Chapter XL: Marriage (1)

MAN'S sexual nature gives rise to various modes of conduct on which moral judgments are passed. We shall first consider such relations between the sexes as are comprised under the heading Marriage.

In a previous work I have endeavoured to show that in all probability there has been no stage in the social history of mankind where marriage has not existed, human marriage apparently being an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor.[1] I then defined marriage as 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 is marriage in the natural history sense of the term. As a social institution, on the other hand, it has a somewhat different meaning: it is a union regulated by custom or law.[2] Society lays down rules relating to the selection of partners, to the mode of contracting marriage, to its form, and to its duration. These rules are essentially expressions of moral feelings.

[Footnote 1: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, ch. iii. _sqq._]

[Footnote 2: The best definition of marriage as a social institution which I have met with is the following one given by Dr. Friedrichs ('Einzeluntersuchungen zur vergleichenden Rechtswissenschaft,' in _Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss._ x. 255):--"Eine von der Rechtsordnung anerkannte und privilegirte Vereinigung geschlechtsdifferenter Personen, entweder zur Führung eines gemeinsamen Hausstandes und zum Geschlechtsverkehr, oder zum ausschliesslichen Geschlechtsverkehr."]

There is, first, a circle of persons within which marriage is prohibited. It seems that the horror of incest is well-nigh universal in the human race, and that the few cases in which this feeling is said to be absent can only be regarded {365} as abnormalities. But the degrees of kinship within which marriage is forbidden are by no means the same everywhere. It is most, and almost universally, abominated between parents and children. It is also held in general abhorrence between brothers and sisters who are children of the same mother as well as of the same father. Most of the exceptions to this rule refer to royal persons, for whom it is considered improper to contract marriage with individuals of less exalted birth; but among a few peoples incestuous unions are practised on a larger scale on account of extreme isolation or as a result of vitiated instincts.[3] It seems, however, that habitual marriages between brothers and sisters have been imputed to certain peoples without sufficient reason.[4] This is obviously true of the Veddahs of Ceylon, who have long been supposed to regard the marriage of a man with his younger sister as _the_ proper marriage.[5] "Such incest," says Mr. Nevill, "never was allowed, and never could be, while the Vaedda {366} customs lingered. Incest is regarded as worse than murder. So positive is this feeling, that the Tamils have based a legend upon the instant murder of his sister by a Vaedda to whom she had made undue advances. The mistake arose from gross ignorance of Vaedda usages. The title of a cousin with whom marriage ought to be contracted, that is, mother's brother's daughter, or father's sister's daughter, is _nagâ_ or _nangî_. This, in Sinhalese, is applied to a younger sister. Hence if you ask a Vaedda, 'Do you marry your sisters?' the Sinhalese interpreter is apt to say, 'Do you marry your nagâ?' The reply is (I have often tested it), 'Yes--we always did formerly, but now it is not always observed.' You say then, 'What? marry your own-sister-nagâ?' and the reply is an angry and insulted denial, the very question appearing a gross insult." The same writer adds:--"In no case did a person marry one of the same family, even though the relationship was lost in remote antiquity. Such a marriage is incest. The penalty for incest was death."[6]

[Footnote 3: Westermarck, _op. cit._ ch. xiv. _sq._]

[Footnote 4: This is apparently the case with various peoples mentioned by Sir J. G. Frazer (_Pausanias's Description of Greece_, ii. 84 _sq._) as being addicted to incestuous unions. Mr. Turner's short statement (_Samoa_, p. 341) that among the New Caledonians no laws of consanguinity were observed in their marriages, and that even the nearest relatives united, radically differs from M. de Rochas' description of the same people. "Les Néo-Calédoniens," he says (_Nouvelle Calédonie_, p. 232), "ne se marient pas entre proches parents du côté paternel; mais du côté maternel, ils se marient à tous les degrés de cousinage." Brothers and sisters, after they have reached years of maturity, are no longer permitted to entertain any social intercourse with each other; they are prohibited from keeping each other company even in the presence of a third person; and if they casually meet they must instantly go out of the way or, if that is impossible, the sister must throw herself on the ground with her face downwards. "Cet éloignement," M. de Rochas adds (_ibid._ p. 239), "qui n'est certes l'effet ni du mépris ni de l'inimitié, me parait né d'une exagération déraisonnable d'un sentiment naturel, l'horreur de l'inceste." Sir J. G. Frazer says that, according to Mr. Thomson, the marriage of brothers with sisters has been practised among the Masai; but a later and, as it seems, better informed authority tells us that "the Masai do not marry their near relations" and that "incest is unknown among them" (Hinde, _The Last of the Masai_, p. 76). Again, the statement that among the Obongos, a dwarf race in West Africa, sisters marry with brothers, is only based on information derived from another people, the Ashangos, who have a strong antipathy to them (Du Chaillu, _Journey to Ashango-Land_, p. 320). Liebich's assertion (_Die Zigeuner_, p. 49) that the Gypsies allow a brother to marry his sister is certainly not true of the Gypsies of Finland, who greatly abhor incest (Thesleff, 'Zigenarlif i Finland,' in _Nya Pressen_, 1897, no. 331 B).]

[Footnote 5: Bailey, 'Wild Tribes of the Veddahs of Ceylon,' in _Trans. Ethn. Soc._ N.S. ii. 294 _sq._]

[Footnote 6: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in _Taprobanian_, i. 178.]

