IHEilYOLUTION HR THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES. Edited by HAVELOCK ELLIS. EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007witli funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/evolutionofmarriOOIetoricli THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE AND OF THE FAMILY BY CH. LETOURNEAU, General Secretary to the Anthropological Society of Paris, and Professor in the School of Anthropolo^. LONDON WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE PATERNOSTER ROW 1891. L5 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE The Biological Origin of Marriage . . 1-19 I. The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom. II. Reproduction. III. Rut and Love. IV. Love of Animals. CHAPTER II. Marriage and the Family amongst Animals . 20-36 I. The Preservation of Species. II. Marriage and the Rearing of the Young among Animals. III. The Family amongst Animals. CHAPTER III. Promiscuity .....*.. 37-55 I. Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity? II. Cases of Human Promiscuity. III. Hetairism. CHAPTER IV. Some Singular Forms of Sexual Association . 56-72 I. Primitive Sexual Immorality. II. Some Strange Forms of Marriage. CHAPTER V. Polyandry. . 73-88 I. Sexual Proportion of Births : its Influence on Marriage. II. Ethnography of Polyandry. HI. Polyandry in Ancient Arabia. IV. Polyandry in General. ivi36Ei3?0 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. PAGE Marriage by Capture ..... 89-104 I. Rape. II. Marriage by Capture. III. Signification of the Ceremonial of Capture. CHAPTER VII. Marriage by Purchase and by Servitude . 105-121 I. The Power of Parents. II. Marriage by Servitude. III. Marriage by Purchase. CHAPTER VIII. Primitive Polygamy 122-137 I. Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America. II. Polygamy in Asia and in Europe. CHAPTER IX. Polygamy of Civilised People . , . 138-153 I. The Stage of Polygamy. IT. Arab Polygamy. III. Polygamy in Egypt, Mexico, and Peru. IV. Polygamy in Persia and India. CHAPTER X. Prostitution and Concubinage . . . 154-170 I. Concubinage in General. II. Prostitution. III. Various Forms of Concubinage. CHAPTER XI. Primitive Monogamy 171-187 I. The Monogamy of Inferior Kaces. II. Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America. III. Monogamy in Ancient Egypt. IV. Monogamy of the Touaregs and Abyssinians. V. Monogamy among the Mongols of Asia. VI. Monogamy and Civilisation. CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER XII. PAGE Hebrew and Aryan Monogamy . . . 188-206 I. Monogamy of the Races called Superior. II. Hebrew Marriage. III. Marriage in Persia and Ancient India. IV. Marriage in Ancient Greece. V. Marriage in Ancient Rome. VI. Barbarous Marriage and Christian Marriage. CHAPTER XIII. Adultery 207-227 I. Adultery in General. II. Adultery in Melanesia. III. Adultery in Black Africa. IV. Adultery in Polynesia. V. Adultery in Savage America. VI. Adultery in Barbarous America. VII. Adultery among the Mongol Races and in Malaya. VIII. Adultery among the Egyptians, the Berbers, and the Semites. IX. Adultery in Persia and India. X. Adultery in the Greco-Roman World. XI. Adultery in Barbarous Europe. XII. Adultery in the Past and in the Future. CHAPTER XIV. Repudiation and Divorce . . . . 228-248 I. In Savage Countries. II. Divorce and Repudiation among Barbarous Peoples. III. The Evolution of Divorce. CHAPTER XV. Widowhood and the Levirate . . . 249-266 I. Widowhood in Savage Countries. II. Widowhood in Barbarous Countries. III. The Levirate. IV. Summary. CHAPTER XVI. The Familial Clan in Australia and America ....... 267-284 I. The Family. II. The Family in Melanesia. III. The Family in America. I* viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVII. PAGE The Familial Clan and its Evolution . 285-302 I. The Clan among the Redskins. II. The Family among the Redskins. III. The Family in Polynesia. IV. The Family among the Mongols. V. The Clan and the Family. CHAPTER XVIII. The Maternal Family 303-321 I. The Familial Clan and the Family properly so- called. II. The Family in Africa. III. The Family in Malaya. IV. The Family among the Nairs of Malabar. V. The Family among the Aborigines of Bengal, VI. The Couvade. VII. The Primitive Family. CHAPTER XIX. The Family in Civilised Countries . . 322-340 I. The Family in China. II. The Family among the Semitic Races. III. The Family among the Berbers. IV. The Family in Persia. V. The Family in India. VI. The Greco-Roman Family. VII. The Family in Barbarous Europe. CHAPTER XX. Marriage and the Family in the Past, the Present, and the Future . . . 341-360 I. The Past. II. The Present. III. The Future. Index 36 ^ PREFACE. A FEW preliminary observations in regard to the aim and method of this work may be useful to the reader. He will do well to begin by persuading himself, with Montaigne, that the " hinges of custom " are not always the " hinges of reason," and still less those of reality in all times and places. He will do better still to steep himself in the spirit of scientific evolution, and to bear in mind that incessant change is the law of the social, quite as much as"^ of the physical and organic world, and that the most splendid blossoms have sprung from very humble germs. This is the supreme truth of science, and it is only when such a point of view has become quite familiar to us that we shall be neither troubled nor disconcerted by the sociological history of humanity; and however shocking or unnatural certain customs may appear, we shall guard ourselves against any feeling of indignation at them, and more especially against a thoughtless refusal to give credence to them, simply because they run counter to our own usages and morality. All that social science has a right to ask of the facts "^ which it registers is that they should be authentic; this X PREFACE, duly proved, it only remains to accept, classify, and interpret them. Faithful to this method, without which there could be no science of sociology, I have here gathered together as proofs a number of singular facts, which, improbable as they may appear according to our pre- conceived notions, and criminal according to our moral sense, are nevertheless most instructive. Although in a former work I have taken care to establish the relativity of morality, the explanations that I am about to make are not out of season ; for the subject of this book is closely connected with vAidX, par excellence^ we call "morals." On this point I must permit myself a short digression. No one will pretend that our so-called civilised society has a very strict practical morality, yet public opinion still seems to attach a particular importance to sexual morality, and this is the expression of a very real sentiment, the origin of which scientific sociology has no difficulty in retracing. This origin, far from being a lofty one, goes back simply to the right of proprietorship in women similar to that in goods and chattels — a proprietorship which we find claimed in savage, and even in barbarous countries, without any feeling of shame. During the lower stages of social evolution, women are uniformly treated as domestic animals ; but this female live-stock are difficult to guard ; for, on the one hand, they are much coveted and are unskil- ful in defending themselves, and on the other, they do not bend willingly to the one-sided duty of fidelity that is im- posed on them. The masters, therefore, protect their own interests by a whole series of vexatious restraints, of rigorous punishments, and of ferocious revenges, left at first to the good pleasure of the marital proprietors, and afterwards PREFACE, xi regulated and codified. In the chapter on adultery, especially, will be found a great number of examples of this marital savagery. I have previously shown, in my Evolution de la Morale^ that the unforeseen result of all this jealous fury has been to endow humanity, and more par- ticularly women, with the delicate sentiment of modesty, unknown to the animal world and to primitive man. From this evolution of thousands of years there has finally resulted, in countries and races more or less civilised, a certain sexual morality, which is half instinctive, and varies according to time and place, but which it is im- possible to transgress without the risk of offending gravely against public opinion. Civilisations, however, whether coarse or refined, differ from each other. Certain actions, counted as blameworthy in one part of the world, are elsewhere held as lawful and even praiseworthy. In order to trace the origin of marriage and of the family, it is therefore indispensable to relate a number of practices which may be scandalous in our eyes. While submitting to this necessity, I have done so unwillingly, and with all the sobriety which befits the subject. I have striven never to depart from the scientific spirit, which purifies everything, and renders even indecency decent. Like the savages of to-day, our distant ancestors were very little removed from simple animal existence. A knowledge of their physiology is nevertheless necessary to enable us to understand our own; for, however culti- vated the civilised man may be, he derives from the humble progenitors of his race a number of instincts which are energetic in proportion as they are of a low order. More or less deadened, these gross tendencies are latent in xii PREFACE. the most highly developed individuals ; and when they sometimes break out suddenly in the actions of a man's life, or in the morals or literature of a people, they recall to us our very humble origin, and even show a certain mental and moral retrogression. ^ Now it is to this primitive man, still in such a rudi- mentary state, that we must go back for enlightenment on the genesis of all our social institutions. We must take him at the most distant dawn of humanity, follow him step by step in his slow metamorphoses, without either disparaging or poetising him ; we must watch him rising and becoming more refined through accumulated centuries, till he loses by degrees his animal instincts, and at length acquires aptitudes, inclinations, and faculties that are truly human. Nothing is better adapted to exemplify the evolution which binds our present to our past and to our future , than the sociological history of marriage and of the family. After having spoken of the aim of this book, it remains for me to justify its method. This differs considerably from what the mass of the public like far too well. But a scientific treatise must not take purely literary works for its models ; and I can say to my readers, with much more reason than old Rabelais, that if they wish to taste the marrow, they must take the trouble to break the bone. My first and chief consideration is to assist in the founda- tion of a new science — ethnographical sociology. Elegant and vain dissertations, or vague generalities, have no place here. It is by giving way to these, and in attempting to reap the harvest before sowing the seed, that many authors have lost themselves in a pseudo-sociology, having no foundation, and consequently no value. PREFACE, xiii Social science, if it is to be seriously constituted, must submit with docility to the method of natural science. The first task, and the one which especially falls to the lot of the sociologists of the present day, is to collect the facts which will form materials for the future edifice. To their suc- cessors will fall the pleasure of completing and adorning it. The present work is, therefore, above all, a collection of facts which, even if taken alone, are curious and suggestive. These facts have been patiently gleaned from the writings of ethnographers, travellers, legists, and historians. I have classed them as well as I could, and naturally they have inspired me here and there with glimpses of possible induc- tions, and with some slight attempts at generalisation. But whether the reader rejects or accepts my interpre- tations, the groundwork of facts on which they rest is so instructive of itself that a perusal of the following pages cannot be quite fruitless. CH. LETOURNEAU. THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE AND OF THE FAMILY. CHAPTER I. THE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE. I. The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom. — Man is a mamniiferous, bimanous vertebrate — Biology the starling-point of sociology — The origin of love. II. Reproduction. — Nutrition and reproduction — Scissiparity — Budding — Ovulation — Conjugation — Impregnation — Reproduction in the invertebrates— The entity called Nature — Organic specialisation and reproduction — A dithyramb by Haeckel. III. Rut and Love. — Rut renders sociable — Rut is a short puberty — Its organic adornment — The frenzy of rut — Physiological reason of rut in mammals — Love and rut — Schopenhauer and the designs of 'Nature. IV. Love of Animals. — Love and death — The law of coquetry — The law of battle — Jealousy and esthetic considerations — Love amongst birds — Effects of sexual selection — The loves of the skylark — The males of the blue heron and their combats— Battles of male geese and male gallinaceae — Courteous duels between males — ^^sthetic seduction among certain birds — .Esthetic constructions — Musical seduction — Predominance of the female among certain birds — Greater sensuality of the male — Effect of sexual exaltation — A Cartesian paradox — ■ Individual choice amongst animals — Individual fancies of females — General propositions. J THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE I. The True Place of Man. We have too long been accustomed to study human society as if man were a being apart in the universe. In comparing human bipeds with animals it has seemed as if we were disparaging these so-called demi-gods. It is to this blind prejudice that we must attribute the tardy rise of anthropological sociology. A deeper knowledge of biological science and of inferior races has at last cured us of this childish vanity. We have decided to assign to man his true place in the organic world of our little globe. Granted that the human biped is incontestably the most intelligent of terrestial animals, yet, by his histological texture, by his organs, and by the functions of these organs, he is evidently only an animal, and easily classed in the series : he is a bimanous, mammiferous vertebrate. Not that by his most glorious representatives, by those whom we call men of genius, man does not rise prodigiously above his distant relations of the mammal class ; but, on the other hand, by imperfectly developed specimens he descends far below many species of animals ; for if the idiot is only an exception, the man of genius is still more so. In fact, the lowest human races, with whose anatomy, psychology, and sociology we are to-day familiar, can only inspire us with feelings of modesty. They furnish studies in ethnography which have struck a mortal blow at the dreams of " the kingdom of man." When once it is established that man is a mammal like any other, and only distinguished from the animals of his class by a greater cerebral development, all study of human sociology must logically be preceded by a corresponding study of animal sociology. Moreover, as sociology finally depends on biology, it will be necessary to seek in physio- logical conditions themselves the origin of great sociological manifestations. The first necessity of societies is that they should endure, and they can only do so on the condition of providing satisfaction for primordial needs, which are the condition of life itself, and which imperatively dominate and regulate great social institutions. Lastly, if man is a sociable animal, he is not the only one ; many other species AND OF THE FAMIL Y. 3 have grouped themselves in societies, where, however rudimentary they may be, we find in embryonic sketch the principal traits of human agglomerations. There are even species — as, for example, bees, ants, and termites — that have created true republics, of complicated structure, in which the social problem has been solved in an entirely original manner. We may take from them more than one good example, and more than one valuable hint. My present task is to write the history of marriage and of the family. The institution of marriage has had no other object than the regulation of sexual unions. These have for their aim the satisfaction of one of the most imperious biological needs — the sexual appetite; but this appetite is only a conscious impulse, a "snare," as Mon- taigne calls it, which impels both man and animal to provide, as far as concerns them, for the preservation of their species — to "pay the ancestral debt," according to the Brahmanical formula. Before studying the sexual relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general, to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental, and to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been determined by physiological causes, and which render the fiercest animals mild and tractable. This is what I shall attempt to do in the following chapter. II. Reproduction. Stendhal has somewhere said that the beautiful is simply the outcome of the useful ; changing the phrase, we may say that generation is the outcome of nutrition. If we examine the processes of generation in very simple organisms, this great function seems to answer to a super- abundance of nutritive materials, which, after having carried the anatomic elements to their maximum volume, at length overflows and provokes the formation of new elements. As long as the new-born elements can remain aggregated with those which already constitute the individual, as long as the latter has not acquired all the development compatible with 4 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE the plan of its being, there is simply growth. When once the limit is attained that the species cannot pass, the organism (I mean a very rudimentary organism) repro- duces itself commonly by a simple division in two halves. It perishes in doubling itself and in producing two beings, similar to itself, and having nothing to do but grow. It is by means of this bi-partition that hydras, vorticellae, algae, and the lowest mushrooms are generally propagated. In the organisms that are slightly more complicated the function of reproduction tends to be specialised. The individual is no longer totally divided ; it produces a bud which grows by degrees, and detaches itself from the parent organism to run in its turn through the very