carnivorous animals, as a few cats and martens,[32] the yaguarundi in South America,[33] the Canis Brasiliensis,[34] and possibly also the wolf.[35] Among all these animals the sexes remain together even after the birth of the young, the male being the protector of the family.
What among lower Mammals is an exception, is among the Quadrumana a rule. The natives of Madagascar relate that in some species of the Prosimii, male and female nurse their young in common[36]—a statement, however, which has not yet been proved to be true. The mirikina (Nyctipithecus trivirgatus) seems, according to Rengger, to live in pairs throughout the whole year, for, whatever the season, a male and a female are always found together.[37] Of the Mycetes Caraya, Cebus Azarae,[38] and Ateles paniscus,[39] single individuals are very seldom, or never, seen, whole families being generally met with. Among the Arctopitheci,[40] the male parent is expressly said to assist the female in taking care of the young ones.
The most interesting to us are, of course, the man-like apes. Diard was told by the Malays, and he found it afterwards to be true, that the young Siamangs, when in their helpless state, are carried about by their parents, the males by the father, the females by the mother.[41] Lieutenant C. de Crespigny, who was wandering in the northern part of Borneo in 1870, gives the following description of the Orang-utan: “They live in families—the male, female, and a young one. On one occasion I found a family in which were two young ones, one of them much larger than the other, and I took this as a proof that the family tie had existed for at least two seasons. They build commodious nests in the trees which form their feeding-ground, and, so far as I could observe, the nests, which are well lined with dry leaves, are only occupied by the female and young, the male passing the night in the fork of the same or another tree in the vicinity. The nests are very numerous all over the forests, for they are not occupied above a few nights, the mias (or Orang-utan) leading a roving life.”[42] According to Dr. Mohnike, however, the old males generally live with the females during the rutting season only;[43] and Mr. Wallace never saw two full-grown animals together. But as he sometimes found not only females, but also males, accompanied by half-grown young ones,[44] we may take for granted that the offspring of the Orang-utan are not devoid of all paternal care.
More unanimous are the statements which we have regarding the Gorilla. According to Dr. Savage, they live in bands, and all his informants agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in every band. “It is said that when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell that resounds far and wide through the forest.... The females and young at the first cry quickly disappear; he then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession.”[45] Again, Mr. Du Chaillu found “almost always one male with one female, though sometimes the old male wanders companionless;”[46] and Mr. Winwood Reade states likewise that the Gorilla goes “sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by his female and young one.”[47] The same traveller was told that, when a family of Gorillas ascend a tree and eat a certain fruit, the old father remains seated at the foot of the tree. And when the female is pregnant, he builds a rude nest, usually about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground; here she is delivered, and the nest is then abandoned.[48]
For more recent information about the Gorilla we are indebted to Herr von Koppenfells. He states that the male spends the night crouching at the foot of the tree, against which he places his back, and thus protects the female and their young, which are in the nest above, from the nocturnal attacks of leopards. Once he observed a male and female with two young ones of different ages, the elder being perhaps about six years old, the younger about one.[49]
When all these statements are compared, it is impossible to doubt that the Gorilla lives in families, the male parent being in the habit of building the nest and protecting the family. And the same is the case with the Chimpanzee. According to Dr. Savage, “it is not unusual to see ‘the old folks’ sitting under a tree regaling themselves with fruit and friendly chat, while ‘their children’ are leaping around them and swinging from branch to branch in boisterous merriment.”[50] And Herr von Koppenfells assures us that the Chimpanzee, like the Gorilla, builds a nest for the young and female on a forked branch, the male himself spending the night lower down in the tree.[51]
Passing from the highest monkeys to the savage and barbarous races of man, we meet with the same phenomenon. With the exception of a few cases in which certain tribes are asserted to live together promiscuously—almost all of which assertions I shall prove further on to be groundless—travellers unanimously agree that in the human race the relations of the sexes are, as a rule, of a more or less durable character. The family consisting of father, mother, and offspring, is a universal institution, whether founded on a monogamous, polygynous, or polyandrous marriage. And, as among the lower animals having the same habit, it is to the mother that the immediate care of the children chiefly belongs, while the father is the protector and guardian of the family. Man in the savage state is generally supposed to be rather indifferent to the welfare of his wife and children, and this is really often the case, especially if he be compared with civilized man. But the simplest paternal duties are, nevertheless, universally recognized. If he does nothing else, the father builds the habitation, and employs himself in the chase and in war.
Thus, among the North American Indians, it was considered disgraceful for a man to have more wives than he was able to maintain.[52] Mr. Powers says that among the Patwin, a Californian tribe which ranks among the lowest in the world, “the sentiment that the men are bound to support the women—that is to furnish the supplies—is stronger even than among us.”[53] Among the Iroquois it was the office of the husband “to make a mat, to repair the cabin of his wife, or to construct a new one.” The product of his hunting expeditions, during the first year of marriage, belonged of right to his wife, and afterwards he shared it equally with her, whether she remained in the village, or accompanied him to the chase.[54] Azara states that among the Charruas of South America, “du moment où un homme se marie, il forme une famille à part et travaille pour la nourrir;”[55] and among the Fuegians, according to Admiral Fitzroy, “as soon as a youth is able to maintain a wife, by his exertions in fishing or bird-catching, he obtains the consent of her relations.”[56] Again, among the utterly rude Botocudos, whose girls are married very young, remaining in the house of the father till the age of puberty, the husband is even then obliged to maintain his wife, though living apart from her.[57]
To judge from the recent account of Herr Lumholtz, the paternal duties seemed to be scarcely recognized by the natives of Queensland.[58] But with reference to the Kurnai in South Australia, Mr. Howitt states that “the man has to provide for his family with the assistance of his wife. His share is to hunt for their support, and to fight for their protection.” As a Kurnai once said to him, “A man hunts, spears fish, fights, and sits about.”[59] And in the Encounter Bay tribe the paternal care is considered so indispensable, that, if the father dies before a child is born, the child is put to death by the mother, as there is no longer any one to provide for it.[60]
Among the cannibals of New Britain, the chiefs have to see that the families of the warriors are properly maintained.[61] As regards the Tonga Islanders, Martin remarks, “A married woman is one who cohabits with a man, and lives under his roof and protection;”[62] and in Samoa, according to Mr. Pritchard, “whatever intercourse may take place between the sexes, a woman does not become a man’s wife unless the latter take her to his own house.”[63] Among the Maoris, says Mr. Johnston, “the mission of woman was to increase and multiply; that of man to defend his home.”[64] In Radack, even natural children are received by the father into his house, as soon as they are able to walk.[65]
The Rev. D. Macdonald states that, in some African tribes, “a father has to fast after the birth of his child, or take some such method of showing that he recognizes that he as well as the mother should take care of the young stranger.”[66] Certain Africans will not even go on any warlike expedition when they have a young child;[67] and the South American Guaranies, while their wives are pregnant do not risk their lives in hunting wild beasts.[68] In Lado the bridegroom has to assure his father-in-law three times that he will protect his wife, calling the people present to witness.[69] And among the Touaregs, according to Dr. Chavanne, a man who deserts his wife is blamed, as he has taken upon himself the obligation of maintaining her.[70]
The wretched Rock Veddahs in Ceylon, according to Sir J. Emerson Tennent, “acknowledge the marital obligation and the duty of supporting their own families.”[71] Among the Maldivians, “although a man is allowed four wives at one time, it is only on condition of his being able to support them.”[72] The Nagas are not permitted to marry until they are able to set up house on their own account.[73] The Nairs, we are told, consider it a husband’s duty to provide his wife with food, clothing, and ornaments;[74] and almost the same is said by Dr. Schwaner with reference to the tribes of the Barito district, in the south-east part of Borneo.[75] A Burmese woman can demand a divorce, if her husband is not able to maintain her properly.[76] Among the Mohammedans, the maintenance of the children devolves so exclusively on the father, that the mother is even entitled to claim wages for nursing them.[77] And among the Romans, manus implied not only the wife’s subordination to the husband, but also the husband’s obligation to protect the wife.[78]
The father’s place in the family being that of a supporter and protector, a man is often not permitted to marry until he has given some proof of his ability to fulfil these duties.
The Koyúkuns believe that a youth who marries before he has killed a deer will have no children.[79] The aborigines of Pennsylvania considered it a shame for a boy to think of a wife before having given some proof of his manhood.[80] Among the wild Indians of British Guiana, says Mr. Im Thurn, before a man is allowed to choose a wife he must prove that he can do a man’s work and is able to support himself and his family.[81] Among the Dyaks of Borneo,[82] the Nagas of Upper Assam,[83] and the Alfura of Ceram,[84] no one can marry unless he has in his possession a certain number of heads. The Karmanians, according to Strabo, were considered marriageable only after having killed an enemy.[85] The desire of a Galla warrior is to deprive the enemy of his genitals, the possession of such a trophy being a necessary preliminary to marriage.[86] Among the Bechuana and Kafir tribes south of the Zambesi, the youth is not allowed to take a wife until he has killed a rhinoceros.[87] In the Marianne Group, the suitor had to give proof of his bodily strength and skill.[88] And among the Arabs of Upper Egypt, the man must undergo an ordeal of whipping by the relations of his bride in order to test his courage. If he wishes to be considered worth having, he must receive the chastisement, which is sometimes exceedingly severe, with an expression of enjoyment.[89]
The idea that a man is bound to maintain his family is, indeed, so closely connected with that of marriage and fatherhood, that sometimes even repudiated wives with their children are, at least to a certain extent, supported by their former husbands. This is the case among the Chukchi of North-Western Asia,[90] the Basutos in Southern Africa,[91] and the Munda Kols in Chota Nagpore.[92] Further, a wife frequently enjoys her husband’s protection even after sexual relations have been broken off. And upon his death, the obligation of maintaining her and her children devolves on his heirs, the wide-spread custom of a man marrying the widow of his deceased brother being, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, not only a privilege belonging to the man, but, among several peoples, even a duty. We may thus take for granted that in the human race, at least at its present stage, the father has to perform the same function as in other animal species, where the connections between the sexes last longer than the sexual desire.
In encyclopedical and philosophical works we meet with several different definitions of the word marriage. Most of these definitions are, however, of a merely juridical or ethical nature, comprehending either what is required to make the union legal,[93] or what, in the eye of an idealist, the union ought to be.[94] But it is scarcely necessary to say how far I am here from using the word in either of these senses. It is the natural history of human marriage that is the object of this treatise; and, from a scientific point of view, I think there is but one definition which may claim to be generally admitted, that, namely, according to which marriage is nothing else than a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. This definition is wide enough to include all others hitherto given, and narrow enough to exclude those wholly loose connections which by usage are never honoured with the name of marriage. It implies not only sexual relations, but also living together, as is set forth in the proverb of the Middle Ages, “Boire, manger, coucher ensemble est mariage, ce me semble.”[95] And, though, rather vague, which is a matter of course, it has the advantage of comprehending in one notion phenomena essentially similar and having a common origin.
Thus, as appears from the preceding investigation, the first traces of marriage are found among the Chelonia. With the Birds it is an almost universal institution, whilst, among the Mammals, it is restricted to certain species only. We observed, however, that it occurs, as a rule, among the monkeys, especially the anthropomorphous apes as well as in the races of men. Is it probable, then, that marriage was transmitted to man from some ape-like ancestor, and that there never was a time when it did not occur in the human race? These questions cannot be answered before we have found out the cause to which it owes its origin.
It is obvious that where the generative power is restricted to a certain season, it cannot be the sexual instinct that keeps male and female together for months or years. Nor is there any other egoistic motive that could probably account for this habit. Considering that the union lasts till after the birth of the offspring, and considering the care taken of this by the father, we may assume that the prolonged union of the sexes is, in some way or other connected with parental duties. I am, indeed, strongly of opinion that the tie which joins male and female is an instinct developed through the powerful influence of natural selection. It is evident that, when the father helps to protect the offspring, the species is better able to subsist in the struggle for existence than it would be if this obligation entirely devolved on the mother. Paternal affection and the instinct which causes male and female to form somewhat durable alliances, are thus useful mental dispositions which, in all probability, have been acquired through the survival of the fittest.
But how, then, can it be that among most animals the father never concerns himself about his progeny? The answer is not difficult to find. Marriage is only one of many means by which a species is enabled to subsist. Where parental care is lacking, we may be sure to find compensation for it in some other way. Among the Invertebrata, Fishes, and Reptiles, both parents are generally quite indifferent as to their progeny. An immense proportion of the progeny therefore succumb before reaching maturity; but the number of eggs laid is proportionate to the number of those lost, and the species is preserved nevertheless. If every grain of roe, spawned by the female fishes, were fecundated and hatched, the sea would not be large enough to hold all the creatures resulting from them. The eggs of Reptiles need no maternal care, the embryo being developed by the heat of the sun; and their young are from the outset able to help themselves, leading the same life as the adults. Among Birds, on the other hand, parental care is an absolute necessity. Equal and continual warmth is the first requirement for the development of the embryo and the preservation of the young ones. For this the mother almost always wants the assistance of the father, who provides her with necessaries, and sometimes relieves her of the brooding. Among Mammals, the young can never do without the mother at the tenderest age, but the father’s aid is generally by no means indispensable. In some species, as the walrus,[96] the elephant,[97] the Bos americanus,[98] and the bat,[99] there seems to be a rather curious substitute for paternal protection, the females, together with their young ones, collecting in large herds or flocks apart from the males. Again, as to the marriage of the Primates, it is, I think, very probably due to the small number of young, the female bringing forth but one at a time; and, among the highest apes, as in man, also to the long period of infancy.[100] Perhaps, too, the defective family life of the Orang-utan, compared with that of the Gorilla and Chimpanzee, depends upon the fewer dangers to which this animal is exposed. For “except man,” Dr. Mohnike says, “the Orang-utan in Borneo has no enemy of equal strength.”[101] In short, the factors which the existence of a species depends upon, as the number of the progeny, their ability to help themselves when young, maternal care, marriage, &c., vary indefinitely in different species. But in those that do not succumb, all these factors are more or less proportionate to each other, the product always being the maintenance of the species.