As a rule, the prohibited degrees are more numerous among peoples unaffected by modern civilisation than they are in more advanced communities, the prohibitions in a great many cases referring even to all the members of the tribe or clan; and the violation of these rules is regarded as a most heinous crime.[7]

[Footnote 7: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 297 _sqq._]

The Algonquins speak of cases where men have been put to death by their nearest kinsfolk for marrying women of their own clan.[8] Among the Asiniboin, a Siouan tribe, a chief can commit murder with impunity if the murdered person be without friends, but if he married within his _gens_ he would be dismissed, on account of the general disgust which such a union would arouse.[9] The Hottentots used to punish alliances between first or second cousins with death.[10] A Bantu of the coast region considers similar unions to be "something horrible, something unutterably disgraceful."[11] The Busoga of the Uganda {367} Protectorate held in great abhorrence anything like incest even amongst domestic animals.[12] Among the Kandhs of India "intermarriage between persons of the same tribe, however large or scattered, is considered incestuous and punishable with death."[13] In the Malay Archipelago submersion is a common punishment for incest,[14] but among certain tribes the guilty parties are killed and eaten[15] or buried alive.[16] In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it would be a crime punishable with death for a man or woman to marry a person belonging to his or her mother's clan;[17] and the Mortlock Islanders are said to inflict the same punishment upon anybody who has sexual intercourse with a relative belonging to his own "tribe."[18] Nowhere has marriage been bound by more severe laws than among the Australian aborigines. Their tribes are grouped in exogamous subdivisions, the number of which varies; and at least before the occupation of the country by the whites the regular punishment for marriage or sexual intercourse with a person belonging to a forbidden division was death.[19]

[Footnote 8: Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 59.]

[Footnote 9: Dorsey, 'Siouan Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xv. 224.]

[Footnote 10: Kolben, _Present State of the Cape of Good Hope_, i. 155 _sq._]

[Footnote 11: Theal, _History of the Boers in South Africa_, p. 16.]

[Footnote 12: Johnston, _Uganda Protectorate_, ii. 719.]

[Footnote 13: Macpherson, quoted by Percival, _Land of the Veda_, p. 345. _Cf._ Hunter, _Annals of Rural Bengal_, iii. 81.]

[Footnote 14: Wilken, _Huwelijken tusschen bloedverwanten_, p. 26 _sq._ Riedel, _De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 460.]

[Footnote 15: Wilken, _Over de verwantschap en het huwelijks- en erfrecht bij de volken van het maleische ras_, p. 18.]

[Footnote 16: _Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago_, p. 105.]

[Footnote 17: Macdonald, _Oceania_, p. 181 _sq._]

[Footnote 18: Kubary, 'Die Bewohner der Mortlock Inseln,' in _Mittheil. d. Geogr. Gesellsch. in Hamburg_, 1878-9, p. 251.]

[Footnote 19: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 299 _sq._ See, besides the authorities quoted there, Roth, _Ethnol. Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 182; Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 15.]

Not less intense is the horror of incest among nations that have passed beyond savagery and barbarism. Among the Chinese incest with a grand-uncle, a father's first cousin, a brother, or a nephew, is punishable by death, and a man who marries his mother's sister is strangled; nay, punishment is inflicted even on him who marries a person with the same surname as his own, sixty blows being the penalty.[20] So also incest was held in the utmost horror by the so-called Aryan peoples in ancient times.[21] In the 'Institutes of Vishnu' it is said that sexual intercourse {368} with one's mother or daughter or daughter-in-law is a crime of the highest degree, for which there is no other atonement than to proceed into the flames.[22]

[Footnote 20: Medhurst, 'Marriage, Affinity, and Inheritance in China,' in _Trans. Roy. Asiatic Soc. China Branch_, iv. 21 _sqq._]

[Footnote 21: Leist, _Alt-arisches Jus Gentium_, p. 394 _sq._]

[Footnote 22: _Institutes of Vishnu_, xxxiv. 1 _sq._]

Various theories have been set forth to account for the prohibition of marriage between near kin. I criticised some of them in my book on the 'History of Human Marriage,' and ventured at the same time on an explanation of my own.[23] I pointed out that there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as such persons are in most cases related by blood, this feeling would naturally display itself in custom and law as a horror of intercourse between near kin. Indeed, an abundance of ethnographical facts seem to indicate that it is not in the first place by the degree of consanguinity, but by the close living together, that prohibitory laws against intermarriage are determined. Thus many peoples have a rule of "exogamy" which does not depend on kinship at all, but on purely local considerations, all the members of a horde or village, though not related by blood, being forbidden to intermarry.[24] The prohibited degrees are very differently defined in the customs or laws of different nations, and it appears that the extent to which relatives are prohibited from intermarrying is nearly connected with their close living together. Very often the prohibitions against incest are more or less one-sided, applying more extensively either to the relatives on the father's side or to those on the mother's, according as descent is reckoned through men or women. Now, since {369} the line of descent is largely connected with local relationships, we may reasonably infer that the same local relationships exercise a considerable influence on the table of prohibited degrees. However, in a large number of cases prohibitions of intermarriage are only indirectly influenced by the close living together.[25] Aversion to the intermarriage of persons who live in intimate connection with one another has called forth prohibitions of the intermarriage of relations; and, as kinship is traced by means of a system of names, the name comes to be considered identical with relationship. This system is necessarily one-sided. Though it will keep up the record of descent either on the male or female side, it cannot do both at once;[26] and the line which has not been kept up by such means of record, even where it is recognised as a line of relationship, is naturally more or less neglected and soon forgotten. Hence the prohibited degrees frequently extend very far on the one side--to the whole clan--but not on the other. It should also be remembered that, according to primitive ideas, the name itself constitutes a mystic link between those who have it in common. "In Greenland, as everywhere else," says Dr. Nansen, "the name is of great importance; it is believed that there is a spiritual affinity between two people of the same name."[27] Generally speaking, the feeling that two persons are intimately connected in some way or other may, through an association of ideas, give rise to the notion that marriage or sexual intercourse between them is incestuous. Hence the prohibitions of marriage between relations by alliance and by adoption. Hence, too, the prohibitions of the Roman and Greek Churches on the ground of what is called "spiritual relationship."