limited adven- tures of its meagre existence. By a more advanced step in specialisation the function of reproduction becomes locaHsed in a particular cell, an ovule, and the latter, by a series of repeated bi-partitions, develops a new individual ; but it is generally necessary that the cellule destined to multiply itself by segmentation should at first dissolve by union with another cell. Through the action of various organic processes the two generating cells arrive in contact. The element which is to undergo segmentation — the female element — then absorbs the element that is simply impulsive ; the element called male becomes impregnated with it, and from that moment it is fertilised, that is to say, capable of pursuing the course of its formative work. This phenomenon, so simple in itself, of the conjugation of two cellules, is the foundation of reproduction in the two organic kingdoms as soon as the two sexes are separated. Whether the sexes are represented by distinct or united individuals, whether the accessory organic apparatus is more or less complicated, are matters of no consequence ; the essential fact reappears always and everywhere of the conjugation of two cellules, with absorption, in the case of superior animals, of the male cellule by the female cellule. The process may be observed m its most elementary form in the algse and the diatomaceae, said to be conjugated. To form a reproductive cellule, or spore, two neighbouring cellules each throw out, one towards the other, a prolongation. ANb OF THE FAMILY, $ These prolongations meet, and their sides absorb each other at the point of contact ; then the protoplasms of the two elements mingle, and at length the two cellules melt into a single reproductive cellule {Spirogyra longata). Between this marriage of two lower vegetal cellules, which realises to the letter the celebrated bibhcal words, " they shall be one flesh," or rather one protoplasm, and the fundamental phenomenon of fecundation in the superior animals, including man, there is no essential dissimilarity. The ovule of the female and the spermatozoon of the male become fused in the same manner, with this difference only, that the feminine cellule, the ovule, preserves its individu- ality and absorbs the masculine cellule, or is impregnated by it. But, simple as it is, this phenomenon of fecundation is the sole reason of the duration of bi-sexual species. Thanks to it, organic individuals that are all more or less ephemeral, " Et, quasi cursores, vitai lampada tradunt." {Lucretius, ii. 78.) For many organised beings reproduction seems in reality the supreme object of existence. Numbers of vegetables and of animals, even of animals high in the series — as insects — die as soon as they have accomplished this great duty. Sometimes the male expires before having detached himself from the female, and the latter herself survives just long enough to effect the laying of eggs. Instead of laying eggs, the female cochineal fills herself with eggs to such a degree that she dies in consequence, and the tegument of her body is transformed into a protecting envelope for the eggs. At the not very distant time when animism reigned supreme, these facts were attributed to calculations of design. Nature, it was believed, occupied herself chiefly with perpetuating organised species ; as for individuals, she disdained the care of them. We now know that Nature, as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist ; that the great forces called natural are unconscious ; that their blind action results, however, in the world of life, in a choice, a selection, 6 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE a progressive evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of the individuals best adapted to the conditions of their existence. Without any intention of Dame Nature, the preservation of the species was necessarily, before anything else, the object of selection ; and during the course of geological periods primitive bi-partition gradually became transformed through progressive differentiation into bi-sexual procreation, re- quiring the concurrence of special and complicated apparatus in order to be effected. But, at the same time as procreation, other functions also became differentiated by the formation of special organs ; the nervous system vegetated around the chorda dorsalis; and, finally, conscious life awoke in the nervous centres. Thenceforth the accomplishment of the great function of procreation assumed an entirely different aspect. In the lowest stages of the animal kingdom reproduction is effected mechanically and un- consciously. A paramoecium, observed by M. Balbiani, produced in forty-two days, by a series of simple bi- partitions, 1,384,116 individuals, who very certainly had not the least notion of the phenomena by which they transmitted existence. But with superior animals it is very different; in their case the act of procreation is a real efflorescence, not only physical, but psychical. For the study that I am now undertaking it will not be without use to recall the principal features of this amorous efflor- escence, since it is, after all, the first cause of marriage and of the family. At the same time, not to lose our stand- point, it is important to bear in mind that at the bottom all this expenditure of physical and psychical force has for motive and for result, both in man and animal, the con- jugation of two generative cellules. Haeckel has written a dithyramb on this subject in his Anthropogenta, which is in the main so true that I take pleasure in quoting it — "Great effects are everywhere produced, in animated nature, by minute causes. . . . Think of how many curious phenomena sexual selection gives rise to in animal life; think of the results of love in human life ; now, all this has for its raison d'etre the union of two cellules. . . . There is no organic act which approaches this one in power and in the force of differentiation. The Semitic myth of Eve seducing Adam for the love of knowledge, the old Greek AND OF THE FAMIL V. 7 legend of Paris and Helen, and many other magnificent poems, do they not simply express the enormous influence that sexual love and sexual selection have exercised since the separation of the sexes ? The influence of all the other passions which agitate the human heart cannot weigh in the balance with love, which inflames the senses and fascinates the reason. On the one hand, we celebrate in love the source of the most sublime works of art, and of the noblest creations of poetry and of music ; we venerate it as the most powerful factor in civilisation, as the prime cause of family life, and consequently of social life. On the other hand, we fear love as a destructive flame; it is love that drives so many to ruin ; it is love that has caused more misery, vice, and crime than all other calamities together. Love is so prodigious, its influence is so enormous on psychic life and the most diverse functions of the nervous system, that in regard to it we are tempted to question the supernatural effect of our natural explanation. Nevertheless, comparative biology and the history of development conduct us surely and incontestably to the simplest, most remote source of love ; that is to say, the elective affinity of two different cellules — the spermatic cell and the ovulary cell."i III. J^ul and Love. In a former work, on the evolution of morality I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of the same acts. The instinct of procreation has, and can have, no other origin. The animal species, during the long phases of their evolution, have reproduced themselves unconsciously, and by very simple processes, which we may still observe in certain zoophytes. By degrees these mere sketches of animals have become perfected and differentiated, and have acquired special organs over which the biological work has been distributed; thenceforth the play of life has echoed in the nervous centres, and has awakened in them impressions and desires, the energy of which 1 Anthropogenia, p. 577. S THE E VOL VTION OF MARRIA GE strictly corresponds to the importance of ihe functions. Now, there is no more primordial function than procreation, since on it depends the duration even of the species ; and for this reason the need of reproduction, or the rut, breaks out in many animals like a kind of madness. The psychic faculties of the animal, whether great or small, are then over-excited, and rise above their ordinary level ; but they all tend to one supreme aim — the desire for reproduction. At this period the wildest and most unsociable species can no longer endure solitude ; both males and females seek each other; sometimes, even, they are seen to form themselves into groups, or small provisional societies, which will dissolve again after the coupling time is over. Each period of rut is for animals a sort of puberty. The hair, the plumage, and the scales often assume rich tints which afterwards disappear. Sometimes special epi- dermic productions appear in the male, and serve him for temporary weapons with which to fight his rivals, or for ornaments to captivate the female. It is with a veritable frenzy that the sexual union is accomplished among certain species. Thus Dr. Giinther has several times found female toads dead, smothered by the embrace of the males. ^ Spallanzani was able to amputate the thighs of male frogs and toads during copulation, without diverting them from their work. In the animal class which more particularly interests us, that of mammals, rut produces analogous, though less violent, phenomena. Now, in this case, we know that erotic fury is closely related to congestive phenomena, having for their seat the procreative glands, which swell in both male and female, and provoke in the latter a veritable process of egg-laying. We must not forget that man, in his quality of mammal, is subject to the common law, that female menstruation is essentially identical with the intimate phenomena of rut in the females of mammals, and corresponds also to an ovarian congestion, or to the swelling and bursting of one or more of the Graafian follicles ; it is, in short, a production of eggs. I need not lay stress on these facts, but it is right to recall them by the way, since they are the raison d'etre of sexual ^ Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 384. AND OF THE FAMIL Y, 9 attraction, without which there would be neither marriage nor family. If we are willing to descend to the foundation of things, we find that human love is essentially rut in an intelligent being. It exalts all the vital forces of the man just as rut over-excites those of the animal. If it seems to differ extremely from it, this is simply because in man the pro- creative need, a primordial need beyond all others, in radiating from highly developed nervous centres, awakens and sets in commotion an entire psychic life unknown to the animal. There is nothing surprising to the naturalist in this pro- creative explosion, which evolves altruism out of egotism. We know too well, however, that it has not appeared so simple a matter to many philosophers and celebrated literary men, little familiar with biological sciences. A belated metaphysician, Schopenhauer, who has lately become fashionable, adopting the ancient stereotyped doctrine which makes Nature an anthropomorphic person- age, has gratuitously credited her with quite a profound diplomatic design. According to him, it is a foregone con- clusion that she should intoxicate individuals with love, and thus urge them on, without their suspecting it, to sacrifice themselves to the major interest of the preservation of the species. The glance that we have just thrown on the processes of reproduction, from the paramoecium up to man, suffices to refute this dream. I will not, however, dwell on this. What is here of great interest is to inquire how the superior animals comport themselves when pricked by desire, and to note the principal traits of their sexual psychology ; for here again we shall have to recognise more than one analogy to what happens in regard to man ; and we shall also see later that there exists both in the animal and the man some relation between the manner in which sexual attraction is felt and the greater or less aptitude for durable pairing, and consequently for marriage and the family. Without giving more time than is necessary to these short excursions into animal psychology, it will be well to pause on them for a moment. They throw a light on the sources of human sociology ; they force us also to break I o THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE once for all wiih the abstract and trite theories which have inspired, on the subject of marriage and the family, so much empty writing and so many satiating trivialities. It is in animality that humanity has its root ; it is there, consequently, that we must seek the origins of human sociology. IV. Loves of Attimals. In a well-known mystic book occurs an aphorism which has become celebrated — "Love is strong as death." The expression is not exaggerated ; we may even say that love is stronger than death, since it makes us despise it. This is perhaps truer with animals than with man, and is all the more evident in proportion as the rational will is weaker, and prudential calculations furnish no check to the impetu- osity of desire. For the majority of insects to love and to die are almost synonymous, and yet they make no effort to resist the amorous frenzy which urges them on. But how- ever short may be their sexual career, one fact has been so generally observed in regard to many of them, that it may be considered as the expression of a law — the law of coquetry. With the greater number of species that are slightly intelligent, the female refuses at first to yield to amorous caresses. This useful practice may well have arisen from selection, for its result has invariably been to excite the desire of the male, and arouse in him latent or sleeping faculties. However brief, for example, may be the life of butterflies, their pairing is not accomplished without preliminaries; the males court the females durin.5 entire hours, and for a butterfly hours are years. We can easily imagine that the coquetry of females is more common amongst vertebrates. When the season of love arrives, many male fishes, who are then adorned with extremely brilliant colours, make the most of their transient beauty by spreading out their fins, and by executing leaps, darts, and seductive manoeuvres around the females. Among fishes we begin already to observe another sexual law, at least as general as the law of coquetry, which Darwin has called the law of battle. The males dispute with each other for the females, and must triumph AND OF THE FAMIL V. 1 1 over their rivals before obtaining them. Thus, whilst the female sticklebacks are very pacific, their males are of war- like humour, and engage in furious combats in their honour. In the same way the male salmon, whose lower jaw lengthens into a crook during the breeding season, are constantly fighting amongst each other. ^ The higher we ascend in the animal kingdom the more frequent and more violent become two desires in the males — the desire of appearing beautiful, and that of driving away rivals. In South America, the males of the Analis cristellaius^ a fissilingual saurian, have terrible battles in the breeding season, the vanquished habitually losing his tail, which is bitten off by the victor. An old observer also describes the amorous male alligator as "swollen to bursting, the head and tail raised, spinning round on the surface of the water, and appearing to assume the manner of an Indian chief relating his exploits."^ But it is particularly among birds that the sentiment, or rather the passion, of love breaks out with most force and even poetry. It is especially to birds that the celebrated Darwinian theory of sexual selection applies. It is difficult, indeed, not to attribute to this influence the production of the offensive and defensive arms, the armaments, the organs of song, the glands of odoriferous secretion of many male birds, also their courage, the warlike instinct of many of them, and lastly, the coquetry of the females. Let us listen to Audubon, as he relates the loves of the skylark: — '' Each male is seen to advance with an imposing and measured step, swinging his tail, spreading it out to its full extent, then closing it again like a fan in the hands of a fine lady. Their brilliant notes are more melodious than ever ; they repeat them oftener than usual as they rest on the branch or summit of some tall meadow reed. Woe to the rival who dares to enter the lists, or to the male who simply comes in sight of another male at this moment of veritable delirium : he is suddenly attacked, and, if he is the weaker, chased beyond the limits of the territory claimed by the first occupant. Sometimes several birds are seen engaged in these rude combats, which rarely last more than two or 1 Darwin, Descent of Man^ p. 365. ^ Bartram, Travels through Carolina^ p. 128 (i79l)' 1 2 THE E VOL UTiON OF MARkIA GE three minutes : the appearance of a single female suffices to put an instant end to their quarrel, and they all fly after her as if mad. The female shows the natural reserve of her sex, without which, even among larks, every female would probably fail to find a male [this is a little too flattering for larks, and even for men]. When the latter," continues Audubon, "flies towards her, sighing forth his sweetest notes, she retreats before her ardent admirer in such a way that he knows not whether he is repulsed or encouraged. "1 In this little picture the author has noted all the striking traits of the love of birds — the courage and jealousy of the male, his efforts to charm the female by his beauty and the sweetness of his song, and finally, the coquetry of the female, who retreats, and thus throws oil on the fire. The combats of the amorous males among many species of birds have been observed and described minutely. " The large blue male herons," says Audubon, "attack each other brutally, without courtesy ; they make passes with their long beaks and parry them like fencing masters, often for half- an-hour at a time, after which tlie vanquished one remains on the ground, wounded or killed." ^ The male Canadian geese engage in combats which last more than half-an-hour ; the vanquished sometimes return to the charge, and the fight always takes place in an enclosed field, in the middle of a circle formed by the band or clan of which the rivals form part. But it is especially among the gallinaceae that love inspires the males with warlike fury. In this order of birds nearly all the males are of bellicose temperament. Our barn-door cock is the type of the gallinaceae — vain, amorous, and courageous. Black cocks are also always ready for a fight, and their females quietly look on at their combats, and afterwards reward the conqueror. We may observe analogous facts, only somewhat masked, in savage, and even in civilised humanity. The conduct of certain females of the Tetras urogallus is still more human. Accord- ing to Kowalewsky, they take advantage of a moment when the attention of the old cocks is entirely absorbed by ^ Audubon, Sdnes de la Nature dans les Etats Unis, vol. i. p. 383. 