Marriage and family are thus intimately connected with each other: it is for the benefit of the young that male and female continue to live together. Marriage is therefore rooted in family, rather than family in marriage. There are also many peoples among whom true conjugal life does not begin before a child is born, and others who consider that the birth of a child out of wedlock makes it obligatory for the parents to marry. Among the Eastern Greenlanders[102] and the Fuegians,[103] marriage is not regarded as complete till the woman has become a mother. Among the Shawanese[104] and Abipones,[105] the wife very often remains at her father’s house till she has a child. Among the Khyens, the Ainos of Yesso, and one of the aboriginal tribes of China, the husband goes to live with his wife at her father’s house, and never takes her away till after the birth of a child.[106] In Circassia, the bride and bridegroom are kept apart until the first child is born;[107] and among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, a wife never enters her husband’s tent until she becomes far advanced in pregnancy.[108] Among the Baele, the wife remains with her parents until she becomes a mother, and if this does not happen, she stays there for ever, the husband getting back what he has paid for her.[109] In Siam, a wife does not receive her marriage portion before having given birth to a child;[110] while among the Atkha Aleuts, according to Erman, a husband does not pay the purchase sum before he has become a father.[111] Again, the Badagas in Southern India have two marriage ceremonies, the second of which does not take place till there is some indication that the pair are to have a family; and if there is no appearance of this, the couple not uncommonly separate.[112] Dr. Bérenger-Féraud states that, among the Wolofs in Senegambia, “ce n’est que lorsque les signes de la grossesse sont irrécusables chez la fiancée, quelquefois même ce n’est qu’après la naissance d’un ou plusieurs enfants, que la cérémonie du mariage proprement dit s’accomplit.”[113] And the Igorrotes of Luzon consider no engagement binding until the woman has become pregnant.[114]
On the other hand, Emin Pasha tells us that, among the Mádi in Central Africa, “should a girl become pregnant, the youth who has been her companion is bound to marry her, and to pay to her father the customary price of a bride.”[115] Burton reports a similar custom as prevailing among peoples dwelling to the south of the equator.[116] Among many of the wild tribes of Borneo, there is almost unrestrained intercourse between the youth of both sexes; but, if pregnancy ensue, marriage is regarded as necessary.[117] The same, as I am informed by Dr. A. Bunker, is the case with some Karen tribes in Burma. In Tahiti, according to Cook, the father might kill his natural child, but if he suffered it to live, the parties were considered to be in the married state.[118] Among the Tipperahs of the Chittagong Hills,[119] as well as the peasants of the Ukraine,[120] a seducer is bound to marry the girl, should she become pregnant. Again, Mr.Powers informs us that, among the Californian Wintun, if a wife is abandoned when she has a young child, she is justified by her friends in destroying it on the ground that it has no supporter.[121] And among the Creeks, a young woman that becomes pregnant by a man whom she had expected to marry, and is disappointed, is allowed the same privilege.[122]
It might, however, be supposed that, in man, the prolonged union of the sexes is due to another cause besides the offspring’s want of parental care, i.e., to the fact that the sexual instinct is not restricted to any particular season, but endures throughout the whole year. “That which distinguishes man from the beast,” Beaumarchais says, “is drinking without being thirsty, and making love at all seasons.” But in the next chapter, I shall endeavour to show that this is probably not quite correct, so far as our earliest human or semi-human ancestors are concerned.
[CHAPTER II]
A HUMAN PAIRING SEASON IN PRIMITIVE TIMES
Professor Leuckart assumes that the periodicity in the sexual life of animals depends upon economical conditions, the reproductive matter being a surplus of the individual economy. Hence he says that the rut occurs at the time when the proportion between receipts and expenditure is most favourable.[123]
Though this hypothesis is accepted by several eminent physiologists, facts do not support the assumption that the power of reproduction is correlated with abundance of food and bodily vigour. There are some writers who even believe that the reverse is the case.[124]
At any rate, it is not correct to say, with Dr. Gruenhagen, that “the general wedding-feast is spring, when awakening nature opens, to most animals, new and ample sources of living.”[125] This is certainly true of Reptiles and Birds, but not of Mammals; every month or season of the year is the pairing season of one or another mammalian species.[126] But notwithstanding this apparent irregularity, the pairing time of every species is bound by an unfailing law; it sets in earlier or later, according as the period of gestation lasts longer or shorter, so that the young may be born at the time when they are most likely to survive. Thus, most Mammals bring forth their young early in spring, or, in tropical countries, at the beginning of the rainy season; the period then commences when life is more easily sustained, when prey is most abundant, when there is enough water and vegetable food, and when the climate becomes warmer. In the highlands, animals pair later than those living in lower regions,[127] whilst those of the polar and temperate zones generally pair later than those of the tropics. As regards the species living in different latitudes the pairing time comes earlier or later, according to the differences in climate.[128]
Far from depending upon any general physiological law, the rut is thus adapted to the requirements of each species separately. Here again we have an example of the powerful effects of natural selection, often showing themselves very obviously. The dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius), for instance, that feeds upon hazel-nuts, pairs in July, and brings forth its young in August, when nuts begin to ripen. Then the young grow very quickly, so that they are able to bear the autumn and winter cold.[129]
There are, however, a few wild species, as some whales,[130] the elephant,[131] many Rodents,[132] and several of the lower monkeys,[133] that seem to have no definite pairing season. As to them it is, perhaps, sufficient to quote Dr. Brehm’s statement with reference to the elephant, “The richness of their woods is so great, that they really never suffer want.”[134] But the man-like apes do not belong to this class. According to Mr. Winwood Reade, the male Gorillas fight at the rutting season for their females;[135] Dr. Mohnike, as also other authorities, mentions the occurrence of a rut-time with the Orang-utan.[136] And we find that both of these species breed early in the season when fruits begin to be plentiful,—that is, their pairing time depends on the same law as that which prevails in the rest of the animal kingdom.
Sir Richard Burton says, “The Gorilla breeds about December, a cool and dry month; according to my bushmen, the period of gestation is between five and six months.”[137] I have referred this important statement to Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, who writes as follows: “From the maps of rain distribution in Africa in Stanford’s ‘Compendium,’ the driest months in the Gorilla country seem to be January and February, and these would probably be the months of greatest fruit supply.” As regards the Orang-utan, Mr. Wallace adds, “I found the young sucking Orang-utan in May; that was about the second or third month of the dry season, in which fruits began to be plentiful.”
Considering, then, that the periodicity of the sexual life rests on the kind of food on which the species lives, together with other circumstances connected with anatomical and physiological peculiarities, and considering, further, the close biological resemblance between man and the man-like apes, we are almost compelled to assume that the pairing time of our earliest human or half-human ancestors was restricted to a certain season of the year, as was also the case with their nearest relations among the lower animals. This presumption derives further probability from there being, even now, some rude peoples who are actually stated to have an annual pairing time, and other peoples whose sexual instinct undergoes most decidedly a periodical increase at a certain time of the year.
According to Mr. Johnston, the wild Indians of California, belonging to the lowest races on earth, “have their rutting seasons as regularly as have the deer, the elk, the antelope, or any other animals.”[138] And Mr. Powers confirms the correctness of this statement, at least with regard to some of these Indians, saying that spring “is a literal Saint Valentine’s Day with them, as with the natural beasts and birds of the forest.”[139]
As regards the Goddanes in Luzon, Mr. Foreman tells us that “it is the custom of the young men about to marry, to vie with each other in presenting to the sires of their future bride all the scalps they are able to take from their enemies, as proof of their manliness and courage. This practice prevails at the season of the year when the tree—popularly called by the Spaniards ‘the fire-tree’—is in bloom.”[140]
Speaking of the Watch-an-dies in the western part of Australia, Mr. Oldfield remarks, “Like the beasts of the field, the savage has but one time for copulation in the year.[141] About the middle of spring ... the Watch-an-dies begin to think of holding their grand semi-religious festival of Caa-ro, preparatory to the performance of the important duty of procreation.”[142] A similar feast, according to Mr. Bonwick, was celebrated by the Tasmanians at the same time of the year.[143]
The Hos, an Indian hill tribe, have, as we are informed by Colonel Dalton, every year a great feast in January, “when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, full of devilry. They have a strange notion that at this period, men and women are so over-charged with vicious propensities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing for a time full vent to the passions. The festival, therefore, becomes a saturnalia, during which servants forget their duty to their masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness.” Men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities, and the utmost liberty is given to the girls.[144]
The same writer adds that “it would appear that most Hill Tribes have found it necessary to promote marriage by stimulating intercourse between the sexes at particular seasons of the year.”[145] Among the Santals, “the marriages mostly take place once a year, in January; for six days all the candidates for matrimony live in promiscuous concubinage, after which the whole party are supposed to have paired off as man and wife.”[146] The Punjas in Jeypore, according to Dr. Shortt, have a festival in the first month of the new year, where men and women assemble. The lower order or castes observe this festival, which is kept up for a month, by both sexes mixing promiscuously, and taking partners as their choice directs.[147] A similar feast, comprising a continuous course of debauchery and licentiousness, is held once a year, by the Kotars, a tribe inhabiting the Neilgherries;[148] according to Mr. Bancroft, by the Keres in New Mexico;[149] according to Dr. Fritsch, by the Hottentots;[150] according to the Rev. H. Rowley, by the Kafirs;[151] and, as I am informed by Mr. A. J. Swann, by some tribes near Nyassa. Writers of the sixteenth century speak of the existence of certain early festivals in Russia, at which great license prevailed. According to Pamphill, these annual gatherings took place, as a rule, at the end of June, the day before the festival of St. John the Baptist, which, in pagan times, was that of a divinity known by the name of Jarilo, corresponding to the Priapus of the Greeks.[152] At Rome, a festival in honour of Venus took place in the month of April;[153] and Mannhardt mentions some curious popular customs in Germany, England, Esthonia and other European countries, which seem to indicate an increase of the sexual instinct in spring or at the beginning of summer.[154]
By questions addressed to persons living among various savage peoples, I have inquired whether among these peoples, marriages are principally contracted at a certain time of the year, and whether more children are born in one month or season than in another. In answer, Mr. Radfield writes from Lifu, near New Caledonia, that marriages there formerly took place at various times, when suitable, but “November used to be the time at which engagements were made.” As the seasons in this island are the reverse of those in England, this month includes the end of spring and the beginning of summer. The Rev. H. T. Cousins informs me that, among the Kafirs inhabiting what is known as Cis-Natalian Kafirland, “there are more children born in one month or season than in another, viz. August and September, which are the spring months in South Africa;” and he ascribes this surplus of births to feasts, comprising debauchery and unrestricted intercourse between the unmarried people of both sexes. Again, Dr. A. Sims writes from Stanley Pool that, among the Bateke, more children are born in September and October, that is, in the seasons of the early rains, than at other times; and the Rev. Ch. E. Ingham, writing from Banza Manteka, states that he believes the same to be the case among the Bakongo. But the Rev. T. Bridges informs me that, among the Yahgans in the southern part of Tierra del Fuego, so far as he knows, one month is the same as another with regard to the number of births. I venture, however, to think that this result might be somewhat modified by a minute inquiry, embracing a sufficient number of cases. For statistics prove that even in civilized countries, there is a regular periodical fluctuation in the birth-rate.
In the eighteenth century Wargentin showed that, in Sweden more children were born in one month than in another.[155] The same has since been found to be the case in other European countries. According to Wappäus, the number of births in Sardinia, Belgium, Holland, and Sweden is subject to a regular increase twice a year, the maximum of the first increase occurring in February or March, that of the second in September and October.[156] M. Sormani observed that, in the south of Italy, there is an increase only once in the year, but more to the north twice, in spring and in autumn.[157] Dr. Mayr and Dr. Beukemann found in Germany two annual maxima—in February or March, and in September;—[158]and Dr. Haycraft states that, in the eight largest towns of Scotland, more children are born in legitimate wedlock in April than in any other month.[159] As a rule, according to M. Sormani, the first annual augmentation of births has its maximum, in Sweden, in March; in France and Holland, between February and March; in Belgium, Spain, Austria and Italy, in February; in Greece, in January; so that it comes earlier in southern Europe than farther to the north.[160] Again, the second annual increase is found more considerable the more to the north we go. In South Germany it is smaller than the first one, but in North Germany generally larger;[161] and in Sweden, it is decidedly larger.[162]
As to non-European countries, Wappäus observed that in Massachusetts, the birth-rate likewise underwent an increase twice a year, the maxima falling in March and September; and that in Chili many more children were born in September and October—i.e., at the beginning of spring—than in any other month.[163] Finally, Mr. S. A. Hill, of Allahabad, has proved, by statistical data, that, among the Hindus of that province, the birth-rates exhibit a most distinct annual variation, the minimum falling in June and the maximum in September and October.[164]
This unequal distribution of births over the different months of the year is ascribed to various causes by statisticians. It is, however, generally admitted that the maximum in February and March (in Chili, September) is, at least to a great extent, due to the sexual instinct being strongest in May and June (in Chili, December).[165] This is the more likely to be the case as it is especially illegitimate births that are then comparatively numerous. And it appears extremely probable that, in Africa also, the higher birth-rates in the seasons of the early rains owe their origin to the same cause.