[Footnote 23: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 310 _sqq._]

[Footnote 24: Herr Cunow (_Die Verwandtschafts-Organisationen der Australneger_, p. 187) finds this argument "rather peculiar," and offers himself a different explanation of the rule in question. He writes:--"In der Wirklichkeit erklärt sich das Verbot einfach daraus, dass sehr oft die Lokalgruppe mit dem Geschlechtsverband beziehungsweise dem Totemverband kongruirt, und demnach das was für die Gens gilt, zugleich auch für die Lokalgruppe Geltung hat." This, however, is only Herr Cunow's own inference. And it may be asked why it is more "peculiar" to suppose that the prohibition of marriage between near kin has sprung from aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together, than to assume that the rule which forbids marriage between unrelated persons living in the same community has sprung from the prohibition of marriage between kindred.]

[Footnote 25: I do not understand how any reader of my book can, like Herr Cunow (_op. cit._ p. 186 _sqq._), attribute to me the statement that the group within which intermarriage is prohibited is identical with the group of people who live closely together. If he had read a little more carefully what I have said, he might have saved himself the trouble he has taken to prove my great ignorance of early social organisations.]

[Footnote 26: _Cf._ Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, p. 285 _sq._]

[Footnote 27: Nansen, _Eskimo Life_, p. 230.]

{370} The question arises:--How has this instinctive aversion to marriage and sexual intercourse in general between persons living closely together from early youth originated? I have suggested that it may be the result of natural selection. Darwin's careful studies of the effects of cross- and self-fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom, the consensus of opinion among eminent breeders, and experiments made with rats, rabbits, and other animals, seem to have proved that self-fertilisation of plants and close inter-breeding of animals are more or less injurious to the species; and it is probable that the evil chiefly results from the fact that the uniting sexual elements were not sufficiently differentiated. Now it is impossible to believe that a physiological law which holds good of the rest of the animal kingdom, as also of plants, would not apply to man as well. But it is difficult to adduce direct evidence for the evil effects of consanguineous marriages. We cannot expect very conspicuous results from other alliances than those between the nearest relatives--between brothers and sisters, parents and children,--and the injurious results even of such unions would not necessarily appear at once. The closest kind of intermarriage which we have opportunities of studying is that between first cousins. Unfortunately, the observations hitherto made on the subject are far from decisive. Yet it is noteworthy that of all the writers who have discussed it the majority, and certainly not the least able of them, have expressed their belief in marriages between first cousins being more or less unfavourable to the offspring; and no evidence which can stand the test of scientific investigation has hitherto been adduced against this view. Moreover, we have reason to believe that consanguineous marriages are much more injurious in savage regions, where the struggle for existence is often very severe, than they have proved to be in civilised societies, especially as it is among the well-to-do classes that such marriages occur most frequently.

Taking all these facts into consideration, I am inclined to think that consanguineous marriages are in some way or {371} other detrimental to the species. And here I find a quite sufficient explanation of the horror of incest; not because man at an early stage recognised the injurious influence of close intermarriage, but because the law of natural selection must inevitably have operated. Among the ancestors of man, as among other animals, there was no doubt a time, when blood-relationship was no bar to sexual intercourse. But variations, here as elsewhere, would naturally present themselves--we know how extremely liable to variations the sexual instinct is; and those of our ancestors who avoided in-and-in breeding would survive, while the others would gradually decay and ultimately perish. Thus a sentiment would be developed which would be powerful enough, as a rule, to prevent injurious unions. Of course it would display itself, not as an innate aversion to sexual connections with near relatives as such, but as an aversion on the part of individuals to union with others with whom they lived; but these, as a matter of fact, would be blood-relations, so that the result would be the survival of the fittest. Whether man inherited this sentiment from the predecessors from whom he sprang, or whether it was developed after the evolution of distinctly human qualities, we cannot know. It must have arisen at a stage when family ties became comparatively strong, and children remained with their parents until the age of puberty or even longer. And exogamy, resulting from a natural extension of this sentiment to a larger group, would arise when single families united into hordes.

This attempt to explain the prohibition of marriage between kindred and exogamy has not lacked sympathetic support,[28] but more commonly, I think, it has been rejected. Yet after a careful consideration of the various objections raised against it I find no reason to alter my opinion. Some of my opponents have evidently failed to grasp the {372} argument on which the theory is based. Thus Professor Robertson Smith argued that it begins by presupposing the very custom which it professes to explain, the custom of exogamy; that "it postulates the existence of groups which through many generations (for the survival of the fittest implies this) avoided wiving within the group."[29] But what my theory postulates is not the existence of exogamous groups, but the spontaneous appearance of individual sentiments of aversion. And if, as Mr. Andrew Lang maintains, my whole argument is a "vicious circle,"[30] then the theory of natural selection itself is a vicious circle, since there never could be a selection of qualities that did not exist before.

[Footnote 28: A. R. Wallace, in his 'Introductory Note' to my _History of Human Marriage_, p. vi. Giddings, _Principles of Sociology_, p. 267. Howard, _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, i. 125 _sqq._ Sir E. B. Tylor (in _Academy_, xl. 289) says with regard to my theory that, at any rate, I am "well on the track." See also Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, i. pp. clxxix, clxxx, ccii.]

[Footnote 29: Robertson Smith, in _Nature_, xliv. 271.]

[Footnote 30: Lang, _Social Origins_, p. 33.]