2 Jbid. vol. ii. p. 66. AND OF THE FAMILY. 13 the anxiety of the combat, to run off with a younger male.^ If we may believe certain authors, these amorous duels must not always be taken seriously. They are often nothing more than parades, tourneys, or courteous jousts, merely giving the males an opportunity of showing their beauty, address, or strength. This is the case, according to Blyth, with the Tetras umbellusP' In the same way, the grouse of Florida (Tetras cuspido) are said to assemble at night to fight until the morning with measured grace, and then to separate, having first exchanged formal courtesies.^ But among animals, as well as men, love has more than one string to his bow. It is especially so with birds, who are the most amorous of vertebrates. They use several aesthetic means of attracting the female, such as beauty of plumage and the art of showing it, and also sweetness of song. Strength seems often to be quite set aside, and the eye and ear are alone appealed to by the love-stricken males. Every one has seen our pigeons and doves courteously salute their mates. Many male birds execute dances and courting parades before their females. Thus, for example, do the Tetras phasaniellus of North America, herons {Cathartes Jota), vultures, etc. The male of the red-wing struts about before his female, sweeping the ground with his tail and acting the dandy. ^ The crested duck raises his head gracefully, straightens his silky aigrette, or bows to his female, while his throat swells and he utters a sort of gutteral sound.^ The male chaffinch places himself in front of the female, that she may admire at her ease his red throat and blue head.^ All this aesthetic display is quite intentional and pre- meditated; for while many pheasants and gallinaceous birds parade before their females, two pheasants of dull colour, the Crossoptilon auritmn and the Phasianus Wallichii^ refrain from doing so,^ being apparently con- scious of their modest livery. 1 V>2it'H'm^ Descent of Man, p. 399. ^ Ibid. p. 403. ^ Espinas, Societis Animates, p. 326. * Audubon, loc. cit., vol. i. p. 305. ^ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 50. ^ Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 438. ^ Ibid. p. 438, 14 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE Birds often assemble in large numbers to compete in beauty before pairing. The Tetras cuspido of Florida and the little grouse of Germany and Scandinavia do this. The latter have daily amorous assemblies, or cours d^amour^ of great length, which are renewed every year in the month of May.i Certain birds are not content with their natural orna- ments, however brilliant these may be, but give the rein to their aesthetic desire in a way that may be called human. Mr. Gould assures us that some species of humming-birds decorate the exterior of their nests with exquisite taste, making use of lichens, feathers, etc. The bower-birds of Australia {Chla7nydera fnaculata^ etc.) construct bowers on the ground, ornamented with feathers, shells, bones, and leaves. These bowers are intended to shelter the courting parades, and both males and females join in building them, though the former are more zealous in the work.^ But in this erotic architecture the palm is carried off by a bird of New Guinea, the Amblyornis inornata^ made known to us by M. O. Beccari.2 This bird of rare beauty, for it is a bird of Paradise, constructs a little conical hut to protect his amours, and in front of this he arranges a lawn, carpeted with moss, the greenness of which he relieves by scattering on it various bright-coloured objects, such as berries, grains, flowers, pebbles, and shells. More than this, when the flowers are faded, he takes great care to replace them by fresh ones, so that the eye may be always agreeably flattered. These curious constructions are solid, lasting for several years, and probably serving for several birds. What we know of sexual unions among the lower human races suffices to show how much these birds excel men in sexual delicacy. Every one is aware that the melodious voice of many male birds furnishes them with a powerful means of seduction. Every spring our nightingales figure in true lyric tourna- ments. Magpies, who are ill-endowed from a musical point of view, endeavour to make up for this organic imperfection 1 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 433.— Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 326. 2 Ibid. pp. 418, 453. 3 Annali del Museo civico di storia naturale di Geneva, t. ix. fase 3-4, ^^77- AND OF THE FAMILY. 15 by rapping on a dry and sonorous branch, not only to call the female, but also to charm her ; we may say, in fact, that they perform instrumental music. Another bird, the male of the weaver-bird, builds an abode of pleasure for himself, where he goes to sing to his companion.^ Audubon has made one observation in regard to Cana- dian geese which is in every point applicable to the human species. The older the birds are, he says, the more they abridge the preliminaries of their amours. Their poetic and aesthetic sense has become blunted, and they go straight to their object. Wherever amongst the animal species supremacy in love is obtained by force, the male, nearly always the more ardent, has necessarily become, through the action of selec- tion, larger, stronger, and better armed than the female. Such is in reality the case in regard to the greater number of vertebrates; certain exceptions, however, exist, and naturally these are chiefly found among birds, as they are more inclined than other types to put a certain delicacy in their sexual unions. With many species of birds, indeed, the female is larger and stronger than the male. It is well known to be the same with certain articulates, and these facts authorise us to admit that there is no necessary correlation between relative weakness and the female sex. Must we therefore conclude, with Darwin, that the females of certain birds owe their excess of size and height to the fact that they have formerly contested also for the possession of the males ? We may be allowed to doubt it. Almost universally, whether she is large or small, the female is less ardent than the male, and in the amorous tragi-comedy she generally plays, from beginning to end, a passive role ; in the animal kingdom, as well as with mankind, amazons are rare. Among birds and vertebrates generally the male is much more impetuous than the female, and therefore he has no difficulty in accepting for the moment any companion whatever.2 This uncontrollable ardour sometimes even urges the males to commit actual attempts on the safety of the family. Thus it happens that the male canary {Fringilla ^ Espinas, loc. city pp. 299, 438. - Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 460. i6 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE canaria) persecutes his female while she is sitting, tears her nest, throws out the eggs, and, in short, tries to excite his mate to become again a lover, forgetting that she is a mother. In the same way our domestic cock pursues the sitting hen when she leaves her eggs in order to feed.^ With the cousins-german of man, the mammals, sexual psychology has a general resemblance to that of birds, but more often it is far less delicate. And besides this, the sexual customs are naturally less refined in proportion as the nervous centres of the species are less perfected. Thus the stupid tatoways meet by chance, smell each other, copulate and separate with the greatest indifference. Our domestic dog himself, although so civilised and affectionate, is generally as gross in his amours as the tatoway. With birds, as we have seen, the law of battle plays an important part in sexual selection ; but it is often counter- balanced by other less brutal influences. This is rarely the case in regard to mammals, with whom especially the right of the strongest regulates the unions. The law of battle prevails among aquatic as well as land mammals. The combats of the male stags, in the rutting season, are celebrated. The combatants have been known to succumb without being able to disentangle their interlocked antlers ; but seals and male sperm-whales fight with equal fury, and so also do the males of the Greenland whale.^ In mammals, as in birds, and as in man, sexual desire raises and intensifies all the faculties, and seems to elevate the individual above the level of normal life. Animals in a state of rut become bolder, more ferocious, and more danger- ous. The elephant, pacific enough by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. The Sanskrit poems constantly recur to the simile of the elephant in rut to express the highest degree of strength, nobility, grandeur, and even beauty. But obviously I must not linger very long over the loves of the animals. My chief object is to study sexual union and marriage amongst human beings. The rut of animals and their sexual passions merely interest us here as pre- liminary studies, which throw light on the origin of analogous ^ Houzeau, Facultis mentales des animaux^ t. i^r. p. 292. 2 Darwin, Descent of Man^ pp. 550, 556. AND OF THE FAMILY. 17 sentiments in mankind. Before leaving this subject, how- ever, it will be useful to note a few more facts which, from the point of view of sexual psychology, bring animals and men near to each other. The old Cartesian paradox, which makes the animal an unconscious machine, has still many partisans. A widely- prevailing prejudice insists that animals always obey blind instincts, while man alone, homo sapiens^ made after the image of God, weighs motives, deliberates and chooses. Now, as procreation constitutes one of the great necessities of organised beings, and is an imperious law which no species can elude without disappearing, surely we ought to find amongst animals the most exact regularity in the acts connected with it. Man alone ought to have the privilege of introducing caprice and free choice into love. It is not so, however. On this side of his nature, as on all the others, man and animal approach, resemble, and copy each other. In his celebrated invocation to Venus, Lucretius has truly said, proclaiming the universal empire of the instinct of reproduction — *' Per te quoniam genus omne animantum Concipitur, visitque exortum lumine solis." The animal, as well as the morally developed man, is capable of preference and individual passion ; he does not yield blindly and passively to sexual love. According to observers and breeders, it is the female who is specially susceptible of sentimental selection. The male, even the male of birds, is more ardent than the female, that is to say, more intoxicated and more sharply pricked by instinct, and thus generally accepts any female whatever : all are alike to him. This is the rule, but it is not without exceptions ; thus, the male pheasant shows a singular aversion to certain hens. Amongst the long- tailed ducks some females have evidently a particular charm for the males, and are courted more than the others.^ The pigeon of the dovecot shows a strong aversion to the species modified by breeders, which he regards as deteriorated.^ Stallions are often capricious. It was necessary, for example, ^ Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 460, 461. ^ Ibid. p. 457. 2 i8 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE to use stratagem in order to induce the famous stallion Monarch to beget Gladiateur, who became still more famous.^ Analogous facts have been observed in regard to bulls.2 But it is more especially the females who introduce in- dividual fancy into sexual love. They are subject to singular and inexplicable aversions. Mares sometimes resist, and it is necessary to deceive them.^ Female pigeons occasionally show a strong dislike to certain males without apparent cause, and refuse to yield to their caresses. At other times a female pigeon, suddenly forgetting the constancy of her species, abandons her old mate or legitimate spouse to fall violently in love with another male. In the same way peahens sometimes show a lively attachment to a particular peacoclc* High-bred bitches, led astray by passion, trample under foot their dignity, honour, and all care for nobility of blood, to yield themselves to pug-dogs of low breed or mongrel males. We are told of some who have persisted for entire weeks in these degrading passions, repulsing between times the most distinguished of their own race.^ Even among species noted for their fidelity it sometimes happens that acts of sexual looseness are committed. The female pigeon often abandons her mate if the latter is wounded or becomes weak.^ Misfortune is not attractive, and love does not always inspire heroism. In concluding this short study of sexual union in the animal kingdom, I will attempt to formulate the general propositions which may be drawn from it. AH organic species undergo the tyranny of the procreative function, which is a guarantee of the duration of the type. The phenomenon of reproduction, when detached from all the complicated accessories which often conceal it in bi-sexual species, goes back essentially to the conjugation of two cellules. With intelligent animals the procreative function echoes in the nervous centres under the form of violent desires, which intensify all the psychic and physical faculties in awakening what we call love. 1 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 575. ^ Ibid. pp. 458, 459. 2 Ibid, p 576. ^ Ibid. p. 574. 3 Ibid. p. 576. ^ Ibid. p. 234. AND OF THE FAMILY. 19 At its base, the love of animals does not differ from that of man. Doubtless it is never such a quintessence as the love of Petrarch, but it is often more delicate than that of inferior races, and of ill-conditioned individuals, who, though belonging to the human race, seek for nothing in love but, to use an energetic expression of Amyot's Plutarch, to "get drunk." But among many of the animal species the sexual union induces a durable association, having for its object the rearing of young. In nobility, delicacy, and devotion these unions do not yield precedence to many human unions. They deserve attentive study. I have now, therefore, to consider marriage and the family amongst the animals. CHAPTER II. MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY AMONGST ANIMALS. I. Tlie preset vation of species. — Two great processes of preservation — Different rdles of the male and the female in the animal family. II. Marriage and the rearing of the young among animals. — Abandonment of the young in the inferior species — The superior molluscs guard their eggs — Solicitude of spiders for their eggs and their young — Instinctive foresight of insects — Its origin — Larvae are ancestral forms — The familial instinct amongst birds — Frequency of monogamy amongst birds. III. The family amongst animals. — Intoxication of egg-laying with birds — Absence of paternal love in certain birds — The familial instinct very developed in certain species — Transient nature of their love for the young — Promiscuity, polygamy, and monogamy among mammals — Hordes of sociable animals — Polygamous monkeys — Monogamous monkeys — General observations. I. The Preservatiott of Species. Two great processes are employed in the animal kingdom to assure the preservation of the species : either the parents do not concern themselves at all with their progeny, in which case the females give birth to an enormous number of young ; or, on the other hand, they are full of solicitude for their offspring, cherishing and protecting them against the numerous dangers that menace them ; and, in this last case, the young are few in number. Nature (since the expression is consecrated) proceeds sometimes by a lavish and lawless production, and sometimes by a sort of Malthusianism. Thus a cod lays every year about a million THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE. 2 1 eggs, on which she bestows no care, and of which only the thousandth, or perhaps even the hundred thousandth part, escapes destruction ; turtle-doves, on the contrary, only lay two eggs, but nearly all their young attain maturity. In short, the species is maintained sometimes by prodigality of births and sometimes by a great expenditure of care and affection on the part of the parents, especially of the female. It is almost superfluous to remark that analogous facts are observed in human natality, according as it is savage or civilised. With animals, as with men, sexual association, when it endures, becomes marriage, and results in the family, that is to say, a union of parents for the purpose of protecting their young. The care of the male for his progeny is more rare and tardy than that of the female. Among animals, as among men, the family is at first matriarchal, and it is only in the higher stages of the animal kingdom that the male becomes a truly constituent part of the family group ; but even then, except among certain species of birds, his chief care is less to rear the young than to govern in order to protect them. He plays the role of a despotic chief, guiding the family when it remains undivided after the rearing of the young, and most frequently acting like a polygamous sultan, without the purely human scruple in regard to incest. Just as we find amongst animals the two principal types of the human family, the matriarchate and the patriarchate, or rather the maternal and paternal family, so we may observe equally among them all the forms of sexual union from promiscuity up to monogamy ; but for enlightenment on these interesting points of sociology, a rapid examination of the animal kingdom is worth far more than all gener- alities. II. Marriage and the Rearing of Young amongst Animals, We shall leave entirely unnoticed the inferior kingdom of zoophytes, which are devoid of coalescing nervous centres, and consequently of conscious life. Even the lower types of molluscs do not begin to think of their progeny; they scatter their eggs as plants do their seeds, and leave them 22 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE exposed to all chances. We must go to the superior molluscs to see any care of offspring awakening. In this order, indeed, the most highly developed species watch more or less over their eggs. The taredos carry them stuck together in rings round their bodies ; snails often deposit them in damp ground, or in the trunk of a tree ; cephalopods fix them in clusters round algae, and some- times watch them till they open, after which they leave them to get on as they can in the great world. With spiders and insects the eggs are often the object of a solicitude and even prolonged forethought, which rejoice greatly the lovers of design. We must observe, however, that the males of spiders and that of the greater number of insects entirely neglect their young \ it is again in the female that the care for offspring first awakens. And this is natural, for the eggs have been formed in her body ; she has laid them, and has been conscious of them ; they form, in a way, an integral part of her individuality. The females of spiders also take care of their eggs after laying them, enclose them in a ball ot thread arranged in cocoons, carry them about with them, and at the moment of hatching set them free, one by one, from the envelope. Amongst some species there is even a certain rearing of the young. Thus the Nemesia Eleonora lives for some time in her trapped nest with her young, numbering from twenty to forty. 