Thus, comparing the facts stated, we find, among various races of men, the sexual instinct increasing at the end of spring, or, rather, at the beginning of summer. Some peoples of India seem to form an exception to this rule, lascivious festivals, in the case of several of them, taking place in the month of January, and the maximum of births, among the Hindus of Allahabad, falling at the end of the hot season, or in early autumn. But in India also there are traces of strengthened passions in spring. M. Rousselet gives the following description of the indecent Holi festival, as it is celebrated among the Hindus of Oudeypour. “The festival of Holi marks the arrival of spring, and is held in honour of the goddess Holica, or Vasanti, who personifies that season in the Hindu Pantheon. The carnival lasts several days, during which time the most licentious debauchery and disorder reign throughout every class of society. It is the regular saturnalia of India. Persons of the greatest respectability, without regard to rank or age, are not ashamed to take part in the orgies which mark this season of the year.... Women and children crowd round the hideous idols of the feast of Holica, and deck them with flowers; and immorality reigns supreme in the streets of the capital.”[166] Among the Aryans who inhabited the plains of the North, the spring, or “vasanta,” corresponding to the months of March and April, was the season of love and pleasure, celebrated in song by the poets, and the time for marriages and religious feasts.[167] And among the Rajputs of Mewar, according to Lieutenant-Colonel Tod, the last days of spring are dedicated to Camdéva, the god of love: “the scorching winds of the hot season are already beginning to blow, when Flora droops her head, and the ‘god of love turns anchorite.’”[168]
We must not, however, infer that this enhancement of the procreative power is to be attributed directly to “the different positions of the sun with respect to the earth,”[169] or to the temperature of a certain season. The phenomenon does not immediately spring from this cause in the case of any other animal species. Neither can it be due to abundance of food. In the northern parts of Europe many more conceptions take place in the months of May and June, when the conditions of life are often rather hard, than in September, October, and November, when the supplies of food are comparatively plentiful. In the north-western provinces of Germany, as well as in Sweden, the latter months are characterized by a minimum of conceptions.[170] Among the Kaffirs, more children are conceived in November and December than in any other month, although, according to the Rev. H. T. Cousins, food is most abundant among them from March to September. And among the Bateke, the maximum of conceptions falls in December and January, although food is, as I am informed by Dr. Sims, most plentiful in the dry season, that is, from May to the end of August.
On the other hand, the periodical increase of conceptions cannot be explained by the opposite hypothesis, entertained by some physiologists, that the power of reproduction is increased by want and distress. Among the Western Australians and Californians,[171] for instance, the season of love is accompanied by a surplus of food, and in the land of the Bakongo, among whom Mr. Ingham believes most conceptions to take place in December and January, food is, according to him, most abundant precisely in these months and in February.
It seems, therefore, a reasonable presumption that the increase of the sexual instinct at the end of spring or in the beginning of summer, is a survival of an ancient pairing season, depending upon the same law that rules in the rest of the animal kingdom. Since spring is rather a time of want than a time of abundance for a frugivorous species, it is impossible to believe that our early ancestors, as long as they fed upon fruits, gave birth to their young at the beginning of that period. From the statements of Sir Richard Burton and Mr. A. R. Wallace, already quoted,[172] we know that the man-like apes breed early in the season when fruits begin to be plentiful. But when man began to feed on herbs, roots, and animal food, the conditions were changed. Spring is the season of the re-awakening of life, when there are plenty of vegetables and prey. Hence those children whose infancy fell in this period survived more frequently than those born at any other. Considering that the parents of at least a few of them must have had an innate tendency to the increase of the power of reproduction at the beginning of summer, and considering, further, that this tendency must have been transmitted to some of the offspring, like many other characteristics which occur periodically at certain seasons,[173] we can readily understand that gradually, through the influence of natural selection, a race would emerge whose pairing time would be exclusively or predominantly restricted to the season most favourable to its subsistence. To judge from the period when most children are born among existing peoples, the pairing season of our prehistoric ancestors occurred, indeed, somewhat earlier in the year than is the case with the majority of mammalian species. But we must remember that the infancy of man is unusually long; and, with regard to the time most favourable to the subsistence of children, we must take into consideration not only the first days of their existence, but the first period of their infancy in general. Besides food and warmth, several other factors affect the welfare of the offspring, and it is often difficult to find out all of them. We do not know the particular circumstances that make the badger breed at the end of February or the beginning of March,[174] and the reindeer of the Norwegian mountains as early as April;[175] but there can be no doubt that these breeding seasons are adapted to the requirements of the respective species.
The cause of the winter maximum of conceptions, especially considerable among the peoples of Northern Europe, is generally sought in social influences, as the quiet ensuing on the harvest time, the better food, and the amusements of Christmas.[176] But the people certainly recover before December from the labours of the field, and Christmas amusements, as Wargentin remarks, take place at the end of that month and far into January, without any particular influence upon the number of births in October being observable.[177] It has, further, been proved that the unequal distribution of marriages over the different months exercises hardly any influence upon the distribution of births.[178] Again, among the Hindus the December and January maximum of conceptions seems from the lascivious festivities of several Indian peoples to be due to an increase of the sexual instinct. According to Mr. Hill, this increase depends upon healthy conditions with an abundant food supply. But, as I have already said, it is not proved that a strengthened power of reproduction and abundance of food are connected with one another.
I am far from venturing to express any definite opinion as to the cause of these particular phenomena, but it is not impossible that they also are effects of natural selection, although of a comparatively recent date. Considering that the September maximum of births (or December maximum of conceptions) in Europe becomes larger the farther north we go; that the agricultural peoples of Northern Europe have plenty of food in autumn and during the first part of winter, but often suffer a certain degree of want in spring; and, finally, that the winter cold does not affect the health of infants, the woods giving sufficient material for fuel,—it has occurred to me that children born in September may have a better chance of surviving than others. Indeed, Dr. Beukemann states that the number of still-born births is largest in winter or at the beginning of spring, and that “the children born in autumn possess the greatest vitality and resisting power against the dangers of earliest infancy.”[179] This would perhaps be an adequate explanation either of an increase of the sexual instinct or of greater disposition to impregnation in December. It is not impossible either, that the increase of the power of reproduction among the Hindus in December and January, which causes an increase of births in September and October—i.e., the end of the hot season and the beginning of winter—owes its origin to the fact that during the winter the granaries get filled and some of the conditions of life become more healthy. But it should be remarked that September itself, according to Mr. Hill, is a very unhealthy month.[180]
Now it can be explained, I believe for the first time, how it happens that man, unlike the lower animals, is not limited to a particular period of the year in which to court the female.[181] The Darwinian theory of natural selection can, as it seems to me, account for the periodicity of the sexual instinct in such a rude race as the Western Australians, among whom the mortality of children is so enormous that the greater number of them do not survive even the first month after birth,[182] and who inhabit a land pre-eminently unproductive of animals and vegetables fitted to sustain human life, a land where, “during the summer seasons, the black man riots in comparative abundance, but during the rest of the year ... the struggle for existence becomes very severe.”[183] The more progress man makes in arts and inventions; the more he acquires the power of resisting injurious external influences; the more he rids himself of the necessity of freezing when it is cold, and starving when nature is less lavish with food; in short, the more independent he becomes of the changes of the seasons—the greater is the probability that children born at one time of the year will survive as well, or almost as well, as those born at any other. Variations as regards the pairing time, always likely to occur occasionally, will do so the more frequently on account of changed conditions of life, which directly or indirectly cause variability of every kind;[184] and these variations will be preserved and transmitted to following generations. Thus we can understand how a race has arisen, endowed with the ability to procreate children in any season. We can also understand how, even in such a rude race as the Yahgans in Tierra del Fuego, the seasonable distribution of births seems to be pretty equal, as there is, according to the Rev. T. Bridges, “such a variety of food in the various seasons that there is strictly no period of hardship, save such as is caused by accidents of weather.” We can explain, too, why the periodical fluctuation in the number of births, though comparatively inconsiderable in every civilized society, is greater in countries predominantly agricultural, such as Chili, than in countries predominantly industrial, as Saxony;[185] why it is greater in rural districts than in towns;[186] and why it was greater in Sweden in the middle of the last century than it is now.[187] For the more man has abandoned natural life out of doors, the more luxury has increased and his habits have got refined, the greater is the variability to which his sexual life has become subject, and the smaller has been the influence exerted upon it by the changes of the seasons.
Man has thus gone through the same transition as certain domestic animals. The he-goat[188] and the ass in southern countries,[189] for instance, rut throughout the whole year. The domestic pig pairs generally twice a year, while its wild ancestors had but one rutting season.[190] Dr. Hermann Müller has even observed a canary that laid eggs in autumn and winter.[191] Natural selection cannot, of course, account for such alterations: they fall under the law of variation. It is the limited pairing season that is a product of this powerful process, which acts with full force only under conditions free from civilization and domestication.
If the hypothesis set forth in this chapter holds good, it must be admitted that the continued excitement of the sexual instinct could not have played a part in the origin of human marriage—provided that this institution did exist among primitive men. Whether this was the case I shall examine in the following chapters.
[CHAPTER III]
THE ANTIQUITY OF HUMAN MARRIAGE
If it be admitted that marriage, as a necessary requirement for the existence of certain species, is connected with some peculiarities in their organism, and, more particularly among the highest monkeys, with the paucity of their progeny and their long period of infancy,—it must at the same time be admitted that, among primitive men, from the same causes as among these animals, the sexes in all probability kept together till after the birth of the offspring. Later on, when the human race passed beyond its frugivorous stage and spread over the earth, living chiefly on animal food, the assistance of an adult male became still more necessary for the subsistence of the children. Everywhere the chase devolves on the man, it being a rare exception among savage peoples for a woman to engage in it.[192] Under such conditions a family consisting of mother and young only, would probably, as a rule, have succumbed.
It has, however, been suggested that, in olden times, the natural guardian of the children was not the father, but the maternal uncle.[193] This inference has been drawn chiefly from the common practice of a nephew succeeding his mother’s brother in rank and property. But sometimes the relation between the two is still more intimate. “La famille Malaise proprement dite—le Sa-Mandei,—” says a Dutch writer, as quoted by Professor Giraud-Teulon, “consiste dans la mère et ses enfants: le père n’en fait point partie. Les liens de parenté qui unissent ce dernier à ses frères et sœurs sont plus étrois que ceux qui le rattachent à sa femme et à ses propres enfants. Il continue même après son mariage à vivre dans sa famille maternelle; c’est là qu’est son véritable domicile, et non pas dans la maison de sa femme: il ne cesse pas de cultiver le champ de sa propre famille, à travailler pour elle, et n’aide sa femme qu’accidentellement. Le chef de la famille est ordinairement le frère aîné du côté maternel (le mamak ou avunculus). De par ses droits et ses devoirs, c’est lui le vrai père des enfants de sa sœur.”[194] As regards the mountaineers of Georgia, especially the Pshaves, M. Kovalevsky states that, among them, “le frère de la mère prend la place du père dans toutes les circonstances où il s’agit de venger le sang répandu, surtout au cas de meurtre commis sur la personne de son neveu.”[195] Among the Goajiro Indians,[196] the Negroes of Bondo,[197] the Barea, and the Bazes,[198] it is the mother’s brother who has the right of selling a girl to her suitor. Touching the Kois, the Rev. John Cain says, “The maternal uncle of any Koi girl has the right to bestow her hand on any one of his sons, or any other suitable candidate who meets with his approval. The father and the mother of the girl have no acknowledged voice in the matter. A similar custom prevails amongst some of the Komâti (Vaiśya) caste.”[199] Among the Savaras in India, the bridegroom has to give a bullock not only to the girl’s father, but to the maternal uncle;[200] whilst among the Creeks, the proxy of the suitor asked for the consent of the uncles, aunts, and brothers of the young woman, “the father having no voice or authority in the business.”[201]
But such cases are rare. Besides, most of them imply only that the children in a certain way belong to the uncle, not that the father is released from the obligation of supporting them. Even where succession runs through females only, the father is nearly always certainly the head of the family. Thus, for instance, in Melanesia, where the clan of the children is determined by that of the mother, “the mother is,” to quote Dr. Codrington, “in no way the head of the family. The house of the family is the father’s, the garden is his, the rule and government are his.”[202] Nor is there any reason to believe that it was generally otherwise in former times. A man could not of course be the guardian of his sister’s children, if he did not live in close connection with them. But except in such a decidedly anomalous case as that of the Malays, just referred to, this could scarcely happen unless marriages were contracted between persons living closely together. Nowadays, however, such marriages are usually avoided, and I shall endeavour later on to show that they were probably also avoided by our remote ancestors.
It might, further, be objected that the children were equally well or better provided for, if not the fathers only, but all the males of the tribe indiscriminately were their guardians. The supporters of the hypothesis of promiscuity, and even other sociologists, as for instance Herr Kautsky,[203] believe that this really was the case among primitive men. According to them, the tribe or horde is the primary social unit of the human race, and the family only a secondary unit, developed in later times. Indeed, this assumption has been treated by many writers, not as a more or less probable hypothesis, but as a demonstrated truth. Yet the idea that a man’s children belong to the tribe, has no foundation in fact. Everywhere we find the tribes or clans composed of several families, the members of each family being more closely connected with one another than with the rest of the tribe. The family, consisting of parents, children, and often also their next descendants, is a universal institution among existing peoples.[204] And it seems extremely probable that, among our earliest human ancestors, the family formed, if not the society itself, at least the nucleus of it. As this is a question of great importance, I must deal with it at some length.
Mr. Darwin remarks, “Judging from the analogy of the majority of the Quadrumana, it is probable that the early ape-like progenitors of man were likewise social.”[205] But it may be doubted whether Mr. Darwin would have drawn this inference, had he taken into consideration the remarkable fact that none of the monkeys most nearly allied to man can be called social animals.