It has been argued that if close living together calls forth aversion to sexual intercourse, such aversion ought to display itself between husband and wife as well as between near relatives.[31] But these cases are certainly not identical. The feeling of which I have spoken is aversion associated with the idea of sexual intercourse between persons who have lived in a long-continued intimate relationship from a period of life when the action of sexual desire is naturally out of the question.[32] On the other hand, when a man marries a woman his feeling towards her is of a very different kind, and his love impulse may remain, nay increase, during the conjugal union; though even in this case long living together has undoubtedly a tendency to lead to sexual indifference and sometimes to positive aversion. The opinion that the home is kept free from incestuous intercourse only by law, custom, and education,[33]{373} shows lack of discrimination. Law may forbid a son to marry his mother, a brother to marry his sister, but it could not prevent him from _desiring_ such a union. Have the most draconic codes ever been able to suppress, say, homosexual love? As Plato observed, an unwritten law defends as sufficiently as possible parents from incestuous intercourse with their children, brothers from intercourse with their sisters; "nor does the thought of such a thing ever enter at all into the minds of most of them."[34] Considering the extreme variability to which the sexual impulse is subject, it is not astonishing that cases of what we consider incestuous intercourse sometimes do occur. It seems to me more remarkable that the abhorrence of incest should be so general, and the exceptions to the rule so few.

[Footnote 31: Durkheim, 'La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines,' in _L'année sociologique_, i. 64. Professor Durkheim refers in this connection to an article by Dr. Simmel, 'Die Verwandtenehe,' in _Vossische Zeitung_, June 3rd and 10th, 1894. But I cannot find that Dr. Simmel is really opposed to my view. He only says, "Das intime Beisammenleben wirkt keineswegs nur abstumpfend, sondern in vielen Fällen gerade anreizend, sonst würde die alte Erfahrung nicht gelten, dass die Liebe, wo sie beim Eingehen der Ehe fehlte, oft im Laufe derselben entsteht."]

[Footnote 32: _Cf._ Bentham, _Theory of Legislation_, p. 220:--"Individuals accustomed to see each other and to know each other, from an age which is neither capable of conceiving the desire nor of inspiring it, will see each other with the same eyes to the end of life."]

[Footnote 33: For advocates of such a view see Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 310 _sqq._ More recently it has been expressed by Krauss, in _Am Ur-Quell_, iv. 151, and Finck, _Primitive Love_, p. 49.]

[Footnote 34: Plato, _Leges_, viii. 838. Among the Maoris of New Zealand, according to Mr. Colenso (_Maori Races_, p. 47 _sq._), adult brothers and sisters slept together, as they had always done from their birth, "not only without sin, but without thought of it."]

Dr. Havelock Ellis, again, objects that my theory assumes the existence of a kind of instinct which can with difficulty be accepted. "An innate tendency," he says, "at once so specific and so merely negative, involving at the same time deliberate intellectual processes, can only with a certain force be introduced into the accepted class of instincts. It is as awkward and artificial an instinct as would be, let us say, an instinct to avoid eating the apples that grew in one's own orchard. The explanation of the abhorrence of incest is really, however, exceedingly simple. . . . The normal failure of the pairing instinct to manifest itself in the case of brothers and sisters, or of boys and girls brought up together from infancy, is a merely negative phenomenon due to the inevitable absence under those circumstances of the conditions which evoke the pairing impulse. . . . Between those who have been brought up together from childhood all the sensory stimuli of vision, hearing, and touch have been dulled by use, trained to the calm level of affection, and deprived of their potency to {374} arouse the erethistic excitement which produces sexual tumescence."[35] I think that Dr. Ellis has considerably exaggerated the difference between my theory and his own. The "instinct" of which I have spoken is simply aversion to sexual intercourse with certain persons, and this is a no more complicated mental phenomenon than, for instance, an animal's aversion to eating certain kinds of substances. Indeed, Dr. Ellis himself, in his excellent 'Studies in the Psychology of Sex,' gives us many instances not only of sexual indifference, but of sexual aversion, quite instinctive in character.[36] Thus the largest proportion of male inverts described by him experience what is called _horror feminæ_, that is to say, "woman as an object of sexual desire is disgusting" (not merely indifferent) to them.[37] And Dr. Ellis also repeatedly speaks of the "abhorrence" of incest.

[Footnote 35: Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, 'Sexual Selection in Man,' p. 205 _sq._]

[Footnote 36: I have been blamed for making an illegitimate use of the word "instinct" (Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_ p. 446). But if, as Dr. Ellis says, "an instinct is fundamentally a more or less complicated series of reflexes set in action by a definite stimulus," or as Mr. Crawley puts it (_op. cit._ p. 446), instinct "has nothing in its content except response of function to environment," then the aversion I speak of may certainly be called an instinct.]

[Footnote 37: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 164.]

The objection has been raised that, if my explanation of the prohibition of incest were correct, connections between unrelated persons who have been brought up together should be as repulsive as connections between near kin; whereas, as a matter of fact, the two cases are regarded in a very different light, the latter, only, being held incestuous.[38] Much, of course, depends on the closeness of the union, and Dr. Steinmetz's argument that "the very sensual Frenchmen often seem to marry the lady friends of their earliest youth,"[39] is certainly not to the point. I believe that sexual love between a man and his foster-daughter is almost as great an abnormality as sexual love between a father and his daughter; and among some peoples marriages between persons who have been brought up together in the same family or who {375} belong to the same local group, without being related to each other by blood, are held blamable or are actually prohibited.[40] Even between lads and girls who have been educated in the same school there is a remarkable absence of erotic feelings, as appears from an interesting communication by a person who has for many years been the head-mistress of such a school in Finland. One youth assured her that neither he nor any of his friends would ever think of marrying a girl who had been their school fellow;[41] and I heard of a lad who made a great distinction between girls of his own school and other, "real," girls, as he called them. Yet however objectionable and unnatural unions between foster-parents and foster-children or between foster-brothers and foster-sisters may appear to us, I do not deny that unions between the nearest blood-relatives inspire a horror of their own; and it seems natural that they should do so considering that from earliest times the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together has been expressed in prohibitions against unions between kindred. Such unions have been stigmatised by custom, law, and religion, whilst much less notice has been taken of intercourse between unrelated persons who may occasionally have grown up in the same household. The belief in the supernatural, especially, has played a very important part in the ideas referring to incest, as in other points of sexual morality, owing to the mystery which surrounds everything connected with the function of reproduction.[42] The Aleuts in early times believed that incest, which they considered the gravest crime, was always followed by the birth of monsters with walrus tusks, beards, and other disfigurations.[43] The Kafirs {376} likewise maintain that the offspring of an incestuous union will be a monster, as "a punishment inflicted by the ancestral spirit."[44] The Bataks of Sumatra regard a long drought as a decisive proof that two cousins have had criminal intercourse with each other.[45] The Galelarese think that incest calls forth alarming natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, the eruption of a volcano, or torrents of rain.[46] So also the higher religions have branded incest as a heinous sin. As for Christianity's views on the subject, it is sufficient to notice that the prohibited degrees were extended by the Church,[47] and that the jurisdiction over incest, as over all sexual offences, was exercised by the ecclesiastical courts.[48]