1 With insects maternal forethought sometimes amounts to a sort of divining prescience, which the doctrine of evolution alone can explain. There is really something wonderful in the actions of a female insect, as she prepares for her descendants, whom she will never see any more than she has seen her own parents, a special nourishment which differs from her own. It is thus that the sphinx, the pompilus, the sand-wasp, and the philanthus dig holes in the sand, in which they deposit with the eggs a suitable food for the future larvae.^ In order to understand these facts, apparently so inexplicable, we must look not only to the powerful influence of selection, but also to the zoogenic past of the species. With the insect the perfect form is always the 1 Espinas, Sq(. Animales, pp. 343, 344. ^ jbid. pp. 344, 345. AND OF THE FAMILY. 23 last which it assumes, the outcome of all the previous metamorphoses. But the larval form, though actually transitory, must have been for a long time the permanent form, and it had different tastes and needs. At the present time there are still numbers of insects whose larval existence has a much longer duration than that of the so-called perfect insect (May-flies, cockchafers). There are even larvae which reproduce themselves. Certain others, even though sterile, have not lost the maternal instinct. Thus at the time of the hatching of the nymphs the larvae of the termites assist the latter to get rid of their envelope. It is therefore probable that, though now transitory, the larval forms of insects have formerly been permanent ; they represent ancestral types, which evolution has by degrees metamorphosed into insects that we call perfect. The larvae, now actually sterile, descend from ancestors which were not so, and in the larvae of certain species the maternal instinct has survived the reproductive function.^ This is doubtless the case with bees and ants ; their workers must represent an ancestral form, having preserved the maternal fervour of its anterior state ; the winged form, on the contrary, must be relatively recent. It even appears probable that in the republics of ants and bees the laborious workers may have succeeded, in a certain way, in getting rid of sexual needs which cause animals and even men to commit so many mad actions. With them the old maternal instinct has taken the place ceded to it by sexual instinct, and has become enlarged and ennobled. Their affection is no longer exclusively confined to a few individuals produced from their own bowels, but is shared by all the young of the association. In their sub-oesophagian ganglion one care takes precedence of all others — the care of rearing the young. This is their constant occupation and the great duty to which they sacrifice their lives. Maternal love, usually so selfish, expands with them into an all-embracing social affection. It is not impossible that a psychic metamorphosis of the same kind may one day take place in future human societies. It would even seem that the workers appreciate the ^ Pspinas, ^oc. Animales, pp. 336-396. 24 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE faculty of reproduction all the more for being deprived of it. The queen bee, or rather the fertile female, who is the common mother of all the tribe, has every possible care lavished on her, and is publicly mourned when she dies. If she happens to perish before having young, and then cannot be replaced, the virgin workers despair of the republic; losing for ever "les longs espoirs et les vastes pens^es," they give way to an incurable and mortal pessimism. One primitive form of the family, the matriarchate, which we shall study later, is realised, even in an exaggerated form, by ants and bees. In human societies we shall only find very faint imitations of this system, which has been so strictly carried out by the primates of the invertebrates, and which seems to have inspired the ancients with their fables about the amazons. The vertebrated species, with the exception ot mankind, have founded no society that can be even distantly com- pared to that of hymenoptera and of ants. With nearly all fishes and amphibia the parents are very poorly developed as regards consciousness, and take no care of their eggs after fecundation. Some species of fishes are, however, endowed with a certain familial instinct, and strange to say, here it is the male who tends his offspring. So true is it, that the imaginary being called Nature has no preference for any special methods, and that in her eyes all processes are good on the one condition that they succeed ! Thus the Chinese Macropus gathers the fecundated eggs into his jaws, deposits them in the midst of the froth and mucous exuding from his mouth, and watches over the young when they are hatched.^ The male of synagnathous fishes and the sea-horses carry their eggs in an incubating pouch ; the Chromis paterfamilias^ of the lake of Tiberias, protects and nourishes in his mouth and bronchial cavity hundreds of small fishes.2 Other fishes also have more or less care for their young. Salmon and trout deposit their eggs in a depression which they have hollowed out in the sand for the purpose. Fishes, belonging to various families, construct nests and ^ Darwin, Descefii of Man, p. 375. 2 Jyortet, Cojnptes rendus de fAcadhnie des Sciences. 1878- AND OF THE FAMIL K 25 watch over the young when hatched (Cranilabrus massa^ Cranilabrus melops). Often again it is the male who undertakes all the work. Thus the male of the Gasterosteus leiurus is incessantly occupied in fetching the young ones home, and driving away all enemies, including the mother.^ The male stickleback, who is polygamous, builds a nest and watches with solicitude over the safety and rearing of the young. 2 Many reptiles are unnatural parents ; some, however, already possess some degree of familial instinct. Thus several males of the batrachians assist the female to eject her eggs. The male accoucheur toad rolls the eggs round his feet, and carefully carries them thus. The Surinam toad, the Pipa Americana^ after having aided the female in the operation of laying the eggs, places them on the back of his companion, in little cutaneous cavities formed for their reception.2 The Cobra capella bravely defends its eggs. The saurians often live in couples, and the females of crocodiles escort their new-born little ones. Female tortoises go so far as to shelter their young in a sort of nest.* But it is especially among birds and mammals that we find forms of union or association very similar to marriage and the family in the human species. Nothing is more natural ; for anatomical and physiological analogy must of necessity lead in its train the analogy of sociology. There is no more uniformity either amongst mammals than amongst men ; the needs, the habitat, and the necessities of existence dominate everything, and in order to secure adjustment to these, recourse is had to various processes. Like men, birds Hve sometimes in promiscuity, and sometimes in monogamy or polygamy ; the familial instinct is also very unequally developed among them. Sometimes even we find their conjugal customs modified by the kind of life they lead. Thus the wild duck, which is strictly monogamous in a wild state, becomes very polygamous when domesticated, and it is the same with the guinea fowl. Civilisation depraves these birds, as it does some men. As may be supposed, it is generally the animals living in ^ Darwin, Descent of Man^^. 379. ^ Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 415, 2 Jbid. p. 244. 4 y^/^_ pp ^i5^ ^17^ 26 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE troops who are degraded most easily by habitual pro- miscuity. But this is not always the case; the character of the animal, his mode of life, and the degree of morality previously acquired, determine his manner of acting. It is probable also that certain animals, living in troops during the breeding season, have formerly been less sociable than at present, for they leave the troop and retire apart in couples as soon as they have paired. Social life is burden- some to them. It is especially interesting to study the various modes of conjugal and familial association amongst birds. This may easily be inferred from the ardour, the variety, and the delicacy they bring to their amours ; the moral level among them, to borrow a human expression, is very diverse, according to the species. There are some birds absolutely fickle and even debauched — as, for example, the little American starling {Icterus pecoris), which changes its female from day to day ; that is to say, it is in the lowest stage of sexual union, a debauched promiscuity, which we only exceptionally find in some hardly civilised human societies.^ The starling, nevertheless, is not ferocious, like the asturides, to whom, according to Brehm, love seems unknown, and amongst whom the female devours her male, the father and the mother feast on their own young, and the latter, when full grown, willingly eat their parents. These ferocious habits denote a very feeble moral development. But if we may believe a French missionary, Mgr. Farand, bishop of the Mackenzie territory, similar customs still prevail among the Redskins of the extreme north.^ We shall not, therefore, be too much scandalised at the birds. These cases of moral grossness are, besides, rare enough with them. Other species, while they have renounced promiscuity, are still determined polygamists. The gallinaceae are par- ticularly addicted to this form of conjugal union, which is so common, in fact, with mankind, even when highly civilised and boasting of their practice of monogamy. Our barn-door cock, vain and sensual, courageous and jealous, is a perfect type of the polygamous bird. But the polygamous ^ Houzeau, Fac. nientales des animaux, t. ii. p. 380. 2 Pix-huit atts chez les sauva^es^ etc., p. 374. AND OF THE FAMILY, a7 habits of the gallinaceae do not prevent them from experi- encing very strong sexual passion. When seized by this frenzy of desire, some of them appear to be senseless of all danger. The firing of a gun, for example, does not alarm a male grouse when swinging his head and whistling to charm his female -^ but this ardour does not hinder him from being a fickle animal, always in search of new adventures, and always seeking fresh mates. ^ These examples of wandering fancy are for the most part rare among birds, the majority of whom are monogamous, and even far superior to most men in the matter of conjugal fidelity. Nearly all the rapacious animals, even the stupid vultures, are monogamous. The conjugal union of the bald-headed eagle appears even to last till the death of one of the partners. This is indeed monogamic and indissoluble marriage, though without legal constraint. ^ Golden eagles live in couples, and remain attached to each other for years without even changing their domicile.* But these instances, honourable as they are, have nothing exceptional in them ; strong conjugal attachment is a sentiment common to many birds. With the female Illinois parrot {Psittacus pertinax) widow- hood and death are synonymous, a circumstance rare enough in the human species, yet of which birds give us more than one example. When, after some years of conjugal life, a wheatear happens to die, his companion hardly survives him a month. The male and female of \\\^ panurus are always perched side by side. When they fall asleep, one of them, generally the male, tenderly spreads its wing over the other. The death of one, says Brehm, is fatal to its companion. The couples of golden wood-peckers, of doves, etc., live in a perfect union, and in case of widowhood experience a violent and lasting grief The male of a climbing wood- pecker, having seen his mate die, tapped day and night with his beak to recall the absent one; then at length, discouraged and hopeless, he became silent, but never recovered his gaiety (Brehm). These examples of a fidelity that stands every test, and of the religion of memory, ^ Espinas, Soc. anim.y p. 427. ' Audubon, loc cit.^ vol. i. p. 83, 2 Ibid. p. 421. ■* Jbid. t- i®^* p- 292. 28 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE although much more frequent in the unions of birds than in those of human beings, are not, however, the unfaihng rule. With birds, as with men, there seems to be a good number of irregular cases — individuals of imperfect moral develop- ment and of fickle disposition. This may be inferred from the facihty with which, among certain species of mono- gamous birds, the dead partner is replaced. Jenner, who introduced vaccination, relates that in Wiltshire he has seen one of a couple of magpies killed seven days in succession, and seven times over immediately replaced. Analogous facts have been observed of jays, falcons, and starlings. Now, when it concerns animals that are paired, each substi- tution must correspond to a desertion, the more so as the observations were made in the same locality and in the height of the breeding season. ^ Very peculiar fancies sometimes arise in the brains of certain birds. Thus we see birds of distinct species pairing, and this even in a wild state. These illegitimate unions have been observed between geese and barnacle geese, and between black grouse and pheasants. Darwin relates a case of this kind of passion suddenly appearing in a wild duck. The fact is related by Mr. Hewitt as follows: — "After breeding a couple of seasons with her own mallard, she at once shook him off on my placing a male pintail in the water. It was evidently a case of love at first sight, for she swam about the new-comer caressingly, though he appeared evidently alarmed and averse to her overtures of affection. From that hour she forgot her old partner. Winter passed by, and the next spring the pintail seemed to have become a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and produced seven or eight young ones."^ It is difficult not to attribute such deviations as these to motives similar to those by which we are ourselves actuated — to passion, caprice, or depravity. They certainly cannot be accounted for by the theory of mechanical and immutable instinct. Such facts clearly prove that animal psychology, although less complicated than our own, does not differ essentially from it, and consequently throws much light on our present investigation. The adventure of the wild duck, for example, may, without any alteration, be read as a ^ Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 446, 449. "^ Ibid. p. 455. AND OF THE FAMlL Y. 29 human adventure, proving for the hundred-thousandth time that the heart, or what we call by that name, is versatile ; that conjugal fidelity does not always resist a strong impres- sion arising from a chance encounter ; that novelty has a disturbing effect; and, finally, that indifference and cold- ness can rarely hold out against the persistent advances of one who loves ardently enough not to yield to discour- agement. Dante has already made this last reflection in his celebrated line — " Amor ch'a null' amato amar perdona." To quote Dante a propos of the illicit amours of a pintail and a wild duck may shock the learned, but the aptness of the quotation proves once more the essential identity of the animal and human organisms. III. The Family amongst Animals. If the study of the modes of sexual union amongst animals is not useless to the sociologist, that of the animal family is at least quite as interesting. This latter confirms the inductions of theorists relative to the primitive form of the human family. The animal family is especially maternal. The female of birds, immediately she has laid her eggs, experiences a sort of intoxication ; to sit becomes for her an imperious need, which completely transforms her moral nature. In January 1871, during the bombard- ment of Paris, a German shell, bursting in the loft of a house inhabited by one of my friends, was powerless to disturb a female pigeon absolutely enchained by the passion of incubation. It is amongst birds that the animal family is best con- stituted; this, however, differs much according to the species, especially as regards the participation of the male in the rearing of the young. Amongst ducks, the male has no care for his progeny. The male eider resembles the duck in this respect (Audubon). Male turkeys do much worse : they often devour the eggs of their females, and thus oblige the latter 30 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE to hide them.^ Female turkeys join each other with their young ones for greater security, and thus form troops of from sixty to eighty individuals, led by the mothers, and carefully avoiding the old males, who rush on the young ones and kill them by violent blows on the head with their beaks.