The solitary life of the Orang-utan has already been noted. As regards Gorillas, Dr. Savage states that there is only one adult male attached to each group;[206] and Mr. Reade says expressly that they are not gregarious, though they sometimes seem to assemble in large numbers.[207] Both Mr. Du Chaillu[208] and Herr von Koppenfels[209] assure us likewise that the Gorilla generally lives in pairs or families.
The same is the case with the Chimpanzee. “It is seldom,” Dr. Savage says, “that more than one or two nests are seen upon the same tree or in the same neighbourhood; five have been found, but it was an unusual circumstance. They do not live in ‘villages’.... They are more often seen in pairs than in gangs.... As seen here, they cannot be called gregarious.”[210] This statement, confirmed or repeated by Mr. Du Chaillu[211] and Professor Hartmann,[212] is especially interesting, as the Chimpanzee resembles man also in his comparatively slight strength and courage, so that a gregarious life might be supposed to be better suited to this animal.
Mr. Spencer, however, has pointed out that not only size, strength, and means of defence, but also the kind and distribution of food and other factors must variously co-operate and conflict to determine how far a gregarious life is beneficial, and how far a solitary life.[213] Considering, then, that, according to Dr. Savage, the Chimpanzees are more numerous in the season when the greatest number of fruits come to maturity,[214] we may almost with certainty infer that the solitary life generally led by this ape is due chiefly to the difficulty it experiences in getting food at other times of the year.
Is it not, then, most probable that our fruit-eating human or half-human ancestors, living on the same kind of food, and requiring about the same quantities of it as the man-like apes, were not more gregarious than they? It is likely, too, that subsequently, when man became partly carnivorous, he continued, as a rule, this solitary kind of life, or that gregariousness became his habit only in part. “An animal of a predatory kind,” says Mr. Spencer, “which has prey that can be caught and killed without help, profits by living alone: especially if its prey is much scattered, and is secured by stealthy approach or by lying in ambush. Gregariousness would here be a positive disadvantage. Hence the tendency of large carnivores, and also of small carnivores that have feeble and widely-distributed prey, to lead solitary lives.”[215] It is, indeed, very remarkable that even now there are savage peoples who live rather in separate families than in tribes, and that most of these peoples belong to the very rudest races in the world.[216]
“‘The wild or forest Veddahs,’” Mr. Pridham states, “build their huts in trees, live in pairs, only occasionally assembling in greater numbers, and exhibit no traces of the remotest civilization, nor any knowledge of social rites.”[217] According to Mr. Bailey, the Nilgala Veddahs, who are considered the wildest, “are distributed through their lovely country in small septs, or families, occupying generally caves in the rocks, though some have little bark huts. They depend almost solely on hunting for their support, and hold little communication even with each other.”[218]
In Tierra del Fuego, according to Bishop Stirling, family life is exclusive. “Get outside the family,” he says, “and relationships are doubtful, if not hostile. The bond of a common language is no security for friendly offices.”[219] Commander Wilkes states likewise that the Fuegians “appear to live in families and not in tribes, and do not seem to acknowledge any chief;[220]” and, according to M. Hyades, “la famille est bien constitutée, mais la tribu n’existe pas, à proprement parler.”[221] Each family is perfectly independent of all the others, and only the necessity of common defence now and then induces a few families to form small gangs without any chief.[222] The Rev. T. Bridges writes to me, “They live in clans, called by them Ucuhr, which means a house. These Ucuhr comprise many subdivisions; and the members are necessarily related. But,” he continues, “the Yahgans are a roving people, having their districts and moving about within these districts from bay to bay and island to island in canoes, without any order. The whole clan seldom travels together, and only occasionally and then always incidentally is it to be found collected. The smaller divisions keep more together.... Occasionally, as many as five families are to be found living in a wigwam, but generally two families.” Indeed, in ‘A Voice for South America,’ Mr. Bridges says that “family influence is the one great tie which binds these natives together, and the one great preventive of violence.”[223]
Speaking of the West Australians, who are probably better known to him than to any other civilized man, Bishop Salvado says that they “au lieu de se gouverner par tribus, paraissent se gouverner à la manière patriarchale: chaque famille, qui généralement ne compte pas plus de six à neuf individus, forme comme une petite société, sous la seule dépendance de son propre chef.... Chaque famille s’approprie une espèce de district, dont cependant les families voisines jouissent en commun si l’on vit en bonne harmonie.”[224]
Mr. Stanbridge, who spent eighteen years in the wilds of Victoria, tells us that the savages there are associated in tribes or families, the members of which vary much in number. Each tribe has its own boundaries, the land of which is parcelled out amongst families and carefully transmitted by direct descent; these boundaries being so sacredly maintained that the member of no single family will venture on the lands of a neighbouring one without invitation.[225] And touching the Gournditch-mara, Mr. Howitt states that “each family camped by itself.”[226]
The Bushmans of South Africa, according to Dr. Fritsch, are almost entirely devoid of a tribal organization. Even when a number of families occasionally unite in a larger horde, this association is more or less accidental, and not regulated by any laws.[227] But a horde commonly consists of the different members of one family only, at least if the children are old and strong enough to help their parents to find food.[228] “Sexual feelings, the instinctive love to children, or the customary attachment among relations,” says Lichtenstein, “are the only ties that keep them in any sort of union.”[229]
The like is stated to be true of several peoples in Brazil. According to v. Martius, travellers often meet there with a language “used only by a few individuals connected with each other by relationship, who are thus completely isolated, and can hold no communication with any of their other countrymen far or near.”[230] With reference to the Botocudos, v. Tschudi says that “the family is the only tie which joins these rude children of nature with each other.”[231] The Guachís, Mauhés, and Guatós for the most part live scattered in families,[232] and the social condition of the Caishánas, among whom each family has its own solitary hut, “is of a low type, very little removed, indeed, from that of the brutes living in the same forests.”[233] The Marauá Indians live likewise in separate families or small hordes, and so do some other of the tribes visited by Mr. Bates.[234] According to Mr. Southey, the Cayáguas or Wood-Indians, who inhabited the forests between the Paraná and the Uruguay, were not in a social state; “one family lived at a distance from another, in a wretched hut composed of boughs; they subsisted wholly by prey, and when larger game failed, were contented with snakes, mice, pismires, worms, and any kind of reptile or vermin.”[235] Again, speaking of the Coroados, v. Spix and v. Martius say that “they live without any bond of social union, neither under a republican nor a patriarchal form of government. Even family ties are very loose among them.”[236]
The Togiagamutes, an Eskimo tribe, never visited by white men in their own country until the year 1880, who lead a thoroughly nomadic life, wandering from place to place in search of game or fish, appear, according to Petroff, “to live in the most perfect state of independence of each other. Even the communities do not seem bound together in any way; families and groups of families constantly changing their abode, leaving one community and joining another, or perhaps forming one of their own. The youth, as soon as he is able to build a kaiak and to support himself, no longer observes any family ties, but goes where his fancy takes him, frequently roaming about with his kaiak for thousands of miles before another fancy calls him to take a wife, to excavate a miserable dwelling, and to settle down for a time.”[237]
The ancient Finns, too, according to the linguistic researches of Professor Ahlqvist, were without any kind of tribal organization. In his opinion, such a state would have been almost impossible among them, as they lived in scattered families for the sake of the chase and in order to have pastures for their reindeer.[238]
That the comparatively solitary life which the families of these peoples live, is due to want of sufficient food, appears from several facts. Lichtenstein tells us that the hardships experienced by the Bushmans in satisfying the most urgent necessities of life, preclude the possibility of their forming larger societies. Even the families that form associations in small separate hordes are sometimes obliged to disperse, as the same spot will not afford sufficient sustenance for all. “The smaller the number, the easier is a supply of food procured.”[239]
“Scarcity of food, and the facility with which they move from one place to another in their canoes,” says Admiral Fitzroy, “are, no doubt, the reasons why the Fuegians are always so dispersed among the islands in small family parties, why they never remain long in one place, and why a large number are not seen many days in society.”[240]
The natives of Port Jackson, New South Wales, when visited a hundred years ago by Captain Hunter, were associated in tribes of many families living together, apparently without a fixed residence, the different families wandering in different directions for food, but uniting on occasions of disputes with another tribe.[241] The Rev. A. Meyer assures us likewise, as regards the Encounter Bay tribe, that “the whole tribe does not always move in a body from one place to another, unless there should be abundance of food to be obtained at some particular spot; but generally they are scattered in search of food.”[242] Again, with reference to the Australians more generally, Mr. Brough Smyth remarks that “in any large area occupied by a tribe, where there was not much forest land, and where kangaroos were not numerous, it is highly probable that the several families composing the tribe would withdraw from their companions for short periods, at certain seasons, and betake themselves to separate portions of the area, ... and it is more than probable—it is almost certain—that each head of a family would betake himself, if practicable, to that portion which his father had frequented.”[243]
Finally, from Mr. Wyeth’s account in Schoolcraft’s great work on the Indian Tribes of the United States, I shall make the following characteristic quotation with reference to the Snakes inhabiting the almost desert region which extends southward from the Snake River as far as the southern end of the Great Salt Lake, and eastward from the Rocky to the Blue Mountains:—“The paucity of game in this region is, I have little doubt, the cause of the almost entire absence of social organization among its inhabitants; no trace of it is ordinarily seen among them, except during salmon-time, when a large number of the Snakes resort to the rivers, chiefly to the Fishing Falls, and at such places there seems some little organization.... Prior to the introduction of the horse, no other tribal arrangement existed than such as is now seen in the management of the salmon fishery.... The organization would be very imperfect, because the remainder of the year would be spent by them in families widely spread apart, to eke out the year’s subsistence on the roots and limited game of their country. After a portion of them, who are now called Bonaks, had obtained horses, they would naturally form bands and resort to the Buffalo region to gain their subsistence, retiring to the most fertile places in their own, to avoid the snows of the mountains and feed their horses. Having food from the proceeds of the Buffalo hunt, to enable them to live together, they would annually do so, for the protection of their horses, lodges, &c., &c. These interests have caused an organization among the Bonaks, which continues the year through, because the interests which produce it continue; and it is more advanced than that of the other Snakes.”[244]
Here, I think, we have an excellent account of the origin of society, applicable not only to the Snakes, but, in its main features, to man in general. The kind of food he subsisted upon, together with the large quantities of it that he wanted, probably formed in olden times a hindrance to a true gregarious manner of living, except perhaps in some unusually rich places. Man in the savage state, even when living in luxuriant countries, is often brought to the verge of starvation, in spite of his having implements and weapons which his ruder ancestors had no idea of. If the obstacle from insufficient food-supply could be overcome, gregariousness would no doubt be of great advantage to him. Living together, the families could resist the dangers of life and defend themselves from their enemies much more easily than when solitary,—all the more so, as the physical strength of man, and especially savage man,[245] is comparatively slight. Indeed, his bodily inferiority, together with his defencelessness and helplessness, has probably been the chief lever of civilization.
“He has,” to quote Mr. Darwin, “invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, &c., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. He has made rafts or canoes for fishing or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He has discovered the art of making fire, by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous.”[246] In short, man gradually found out many new ways of earning his living and more and more emancipated himself from direct dependence on surrounding nature. The chief obstacle to a gregarious life was by this means in part surmounted, and the advantages of such a life induced families or small gangs to unite together in larger bodies. Thus it seems that the gregariousness and sociability of man sprang, in the main, from progressive intellectual and material civilization, whilst the tie that kept together husband and wife, parents and children, was, if not the only, at least the principal social factor in the earliest life of man. I cannot, therefore, agree with Sir John Lubbock that, as a general rule, as we descend in the scale of civilization, the family diminishes, and the tribe increases, in importance.[247] This may hold good for somewhat higher stages, but it does not apply to the lowest stages. Neither do I see any reason to believe that there ever was a time when the family was quite absorbed in the tribe. There does not exist a single well established instance of a people among whom this is the case.
I do not, of course, deny that the tie which bound the children to the mother was much more intimate and more lasting than that which bound them to the father. But it seems to me that the only result to which a critical investigation of facts can lead us is, that in all probability there has been no stage of human development when marriage has not existed, and that the father has always been, as a rule, the protector of his family. Human marriage appears, then, to be an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor.
[CHAPTER IV]
A CRITICISM OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF PROMISCUITY
The inference drawn in the last chapter is opposed to the view held by most sociologists who have written upon early history. According to them, man lived originally in a state of promiscuity. This is the opinion of Bachofen, McLennan, Morgan, Lubbock, Bastian, Giraud-Teulon, Lippert, Kohler, Post, Wilken, and several other writers.[248] Although suggested at first only as a probable hypothesis, this presumption is now treated by many writers as a demonstrated truth.[249]
The promiscuity of primitive man is not, however, generally considered to be perfectly indiscriminate, but limited to the individuals belonging to the same tribe. It may, therefore, perhaps be said to be a kind of marriage: polygyny combined with polyandry. Sir John Lubbock has also given it the name of “communal marriage,” indicating by this word, that all the men and women in a community were regarded as equally husbands and wives to one another. As I do not, in speaking of marriage, take into consideration unions of so indefinite a nature, this seems to be the proper place to discuss the hypothesis in question.
The evidence adduced in support of it flows from two sources. First, there are, in the books of ancient writers and modern travellers, notices of some savage nations said to live promiscuously; secondly, there are some remarkable customs which are assumed to be social survivals, pointing to an earlier stage of civilization, when marriage did not exist. Let us see whether this evidence will stand the test of a critical examination.