[Footnote 38: Steinmetz, 'Die neueren Forschungen zur Geschichte der menschlichen Familie,' in _Zeitschr. f. Socialwiss._ ii. 818 _sq._]

[Footnote 39: _Ibid._ ii. 818.]

[Footnote 40: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 321 _sqq._ Among the Western Islanders of Torres Straits marriage was forbidden, "with a remarkable delicacy of feeling, to the sister of a man's particular friend" (Haddon, 'Ethnology of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xix. 315).]

[Footnote 41: Lucina Hagman, 'Från samskolan,' in _Humanitas_, ii. 188 _sq._]

[Footnote 42: For the connection between religious feelings and the sexual impulse, see Vallon and Marie, 'Des psychoses religieuses,' in _Archives de Neurologie_, ser. ii. vol. iii. 184 _sq._; Gadelius, _Om tvångstankar_, p. 120 _sq._; Starbuck, _Psychology of Religion_, p. 401 _sqq._]

[Footnote 43: Veniammof, quoted by Petroff, _Report on Alaska_, p. 155.]

[Footnote 44: Shooter, _Kafirs of Natal_, p. 45.]

[Footnote 45: von Brenner, _Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras_, p. 212.]

[Footnote 46: van Baarda, 'Fabelen, verhalen en overleveringen der Galelareezen,' in _Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_, xlv. (ser. vi. vol. 1.) p. 514. See also Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 212 _sq._]

[Footnote 47: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 308. Katz, _Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts_, p. 116 _sq._]

[Footnote 48: Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_, ii. 411.]

It has, finally, been argued that my theory utterly fails to explain the fact that prohibitions of intermarriage frequently refer to all the members of a clan, even those who live in different localities.[49] In addition to what I have previously observed on this point, I desire to emphasise that every hypothesis pretending to give a full explanation of prohibitions of incest must assume the operation of the very same mental law--that of association--which in my opinion accounts for clan-exogamy. Thus Professor Durkheim, while maintaining that my theory as regards the horror of incest could not apply to exogamy because the members of the same totem do not live together, is himself quite ready to resort to analogy to explain prohibitions extending outside the totem clan. He tries to show that clan-exogamy is the source of all other prohibitions against incest, and that clan-exogamy itself springs from totemism.[50] According {377} to him the rule of clan-exogamy has been extended to near relatives belonging to different clans, because they are in no less intimate contact with each other than are the members of the same clan. According to my own theory, again, the prohibition of marriage between near relatives living closely together has been extended to all the members of the clan on account of the notion of intimacy connected with the idea of a common descent and with a common name. If I consider Professor Durkheim's hypothesis extremely unsatisfactory,[51] it is certainly not because he has called in the law of association to explain the rules against incest. How could anybody deny the operation of this law for instance in the Roman Catholic prohibition of marriage between co-sponsors, or in the rule prevalent in Eastern Europe according to which the groomsman at the wedding is forbidden to intermarry with the family of the bride,[52] or in laws prohibiting marriage between relatives by alliance? And why might not the {378} same law be applied to other relationships also, such as those constituted by a common descent or a common name?

[Footnote 49: Cunow, _op. cit._ p. 185. Durkheim, in _L'année sociologique_, i. 39, n. 2. Steinmetz, in _Zeitschr. f. Socialwiss._ ii. 819.]

[Footnote 50: Prof. Durkheim says (_L'année sociologique_, i. 50):--"Le sang est tabou d'une manière générale et il taboue tout ce qui entre en rapports avec lui. . . . La femme est, d'une manière chronique, le théâtre de manifestations sanglantes. . . . La femme est donc, elle aussi, et d'une manière également chronique, tabou pour les autres membres du clan." However, the taboo is not restricted to the members of the clan, but refers also to near relatives belonging to different clans, and this has to be explained. M. Durkheim writes (_ibid._ p. 19):--"Quand on a pris l'habitude de regarder comme incestueux et abominables les rapports conjugaux de sujets qui sont nominalement du même clan, les rapports similaires d'individus qui, tout en ressortissant verbalement à des clans différents, sont pourtant en contact aussi ou plus intime que les précédents, ne peuvent manquer de prendre le même caractère." And further (_ibid._ p. 58):--"Quand le totémisme disparaît, et avec lui la parenté spéciale au clan, l'exogamie devient solidaire des nouveaux types de famille qui se constituent et qui reposent sur d'autres bases, et comme ces families sont plus restreintes que n'était le clan, elle se circonscrit, elle aussi, dans un cercle moins étendu; le nombre des individus entre lesquels le mariage est prohibé diminue. C'est ainsi que, par une évolution graduelle, elle en est arrivée à l'état actuel où les mariages entre ascendants et descendants, entre frères et s[oe]urs, sont à peu près les seuls qui soient radicalement interdits."]