^ Among certain species of gallinacese the male leaves to the female the care of incubation and of rearing the young. During this time he is running after adventures, but returns when the young are old enough to follow him and form a docile band under his government.^ It is important to notice that, amongst birds, the fathers devoid of affection generally belong to the less intelligent species, and are most often polygamous. It seems, therefore, that polygamy is not very favourable to the development of paternal love.* But bad fathers are rare amongst birds. Often, on the contrary, the male rivals the female in love for the young ; he guards and feeds her during incubation, and sometimes even sits on the eggs with her. The carrier pigeon feeds his female while she is sitting;^ the Canadian goose ^ and the crow do the same; more than that, the latter takes his companion's place at times, to give her some relaxation. The blue marten behaves in the same manner.''' Among many species, male and female combine their efforts with- out distinction of sex ; they sit in turn, and the one who is free takes the duty of feeding the one who is occupied. This is the custom of the black-coated gull,^ the booby of Bassan,^ the great blue heron,i^ and of the black vulture. ^^ According to Audubon, the blue bird of America works so ardently at the propagation of its species that a single brood does not satisfy him; each couple, therefore, exerts itself zealously, rearing two or three broods at the same time, the female sitting on one, while the male feeds the little ones of the preceding brood.^^ ^ Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 422. * Audubon, Schnes de la Nature^ t. ler. p. 29. ' Espinas, loc. cit. pp. 421-423. 8 jj^id^ t. ii. p. 199. * Audubon, loc. cit. t. ler. p. 209. ^ Ibid. t. ii. p. 476. 5 Ibid. t. ii. p. 13. 10 Ibid. t. ii. p. 70. " Ibid. 11 Ibid. t. ler. p. 347. ' Ibid. t. ler. p, 167. ^ Audubon, Scenes dc la Nature^ t. ler. p. 317. AND OF THE FAMILY. 31 But however violent the love of birds for their progeny may be, it lasts only a short time, and is suddenly extin- guished when the young can manage for themselves. It is then quite surprising to see the parents drive away by strokes of the beak the little ones they had been nursing with such devoted tenderness a few days before. The birds of several species, however, teach their young to fly before separating from them. The white-headed sea-eagle carries them on its back to give them lessons in flying ; grebes, swans, and eiders teach their young to swim, etc. But the family is only of short duration among birds and animals generally, unless, as is the case with some gallinaceae, the male keeps a few of his daughters to enrich his harem. As a matter of fact, both with birds and other animals, the paternal or maternal sentiment hardly lasts longer than the rearing time. When once the young are full grown, the parents no longer distinguish them from strangers of their species, and it is thus even with monogamic species when the conjugal tie is lifelong ; the marriage alone endures, but the family is intermittent and renewed with every brood. We may remark that it is almost the same with certain human races of low development. But, before speaking of man, it will be well to investigate conjugal union and the family amongst the animals nearest to man — the mammals. From the point of view of duration and strength of the affections, or that which we as men should call their morality, the mammals are far from occupying the first rank in the animal hierarchy; many birds are very superior to them. We find, however, great differences in the morals, according to the species. Many mammals have stopped at the most brutal promiscuity ; males and females unite and separate at chance meetings, without any care for the family arising in the mind of the male. The females of mammals being always weaker than the males, no sexual association com- parable to polyandry is possible in this class, since, even if she wished it, the female could not succeed in collecting a seraglio of males. But as to polygamy, it is quite different, and this is very common with mammals, especially with the sociable kinds, living in flocks. It is even a necessity of the struggle for existence. Sociability generally proceeds from weakness. The species that are badly armed for fierce S2 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE combats, and that have besides some difficulty in finding food, are glad to hve in association. Union is strength. The ruminants, for example, do this. Certain carnivorous animals, ill-furnished with teeth and claws, dogs also, and jackals, live in troops for the same reason— that of opposing a respectable front to the enemy. This life in common is certainly favourable to the development of social virtues ; it cannot but soften primitive cruelty, and develop altruistic qualities ; but it is little conducive to sexual restraint and monogamy. Thus the greater number of sociable mammals are polygamous. The ruminants live in hordes composed of females and young, grouped around a male who protects them, but who expels his rivals and becomes a veritable chief of a band. Very various species compose familial societies in the same manner, and strongly resembling each other. When the Indian adult elephant renounces the solitary life which strong animals generally adopt, it is in order to found a little polygamous society, from which he expels all the males weaker than himself.^ The moufflons of Europe and of the Atlas also form little societies of the same kind in the breeding season. 2 Among the walrus, says Brehm, the male, who is of very jealous temperament, collects around him from thirty to forty females, without counting young, making altogether a polygamous family sometimes amounting to a hundred and twenty individuals. The male of the Asaitic antilope saiga is inordinately polygamous ; he expels all his rivals, and forms a harem numbering sometimes a hundred females. ^ The polygamic r'egime of animals is far from extinguishing affectionate sentiments in the females towards their husband and master. The females of the guanaco lamas, for example, are very faithful to their male. If the latter happens to be wounded or killed, instead of running away, they hasten to his side, bleating and offering themselves to the shots of the hunter in order to shield him, while, on the contrary, if a female is killed, the male makes off with all his troop j he only thinks of himself. 1 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 238. 2 Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 448. 3 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 238. AND OF THE FAMIL Y. 33 In regard to mammals, there is no strict relation between the degree of intellectual development and the form of sexual union. The carnivorous animals often live in couples for the reason previously given ; but this is not an absolute rule, for the South African lion is frequently accompanied by four or five females. ^ Bears, weasels, whales, etc., on the contrary, generally go in couples. Sometimes species that are very nearly allied have different conjugal customs ; thus the white-cheeked peccary lives in troops, whilst the white-ringed peccary lives in couples.^ There is the same diversity in the habits of monkeys. Some are polygamous and others monogamous. The wanderoo {Macacus stlenus) of India has only one female, and is faithful to her until death.^ The Cebus capucinus^ on the contrary, is polygamous.* Those cousins -german of man, the anthropoid apes, have sometimes adopted polygamy and sometimes mono- gamy. Savage tells us that the Gorilla gina forms small hordes, consisting of a single adult male, who is the despotic chief of many females and a certain number of young. Chimpanzees are sometimes polygamous and sometimes monogamous. The polygamous family of monkeys is always subject to the monarchic regime. The male, who is at the same time the chief, is despotic ; he exacts a passive obedience from his subordinates, and he expels the young males as soon as they are old enough to give umbrage to him. To sum up, he is at once the father, the protector, and the tyrant of the band. Nevertheless, the females are affectionate to him, and the most zealous among them prove it by assiduously picking the lice from him, which, with monkeys, is a mark of great tenderness.^ But the master who has been thus flattered and cringed to sometimes comes to a bad end. One fine day, when old age has rendered him less formidable, when he is no longer capable of proving at every instant that right must yield to ^ Darwin, Descent of Man ^ p. 443. "^ Espinas, loc. cit. p. 443. ^ Houzeau, Facultes mentales des animaux, t. ii. p. 394. * Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 238 ^ Espinas, loc, cit. p. 453. 3 34 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE might, the young ones, so long oppressed, rebel, and assassinate this tyrannous father. We must here remark, that whatever the form of sexual association among mammals, the male has always much less affection for the young than the female. Even in monogamous species, when the male keeps with the female, he does so more as chief than as father. At times he is much inclined to commit infanticides and to destroy the offspring, which, by absorbing all the attention of his female, thwart his amours. Thus, among the large felines, the mother is obliged to hide her young ones from the male during the first few days after birth, to prevent his devouring them. I shall here conclude this very condensed study of sexual association and the family in the animal kingdom. My object is not so much to exhaust the subject, as to bring into relief the analogies existing between man and the other species. The facts which have been cited are amply sufficient for this purpose, and we may draw the following general conclusions from them : — In the first place there is no premeditated design in nature ; any mode of reproduction of sexual association and of rearing of young that is compatible with the duration of the species may be adopted. But in a general manner it may be said that a sort of antagonism exists between the multiplicity of births and the degree of protection bestowed on the young by the parents. A rough outline of the family is already found in the animal kingdom ; it is sometimes patriarchal, as with stickle- backs, etc., but most often it is matriarchal. In the latter case the female is the centre of it, and her love for the young is infinitely stronger and more devoted than that of the male. This is especially true of mammals, with whom the male is generally an egoist, merely protecting the family in his own personal interest. The familial instinct, more or less developed, exists in the greater number of vertebrates, and in many invertebrates. From an early period it must have been an object of selection, since it adds considerably to the chances of the duration of the species. With some species (ants, bees, termites) this instinct has expanded into a wide social love, resulting in the production of large societies of AND OF THE FAMILY, 35 complex structure, in which the family, as we understand it, is unknown. I lay stress on this fact, for it is of great importance in theoretical sociology ; it proves, in fact, that large and complicated societies, with division of social labour, can be maintained without the institution of the family. We are not, therefore, warranted in pretending, as is usually done, that the family is absolutely indispensable, and that it is the " cellule " of the social organism. Let us observe, by the way, that the expression " social organism " is simply metaphorical, and we must beware of taking it literally, as Herbert Spencer, with a strange naivetd, seems to have done. Societies are agglomerations of individuals in which a certain order is necessarily established; but it is almost puerile to seek for, and to pretend to find in them, an actual organisation, comparable, for example, to the anatomic and physiologic plan of a mammal. Terminating this short digression, I revert to my subject by summing up the results of our examination of sexual associations among the animals. In regard to marriage, as well as to the family, nature has no preference ; all means are welcome to her, provided the species profits by them, or, at least, does not suffer too much from them. We find amongst animals temporary unions, at the close of which the male ceases absolutely to care for the female ; but we also find, especially among birds, numbers of lasting unions, for which the word marriage is not too exalted. It does not appear that polyandry — that is, a durable society between one female and many males — has been practised by animals. The female, nearly always weaker than the male, could not reduce a number of them to sexual servitude, and the latter have never been tempted to share one female systematically. On the contrary, they are often polygamous. But it is especially amongst mammals that polygamy is common, and it must often have had its raison d^itre either in the sexual proportion of births, or in a greater mortality of males. These are reasons I shall have to refer to later, in speaking of human polygamy. But if polygamy is frequent with mammals, it is far from being the conjugal r'egime universally adopted ; mono- gamy is common, and is sometimes accompanied by so 36 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. much devotion, that it would serve as an example to human monogamists. It is important also to notice that, in regard to animals, the mode of sexual association may vary without much difficulty. No species is of necessity and always restricted to such or such a form of sexual union. An animal belonging to a species habitually monogamous may very easily become polygamous. In short, there does not seem to be any relation between the degree of intelligence in a species and its conjugal customs. In the following chapters it will be seen that, in great measure, these observations do not apply exclusively to animals. CHAPTER III. PROMISCUITY. I. Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity ? — Promiscuity rare among the superior vertebrates — It has been exceptional in mankind. II. Cases of Human Promiscuity. — Promiscuity among the Troglo- dytes, the ancient Arabs, the Agathyrses, the Anses, the Garamantes, the ancient Greeks, in the Timcsus, in China, in India, among the Andamanites, in California, among the aborigines of India, among the Zaporogs, and the Ansarians — Insufficience of these proofs. III. Hetairism.—Jus primcB noctis — Religious hetairism at Babylon, in Armenia — Religious prostitution — Religious defloration — The jus prima noctis with the Nasamons, in the Balearic Isles, in ancient Peru, in Asia, etc. — The right of the chief with the Kaffirs, in New Zealand, in New Mexico, in Cochin- China, in feudal Europe — The right of religious prelibation — Religious defloration in Cambodia — The reason of the right of prelibation — The Jus prima noctis confounded with the simple licence of unmarried women — Shamelessness of girls in Australia, Polynesia, America, Malaya, Abyssinia, etc. — The indotata in primitive Rome — Loan and barter of women in America and else- where, and among the ancient Arabs — Actual promiscuity has been rare in humanity. I. Has there been a Stage of Fromiscuiiy ? Having made our preliminary investigation of love, sexual unions, marriage, or what corresponds to it, and the family in the animal kingdom, we are now in a position to approach the examination of corresponding social facts in regard to man. The method of evolution requires us to begin our inquiry with the lowest forms of sexual associa- tion, and there is none lower, morally and intellectually, than promiscuity ; that is to say, a social condition so gross 38 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE that within a group, a horde, or a tribe, all the women belong, without rule or distinction, to all the men. In a society so bestial there is surely no room for what we call love, however grossly we may understand this sentiment. There is no choice, no preference; the sexual need is reduced to its simplest expression, and absolutely debased to the level of the nutritive needs ; love is no more than a hunger or thirst of another kind ; there is no longer any distinction between the man and the tatoway. Some sociologists have affirmed, without hesitation, that community of women represented a primitive and necessary stage of the sexual associations of mankind. Surely they would have been less dogmatic on this point if, before approaching human sociology, they had first consulted animal sociology, as we have done. We have seen that many vertebrated animals are capable of a really exclusive and jealous passion, even when they are determined poly- gamists. As a matter of fact, the vertebrates with whom love is merely a need, like any other, seem to be a very small minority. Some among them, especially birds, are models of fidelity, constancy, and devoted attachment, which may well inspire man with feelings of modesty. Mammals, while less delicate in their love than many birds, are, however, for the most part, already on a moral level incompatible with promiscuity. The mammals nearest to man, those whom we may consider as the effigies of our nearest animal ancestors, the anthropoid apes, are sometimes monogamous and sometimes poly- gamous, but, as a rule, they cannot endure promiscuity. Now, this fact manifestly constitutes a very strong pre- sumption against the basis of the theory according to which promiscuity has been, with the human species, the primitive and necessary stage of sexual unions. Do we thus mean to say that there is no example of promiscuity in human societies, primitive or not? Far from it. It would be impossible to affirm this without neglecting a large number of facts observed in antiquity or observable in our own day. But we are warranted in believing that the very inferior stage of promiscuity has never been other than exceptional in humanity. If it has existed here and there, it is that by the very reason of the relative superiority AND OF THE FAMILY, 39 of his intelligence, man is less rigorously subject to general laws, and that he knows sometimes how to modify or infringe them; there is more room for caprice in his existence than in the life of the animals. II. Some Cases of Human Promiscuity. Human groups have, then, practised promiscuity, and it is not quite impossible that some of them practise it still. Exceptional as these facts may be, they are interest- ing to sociologists, and it is important to mention and to criticise them also. We are indebted for our knowledge of a certain number of them to the writers of Greco- Latin antiquity. I will give them in full, at least those that deserve or have obtained more or less credit. " Throughout the Troglodyte country," relates Strabo, " the people lead a nomad life. Each tribe has its chief, or tyrant. The women and the children are possessed in common, with the exception of the wives and children of the chief, and whoever is guilty of adultery with one of the wives of the chief is punished by a fine consisting of the payment of a sheep." ^ Another passage of Strabo's, which is better known, is often quoted as proving a primitive epoch of promiscuity among the ancient Arabs also. This passage is curious and interesting, but it has not in the least the extent of signification that is attributed to it. Concerning the con- jugal customs of the peoples of Arabia Felix, Strabo speaks as follows : — *' Community of goods exists between all the members of the same family, but there is only one master, who is always the eldest of the family. They have only one wife between them all, and he who can forestall the others enters her apartment the first, and enjoys her, after having taken the precaution of placing his staff across the door (it is the custom for every man to carry a staif). She never spends the night with any but the eldest, the chief. This promis- cuity makes them all brothers. We must add that they have commerce with their own mothers. On the other hand, adultery, which means for them commerce with a lover who is not of the family, is pitilessly punished with death. The 1 Herodotus, Book xvi. p. 17. 