Herodotus and Strabo inform us that, among the Massagetæ every man had his own wife, but that all the other men of the tribe were allowed to have sexual intercourse with her.[250] The Auseans, a Libyan people, had, according to the former, their wives in common;[251] and Solinus reports the same of the Garamantians of Ethiopia.[252] Community of women is, further, alleged to have occurred among the Liburnes, Galactophagi,[253] and the ancient Bohemians.[254] And Garcilasso de la Vega asserts that, among the natives of Passau in Peru, before the time of the Incas, men had no separate wives.[255]
To these statements of ancient peoples Sir J. Lubbock adds a few others concerning modern savages.[256] “The Bushmen of South Africa,” he says, “are stated to be entirely without marriage.” Sir Edward Belcher tells us that, in the Andaman Islands, the custom is for the man and woman to remain together until the child is weaned, when they separate, and each seeks a new partner.[257] Speaking of the natives of Queen Charlotte Islands, Mr. Poole says that among them “the institution of marriage is altogether unknown,” and that the women “cohabit almost promiscuously with their own tribe, though rarely with other tribes.”[258] In the Californian Peninsula, according to Baegert, the sexes met without any formalities, and their vocabulary did not even contain the word “to marry.”[259] Mr. Hyde states that, in the Pacific Islands, there was an “utter absence of what we mean by the family, the household, and the husband; the only thing possible was to keep the line distinct through the mother, and enumerate the successive generations with the several putative fathers.”[260] Among the Nairs, as Buchanan tells us, no one knows his father, and every man looks on his sister’s children as his heirs; a man may marry several women, and a woman may be the wife of several men.[261] The Teehurs of Oude live together almost indiscriminately in large communities, and even when two people are regarded as married the tie is but nominal.[262] It is recorded that, among the Tôttiyars of India, “brothers, uncles, nephews, and other kindred, hold their wives in common.”[263] And among the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills, when a man marries a girl, she becomes the wife of all his brothers as they successively reach manhood, and they become the husbands of all her sisters when they are old enough to marry.[264]
The Kámilarói tribes in South Australia are divided into four clans, in which brothers and sisters are respectively Ipai and Ipātha, Kŭbi and Kubĭtha, Mŭri and Mātha, Kumbu and Būtha. Ipai may only marry Kubĭtha; Kŭbi, Ipātha; Kumbu, Mātha; and Mŭri, Būtha. In a certain sense, we are told, every Ipai is regarded as married, not by any individual contract, but by organic law, to every Kubĭtha; every Kŭbi to every Ipātha, and so on. If, for instance, a Kŭbi “meet a stranger Ipātha, they address each other as spouse. A Kŭbi thus meeting an Ipātha, though she were of another tribe, would treat her as his wife, and his right to do so would be recognised by her tribe.”[265] This institution, according to which the men of one division, have as wives the women of another division, the Rev. L. Fison calls “group marriage.” He contends that, among the South Australians, it has given way in later times, in some measure, to individual marriage. But theoretically, as he says, marriage is still communal: “it is based upon the marriage of all the males in one division of a tribe to all the females of the same generation in another division.” To this may be added a statement of the Rev. C. W. Schürmann with reference to the Port Lincoln aborigines. “As for near relatives, such as brothers,” he remarks, “it may almost be said that they have their wives in common.... A peculiar nomenclature has arisen from these singular connections; a woman honours the brothers of the man to whom she is married with the indiscriminate name of husbands; but the men make a distinction, calling their own individual spouses yungaras, and those to whom they have a secondary claim, by right of brotherhood, kartetis.”[266]
Speaking of the Fuegians, Admiral Fitzroy says, “We had some reason to think there were parties who lived in a promiscuous manner—a few women being with many men.”[267] The Lubus of Sumatra, the Olo Ot, together with a few other tribes of Borneo, the Poggi Islanders, the Orang Sakai of Malacca, and the mountaineers of Peling, east of Celebes, are by Professor Wilken stated to be entirely without marriage.[268] The same is said by Professor Bastian to be the case with the Keriahs, Kurumbas, Chittagong tribes, Guaycurûs, Kutchin Indians, and Arawaks.[269] He states, too, that the Jolah on the island of St. Mary, according to Hewett, possess their women in common,[270] and that, according to Magalhães, the like is true of the Cahyapos in Matto Grosso.[271] We read in Dapper’s old book on Africa, that certain negro tribes had neither law, nor religion, nor any proper names, and possessed their wives in common.[272] These are all the statements known to me of peoples alleged to be without marriage.
In the first place, it must be remarked that some of the facts adduced are not really instances of promiscuity. Sir Edward Belcher’s statement as regards the Andamanese evidently suggests monogamy; and among the Massagetæ and the Teehurs, the occurrence of marriage is expressly confirmed, though the marriage tie was loose. As for the aborigines of the Californian Peninsula, it must be remembered that the want of an equivalent for the verb “to marry” does not imply the want of the fact itself. Baegert indicates, indeed, that marriage did occur among them, when he says that “each man took as many wives as he liked, and if there were several sisters in a family he married them all together.”[273] And throughout the Pacific Islands, marriage is a recognized institution. Nowhere has debauchery been practised more extensively than among the Areois of Tahiti. Yet Mr. Ellis assures us that, “although addicted to every kind of licentiousness themselves, each Arcoi had his own wife; ... and so jealous were they in this respect that improper conduct towards the wife of one of their own number was sometimes punished with death.”[274]
As to the South Australians, Mr. Fison’s statements have caused not a little confusion. On his authority several writers assert that, among the Australian savages, groups of males are actually found united to groups of females.[275] But after all, Mr. Fison does not seem really to mean to affirm the present existence of group-marriages. The chief argument advanced by him in support of his theory is grounded on the terms of relationship in use in the tribes. These terms belong to the “classificatory system” of Mr. Morgan;[276] but Mr. Fison admits that he is not aware of any tribe in which the actual practice is to its full extent what the terms of relationship imply. “Present usage,” he says, “is everywhere in advance of the system so implied, and the terms are survivals of an ancient right, not precise indications of custom as it is.”[277] The same is granted by Mr. Howitt.[278] Yet it will be pointed out further on to what absurd results we must be led, if, guided by such terms, we begin to speculate upon early marriage. Moreover, if a Kŭbi and an Ipātha address each other as spouse, this does not imply that in former times every Kŭbi was married to every Ipātha indiscriminately. On the contrary, the application of such a familiar term might be explained from the fact that the women who may be a man’s wives, and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him.[279] It seems also as if a communism in wives among the Port Lincoln aborigines had been inferred by Mr. Schürmann chiefly from the nomenclature. Indeed, Mr. Curr, who has procured more information regarding the Australian aborigines than any other investigator, so far as I know, states that, in Australia, men and women have never been found living in a state of promiscuous intercourse, but the reverse is a matter of notoriety.[280] “It seems to me,” he says, “after a careful examination of the subject, that there is not within our knowledge a single fact, or linguistic expression which requires us to have recourse to the theory of group-marriage to explain it, but that there are several ... directly at variance with that theory.”[281] The Rev. John Mathew asserts also, in his recent paper on ‘The Australian Aborigines,’ that he fails to see that group-marriage “has been proven to exist in the past, and it certainly does not occur in Australia now.”[282] At any rate, it may be asserted that such group-marriages are different from the promiscuity which is presumed to have prevailed in primitive society. And this may with even more reason be said of the marriages of the Tôttiyars, Nairs and Todas, of which at least those of the Todas have originated, I believe, in true polyandry.
Many of the assertions made as to peoples living together promiscuously are evidently erroneous. Travellers are often apt to misapprehend the manners and customs of the peoples they visit, and we should therefore, if possible, compare the statements of different writers, especially when so delicate and private a matter as the relation between the sexes is concerned. Sir Edward Belcher’s statement about the Andamanese has been disproved by Mr. Man, who, after a very careful investigation of this people, says not only that they are strictly monogamous, but that divorce is unknown, and conjugal fidelity till death not the exception but the rule among them.[283] As regards the Bushmans, Sir John Lubbock does not indicate the source from which he has taken the statement that they are “entirely without marriage;” all the authorities I have consulted, unanimously assert the reverse. Burchell was told that even a second wife is never taken until the first has become old, and that the old wives remain with the husband on the same terms as before.[284] Barrow tells us almost the same.[285] Indeed, as we have already seen, the family is the chief social institution of this people.
With reference to the Fuegians, Mr. Bridges, who has lived amongst them for thirty years, writes to me, “Admiral Fitzroy’s supposition concerning parties among the natives who lived promiscuously is false, and adultery and lewdness are condemned as evil, though through the strength of animal passions very generally indulged, but never with the consent of husbands or wives, or of parents.” From the description of Captain Jacobsen’s recent voyage to the North-Western Coast of North America, it appears that marriage exists among the Queen Charlotte Islanders also, although the husbands often prostitute their wives.[286] As for Professor Wilken’s statements about promiscuity among some peoples belonging to the Malay race, Professor Ratzel calls their accuracy in question. At least, among the Lubus, as Herr Van Ophuijsen assures us, a man has to buy his wife, just as among the other Malay peoples;[287] and Dr. Schwaner expressly says that all that we know about the Olo Ot depends on hearsay only.[288] But, according to him, they are not without marriage.[289]
Some of Professor Bastian’s assertions are most astonishing. Any one who takes the trouble to read Richardson’s, Kirby’s, or Bancroft’s account of the Kutchin, will find that polygyny, but not promiscuity, is prevalent among them, the husbands being very jealous of their wives.[290] The same is stated by v. Martius about the Arawaks, whose blood-feuds are generally owing to jealousy and a desire to avenge violations of conjugal rights.[291] The occurrence of marriage among them has also been ascertained by Schomburgk and the Rev. W. H. Brett.[292] The Guaycurûs are said by Lozano to be monogamous,[293] and so, according to Captain Lewin, are as a rule the Chittagong Hill tribes, as we shall find later on. Touching the Keriahs, Colonel Dalton affirms only that they have no word for marriage in their own language, but he does not deny that marriage itself occurs among them; on the contrary, it appears that they buy their wives.[294] The Kurumbas are stated to be without the marriage ceremony, but not without marriage.[295] And Dapper’s assertion that certain negro tribes have their women in common, has never, so far as I know, been confirmed by more recent writers. Dr. Post has found no people in Africa living in a state of promiscuity;[296] and Mr. Ingham informs me, speaking of the Bakongo, that “they would be horrified at the idea of promiscuous intercourse.”
The peoples who may possibly live in a state of promiscuity have thus been reduced to a very small number. Considering the erroneousness of so many of the statements on the subject, it is difficult to believe in the accuracy of the others.[297] Ethnography was not seriously studied by the ancients, and their knowledge of the African tribes was no doubt very deficient. Pliny, in the same chapter where he states that, among the Garamantians, men and women lived in promiscuous intercourse, reports of another African tribe, the Blemmyans, that they had no head, and that the mouth and eyes were in the breast.[298] Besides, marriage is an ambiguous word. The looseness of the marital tie, the frequency of adultery and divorce, and the absence of the marriage ceremony may entitle us to say that, among many savage peoples, marriage in the European sense of the term does not exist. But this is very different from promiscuity.
Even if some of the statements are right, and the intercourse between the sexes among a few peoples really is, or has been, promiscuous, it would be a mistake to infer that these utterly exceptional cases represent a stage of human development which mankind, as a whole, has gone through. Further, nothing would entitle us to consider this promiscuity as a survival of the primitive life of man, or even as a mark of a very rude state of society. It is by no means among the lowest peoples that sexual relations most nearly approach to promiscuity. Mr. Rowney, for instance, states that, among the Butias, the marriage tie is so loose that chastity is quite unknown, that the husbands are indifferent to the honour of their wives, that “the intercourse of the sexes is, in fact, promiscuous.” But the Butias are followers of Buddha, and “can hardly be counted among the wild tribes of India, for they are, for the most part, in good circumstances, and have a certain amount of civilization among them.”[299] On the other hand, among the lowest races on earth, as the Veddahs, Fuegians, and Australians, the relation of the sexes are of a much more definite character. The Veddahs are a truly monogamous people, and have a saying that “death alone separates husband and wife.”[300] And with reference to the Australians, Mr. Brough Smyth, states that “though the marriages of Aboriginals are not solemnized by any rites, ... it must not be supposed that, as a rule, there is anything like promiscuous intercourse. When a man obtains a good wife, he keeps her as a precious possession, as long as she is fit to help him, and minister to his wants, and increase his happiness. No other man must look with affection towards her.... Promiscuous intercourse is abhorrent to many of them.” Among the aborigines of the northern and central parts of Australia, there are certainly women wholly given up to common lewdness, and a man is said to be considered a bad host who will not lend his wife to a guest. But Mr. Brough Smyth thinks that these practices are modern, and have been acquired since the aborigines were brought in contact with the lower class of the whites, for “they are altogether irreconcilable with the penal laws in force in former times amongst the natives of Victoria.”[301] It seems obvious, then, that even if there are peoples who actually live promiscuously, these do not afford any evidence whatever for promiscuity having prevailed in primitive times. Now let us examine whether the other arguments are more convincing.
“A further fact,” Dr. Post says, “which speaks for sexual intercourse having originally been unchecked, is the wide-spread custom that the sexes may cohabit perfectly freely previous to marriage.”[302]
The immorality of many savages is certainly very great, but we must not believe that it is characteristic of uncivilized races in general. There are numerous savage and barbarous peoples among whom sexual intercourse out of wedlock is of rare occurrence, unchastity, at least on the part of the woman, being looked upon as a disgrace and even as a crime.