[Footnote 51: Professor Durkheim tries to explain a phenomenon of universal prevalence through an institution which has been proved to exist among certain peoples only. How does Professor Durkheim know that totem clans once prevailed among all peoples who now prohibit the intermarriage of near relatives? If the rules which prevent parents from marrying their children and brothers from marrying their sisters are survivals of ancient totemism, how shall we explain the normal aversion to such unions? Ancient totemism can certainly not account for this. But then the coincidence between these two facts--the legal prohibition of incest and the psychical aversion to it--is merely accidental; and this seems to me a preposterous supposition. See _infra_, Additional Notes.]

[Footnote 52: Maine, _Dissertations_, p. 257 _sq._]

* * * * *

There is not only an inner circle within which no marriage is allowed, but also an outer circle outside of which marriage is either prohibited or at least disapproved of. Like the inner circle, the outer one varies greatly in extent.[53] Probably every people considers it a disgrace, if not a crime, for its men, and even more so for its women, to marry within a race very different from its own, especially if it be an inferior race. The Romans were prohibited from marrying barbarians--the emperor Valentinian inflicted the penalty of death for such unions;[54] and a modern European girl who married an Australian native would no doubt be regarded as an outcast by her own society. Among many peoples marriage very seldom or never takes place outside the limits of the tribe or community. In India there are several instances of this. The Tipperahs and Abors view with abhorrence the idea of their girls marrying out of their clan;[55] and Colonel Dalton was gravely assured that, "when one of the daughters of Pádam so demeans herself, the sun and moon refuse to shine, and there is such a strife in the elements that all labour is necessarily suspended, till by sacrifice and oblation the stain is washed away."[56] In ancient Peru it was not lawful for the natives of one province or village to intermarry with those of another.[57] Marriage with foreign women was unlawful at Sparta and Athens.[58] At Rome any marriage of a citizen with a woman who was not herself a Roman citizen, or did not belong to a community possessing the privilege of _connubium_ with Rome, was invalid, and no legitimate children could be born of such a union.[59]

[Footnote 53: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 363 _sqq._]

[Footnote 54: Rossbach, _Römische Ehe_, p. 465.]

[Footnote 55: Lewin, _Wild Races of South-Eastern India_, p. 201.]

[Footnote 56: Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 28.]

[Footnote 57: Garcilasso de la Vega, _First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas_, i. 308.]

[Footnote 58: Müller, _History of the Doric Race_, ii. 302. Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, p. 156 _sq._]

[Footnote 59: Gaius, _Institutiones_, i. 56.]

{379} Prohibitions of intermarriage also very often relate to persons belonging to different classes or castes of the same community.[60] To mention a few instances. The wild tribes of Brazil consider alliances between slaves and freemen highly disgraceful.[61] In Tahiti, if a woman of condition chose an inferior person as her husband, the children he had by her were killed.[62] In the Malay Archipelago marriages between persons of different rank are, as a rule, disapproved of, and in some places prohibited.[63] In India intermarriage between different castes, though formerly permissible, is now altogether prohibited.[64] In Rome plebeians and patricians could not intermarry till the year 445 B.C., nor were marriages allowed between patricians and clients; and Cicero himself disapproved of intermarriages of _ingenui_ and freedmen.[65] Among the Teutonic peoples in ancient times any freeman who married a slave became a slave himself.[66] As late as the thirteenth century a German woman who had intercourse with a serf lost her liberty;[67] and both in Germany and Scandinavia, when the nobility emerged as a distinct order from the class of freemen, marriages between persons of noble birth and persons who, although free, were not noble came to be considered misalliances.[68] Even in modern Europe there survive traces of the former class endogamy. According to German Civil Law, the marriage of a man belonging to the high nobility with a woman of inferior birth is still regarded as a _disparagium_, and the woman is not entitled to the rank of her husband, nor is the full right of inheritance possessed by her or her children.[69] Although in no way prevented by law, marriages out of {380} the class are generally avoided by custom. As Sir Henry Maine observes, "the outer or endogamous limit, within which a man or woman must marry, has been mostly taken under the shelter of fashion or prejudice. It is but faintly traced in England, though not wholly obscured. It is (or perhaps was) rather more distinctly marked in the United States, through prejudices against the blending of white and coloured blood. But in Germany certain hereditary dignities are still forfeited by a marriage beyond the forbidden limits; and in France, in spite of all formal institutions, marriages between a person belonging to the noblesse and a person belonging to the _bourgeoisie_ (distinguished roughly from one another by the particle 'de') are wonderfully rare, though they are not unknown."[70]

[Footnote 60: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 368 _sqq._]

[Footnote 61: von Martius, _Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's_, i. 71. von Spix and von Martius, _Travels in Brazil_, ii. 74.]

[Footnote 62: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 256. Cook, _Voyage to the Pacific Ocean_, ii. 171 _sq._]

[Footnote 63: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 371.]

[Footnote 64: Monier-Williams, _Hinduism_, p. 155.]

[Footnote 65: Mommsen, _History of Rome_, i. 371. Rossbach, _op. cit._ pp. 249, 456 _sq._]

[Footnote 66: Winroth, _Äktenskapshindren_, p. 227.]

[Footnote 67: _Ibid._ p. 230 _sq._ Weinhold, _Deutsche Frauen in dem Mittelalter_, i. 349, 353 _sq._]

[Footnote 68: Weinhold, _op. cit._ i. 349 _sq._]

[Footnote 69: Behrend, in von Holtzendorff, _Encyclopädie der Rechtswissenschaft_, i. 478.]