40 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE daughter of one of the kings of the country, who was marvellously beautiful, had fifteen brothers, all desperately in love with her, and who, for this reason, took turns in enjoying her without intermission. Fatigued with their assiduity, she invented the following stratagem. She pro- cured staffs exactly similar to those of her brothers, and when one of them left her, she quickly placed across the door the staff similar to that of the brother who had just quitted her, then replaced it shortly after by another, and so on, taking care not to place there the staff like the brother's whose visit she was expecting. Now, one day, when all the brothers were together in the public place, one of them went to her door, and concluded, at the sight of the staff, that some one was with her ; but, as he had left all his brothers together, he believed in a flagrant act of adultery, hastened to seek their father, and led him to the spot. He was, however, forced to acknowledge in his presence that he had slandered his sister."^ Even admitting the perfect accuracy of the fact related by Strabo (and there is nothing in it to surprise an ethno- graphical sociologist), the word promiscuity is here quite inappropriate. The custom of maternal incest, which is not without example, perhaps warrants the supposition of ancient familial promiscuity; but in reality the Arabs of whom Strabo speaks were simply polyandrous, and they were so precisely in the manner of the Thibetans of the present day ; they practised fraternal polyandry — a conjugal form to which we shall presently return. The other examples of so-called promiscuity related by the writers of antiquity are, unfortunately, so briefly given that it is difficult to judge of their value. "The Agathyrses" (Scythians), says Herodotus, "are the most delicate of men ; their ornaments are chiefly of gold. They have their women in common in order that they may all be brothers, and that, being so nearly related, they may feel neither hatred nor envy against each other." ^ In another passage Herodotus says of the Massagetes (Scythians), " Each man marries a wife, but they use them all in common." The assertion is grossly contradictory, and can only relate to the extremely loose manners of the * Strabo, vol. xvi. ch. iv. p. 25. ^ Herodotus, Book i. p. 216. AND OF THE FAMILY. 41 unmarried women. As a matter of fact, amongst many savage or barbarous peoples chastity is not imposed on the women, as long as they have no proprietors. " When one of them desires a woman," continues Herodotus, " he suspends his quiver in front of his chariot, and tranquilly unites with her."^ This is merely a trait of very free manners, which may be placed by the side of many others, proving that modesty has been slow of growth in the human brain. The Tahitians were still more cynical than the Massagetes. Herodotus himself speaks of black Indians (Tamils) "who coupled as publicly as beasts" (iii. loi), and V. Jacquemont has related that Runjeet Singh would ride with one of his wives on the back of an elephant and take his pleasure publicly with his companion, careless of censure (V. Jacquemont, Corres.^ i6th March 1831). It would be very easy, by searching into ethnography, to accumulate facts of this kind; but for the moment I have only to continue my examination of old Greco-Roman texts re- lating more or less to promiscuity. I therefore return to them. Herodotus again relates, in speaking of the Anses, an Ethiopian tribe : " Their women are common ; they do not live with them, but couple after the manner of beasts. When a vigorous child is born to a woman, all the men go to see it at the third month, and he whom it most resembles acknowledges it for his."^ And here we have Pliny say- ing also of the Garamantes : Garafnantes matrimoniorum exsories, passim cumfeminis degunt? Strabo^ too, affirms of the Celtic population of lerne (Ireland), " the men have public commerce with all kinds of women, even with their mothers and sisters."* The passages that I have just quoted are those which are most frequently used to support the pretension that human societies have begun with promiscuity ; they are at once the most ancient, most authentic, and most explicit. We may add to them the assertion of Varro, quoted by Saint Augustine,^ according to which the Greeks, prior to the time of Cecrops, lived in promiscuity. But how is it possible ^ Herodotus, iv. 104. ^ Pliny, v. 8. 2 Ibid. iv. 180. 4 Strabo, iv. 4. ^ Varro, Apttd. August, de Civit. Dei. xviii. 9. 42 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE not to be struck with the weakness of these historical proofs ? Some of them are mere general assertions, while others plainly relate either to social anomalies or to cases of polyandry. There is no doubt as to this in regard to the ancient Arabs of whom Strabo speaks, and also to the Protohellenes of Varro. This last instance certainly relates to the matriarchal family, of which I shall have to speak again at some length. In fact, after having stated that the Protohellenes had no marriage, Varro adds that the children only knew their mother and bore her name. The proof is decisive, for the matriarchate does not in the least exclude marriage, as we shall see later, and in the case of the Lydians it lasted until the time of Herodotus. In order to complete this review of ancient texts, I will mention further the passage of the Timceus in which Socrates speaks of the community of wives: — "On the subject of the procreation of children we established a community of wives and children ; and we devised means that no one should ever know his own child. They were to imagine that they were of one family, and to regard those who were within a certain limit of age as brothers and sisters ; and again, those who were of an elder generation as parents and grandparents, and those who were of a younger generation as children and grandchildren." But Plato had a lively imagination. He was a "great dreamer," as Voltaire said of him, and this passage evidently describes a purely Utopian society. Traditions relative to a very ancient epoch of promiscuity are found here and there outside the Greco-Roman world. In China, for example, the women are said to have been common until the reign of Fouhi.^ A tradition of the same kind, but more explicitly stated, is mentioned in the Mahabharata (i. 503): ** Formerly it was not a crime to be faithless to a husband ; it was even a duty. . . . This custom is observed in our own days among the Kourous of the north. . . . The females of all classes are common on the earth ; as are the cows, so are the women ; each one has her caste. ... It is Civdta-Ketou who has established a limit for the men and women on the earth." 2 This ^ Goguet, Orig. des lots, t. iii. p. 388. ^ Quoted by Giraud Teulon, Orig. de la Famille, p. 66. AND OF THE FAMILY, 43 assertion is vague, and has not the least proof to support it. If, continuing our inquiry, we attempt to correct these historical documents by ethnographical information, we shall hardly find, on this side of the subject more than on the other, anything but simple assertions, which are either too vague or too brief, or evidently open to dispute. In the Andaman Islands, or at least in certain of them, the women are said to have been held in common till quite recently. Every woman belonged to all the men of the tribe, and resistance to any of them was a crime severely punished.^ This time we seem to have found, at length, a case of actual legal promiscuity. But, according to other accounts, the Andamanite man and woman contract, on the contrary, a monogamic and temporary union, and remain together, in case of pregnancy and maternity, until the child is weaned, as do many animals.^ Now, however short a conjugal union may be, it is incompatible with promiscuity. The indigenous Indians of California, who are among the lowest of human races, couple after the manner of inferior mammals, without the least formality, and accord- ing to the caprice of the moment.^ They are said even to celebrate feasts and propitiatory dances, which are followed by a general promiscuity.'* According to Major Ross King, some aboriginal tribes of India, notably the Kouroumbas and the Iroulas, have no idea of marriage, and live in promiscuity.'* The only prohibitory rule consists in not having intimate commerce with a person belonging to another class or caste ; but there seem only to be two classes in the tribe. Barbarous tribes belonging to white races are said also to have practised promiscuity in modern times. Among certain tribes of the Zaporog Cossacks the women are said to be common, and are confined in separate camps.^ Besides these, the Ansarians, mountaineers of Syria, are * Trans. Ethn, Soc, New Series, vol. ii. p. 35. * Ibid. vol. V. p. 45. ^ Bagaert, Smithsonian Report^ p. 368, 1863. * Bancroft, Native Races of Pacific ^ vol. i. p. 352. * Wake, Evolution of Morality^ vol. i. p. 1 10. ® Campenbausen, Bemark. iiber Russland. 44 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE said to practise, not promiscuity pure and simple, or civil promiscuity, but a religious promiscuity, analogous to that of the ancient Gnostics ^ and the Areois of Tahiti. These Ansarians must doubtless have been confounded with the Yazidies, a sect of Arabs, also Syrians, practising a sort of manich3eism, and who, it is said, assemble periodically every month, or every three months, in fraternal agapae, at the conclusion of which they unite in the darkness with- out heed as to adultery or incest. Throughout the Syrian Orient the erotic festival of the Yazidies is called by a significant name, Daour-el-Cachfeh — the game of catching.^ But even if the fact were true, what does it show ? Only one more aberration to the score of the phallic religions. Here I end my enumeration. Evidently nothing very convincing results from it. The greater number of the facts that I have just quoted have either been carelessly observed, or contested, or affirmed by a single witness, or depend merely on hearsay evidence. It is prudent, there- fore, to regard them with lawful suspicion, and even if certain of them are exact, we must be careful not to draw general conclusions from them. Promiscuity may have been adopted by certain small human groups, more probably by certain associations or brotherhoods. Thus the chiefs of the Namaquoi Hottentots willingly held their wives in common. When we come to study the family we shall find that among the Kamilaroi of Australia all the women of one clan are reputed to be the wives of all the men of another. But this community is often only fictitious, and, besides, it is already regulated; it is not promiscuity pure and simple. So far, nothing proves sufficiently that there has been a universal stage of promiscuity among mankind. Some theorists have been so hasty to come to a conclusion on this point that they have gone beyond actual experience. Moreover, as I have been careful to remark, the simple fact that man is a mammalian primate weakens this hypothesis in advance, since the nearest relations of man in the animal kingdom are in general polygamous, and even sometimes monogamous. ^ Volney, Syria, ch. iii. " Mayeux, Les Bedouins ou Arahes du Desert { i8i6), t. i^r. pp. 187, 189. AND OF THE FAMILY, 45 III. Hetdirism.^Jus primcR noctis. Not only is it impossible to admit that mankind has, in all times and places, passed through a necessary stage of promiscuity, but we must go further, and also renounce a theory which has had some degree of success lately — the theory of obligatory primitive hetairism. According to this theory, when the instinct of holding feminine property arose in man, some individuals arrogated the right to keep for themselves one or more of the women hitherto common. The community then protested, and while tolerating this derogation from ancient usage, exacted that the bride, or purchased woman, should make an act of hetairism, or prostitution, before belonging to one man only. It is Herodotus who has transmitted to us the most striking example of this kind, the one invoked by all the theorists of hetairism. I shall, therefore, quote it at length : "The most disgraceful of t^e Babylonian customs is the following. Every native woman is obliged, once in her life, to sit in the temple of Venus and have intercourse with some stranger. And many, disdaining to sit with the rest, being proud on account of their wealth, come in covered carriages, and take up their station at the temple with a numerous train of servants attending them. But the far greater part do this : many sit down in the temple of Venus, wearing a crown of cord round their heads; some are continually coming and others are going out. Passages marked out in a straight line lead in every direction through the women, along which strangers pass and make their choice. When a woman has once seated herself, she must not return home till some stranger has thrown a piece of silver into her lap and lain with her outside the temple. He who throws the silver must say thus : ' I beseech the goddess Mylitta to favour thee;' for the Assyrians call Venus Mylitta. The silver may be ever so small, for she will not reject it, inasmuch as it is not lawful for her to do so, for such silver is accounted sacred. The woman follows the first man that throws, and refuses no one. But when she has had intercourse, and has absolved herself from her obligations to the goddess, she returns home ; and after that 46 THE E VOL UTION OF MARK I A GE time, however great a sum you may give her, you will not gain possession of her. Those that are endowed with beauty and symmetry of shape are soon set free ; but the deformed are detained a long time, from inabiHty to satisfy the law, for some wait for a space of three or four years. In some parts of Cyprus there is a custom very similar." ^ After having read this passage, we are surprised at the import that has been attributed to it. Even admitting the obligation and universality of the custom in ancient Babylon, it is only an example of religious prostitution, with traces of exogamy. The Babylonians honoured Mylitta, just as the Armenians, according to Strabo,^ ven- erated the goddess Anaitis. " They have erected temples to Anaitis in various places, especially in the Akilisenus, and have attached to these temples a good number of hierodules, or sacred slaves, of both sexes. So far, indeed, there is no ground for astonishment; but their devotion goes further, and it is the custom for the most illustrious personages to consecrate their virgin daughters to the goddess. This in no way prevents the latter from easily finding husbands, even after they have prostituted them- selves for a long time in the temples of Anaitis. No man feels on this account any repugnance to take them as wives." I quote in full these venerable passages, which have been so much used and abused, in order that it may not be possible to mistake their signification. Once more we repeat that they merely relate to erotico-religious aberra- tions. The procreative need, or delirium, has inspired men with many foolish ideas, and probably will continue to do so. A very slight knowledge of mythology is enough to show us that numerous cults have been founded on the sexual instinct, and these cults are naturally accompanied by special practices, little in accordance with our European morality. Religious prostitution, which was widely spread in Greek antiquity, has been also found in India, where every temple of renown had its bayaderes, the only women in India to whom, until quite recently, any instruction was given. The far more peculiar custom of Tchin-than, or religious 1 Herodotus, Book i. 199. ^ Strabo, vol. xi. 14. AND OF THE FAMILY. 47 defloration, formerly in use in Cambodia ^ and in Malabar, is evidently akin to religious prostitution. But this custom is nothing else than a mystic transformation of what was called the jus primes noclis, of which I must first speak. It is important to distinguish several varieties of it. The first and most simple was the custom by which every newly- married woman, before belonging to her husband, was obHged to give herself, or be given, to a certain number of men, either relatives, friends, or fellow-citizens. This was the custom among the Nasamons, according to Herodotus : " When a Nasamon marries, custom requires that his bride should yield herself on the first night to all his guests in turn ; each one who has had commerce with her makes her a present, which he has been mindful to bring with him." 2 A similar custom is said to have existed in various countries of the globe, in ancient times in the Balearic Isles, more recently among the ancient Peruvians, in our own times among several aboriginal tribes of India ; in Burmah, in Cashmere, in the south of Arabia, in Madagascar, and in New Zealand;^ but always as an exceptional practice, in use only in a small group or tribe. It is not impossible that here and there this usage, which is rare enough, may have been derived traditionally from an ancient marriage by classes, analogous to that still found among the Kamilaroi of Australia; but it may have been simply a mark of good-fellowship, or of conjugal generosity on the part of the bridegroom. The seignorial jus primes noctis^ the right of the lord, is much more widely spread, and its existence cannot be con- tested. Among the Kaffirs, says Hamilton,* the chiefs have the choice of the women for several leagues round. So also, until lately, in New Zealand, every pretty girl was taboo for the vulgar, and had to be first reserved for the chief.