“A Kafir woman,” Barrow says, “is chaste and extremely modest;”[303] and Mr. Cousins writes to me that, between their various feasts, the Kafirs, both men and women, have to live in strict continence, the penalty being banishment from the tribe, if this law is broken. Proyart states that, among the people of Loango, “a youth durst not speak to a girl except in her mother’s presence,” and “the crime of a maid who has not resisted seduction, would be sufficient to draw down a total ruin on the whole country, were it not expiated by a public avowal made to the king.”[304] Among the Equatorial Africans, mentioned by Mr. Winwood Reade, a girl who disgraces her family by wantonness is banished from her clan; and, in cases of seduction, the man is severely flogged.[305] In Dahomey, if a man seduces a girl, the law compels marriage, and the payment of eighty cowries to the parent or master.[306] In Tessaua, according to Dr. Barth, a fine of 100,000 kurdi is imposed on the father of a bastard child—a sum which indicates how seldom such children are born there.[307] Among the Beni-Mzab, a man who seduces a young girl has to pay two hundred francs, and is banished for four years.[308] Among the Beni-Amer, according to Munzinger, the unmarried women are very modest, though the married women believe that they are allowed everything.[309] Among the Arab girls in Upper Egypt, unchastity is made impossible by an operation when they are from three to five years old;[310] and among the Marea, continence is a scarcely less necessary virtue, as a maiden or widow who becomes pregnant is killed together with the seducer and the child.[311] As regards the Kabyles, Messrs. Hanoteau and Letourneux assert, “Les mœurs ne tolèrent même aucune relation sexuelle en dehors du mariage.... L’enfant né en dehors du mariage est tué ainsi que sa mère.”[312]
Among the Central Asian Turks, according to Vámbéry, a fallen girl is unknown.[313] Among the Kalmucks,[314] as also the Gypsies,[315] the girls take pride in having gallant affairs, but are dishonoured if they have children previous to marriage. A seducer among the Tunguses is bound to marry his victim and pay the price claimed for her.[316] In Circassia, an incontinent daughter is generally sold as soon as possible, being a disgrace to her parents.[317] Among the wretched inhabitants of Lob-nor, “immorality is severely punished.”[318] And regarding the Let-htas, a Hill Tribe of Burma, Mr. O’Riley states that, until married, the youth of both sexes are domiciled in two long houses at opposite ends of the village, and “when they may have occasion to pass each other, they avert their gaze, so they may not see each other’s faces.”[319]
As to the aborigines of the Indian Archipelago, Professor Wilken states that side by side with peoples who indulge in great licentiousness, there are others who are remarkably chaste. Thus, in Nias, the pregnancy of an unmarried girl is punished with death, inflicted not only upon her but upon the seducer.[320] Among the Hill Dyaks, the young men are carefully separated from the girls, licentious connections between the sexes being strictly prohibited;[321] and the Sibuyaus, a tribe belonging to the Sea Dyaks, though they do not consider the sexual intercourse of their young people a positive crime, yet attach an idea of great indecency to irregular connections, and are of opinion that an unmarried woman with child must be offensive to the superior powers.[322]
By some of the independent tribes of the Philippines also, according to Chamisso, chastity is held in great honour, “not only among the women, but also among the young girls, and is protected by very severe laws;”[323]—a statement which is confirmed by Dr. Hans Meyer and Professor Blumentritt with reference to the Igorrotes of Luzon.[324]
In New Guinea, too, chastity is strictly maintained.[325] Mr. G. A. Robinson and the Catechist Clark, who lived for years with the aborigines, both declare their belief in the virtue of the young women;[326] and Dr. Finsch assures us that the natives of Dory are, in that respect, superior to many civilized nations in Europe.[327] The French naturalists and some English writers spoke highly of the morality of the young people among the Tasmanians.[328] The women of Uea, Loyalty Islands, are described by Erskine as “strictly chaste before marriage, and faithful wives afterwards.”[329] In Fiji, great continence prevailed among the young folk, the lads being forbidden to approach women till eighteen or twenty years old.[330] Speaking of the aborigines of Melanesia, Dr. Codrington remarks, “It is certain that in these islands generally there was by no means that insensibility in regard to female virtue with which the natives are so commonly charged.”[331] In Samoa, the girls were allowed to cohabit with foreigners, but not with their countrymen,[332] and the chastity of the chiefs’ daughters was the pride of the tribe. But Mr. Turner remarks that, though this virtue was ostensibly cultivated here by both sexes, it was more a name than a reality.[333]
With reference to the Australian natives, Mr. Moore Davis says, “Promiscuous intercourse between the sexes is not practised by the Aborigines, and their laws on the subject, particularly those of New South Wales, are very strict. When at camp, all the young unmarried men are stationed by themselves at the extreme ends, while the married men, each with his family, occupy the centre. No conversation is allowed between the single men and the girls or the married women.... Infractions of these and other laws were visited either by punishment by any aggrieved member of the tribe, or by the delinquent having to purge himself of his crime by standing up protected simply by his shield, or a waddy, while five or six warriors threw, from a comparatively short distance, several spears at him.”[334] Concerning several tribes in Western Victoria, Mr. Dawson likewise states that, at the corroborees and great meetings of the tribes, unmarried adults of both sexes are kept strictly apart from those of another tribe. “Illegitimacy is rare,” he says, “and is looked upon with such abhorrence that the mother is always severely beaten by her relatives, and sometimes put to death and burned. Her child is occasionally killed and burned with her. The father of the child is also punished with the greatest severity, and occasionally killed.”[335]
Turning to the American peoples: among the early Aleuts, according to Veniaminof, “girls or unmarried females who gave birth to illegitimate children were to be killed for shame, and hidden.”[336] Egede tells us that, among the Greenlanders, unmarried women observed the rules of modesty much better than married women. “During fifteen full years that I lived in Greenland,” he says, “I did not hear of more than two or three young women, who were gotten with child unmarried; because it is reckoned the greatest of infamies.”[337] According to Cranz, a Greenland maid would take it as an affront were a young fellow even to offer her a pinch of snuff in company.[338] Among the Northern Indians, girls are from the early age of eight or nine years prohibited by custom from joining in the most innocent amusements with children of the opposite sex. “When sitting in their tent,” says Hearne, “or even when travelling, they are watched and guarded with such an unremitting attention as cannot be exceeded by the most rigid discipline of an English boarding-school.”[339] Mr. Catlin asserts that, among the Mandans, female virtue is, in the respectable families, as highly cherished as in any society whatever.[340] Among the Nez Percés,[341] the Apaches,[342] and certain other North American peoples,[343] the women are described as remarkably chaste, the seducer being viewed by some of them with even more contempt than the girl he has dishonoured. And Dobrizhoffer praises the Abiponian women for their virtuous life.[344]
If we add to these facts those which will be adduced further on, showing what man requires in his bride, it must be admitted that the number of uncivilized peoples among whom chastity, at least as regards women, is held in honour and, as a rule, cultivated, is very considerable. There being nothing to indicate that the morality of those nations ever was laxer, the inference of an earlier stage of promiscuity from the irregular sexual relations of unmarried people, could not apply to them, even if such an inference, on the whole, were right. But this is far from being the case: first, because the wantonness of savages, in several cases, seems to be due chiefly to the influence of civilization; secondly, because it is quite different from promiscuity.
It has been sufficiently proved that contact with a higher culture, or, more properly, the dregs of it, is pernicious to the morality of peoples living in a more or less primitive condition. In Greenland, says Dr. Nansen, “the Eskimo women of the larger colonies are far freer in their ways than those of the small outlying settlements where there are no Europeans.”[345] And the Yokuts of California, amongst whom the freedom of the unmarried people of both sexes is very great now, are said to have been comparatively virtuous before the arrival of the Americans.[346] In British Columbia and Vancouver Island, “amongst the interior tribes, in primitive times, breaches of chastity on the part either of married or unmarried females were often punished with death, inflicted either by the brother or husband;” whilst, among the fish-eaters of the north-west coast, “it has no meaning, or, if it has, it appears to be utterly disregarded.”[347] Again, among the Queen Charlotte Islanders the present depravation has, according to Captain Jacobsen been caused by the gold diggers who went there in the middle of this century.[348] Admiral Fitzroy observed, too, that the unchastity of the Patagonian women did not correspond with the pure character attributed to them at an earlier time by Falkner, and he thinks that “their ideas of propriety may have been altered by the visits of licentious strangers.”[349] A more recent traveller, Captain Musters, observed, indeed, little immorality amongst the Indians whilst in their native wilds.[350]
There is, further, no doubt that the licentiousness of many South Sea Islanders, at least to some extent, owes its origin to their intercourse with Europeans. When visiting the Sandwich Islands with Cook, Vancouver saw little or no appearance of wantonness among the women. But when he visited them some years afterwards, it was very conspicuous; and he ascribes this change in their habits to their intercourse with foreigners.[351] Owing to the same influence, the women of Ponapé and Tana lost their modesty;[352] and the privileges granted to foreigners in Samoa have been already mentioned. Nay, even in Tahiti, so notorious for the licentiousness of its inhabitants, immorality was formerly less than it is now. Thus, as a girl, betrothed when a child, grew up, “for the preservation of her chastity, a small platform of considerable elevation was erected for her abode within the dwelling of her parents. Here she slept and spent the whole of the time she passed within doors. Her parents, or some member of the family, attended her by night and by day, supplied her with every necessary, and accompanied her whenever she left the house. Some of their traditions,” Ellis adds, “warrant the inference that this mode of life, in early years, was observed by other females besides those who were betrothed.”[353]
Speaking of the tribes who once inhabited the Adelaide Plains of South Australia, Mr. Edward Stephens, who went to Australia about half a century ago, remarks, “Those who speak of the natives as a naturally degraded race, either do not speak from experience, or they judge them by what they have become when the abuse of intoxicants and contact with the most wicked of the white race have begun their deadly work. As a rule, to which there are no exceptions, if a tribe of blacks is found away from the white settlement, the more vicious of the white men are most anxious to make the acquaintance of the natives, and that, too, solely for purposes of immorality.... I saw the natives and was much with them before those dreadful immoralities were well known, ... and I say it fearlessly, that nearly all their evils they owed to the white man’s immorality and to the white man’s drink.”[354]
The Rev. J. Sibree tells us that, among most of the tribes of Madagascar, the unchastity of girls does not give umbrage. But “there are some other tribes,” he says, “more isolated, as certain of the eastern peoples, where a higher standard of morality prevails, girls being kept scrupulously from any intercourse with the other sex until they are married.”[355]
Nowhere has chastity been more rigorously insisted upon than among the South Slavonians. A fallen girl among them has lost almost all chance of getting married. She is commonly despised and often punished in a very barbarous way; whilst, on the other hand, purity gives a girl a higher value than the greatest wealth. In some places, a father or a brother may even kill a man whom he finds with his daughter or sister. But Dr. Krauss assures us that this rigidity in their morals has gradually decreased, the more foreign civilization has got a footing among them.[356]
Again, Professor Ahlqvist believes that illicit intercourse between the sexes was almost unknown among the ancient Finns, as the terms used by them with reference to such connections are borrowed from other languages.[357] And Professor Vámbéry makes the same observation as regards the primitive Turko-Tartars. “The difference in morality,” he says, “which exists between the Turks affected by a foreign civilization and kindred tribes inhabiting the steppes, becomes very conspicuous to any one living among the Turkomans and Kara-Kalpaks; for whether in Africa or Asia, certain vices are introduced only by the so-called bearers of culture.”[358]
Apart from such cases of foreign influence, we may perhaps say that irregular connections between the sexes have on the whole exhibited a tendency to increase along with the progress of civilization. Dr. Fritsch remarks that the Bushmans are much stricter in that matter than their far more advanced neighbours.[359] Robert Drury assures us that, in Madagascar, “there are more modest women, in proportion to the number of people, than in England.”[360] Tacitus praised the chastity of the Germanic youth, in contrast to the licentiousness of the highly civilized Romans. These statements may to a certain extent be considered typical. In Europe, there are born among towns-people, on an average, twice as many bastard children, in proportion to the number of births, as among the inhabitants of the country, who generally lead a more natural life. In France, according to Wappäus, the ratio was found even so great as 15·13 to 4·24; though in Saxony, with its manufacturing country people, it was only as 15·39 to 14·64.[361] Nay, in Gratz and Munich the illegitimate births are even more numerous than the legitimate.[362] The prostitution of the towns makes the difference in morality still greater; and unfortunately the evil is growing. Almost everywhere prostitution increases in a higher ratio than population.[363] In consideration of these facts, it is almost ridiculous to speak of the immorality of unmarried people among savages as a relic of an alleged primitive stage of promiscuity.
There are several factors in civilization which account for this bad result. The more unnatural mode of living and the greater number of excitements exercise, no doubt, a deteriorating influence on morality; and poverty makes prostitutes of many girls who are little more than children. But the chief factor is the growing number of unmarried people. It is proved that, in the cities of Europe, prostitution increases according as the number of marriages decreases.[364] It has also been established, thanks to the statistical investigations of Engel and others, that the fewer the marriages contracted in a year, the greater is the ratio of illegitimate births.[365] Thus, by making celibacy more common, civilization promotes sexual irregularity. It is true that more elevated moral feelings, concomitants of a higher mental development, may, to a certain extent, put the drag on passion. But in a savage condition of life, where every full-grown man marries as soon as possible; where almost every girl, when she reaches the age of puberty, is given in marriage; where, consequently, bachelors and spinsters are of rare occurrence,—there is comparatively little reason for illegitimate relations.[366] Marriage, it seems to me, is the natural form of the sexual relations of man, as of his nearest allies among the lower animals. Far from being a relic of the primitive life of man, irregularity in this respect is an anomaly arising chiefly from circumstances associated with certain stages of human development.