[Footnote 70: Maine, _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom_, p. 224 _sq._]

Religion, also, has formed a great bar to intermarriage. Among Muhammedans a marriage between a Christian man and a Muhammedan woman is not permitted under any circumstances, whereas it is held lawful for a Muhammedan to marry a Christian or a Jewish, but not a heathen, woman, if induced to do so by excessive love of her, or if he cannot obtain a wife of his own religion.[71] The Jewish law does not recognise marriage with a person of another belief;[72] and during the Middle Ages marriage between Jews and Christians was prohibited by the Christians also.[73] St. Paul indicates that a Christian was not allowed to marry a heathen.[74] Tertullian calls such an alliance fornication;[75] and in the fourth century the Council of Elvira forbade Christian parents to give their daughters in marriage to heathens.[76] Even the adherents of different Christian confessions have been prohibited from intermarrying. In {381} the Roman Catholic Church the prohibition of marriage with heathens and Jews was soon followed by the prohibition of "mixed marriages," and Protestants likewise forbade such unions.[77] Mixed marriages are not now contrary to the civil law either among Roman Catholic or Protestant nations, but in countries belonging to the Orthodox Greek Church ecclesiastical restrictions have been adopted, and are still recognised, by the State.[78]

[Footnote 71: Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_, i. 123. d'Escayrac de Lauture, _Die afrikanische Wüste_, p. 68.]

[Footnote 72: Frankel, _Grundlinien des mosaisch-talmudischen Eherechts_, p. xx. Ritter, _Philo und die Halacha_, p. 71.]

[Footnote 73: Andree, _Zur Volkskunde der Juden_, p. 48. Neubauer, 'Notes on the Race-Types of the Jews,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv. 19.]

[Footnote 74: _1 Corinthians_, vii. 39.]

[Footnote 75: Tertullian, _Ad uxorem_, ii. 3 (Migne, _Patrologiæ cursus_, i. 1292 _sq._).]

[Footnote 76: _Concilium Eliberitanum_, cap. 15 _sq._ (Labbe-Mansi, _Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio_, ii. 8). See also Müller, _Das sexuelle Leben der christlichen Kulturvölker_, p. 54.]

[Footnote 77: Winroth, _op. cit._ p. 213 _sqq._]

[Footnote 78: _Ibid._ p. 220 _sq._]

The endogamous rules are in the first place due to the proud antipathy people feel to races, nations, classes, or religions different from their own. He who breaks such a rule is regarded as an offender against the circle to which he belongs. He hurts its feelings, he disgraces it at the same time as he disgraces himself. Irregular connections outside the endogamous circle are often looked upon with less intolerance than marriage, which places the parties on a more equal footing. A traveller relates that at Djidda, where sexual morality is held in little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or European, but would think herself for ever dishonoured if she were joined to him in lawful wedlock.[79] In Rome _contubernium_, but not marriage, could take place between freemen and slaves.[80] And among ourselves public opinion regards it as a much more lenient offence if a royal person keeps a woman of inferior rank as his concubine than if he marries her.

[Footnote 79: de Gobineau, _Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races_, p. 174, n. 1. _Cf._ d'Escayrac de Lauture, _op. cit._ p. 155.]

[Footnote 80: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 372.]

Modern civilisation tends more or less to pull down the barriers which separate races, nations, the various classes of society, and the adherents of different religions. The endogamous rules have thus become less stringent and less restricted. Whilst civilisation has narrowed the inner limit within which a man or woman must not marry, it has widened the outer limit within which a man or woman may marry, and generally marries. The latter of these processes has been one of vast importance in man's history. {382} Originating in race- or class-pride, or in religious intolerance, the endogamous rules have in their turn helped to keep up and to strengthen these feelings. Frequent intermarriages, on the other hand, must have the very opposite effect.

Like the rules referring to the choice of partners, so the modes of contracting marriage and the ideas as to what in this respect is right and proper have undergone successive changes. The practice of capturing wives prevails in certain parts of the world, and traces of it are met with in the marriage ceremonies of several peoples, indicating that it occurred more frequently in past ages.[81] This practice, as it seems to me, has chiefly sprung from the aversion to close intermarriage, together with the difficulty a savage man may have in procuring a wife in a friendly manner, without giving compensation for the loss he inflicts on her family. We may imagine that it chiefly occurred at a stage of social growth where family ties had become stronger, and man lived in small groups of nearly related persons, but where the idea of barter had scarcely presented itself to his mind. Yet there is no reason to think that capture was at any period the exclusive form of contracting marriage; its prevalence seems to have been much exaggerated by McLennan and his school.[82] It is impossible to believe that there ever was a time when friendly negotiations between families who could intermarry were altogether unknown. The custom prevalent among many savage tribes of a husband taking up his abode in his wife's family seems to have arisen very early in man's history.

[Footnote 81: Westermarck, _op. cit._ ch. xvii.]

[Footnote 82: Dr. Grosse (_Die Formen der Familie_, p. 105) goes so far as to believe that marriage by capture has never been a form of marriage recognised by custom or law, but only an occasional and punishable act of violence. But, as Dr. Havelock Ellis justly observes (_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, 'Analysis of the Sexual Impulse,' p. 62, n. 2), this position is too extreme.]

Among most uncivilised peoples now existing a man has, in some way or other, to give compensation for his bride.[83] The simplest way of purchasing a wife is to give a kinswoman in exchange for her--a practice prevalent among {383} Australian tribes. Much more common is the custom of obtaining a wife by services rendered to her father, the man taking up his abode with the family of the girl for a certain time, during which he works as a servant. But the ordinary compensation for a girl is property paid to her father, or in some cases to her uncle, or to some other relatives as well as to the father. Marriage by exchange or purchase is not only general among existing lower races; it occurs, or formerly occurred, among semi-civilised nations of a higher culture as well--in Central America and Peru, in China and Japan, in the various branches of the Semitic race, in the past history of all so-called Aryan peoples. We have no evidence that it is a stage through which every race has passed; we notice its absence among some of the rudest races with whom we are acquainted. Yet with much more reason than marriage by capture, purchase of wives may be said to form a general stage in the social history of mankind. Although the two practices may occur simultaneously, the former seems more often to have succeeded the latter, as barter in general has followed upon robbery. It has been suggested that the transition from marriage by capture to marriage by purchase was brought about in the following way: abduction, in spite of parents, was the primary form; then there came the offering of compensation to escape vengeance; and this grew eventually into the making of presents or paying a sum beforehand.[84] The price was a compensation for the loss sustained in the giving up of the girl and a remuneration for the expenses incurred in her maintenance till the time of her marriage. The girl was regarded more or less in the light of property, to take her away from her owner without his consent was theft. To claim a compensation for her was his right, or even his duty. The Indians in Columbia consider it in the highest degree disgraceful to the girl's family if she is given away without a price;[85] and in certain tribes of California {384}"the children of a woman for whom no money was paid are accounted no better than bastards, and the whole family are condemned."[86]