^ In New Mexico, with the Tahous, as Castaiieda informs us, it is necessary, after having purchased the girl from her parents, to submit her to the seignorial right of ^ Abel de Remusat, Nouv. mil. Asiatiques^ p. 116. ^ Herodotus, iv. 172. • Giraud Teulon, Orig, de la Families p. 69. * Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 651. » Ibid. p. 651. 48 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE the cacique, or to a priest of high rank. Reh'gion already begins to insinuate itself into this singular right.^ According to Marco Polo, the same custom existed in the thirteenth century in Cochin-China. " Know," says the old chronicler, "no woman can marry without the king first seeing her. If she pleases him, he takes her to wife ; if she does not please him, he gives her enough from his own property to enable her to marry. "In the year 1280 of Christ, when Messire Marco Polo was in that country, the king had three hundred and eighty-six children, male and female. "^ Under the feudal system in Europe this right of pre- libation, or marquette (designated in old French by the expressive term droit de culage\ has been in use in many fiefs, and until a very recent epoch. Almost in our own days certain lords of the Netherlands, of Prussia, and of Germany, still claimed it. In a French title-deed of 1507 we read that the Count d'Eu has the right of prelibation in the said place when any one marries.^ More than this, ecclesiastics, and even bishops, have been known to claim this right in their quality of feudal lords. " I have seen," says Boetius, "in the court at Bourges, before the metro- politan, an appeal by a certain parish priest, who pretended to claim the first night of young brides, according to the received usage. The demand was rejected with indignation, the custom unanimously proscribed, and the scandalous priest condemned to pay a fine." " In a kingdom of Malabar," says J. Forbes, " the ecclesias- tical power took precedence of the civil on this particular point, and the sovereign himself passed under the yoke. Like the other women, the queen had to submit to the right of prelibation exercised by the high priest, who had a right to the first three nights, and who was paid fifty pieces of gold besides for his trouble."* In Cambodia, according to an ancient Chinese traveller, religious prelibation was obligatory on all the young girls, and was performed every year with great ceremony. The parents who had daughters ^ Bancroft, Native Races, etc., vol. i. p. 584. 2 Marco Polo, Edition Populaire, p. 187. ^ Lauri^re, Close du droit Franfais, at the word Culage ou Culiage. * James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. p. 446; vol. iv. 18 13. AND OF THE FAMIL Y. 49 to marry made a declaration of it, and a public functionary fixed the day for the celebration of Tchin-than^ or the legal and religious defloration. For this the intervention of a Buddhist priest, or a tao-sse priest, was indispensable. The parents entreated his service, which was very costly, and for this reason girls who were poor retained their virginity longer than the rich. It even sometimes happened that pious persons, moved by a sentiment of charity, took on themselves the payment of the costs of the ceremony for those who had been waiting a long time. Great display attended it. On the appointed day the officiating priest was carried in the evening with much pomp to the festive house, and the next morning he was reconducted home in a palanquin with parasol, drum, and music, and not without being offered fresh presents. A. de R^musat has given, in Latin, some curious particulars of the intimate details of the ceremony, which I cannot relate here.^ These few examples suffice to show how very much morality is a relative thing, but they cannot serve as a basis to a general theory of hetairism. The seignorial right of prelibation is simply an abuse of force and good pleasure ; only, viewed in the light of our morality, it shocks us more than the others. One might justify it, however, by reasons which Bossuet considered sufficient to render slavery lawful. The right of conquest has given, or still gives, all over the world, every sort of right over the vanquished, even the right of life and death. The conqueror, "in a just war," says the sage of Meaux, may legitimately kill the vanquished and, a fortiori^ enslave him; and one may add, following out a logical conclusion, that it is lawful for him to dispose as he pleases of his wife and daughter. As a matter of course, the priest, in his quahty of lord, can claim the same privileges as the layman; but besides this, if it should happen that his particular religion lends itself to the idea by being founded in some manner on the worship of the principle of procrea- tion, as is so frequently the case with oriental religions, a sort of superstitious prestige will come to adorn and clothe this sacerdotal shamelessness. In all this there is hardly any room for hetairism con- ^ A. Remusat, Nouv. md, AsiaMqueSf t. 1^' p. Il8. 4 50 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE sidered as a compensation to the community for damage to its ancient rights. Admitting that th.Q Jus pri?iicB noctis of relatives and friends does not imply simple polyandry, it may very naturally be explained by primitive laxity of morals. Among the greater number of peoples who are very slightly or not at all civilised, the women are free to give or sell themselves before marriage as they please, and as it does not entail any disgrace, they use the liberty largely. Besides, in many countries the husband had, or still has, over his wife or wives all the rights of a proprietor over the thing possessed. Now, considering he is a stranger to all modesty and sexual restraint, nothing seems more natural, if he has some instinct of sociability, than to lend his wife to his friends, just as he would do them an act of politeness, make them a present, or invite them to a feast, all without thinking any evil. This view of the practice is supported by many facts. Doubtless it is the great sexual licence accorded to young girls in so many countries which has led many observers and travellers to conclude that promiscuity has been systematically established. In Australia the girls cohabit from the age of ten with young boys of fourteen or fifteen, without rebuke from any one, and there are even great sexual orgies in which the signal is given to the young people for liberty to unite freely in open day.^ In the greater number of savage countries these customs are common. At Nouka-Hiva, or more generally all over Polynesia, the young girls did not marry, that is to say, did not become the chattel of a man, before the age of nineteen or twenty, and until then they contracted a great number of capricious unions, which became lasting only in case of the birth of children. ^ In all these islands, moreover, modesty was unknown, and the members of each family passed the night side by side on mats, and entirely naked. The place of honour, in the centre, was occupied by the master of the house, flanked by his wife or wives.^ ^ Eyre, Discoveries, vol. ii. p. 320. 2 Porter, Hist. Univ. des Voy., vol. xvi. p. 323. ^ Cook, First Voy. (Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. v. p. 252). Moerenhout, Voy. atix iles du Grand Ocean, t. i^'^' p. 263. AND OF THE FAMILY, 51 Analogous customs, extremely licentious in our eyes, but perfectly natural for primitive peoples, were in full force among all the indigenous races of America. The Chinouk girls give or hire themselves out as they please. In the latter case the parents often take the payment.^ The Aymaras, who have no word for marriage, and who are such a simple folk that, in- their opinion, any crime can be committed with impunity on Good Friday, since God is dead on that day, contract without scruple free unions merely for the duration of the evening of a feast. The contract is made in mimic language, and in settling it the man and woman exchange head-gear only.^ Similar manners prevail among the Esquimaux, the Kaffirs, and the Dyaks of Borneo. In Japan the parents willingly hire out their daughters, either to private individuals or to houses of prostitution, for a period of several years, and the girls are in no way dishonoured thereby. In Abyssinia, says Bruce, outside of the conjugal bond, which is easily tied or untied, the women dispose of their person as they please. In primitive Rome, as with us, the young girl without dowry, the indotata^ was held in moderate esteem ; and therefore many young girls procured themselves a dowry by trafficking their persons. An old Latin proverb has handed down the souvenir of this ancient fashion of procuring a dowry: Tusco more^ tuie iibi dotem quceris corpore,^ Now, in all these customs, at once so simple and so gross, it is impossible to see the traces of an enforced hetairism, derived from an antique period of promiscuity, which was also equally obligatory. They are simply traits of animal laxity. Men were still almost devoid of moral training, and the care for decency and modesty was of the slightest. If in a primitive country a certain amount of restraint is imposed on a woman who is married, or rather owned by a man, it is solely because she is considered as property, held by the same title as a field or a domestic animal. For her ^ Bancroft, Native Races, etc. * Wake, Evolution of Morality, vol. i. p. 219. ' Giraud Teulon, Orig, de la Famille, p. 83. 52 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE to dispose of her person without authorisation is often a capital crime ; but the husband, on the contrary, has in many countries the undisputed right to lend, let out, or barter his wife or wives : jus utendi et abutendi. I will mention a few of these marital customs. In America, from the land of the Esquimaux to Patagonia, the loan of the wife is not only lawful, but praiseworthy. Egidius says of the Esquimaux, " that those who lend their wives to their friends without the least hesitation are reputed in the tribe as having the best and noblest character." ^ The English traveller, Captain Ross, relates that one of the Esquimaux prowling around his ship was accompanied by the wives and children of one of his intimate friends, to whom he had, in the preceding autumn, confided, on his side, his own two wives. The exchange was to terminate at a fixed time, and the Esquimaux of whom Captain Ross speaks was very indignant with his friend because the latter, having forgotten himself while chasing the deer in distant regions, was not exact in keeping the engagement.2 On this point the Redskins are not more delicate than the Esquimaux. Thus the Natchez make no difficulty of lending their wives to their friends.^ In New Mexico the Yuma husbands willingly hire out their wives and their slaves, without making any difference. And, besides, with them, as in many other countries, to furnish a guest with a temporary wife is simply one of the duties of hospitality.* The chiefs of the Noutka Columbians barter their wives among each other as a sign of friendship.^ Nothing would be easier than to enumerate a great number of facts of the same kind observed in Australia, Africa, Polynesia, Mongolia, and almost everywhere. But it is more remark- able to meet with the same custom in a Mussulman country. Nevertheless, Burckhardt relates that the Merekedeh, a branch of the great tribe of Asyr, understood hospitality in this primitive manner. To every stranger received under ^ History of Greenland ^ p. 142. ^ Ross, Hist. Univ. des Voy.y t. xl. p. 158. ^ Lettres Edifiantes^ t. xx. p. 116. * Bancroft, Native Races, etc., vol. i. p. 514. ' Meares, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xiii. p. 375. AND OF THE FAMILY, 53 their tents or in their houses, they offered a woman of the family, and most often a wife of the host himself. The young girls alone were exempt from this strange service. It was considered the duty of the traveller to conform with a good grace to the custom, otherwise he was hooted and chased from the village or camp by the women and children. This extreme manner of understanding hospitality was very ancient and deeply rooted, and it was not without difficulty that the conquering Wahabites brought the Asyrs to renounce it.^ But these customs were not specially con- fined to the Asyrs; they were in force throughout prehistoric Arabia. An old Arab writer, Ibn al Moghawir, mentions them. "Sometimes," he says, "the wife was actually placed at the disposition of the guest \ at other times, the offer was only symbolic. The guests were invited to press the wife in their arms, and to give her kisses, but the poignard would have revenged any further liberties." 2 It is not very long since the same practice prevailed in Kordofan and Djebel-Taggale.^ Certain traits of morals related by the Greco-Latin writers show that in Rome, and Greece also, if it was not the husband's duty to lend his wife to his friends, he had at least the right to do so. At Sparta, Lycurgus authorised husbands to be thus liberal with their wives whenever they judged their friends worthy of this honour. And, further, the public opinion of Sparta strongly approved the conduct of an aged husband who took care to procure for his wife a young, handsome, and virtuous substitute.* The same customs prevailed at Athens, where Socrates, it is said, lent his wife Xantippe to his friend Alcibiades ; and at Rome,*^ where the austere Cato the elder gave up his wife Marcia to his friend Hortensius, and afterwards took her back, much enriched, it is true, at the death of this friend. All these facts relate, therefore, to a very widely-spread and almost universal custom, which is in perfect accord 1 Burckhardt, Hist. Univ. des Voy,^ t xxxii. p, 380. 3 R. Smith, Kinship, etc., p. 276. * Les Abyssiniennes et les Femmes du Soudan Oriental^ p. 97. * Plutarch, Lycurgtis. 5 Ibid.^ Cato, 54 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE with the extremely low position that has been granted to women in the greater number of savage and barbarous societies. The married woman, being exactly assimilated to a slave or a thing possessed, might thenceforth be treated as such ; and tlie right of property, soon becoming sacred, easily stood before any scruples of decency which were still rare and weak. After the preceding investigation, there appears to be no difficulty in refuting the sociological theory, far too pre- valent, according to which the entire human race has passed through a primitive period of promiscuity followed by hetairism. Our first ancestors, the precursors of man, were surely very analogous to the other primates. We may, therefore, conclude that, like them, they generally lived in polygamous families. When these almost human little groups were associated in hordes or tribes, it is quite possible that great laxity of morals may have prevailed amongst them, but not a legal or obligatory promiscuity. In a society sufficiently numerous and savage it is no easy task for a man to guard his feminine property, for the women are not by any means averse to adventures. Their modesty is still very slight, and before belonging specially to one man they have generally been given or sold to many others. At that period of the social evolution public opinion saw no harm in all this. And, besides, the husband or the proprietor of the woman considered her absolutely as his thing, and did not scruple to lend her to his friends, to barter her, or to hire her out. These primitive customs, combined with polyandrous or collective marriage and the matriarchate, have deceived many observers, both ancient and modern. AVhen we come to scrutinise these facts, and to view them in the light of animal sociology, we arrive at the conclusion that human promiscuity can only have been rare and exceptional, and that the theory of the community of wives and of obligatory hetairism will not bear examination. The procreative need is one of the most tyrannical, and primitive man has satisfied it as he best could, without the least delicate refinement ; but the egotism of individuals has had for its result, from the origin of human societies, the formation of unions based on force, and, correlatively, a AND OF THE FAMILY. 