Dr. Post’s argument, as I have said, is open to another objection. Free sexual intercourse previous to marriage is quite a different thing from promiscuity, the most genuine form of which is prostitution. But prostitution is rare among peoples living in a state of nature and unaffected by foreign influence.[367] It is contrary to woman’s natural feelings as involving a suppression of individual inclinations. In free sexual intercourse there is selection; a woman has for one man, or for several men, a preference which generally makes the connections more durable.
Nowhere are unmarried people of both sexes less restrained than among the savage nations of India and Indo-China. Yet among these savage nations there is no promiscuity. Among the Toungtha, for instance, according to Captain Lewin, prostitution is not understood, and, when explained, it is regarded by them with abhorrence. “They draw rightly a strong distinction between a woman prostituting herself habitually as a means of livelihood, and the intercourse by mutual consent of two members of opposite sexes, leading, as it generally does, to marriage.”[368] Among the Tipperahs,[369] Oráons,[370] and Kolyas[371], unmarried girls may cohabit freely with young men, but are never found living promiscuously with them. Among the Dyaks on the Batang Lupar, too, unchastity is not rare, but a woman usually confines herself to one lover. “Should the girl prove with child,” says Sir Spenser St. John, “it is an understanding between them that they marry”; and the men seldom, by denying the paternity, refuse to fulfil their engagements.[372] Again, in Tonga, it was considered disgraceful for a girl to change lovers often. And in Scotland, prior to the Reformation, there was a practice called “hand-fasting,” which certainly may be characterized as unrestrained freedom before marriage, but not as promiscuity. “At the public fairs,” the Rev. Ch. Rogers states, “men selected female companions with whom to cohabit for a year. At the expiry of this period both parties were accounted free; they might either unite in marriage or live singly.”[373]
The attempt to explain free intercourse between unmarried people as a relic of a primitive condition of general promiscuity or rather, to infer the latter from the former, must thus, in every respect, be considered a complete failure.
Sir John Lubbock thinks that his hypothesis of “communal marriage” derives additional support from some curious customs, which he interprets as acts of expiation for individual marriage. “In many cases,” he says, “the exclusive possession of a wife could only be legally acquired by a temporary recognition of the pre-existing communal rights.”[374]
Thus Herodotus states that, in Babylonia, every woman was obliged once in her life to give herself up, in the temple of Mylitta, to strangers, for the satisfaction of the goddess; and in some parts of Cyprus, he tells us, the same custom prevailed.[375] In Armenia, according to Strabo, there was a very similar law. The daughters of good families were consecrated to Anaitis, a phallic divinity like Mylitta, giving themselves, as it appears, to the worshippers of the goddess indiscriminately.[376] Again, in the valleys of the Ganges, virgins were compelled before marriage to offer themselves up in the temples dedicated to Juggernaut. And the same is said to have been customary in Pondicherry and at Goa.[377]
These practices, however, evidently belong to phallic-worship, and occurred, as Mr. McLennan justly remarks, among peoples who had advanced far beyond the primitive state. The farther back we go, the less we find of such customs in India; “the germ only of phallic-worship shows itself in the Vedas, and the gross luxuriance of licentiousness, of which the cases referred to are examples, is of later growth.”[378]
Ancient writers tell us that, among the Nasamonians and Augilæ, two Libyan tribes, the jus primae noctis was accorded to all the guests at a marriage.[379] Garcilasso de la Vega asserts that, in the province Manta in Peru, marriages took place on condition that the bride should first yield herself to the relatives and friends of the bridegroom.[380] In the Balearic Islands, according to Diodorous Siculus, the bride was for one night considered the common property of all the guests, after which she belonged exclusively to her husband.[381] And v. Langsdorf reports the occurrence of a very similar practice in Nukahiva.[382]
With regard to Sir J. Lubbock’s interpretation of these customs, as acts of expiation for individual marriage, Mr. McLennan remarks that they are not cases of privileges accorded to the men of the bridegroom’s group only, which they should be, if they refer to an ancient communal right.[383] It may also be noted that, in Nukahiva, the license was dependent upon the will of the bride. Moreover, the freedom granted to the wedding guests may be simply and naturally explained. It may have been a part of the nuptial entertainment—a horrible kind of hospitality, no doubt, but quite in accordance with savage ideas, and analogous to another custom, which occurs much more frequently; I mean the practice of lending wives.
Among many uncivilized peoples, it is customary for a man to offer his wife, or one of his wives, to strangers for the time they stay in his hut. Even this practice has been adduced by several writers as evidence of a former communism.[384] To Sir John Lubbock it seems to involve the recognition of “a right inherent in every member of the community, and to visitors as temporary members.” Were this so, we should certainly have to conclude that “communal marriage” has been very prevalent in the human race, the practice of lending wives occurring among many peoples in different parts of the world.[385] But it is difficult to see how the practice could ever have been in any way connected with communism in women for all men belonging to the same tribe. It is not always the wife that is offered; it may as well be a daughter, a sister, or a servant.[386] Thus the people of Madagascar warn strangers to behave with decency to their wives, though they readily offer their daughters;[387] and it is asserted that a Tungus “will give his daughter for a time to any friend or traveller that he takes a liking to,” and if he has no daughter, he will give his servant, but not his wives.[388]
It can scarcely be doubted that such customs are due merely to savage ideas of hospitality. When we are told that, among the coast tribes of British Columbia, “the temporary present of a wife is one of the greatest honours that can be shown there to a guest;”[389] or that such an offer was considered by the Eskimo “as an act of generous hospitality;”[390] or, that “this is the common custom when the negroes wish to pay respect to their guests,”[391]—I cannot see why we should look for a deeper meaning in these practices than that which the words imply. A man offers a visitor his wife as he offers him a seat at his table. It is the greatest honour a savage can show his guest, as a temporary exchange of wives—a custom prevalent in North America, Polynesia, and elsewhere[392]—is regarded as a seal of the most intimate friendship. Hence, among the Greenlanders, those men were reputed the best and noblest tempered, who, without any pain or reluctance, would lend their friends their wives:[393] and the men of Caindu, a region of Eastern Tibet, hoped by such an offering to obtain the favour of the gods.[394] Indeed, if the practice of lending wives is to be regarded as a relic of ancient communism in women, we may equally well regard the practice of giving presents to friends, or hospitality in other respects, as a remnant of ancient communism in property of every kind.
The jus primae noctis granted to the friends of the bridegroom may, however, be derived from another source. Touching the capture of wives, Mr. Brough Smyth states that, in New South Wales and about Riverina, “in any instance where the abduction has taken place by a party of men for the benefit of some one individual, each of the members of the party claims, as a right, a privilege which the intended husband has no power to refuse.”[395] A similar custom prevails, according to Mr. Johnston, among the Wa-taïta in Eastern Central Africa, though the capture here is a symbol only. After the girl has been bought by the bridegroom, she runs away and affects to hide. Then she is sought out by him and three or four of his friends. When she is found, the men seize her and carry her off to the hut of her future husband, where she is placed at the disposal of her captors.[396] In such cases the jus primae noctis is a reward for a good turn done, or perhaps, as Mr. McLennan suggests,[397] a common war-right, exercised by the captors of the woman. If we knew all the circumstances, this explanation might prove to hold good also with regard to the right granted to the wedding-guests in the cases we have mentioned. At any rate, it must be admitted that these strange customs may be interpreted in a much simpler way than that suggested by Sir John Lubbock.
There are some instances of jus primae noctis accorded to a particular person, a chief or a priest. Thus, among the Kinipetu-Eskimo, the Ankut, or high-priest has this right.[398] Among the Caribs, the bridegroom received his bride from the hand of the Piache, or medicine-man, and certainly not as a virgin.[399] A similar custom is met with among certain Brazilian tribes, though in some of these cases it is to the chief that the right in question belongs.[400] The Spanish nobleman Andagova states that, in Nicaragua, a priest living in the temple was with the bride during the night preceding her marriage.[401] And among the Tahus in Northern Mexico according to Castañeda, the droit du seigneur was accorded to the cacique.[402]
In descriptions of travel in the fifteenth century, the aboriginal inhabitants of Teneriffe are represented as having married no woman who had not previously spent a night with the chief, which was considered a great honour.[403] The same right, according to Dr. Barth, was presumably granted to the chief of Bagele in Adamáua;[404] and, according to Herodotus, to the king of the ancient Adyrmachidae.[405] Navarette tells us that, on the coast of Malabar, the bridegroom brought the bride to the king, who kept her eight days in his palace; and the man took it “as a great honour and favour that his king would make use of her.”[406] Again, according to Hamilton, a Samorin could not take his bride home for three nights, during which the chief priest had a claim to her company.[407] Sugenheim believes even that, in certain parts of France, a similar right was accorded to the higher clergy during the Middle Ages.[408]
Yet Dr. Karl Schmidt has endeavoured, in a learned work, to prove that the droit du siegneur never existed in Europe, the later belief in it being merely “ein gelehrter Aberglaube,” which arose in various ways. Thus there was classical witness to ancient traditions of tyrants, who had distinguished themselves by such proceedings as that right was supposed to legalize. From various parts of the world came reports of travellers as to tribes among whom defloration was the privilege or duty of kings, priests, or other persons set apart for the purpose. A grosser meaning than the words will warrant had, besides, in Dr. Schmidt’s opinion, been attached to the fine paid by the vassal to his feudal lord for permission to marry. That law, he says, which is believed to have extended over a large part of Europe, has left no evidence of its existence in laws, charters, decretals, trials, or glossaries.[409]
This is not the proper place to discuss Dr. Schmidt’s hypothesis; but his arguments do not seem to be conclusive.[410] Several writers speak of estate-owners in Russia who claimed the droit du seigneur in the last and even the present century;[411] and a friend of mine informs me that, when travelling in that country, he met with aged men whose wives had been victims of the custom. It was certainly a privilege taken by the law of might. But how in such cases shall we draw the line between might and what is properly accepted as right?
Bachofen, Giraud-Teulon, Kulischer, and other writers[412] regard the jus primae noctis accorded to a special person, as a remnant of a primitive state of promiscuity or “communal marriage.” It is, in their opinion, a transformation of the ancient communal right, which was taken away from the community and transferred to those who chiefly represented it—the priest, the king, or the nobility.
But why may not the practice in question have been simply a consequence of might? It may be a right taken forcibly by the stronger, or it may be a privilege voluntarily given to the chief man as a mark of esteem,—in either case, it depends upon his authority. Indeed, the right of encroaching upon the marital rights of a subject is not commonly restricted to the first night only. Where the chief or the king has the power of life and death, what man can prohibit him from doing his will? “Quite indisputed,” Dr. Holub says, with reference to the Marutse, “is the king’s power to put to death, or to make a slave of any one of his subjects in any way he choses; he may take a man’s wife simply by providing him with another wife as a substitute.”[413] In Dahomey, all women belong to the king, who causes every girl to be brought to him before marriage, and, if he pleases, retains her in the palace.[414] Among the Negroes in Fida, according to Bosman, the captains of the king, who have to supply him with fresh wives, immediately present to him any beautiful virgin they may see; and none of his subjects dare presume to offer objections.[415] In Persia, it was a legal principle that whatever was touched by the king remained immaculate, and that he might go into the harem of any of his subjects.[416] Among the Kukis, “all the women of the village, married or single, are at the pleasure of the rajah,” who is regarded by his people with almost superstitious veneration.[417] The Kalmuck priests, who are not suffered to marry, may, it is said, pass a night with any man’s wife, and this is esteemed a favour by the husband.[418] And in Chamba (probably Cochin China), Marco Polo tells us, no woman was allowed to marry until the king had seen her.[419]
According to Dr. Zimmermann, it is a dogma among many Malays that the rajah has the entire disposal of the wives and children of his subjects.[420] In New Zealand, when a chief desires to take to himself a wife, he fixes his attention upon one and takes her, if need be by force, without consulting her feelings and wishes, or those of any one else.[421] In Tonga, the women of the lower people were at the disposal of the chiefs, who even used to shoot the husbands, if they made resistance;[422] whilst in Congo, as we are told by Mr. Reade, when the king takes a fresh concubine, her husband and all her lovers are put to death.[423]
In the interesting ‘Notes of a Country Clergyman’ in Russkaja Stariná (‘Russian Antiquity’), much light is thrown on the life of Russian landlords before the emancipation of the serfs. Here is what is said of one of them:—“Often N. I—tsch would stroll late in the evening about his village to admire the prosperous condition of his peasants; he would stop at some cottage, look in at the window, and tap on the pane with his finger. This tapping was well known to everybody, and in a moment the best-looking woman of the family went out to him.... Another landlord, whenever he visited his estate, demanded from the manager, immediately after his arrival, a list of all the grown-up girls. Then,” the author continues, “the master took to his service each of the girls for three or four days, and as soon as the list was finished, he went off to another village. This occurred regularly every year.”[424]
Here we have a collection of facts, belonging, as I think, to the same group as the jus primae noctis is of a chief or a priest. And it is obvious that they have nothing to do with “communal marriage.” The privilege accorded to the priest, however, seems, in some cases, to have a purely religious origin. Thus, Egede informs us that the native women of Greenland thought themselves fortunate if an Angekokk, or prophet, honoured them with his caresses; and some husbands even paid him, because they believed that the child of such a holy man could not but be happier and better than others.[425] Von Martius thinks that the right granted to the medicine-man among the Brazilian aborigines is owing to savage ideas of woman’s impurity.[426] And on the coast of Malabar, Hamilton says, the bride was given to the chief priest, “because the first fruits of her nuptials must be a holy oblation to the god she worships.”[427]
Yet another group of facts is adduced as evidence for the hypothesis of ancient communism in women. Sir J. Lubbock and Professor Giraud-Teulon cite some cases of courtesans being held in greater estimation than women married to a single husband, or, at least, being by no means despised.[428] Such feelings, Sir John believes, would naturally arise “when the special wife was a stranger and a slave, while the communal wife was a relative and a free woman,” and would, in some instances, long survive the social condition to which they owed their origin.[429] The courtesans are thus regarded as representatives of the communal wives of primitive times. But it seems to me much more reasonable to suppose that if, in Athens and India, courtesans were respected and sought after even by the principal men, it was because they were the only educated women.[430] Besides, as Mr. McLennan justly remarks with regard to such “communal wives,” “if any inference is to be made from their standing in Athens, in the brilliant age of Pericles, as to the state of matters in the primitive groups, proof of primitive communism in women might as well be sought in London or Paris in our own day. Far back in the interval between savagery and the age of Pericles are the heroes of Homer with their noble wedded wives.”[431]
It is true that, among some uncivilized peoples, women having many gallants are esteemed better than virgins, and are more anxiously desired in marriage. This is, for instance, stated to be the case with the Indians of Quito,[432] the Laplanders in Regnard’s days,[433] and the Hill Tribes of North Aracan.[434] But in each of these cases we are expressly told that want of chastity is considered a merit in the bride, because it is held to be the best testimony to the value of her attractions. There are thus various reasons why courtesans and licentious women may be held in respect and sought after, and we need not, therefore, resort to Sir John Lubbock’s far-fetched hypothesis.