[Footnote 83: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 390 _sqq._]

[Footnote 84: Koenigswarter, _Études historiques sur le developpement de la société humaine_, p. 53. Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, i. 625.]

[Footnote 85: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, i. 277. _Cf._ von Weber, _Vier Jahre in Afrika_, ii. 215 _sq._ (Kafirs).]

[Footnote 86: Powers, _Tribes of California_, pp. 22, 56.]

With progressing civilisation, however, the practice of purchasing wives has been gradually abandoned, and come to be looked upon as infamous. The wealthier classes took the first step, and poorer and ruder persons subsequently followed their examples. Thus in India, in ancient times, the Âsura form, or marriage by purchase, was lawful for all the four castes. Afterwards it fell into disrepute, and was prohibited among the Brâhmanas and Kshatriyas, whereas it was still approved of in the case of a Vaisya and a Sûdra. But in the 'Laws of Manu' it is forbidden altogether.[87] It is said there, "No father who knows the law must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring."[88] The Greeks of the historical age had ceased to buy their wives. In Rome _confarreatio_, which suggested no idea of purchase, was in the very earliest known time the form of marriage in force among the patricians; and among clients and plebeians, also, the purchase of wives came to an end in remote antiquity, surviving as a mere symbol in their _coëmptio_.[89] Among the Germans marriage by purchase was abolished only after their conversion to Christianity.[90] In the Talmudic law the purchase of wives appears as merely symbolical, the bride-price being fixed at a nominal amount.[91] In China, although marriage presents correspond exactly to purchase-money in a contract of sale, the people will not hear of their being called a "price";[92] which shows that here, too, some feeling of shame is attached to the idea of selling a daughter.

[Footnote 87: _Laws of Manu_, iii. 23 _sqq._]

[Footnote 88: _Ibid._ iii. 51. _Cf._ _ibid._ ix. 93, 98.]

[Footnote 89: Rossbach, _op. cit._ pp. 92, 146, 248, 250, &c.]

[Footnote 90: Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, p. 424.]

[Footnote 91: Gans, _Erbrecht_, i. 138.]

[Footnote 92: Jamieson, 'Marriage Laws,' in _China Review_, x. 78 n.*]

We may discern two different ways in which this {385} gradual disappearance of marriage by purchase has taken place. On the one hand, the purchase became a symbol, appearing as a sham sale in the marriage ceremonies or as an exchange of presents; on the other hand, the purchase sum was transformed into the morning gift and the dotal portion, a part--afterwards the whole--being given to the bride either directly by the bridegroom or by her father. These transformations of marriage by purchase have taken place not only in the history of the civilised nations, but among several peoples who are still in a savage or semi-civilised state; and of a few of them it is expressly stated that they consider marriage by purchase a disgraceful practice.[93]

[Footnote 93: Westermarck, _op. cit._ p. 405 _sqq._]

From marriage by purchase we have thus come to the practice of dower, which is apparently the very reverse of it. But whilst the marriage portion partly derives its origin from the purchase of wives, it does not do so in every case. It serves different ends, often indissolubly mixed up together. It may have the meaning of a return gift. It may imply that the wife as well as the husband is expected to contribute to the expenses of the joint household. It is also very often intended to be a settlement for the wife in case the marriage be dissolved through the husband's death or otherwise.[94] In the social history of the civilised races the marriage portion has played so prominent a part, that, as we have spoken of a stage of marriage by purchase, we may speak of another and later stage where fathers are bound by custom or law to portion their daughters. The Jews[95] and Muhammedans[96] consider it a religious duty for a man to give a dower to his daughter. In Greece the dowry came to be thought almost necessary to make the distinction between a wife and a concubine.[97] Isaeus says that no decent man would give his legitimate daughter less than a tenth of his {386} property;[98] indeed, so great were the dowers given that in the time of Aristotle nearly two fifths of the whole territory of Sparta were supposed to belong to women.[99] In Rome, even more than in Greece, the marriage portion became a mark of distinction for a legitimate wife;[100] and though later on Justinian in several of his constitutions declares that _dos_ is obligatory for persons of high rank only,[101] the old custom did not fall into desuetude.[102] The Prussian 'Landrecht' still prescribes that the father, or eventually the mother, shall arrange about the wedding and fit up the house of the newly-married couple.[103] According to the 'Code Napoléon,' on the other hand, parents are not bound to give a dower to their daughters,[104] and the same principle is generally adopted by modern legislation. It is true that especially in the so-called Latin countries there is still a strong tendency to dotation,[105] but another feeling, in some measure opposed to it, is gaining ground everywhere. In a society where monogamy is prescribed by law, where the adult women outnumber the adult men, where many men never marry, and where married women too often lead an indolent life--in such a society the marriage portion in many cases becomes a purchase-sum by means of which a father buys a husband for his daughter, as formerly a man bought a wife from her father. But, as Mr. Sutherland observes, "that pecuniary interests, either on one side or on the other, should conspicuously enter into the motives which lead to marriage, becomes repulsive to the increasing delicacy of feeling; and so we find that in cultured communities the dowry dies out, just as the purchase-money declined in the civilised stages."[106]