[CHAPTER V]
A CRITICISM OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF PROMISCUITY
(Continued)
We are indebted to Mr. Lewis H. Morgan for information as to the names of various degrees of kinship among no fewer than 139 different races or tribes. This collection shows that very many peoples have a nomenclature of relationships quite different from our own. Mr. Morgan divides the systems into two great classes, the descriptive and the classificatory, which he regards as radically distinct. “The first,” he says, “which is that of the Aryan, Semitic, and Uralian families, rejecting the classification of kindred, except so far as it is in accordance with the numerical system, describes collateral consanguinei, for the most part, by an augmentation or combination of the primary terms of relationship. These terms, which are those for husband and wife, father and mother, brother and sister, and son and daughter, to which must be added, in such languages as possess them, grandfather and grandmother, and grandson and granddaughter, are thus restricted to the primary sense in which they are here employed. All other terms are secondary. Each relationship is thus made independent and distinct from every other. But the second, which is that of the Turanian, American Indian, and Malayan families, rejecting descriptive phrases in every instance, and reducing consanguinei to great classes, by a series of apparently arbitrary generalizations, applies the same terms to all the members of the same class. It thus confounds relationships, which, under the descriptive system, are distinct, and enlarges the signification both of the primary and secondary terms beyond their seemingly appropriate sense.”[435]
The most primitive form of the classificatory group is the system of the “Malayan family,”[436] which prevails among the Hawaiians, Kingsmill Islanders, Maoris, and, presumably, also among several other Polynesian and Micronesian tribes.[437] According to this system, all consanguinei, near and remote, are classified into five categories. My brothers and sisters and my first, second, third, and more remote male and female cousins, are the first category. To all these without distinction I apply the same term. My father and mother, together with their brothers and sisters, and their first, second, and more remote cousins, are the second category. To all these without distinction I apply likewise the same term. The brothers, sisters, and several cousins of my grandparents I denominate as if they were my grandparents; the cousins of my sons and daughters, as if they were my sons and daughters; the grandchildren of my brothers and sisters and their several cousins, as if they were my own grandchildren. All the individuals of the same category address each other as if they were brothers and sisters. Uncleship, auntship, and cousinship being ignored, we have, as far as the nomenclature is considered, only grandchildren.[438]
From this system of nomenclature all the others belonging to the classificatory group have, according to Mr. Morgan, been gradually developed. The system of the Two-Mountain Iroquois differs from that of the Hawaiians essentially in two respects only, the mother’s brother being distinguished by a special term, and so also a sister’s children. The Micmac system is somewhat more advanced. Not only does a man call his sister’s son his nephew, but a woman applies the same term to her brother’s son; and not only is a mother’s brother termed an uncle, but also the father’s sister is distinguished by a special term, as an aunt. A father’s brother is called a “little father;” and a mother’s sister, a “little mother.” Still more advanced is the system of the Wyandots, which may be regarded as the typical system of the Indians.[439] A mother’s brother’s son and a father’s sister’s son are no longer called by the same terms as brothers, but are recognized as cousins; and women apply to their mother’s brother’s grandsons no longer the same term as to their sons, but call them nephews.
It is needless to enter into further details. Those who shrink from the trouble of reading through Mr. Morgan’s extensive tables, will find an excellent summary of them in the fifth chapter of Sir John Lubbock’s great work on ‘The Origin of Civilization.’ It may, however, be added that the most advanced system of the classificatory group is that of the Karens and Eskimo, which differs from our own in three respects only. The children of cousins are termed nephews; the children of nephews, grandchildren; and a grandfather’s brothers and sisters, respectively, grandfathers and grandmothers. “Hence,” says Sir John Lubbock, “though the Karens and Eskimo have now a far more correct system of nomenclature than that of many other races, we find, even in this, clear traces of a time when these peoples had not advanced in this respect beyond the lowest stage.”[440]
From these systems of nomenclature Mr. Morgan draws very far-reaching conclusions, assuming that they are necessarily to be explained by early marriage customs. Thus, from the “Malayan system,” he infers the former prevalence of “marriage in a group” of all brothers and sisters and cousins of the same grade or generation; or, more correctly, his case is, that if we can explain the “Malayan system” on the assumption that such a general custom once existed, then we must believe that it did formerly exist. “Without this custom,” he says, “it is impossible to explain the origin of the system from the nature of descents. There is, therefore, a necessity for the prevalence of this custom amongst the remote ancestors of all the nations which now possess the classificatory system, if the system itself is to be regarded as having a natural origin.”[441] The family resulting from this custom he calls, in his latest work, the “consanguine family,” and in this, consisting of a body of kinsfolk, within which there prevailed promiscuity, or “communal marriage,” between all men and women of the same generation, the family in its first stage is recognized.[442] Mr. Morgan believes, however, that as a necessary condition antecedent to this form of the family, promiscuity, in a wider sense of the term, may be theoretically deduced, though, as he says, “it lies concealed in the misty antiquity of mankind beyond the reach of positive knowledge.”[443]
It is needless here to consider whether the last conclusion holds good. I shall endeavour to prove that Mr. Morgan’s inference of a stage of promiscuous intercourse even within the prescribed limits is altogether untenable. All depends on the point whether the “classificatory system” is a system of blood-ties, the nomenclature having been founded on blood-relationship, as near as the parentage of individuals could be known. Mr. Morgan assumes this, instead of proving it.
Yet in the terms themselves there is, generally, nothing which indicates that they imply an idea of consanguinity. Professor Buschmann has given us a very interesting list of the names for father and mother in many different languages.[444] The similarity of the terms is striking. “Pa,” “papa,” or “baba,” for instance, means father in several languages of the Old and New World, and “ma,” “mama,” means mother. The Tupis in Brazil have “paia” for father, and “maia” for mother;[445] the Uaraguaçú, respectively, “paptko” and “mamko.”[446] In other languages the terms for father are “ab,” “aba,” “apa,” “ada,” “ata,” “tata”; those for mother, “ama,” “emä,” “ana,” “ena,” &c. According to Buschmann, there are four typical forms of words for each of these ideas: for father, “pa,” “ta,” “ap,” “at”; for mother, “ma,” “na,” “am,” “an.” Sometimes, however, the meaning of the types is reversed. Thus, in Georgian,[447] as well as in the Mahaga language of Ysabel,[448] “mama” stands for father; whilst the Tuluvas in Southern India call the father “amme,” and the mother “appe.”[449]
The terms used often fall outside of the types mentioned. In the Lifu tongue, for example, one term for father is “kaka;”[450] in the Duauru language of Baladea, “chicha”;[451] in the Maréan tongue, “chacha” or “cheche.”[452] Again, among the Chalcha Mongols and some related peoples, mother is “ekè.”[453] In the Kanúri language, of Central Africa, the mother is called “ya”;[454] while the Kechua in Brazil call the father “yaya.”[455] Among the Bakongo, as I am informed by Mr. Ingham, “se” means father; in Finnish, “isä.” Again, by the Brazilian Bakaĭri, the mother is called “ise”;[456] and, by the people of Aneiteum, New Hebrides, “risi.”[457]
Similar terms are often used for other relationships. The Greek, “πάππος” signifies grandfather, and “μάμμα” grandmother. In the Kanúri language, “yaya” stands for elder brother;[458] and, in Lifuan, “mama” and “dhina” are terms for brother, whilst mother is “thine.”[459]
The origin of such terms is obvious. They are formed from the easiest sounds a child can produce. “‘Pa-pa,’ ‘ma-ma,‘ 'tata,’ and ‘apa,’ ‘ama,’ ‘ata,’” Professor Preyer says, “emerge originally spontaneously, the way of the breath being barred at the expiration, either by the lips (p, m), or by the tongue (d, t).”[460] Yet the different races vary considerably with regard to the ease with which they produce certain sounds. Thus the pronunciation of the labials is very difficult to many Indians,[461] on account of which their terms for father, mother, or other near kinsfolk, often differ much from the types given by Professor Buschmann.
It is evident that the terms borrowed from the children’s lips have no intrinsic meaning whatever. Hence, if a Bakaĭri child calls its father and father’s brother “tsogo,” its mother and mother’s sister “tsego”;[462] if a Macúsi names his paternal uncle “papa” as well as his father, and an Efatese names his father and all the tribe brothers of his father “ava” or “tama”;[463] if the Dacotahs apply the term “ahta” not only to the father, but also to the father’s brother, to the mother’s sister’s husband, to the father’s father’s brother’s son, &c., and the term “enah” not only to the mother, but also to the mother’s sister, to the mother’s mother’s sister’s daughter, &c.;[464] if, among the New Caledonians, an uncle, taking the place of a father, is called “baba” like the father himself, and an aunt is called “gnagna” like a mother;[465] if, as Archdeacon Hodgson of Zanzibar, writes to me, a native of Eastern Central Africa uses the words “baba” and “mama” not only for father and mother respectively, but also, very commonly, for “any near relationship or even external connection;” if, finally, the Semitic word for father, “ab” (“abu”), is not only used in a wide range of senses, but, to quote Professor Robertson Smith, “in all dialects is used in senses quite inconsistent with the idea that procreator is the radical meaning of the word,”[466]—we certainly must not, from these designations, infer anything as to early marriage customs.
Of course there are other terms applied to kinsfolk besides words taken from the lips of children, or words derived from these. But though considerable, their number has been somewhat exaggerated. Thus, for instance, Professor Vámbéry, in his work upon the primitive culture of the Turko-Tartars, says that the terms for mother, “ana” or “ene” have originally the meaning of woman or nurse, being derived from the roots “an” and “en.”[467] Exactly the reverse seems to be the fact, the terms for mother being the primitive words. In the same way, I cannot but think that Professor Max Müller and several other philologists are in error in deriving “pitár,” “pater,” “father,” from the root “pa,” which means to protect, to nourish; and “mâtár,” “mater,” “mother,” from the root “ma,” to fashion.[468] It seems, indeed, far more natural, as has been pointed out by Sir J. Lubbock and others, that the roots “pa,” to protect, and “ma,” to fashion, come from “pa,” father, and “ma,” mother, and not vice versa.[469] I am the more inclined to accept this explanation, as Mr. A. J. Swann informs me, from Kavala Island, Lake Tanganyika, that among the Waguha, the words “baba,” and “tata,” which mean father, also have the meaning of protector, provider.
I do not deny that relationships—especially in the collateral and descending lines—are in some cases denoted by terms derived from roots having an independent meaning; but the number of those that imply an idea of consanguinity does not seem to be very great. Mr. Bridges writes that, among the Yahgans, “the names ‘imu’ and ‘dabi’—father and mother—have no meaning apart from their application, neither have any of their other very definite and ample list of terms for relatives, except the terms ‘macu’ and ‘macipa’ son and daughter. These terms refer to ‘magu’ which means parturition; ‘cipa’ (‘keepa’) signifies woman or female.” In Bakongo, according to Mr. Ingham, “se” and “tata” denote father; “mama,” “mbuta,” and “ngudi,” mother; “nfumu,” elder brother or sister; “mbunzi,” younger brother; and “mbusi,” younger sister. “Nfumu” means also Sir, chief; “mbuta” means “the one who bore,” from “buta,” or “wuta,” to beget; and “ngudi,” “the one we descended from.” Again, Mr. Radfield informs me that, in the language of Lifu, the term for father means root; the term for mother, foundation or vessel; the term for sister, forbidden or “not to be touched;” and the terms for eldest and younger brother, respectively, ruler and ruled. It is possible—I should even say probable—that, in these instances also, the designations for relationships are the radical words. Besides, it should be observed that, in Yahgan, “the terms for relatives are strictly reserved for such, neither are they interchanged,” and that in Bakongo, the terms “tata” and “mama” are used as signs of respect to any one, whilst the terms “mbuta” and “ngudi” seem to be applied exclusively to the mother.
Not only has Mr. Morgan given no evidence for the truth of his assumption that the “classificatory system” is a system of blood-ties, but this assumption is not even fully consistent with the facts he has himself stated. It is conceivable that uncertainty as regards fatherhood might have led a savage to call several men his fathers, but an analogous reason could never have induced him to name several women his mothers. Hence, if a man applies the same term to his mother’s sisters as to his mother, and he himself is addressed as a son by a woman who did not give birth to him, this evidently shows that the nomenclature, at least in certain cases, cannot be explained by the nature of descent.[470]