55 right of property which fettered more or less rigorously the liberty of the women who were thus possessed. These primitive unions were concluded according to the chance caprices or needs of extremely gross societies, who cared httle to submit to a uniform conjugal type. There are some very singular ones among them, which differ essentially from the legal forms of marriage finally and very tardily adopted by the majority of mankind. It is these isolated conjugal unions, extravagant and immoral in our eyes, that we now have to consider. CHAPTER IV. SOME SINGULAR FORMS OF SEXUAL ASSOCIATION. I. Primitive Sexual Immorality. — Origin of modesty — Absence of modesty in the savage — Loan of wives in Melanesia and among the Bochimans — Absence of modesty in the Esquimaux, the Redskins, and Polynesians — Right of the husband in Polynesia — Loan or barter of wives — Erotic training of little girls in Polynesia — Society of the Areois — Man in a state of nature — Unnatural love in New Caledonia, in the two Americas, among Asiatic peoples, and in Greco-Roman antiquity — The erastes of Crete. II. Some Strange Forms of Marriage. — Coarseness of primitive marriage — Horror of incest artificially created — Incest among various peoples — Artificial defloration — Experimental marriages among the Redskins, the Otomies, the Sonthals, the Tartars, and in Ceylon — Temporary marriages among the Jews of Morocco and the Tapyres — Free unions — Partial marriages and marriages for a term among the Arabs — Marriage and the right of the strongest in savage countries — Savage coarseness and civilised depravity. I. Primitive Sexual Immorality. In a former work^ I have attempted to trace the genesis of a sentiment peculiar to humanity — the sentiment of modesty. It would be inexpedient here to treat the subject afresh in detail, but I will recall the conclusions arrived at by that investigation. Modesty is par excellence a human sentiment, and is totally unknown to the animals, although the procreative need inspires them with desires and passions essentially identical with what in man we call love; it is therefore certainly an artificial sentiment, and comparative ethnology proves that it must have resulted from the 1 U Evolution de la Morale* THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE. 5 7 enforced chastity imposed on women under the most terrible penalties. In reality, primitive marriage hardly merits the name ; it is simply the taking possession of one or several women by one man, who holds them by the same title as all other property, and who treats adultery, when unauthorised by himself, strictly as robbery. This ferocious restraint has resulted, especially in the woman, in the formation of particular mental impressions, correspond- ing psychically to the sentiment of modesty, and inducing a certain sexual reserve which has become instinctive. But this moral inhibition is still very weak in races of low development, and, taking the whole human species, it exists chiefly in the woman ; it is a sexual peculiarity of character, and is of relatively recent origin. If we keep well in mind these preliminary considerations, we shall not be much surprised at the forms of sexual association which we are about to consider, although they are singularly repulsive to our ideas of morality. We shall be still less surprised at them when we are acquainted with the extreme licence permitted in many savage and barbarous societies. There is nothing more difficult for us to realise, civilised as we are, than the mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation as regards what we ca.\\J>ar excellence "morality." It is not indecency ; it is simply an animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably quite natural, since they are the expression of a primordial need, essential to the duration of the species, but which a long ancestral and individual education has trained us to subject to a rigorous restraint, and to the accomplishment of which, consequently, we cannot help attaching a certain shame, do not in the least shock the still imperfect conscience of the primitive man. On this point facts are eloquent and abundant ; I will quote a few of them. In Tasmania it was' thought an honour for women to prostitute themselves to Europeans, who were ennobled in the eyes of the natives by the prestige of their superiority. ^ The Australians, who were a little more developed than the Tasmanians, willingly lent or hired out their women — at least those that were their own property — to their friends.^ ^ Wake, vol. i. p. 77. ^ Id, vol. i. p. 71. 58 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE The women were not less bestial than their males. They often engaged, says Peltier, in furious combats, fighting with spears, for the possession of a man. This is a peculiar case, and is an entirely human instance of that law of battle of which I have spoken in regard to animals. Like the females of animals also the Australian women adored strength, and when the men of their own horde were beaten in battle they sometimes went over to the camp of the conquerors of their own accord (Mitchell).^ In these facts there is nothing exceptional, and we may change the country without changing the customs. Thus the Bochi- mans treat their wives as simple domestic animals, and offer them willingly to strangers,^ as do also the Australians. In the Andaman Islands and elsewhere the women give themselves up before marriage — that is, before becoming the property of one man — to the most unbridled prostitu- tion, ^ and yet the most innocent, according to the morality of the country. Among the Esquimaux the laxity of sexual customs, both for men and women, is extreme. The husbands feel no shame in selling, or rather hiring out, their wives ; and the latter, as soon as their proprietors are gone to the chase or to fish, abandon themselves to an uncontrolled debauch, taking care to post their children outside the hut to warn them in case of the unexpected return of the master.'* Sexual morality does not yet exist among the Esquimaux, and an Aleout said quite simply to the missionary Langs- dorff, "When my people couple they do it like the sea- otters."^ In fact, if the cold permitted, the Esquimaux would not be any more clothed than the sea-otters. In their common houses, where two or three hundred people are crowded together, and a high degree of temperature is maintained, they throw off their clothing without distinction of age or sex.^ They go further still, and, like many savages, practise what is called Socratic love openly and without shame. Thus, among the Inoits, well-favoured boys 1 H. Spencer, Sociology ^ vol. ii. p. 213. ^ Wake, vol. i. p. 205. ' Giraud Teulon, Orig. de la Famille^ p. 68. * Parry ( Third Voyage), Hist. Univ. des Voyages, t. xl. p. 456. ^ Giraud Teulon, loc. cit., p. 96. ^ l^lie Reclus, Les Primitifs, p. 70. AND OF THE FAMILY. 59 are brought up with care, dressed as girls, and sold at a high price towards the age of fifteen/ without any harm being seen in it. Tlie Redskins of the extreme north are scarcely more modest than the Esquimaux. Carver relates that among the Nandowessics a woman was particularly honoured because she had first entertained and then treated as husbands the forty chief warriors of the tribe.^ But it is especially in Polynesia that the naive immodesty of primitive peoples was displayed with the greatest indiffer- ence to the opinions of others. " The principal difficulty of the missionaries in the Sand- wich Isles,'' says M. de Varigny, " consisted in teaching the women chastity; they were ignorant of the name and of the thing. Adultery, incest, and fornication were common things, approved by public opinion, and even consecrated by religion." 3 These customs are of ancient date in Polynesia. The travellers of last century had observed them still the same. The Tahitian women, if they were free, openly bartered their persons, and the fathers, mothers, brothers, and some- times the husbands, often brought them to the European sailors and hired them out, after a lively bargaining, for nails, red feathers, etc. ^ At Noukahiva "the young girls of the island," says Porter, *'are the wives of all those who can buy their favours, and a beautiful daughter is considered by her parents as a means of procuring them for a time riches and plenty. However, when they are older, they form more lasting connections, and seem then as firmly attached to their husbands as women of any other country."^ In the same archipelago, the surgeon Roblet says that the French sailors were frequently offered girls of eight years ; " and," he adds, " they were not virgins."^ 1 filie Reclus, Les Primitifs, p. 80. 2 Carver, Travels in North America, p. 245. * De Varigny, Quatorze ans aux ties Sandwich^ p. 159. * Wallis, Hist. Univ. des Vby., t. xviii. p. 364. — Edwards, ih'd. t. xiii. p. 426. ^ Porter, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xvi. p. 232. ^ Marchand, ibid. t. xv. p. 406. — Moerenhout, Voy. aux iles^ t, ler. p. 313. 6o THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE "Virtue," says Porter, "such as we understand it, was unknown among them, and they attached no shame to acts which they regarded not only as natural, but as an inoffensive amusement. Many parents thought themselves honoured by the preference given to their daughters, and showed their satisfaction by presents of pigs and fruits, which, on their part, was an extreme of munificence."^ In Polynesia public opinion forbade married women to yield themselves without the authorisation of their owners, and this was almost the only strict rule of morals existing ; but the husbands trafficked in their wives without scruple. " Tawee," says Porter, " was one of the handsomest men of the island, and loved to adorn his person ; a bit of red stuff, some morsels of glass, or a whale's tooth, had irresistible charms for him, and in order to procure these objects he would offer any of the most precious things he possessed. Thus, though his wife was of remarkable beauty, and he was the tenderest of husbands, Tawee offered his wife more than once for a necklace." ^ To offer a woman to a visitor to whom one would do honour was, for that matter, a simple act of courtesy in Polynesia, and the same courtesy prescribed the immediate acceptance of the offer, coram populo (Bougainville). It was frequently his own wife that the husband thus gave up to his guest, and the case of Porter, which I have just quoted, had nothing exceptional in it. A similar thing happened to Captain Beechey,^ and to many other travellers. This conjugal liberality was one of the customs of the country ; the friend, or iayo^ acquired conjugal rights over the wife or wives of his friend. Between brothers and relations the exchange of wives was frequent,* to such a degree that at Toubouai, etc., Moerenhout tells us the women were nearly held in common, and that in the Marquesas a woman had sometimes as many as twenty lovers.* For the Polynesians the pleasures of sensual love were the chief business of life ; they neither saw evil nor practised 1 Porter, Hist. Univ. des Vby., t. xvi. p. 229. 2 M, loc. cit., t. xvi. p. 245. ' Ibid. t. xix. p. 213. * Wake, Evolution of Morality ^ vol. i. p. 79. 5 Moerenhout, Voy. aux ties, etc. , t. ii. p. 56. AND OF THE FAMIL Y, 6l restraint in them. The women were trained with a view to amorous sports;^ they were fattened on a soup of bread fruit, and from earhest infancy taught by their mothers to dance the timorodte, a very lewd dance, accompanied by appropriate words.^ The conversation also was in keeping with the morals. "One thing which particularly struck me," says Moerenhout, ** as soon as I began to understand their language, was the extreme licence in conversation — a hcence pushed to the limit of most shameless cynicism, and which is the same even with the women ; for these people think and talk of nothing but sensual pleasure, and speak openly of everything, having no idea of the euphemisms of our civilised societies, where we use double meanings and veiled words, or terms that are permitted in mentioning things which would appear revolting and cause scandal if plainly expressed ; but these islanders could not understand this, and the missionaries have never been able to make them do so."^ Lastly, the existence of the religious and aristocratic society of the Areo'is, in Tahiti and other archipelagoes, finishes the picture of the mental condition of the Poly- nesians as regards morals. Without describing afresh this curious association, I shall only remind my readers that it had for its object an unrestrained and public abandonment to amorous pleasures, and that, for this reason, the com- munity of women and the obligation of infanticide were decreed. During the last century sentimentality invaded the brains of thinkers and writers like an epidemic, and gave rise to the belief that primitive man, or "man in a state of nature," as the phrase went, was the model of all virtues. But we must discount much of this. As we might naturally expect, the uncultivated man is a mammal of the grossest kind. We have already seen that his sexual morality is extremely loose, and necessarily so ; we are, however, surprised to find him addicted to certain aberrations from nature which the chroniclers of the Greco-Latin world have accustomed us to- regard as the result of a refined and depraved civilisation, — 1 Moerenhout, Voy. aux tlesy etc., t. i^^- p. 206. * Cook, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. v. p. 268, * Moerenhout, /oc. cit., t. i^r. p. 229. 62 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE an opinion which is quite erroneous, as comparative ethno- graphy irrefutably proves. Nothing is more common among primitive races than what is called Socratic love, and on this point I will briefly quote a few facts, without pausing longer on them than my subject requires. In the vast sociological investigation which I am undertaking, moral bestiality must not discourage scientific analysis any more than putrefaction arrests the scalpel of the anatomist; it does not therefore follow that we take delight in it. As a matter of fact, many human races have practised, from the first, vices contrary to nature. The Kanaks of New Caledonia frequently assemble at night in a cabin to give themselves up to this kind of debauchery.^ The New Zealanders practised it even among their women.^ It was also a widely-spread custom throughout Polynesia, and even a special deity presided over it. In the whole of America, from north to south, similar customs have existed or still exist. We have previously seen that the Esquimaux reared young boys for this purpose. The Southern Californians did the same, and the Spanish missionaries, on their arrival in the country, found men dressed as women and assuming their part. They were trained to this from youth, and often publicly married to the chiefs.^ Nero was evidently a mere plagiarist. The existence of analogous customs has been proved amongst the Guyacurus of La Plata, the natives of the Isthmus of Darien, the tribes of Louisiana, and the ancient Illinois, etc* The two chief forms of sexual excess of which I have been speaking, unnatural vice and the debauchery of girls or free women, are habitual in savage countries ; and later, when civilisation and morality have evolved, the same inveterate inclinations still persist for a long time, in spite of public opinion and even of legal repression. The Incas, according to the chronicler Garcilaso, were merciless in regard to these sexual aberrations, and the ^ Bourgarelj Des Races de V Ocianie fran^aise^ in Mim. Soc. cTAnthro- pologie, t. ii. p. 390. — De Rochas, Nouvelle Caledonte, p. 235. 2 Moerenhout, Voy. aux. ileSy etc., t. ii. p. 167. — Marion, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. iii. p. 487. 3 Wake, Evolution of Morality , vol. i. p. 241, * Peschel, Races of Man ^ p. 408, AND OF THE FAMlL Y. 63 Mexican law was equally severe, but all without much effect, if we may believe the accounts of Garcilaso himself, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, etc. I have elsewhere related how the ancient legislations of the great Asiatic states repressed these base aberrations of the procreative sense, and nevertheless, at the present day, the Arabs frequently give way to them, even in the holy Mosque at Mecca ;^ and other Eastern peoples, Hindoos, Persians, and Chinese, are also very imperfectly reformed on this point. When we remember that morality is essentially relative, and that ancestral impressions are extremely tenacious in the human brain, we shall not be much surprised to see these low tendencies persist as survivals in the midst of civilisations already far advanced. Nevertheless, the theoretic morality of all the great nations of the East has for centuries condemned these repugnant excesses, which our European ancestors, both Celts and Teutons, have early reproved and repressed. It is all the more singular to find the most intelligent race of antiquity, the ancient Greeks, practising the greatest tolerance on this subject, «o much so that the names of Socrates and Plato, those fathers of ethereal spiritualism, are attached to amours the mere thought of which now excites disgust in a civilised European. A very slight acquaintance with Greco-Roman literature furnishes abundant information on this matter. I have no need, therefore, to dwell on it, but I must quote a curious passage of Strabo, from which we learn that the ancient Cretans associated with so-called Socratic amours the ceremonial of marriage by capture, of which I shall soon have to speak. This strange passage is as follows : — "It is not by persuasion, but by capture, that they obtain posses- sion of the beloved object. Three days or more in advance the erasies apprises the friends of the young boy of his project of abduction. It would be considered the greatest disgrace for them to conceal the child, or prevent him from passing by the road indicated. By so doing they would appear to confess that he did not merit the favours of such a distinguished erastes. What do they do therefore ? They meet together, and if the ravisher is equal or superior in ^ Burckhardt, Hist, Univ. des Voy.t t. xxxii. p. 155. 64 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE rank and all other respects to the family of the child, they are content in their pursuit to comply with the idea of the law, and to make a semblance of attack only, allowing the child to be carried off, and even testifying their satisfaction; but if, on the contrary, the ravisher should be of greatly inferior rank, they invariably rescue the child from his hands. In any case the pursuit comes to an end when the child has crossed the threshold of the andrion of his captor." We may doubtless presume, from this passage, that the ancient Cretans were no longer in the state of bestial coarseness of the New Caledonians. With them the capture was a symbol or comedy. It was a mark of esteem, paid less to the beauty of the child than to his valour and propriety of manners. In fact, the boy had the legal right to revenge himself, if he had suffered any violence in his capture ; and in restoring him to liberty his ravisher loaded him with presents, some of which were obligatory and legal, namely, a warrior's cloak, an ox, and a goblet ; it was a kind of initiation in virility, and it was considered a disgrace for a young boy not to obtain an erastes?- But even if we admit that all the ceremonial of this singular platonic marriage among the Cretans was perfectly innocent, it arose, none the less, from a moral laxity, plainly showing that ancient morals were gross in the extreme. I here conclude my enumeration. Short as it has been, for I have purposely limited my facts to a small number, it is sufficient to prove that for an immense period man has been a very coarse animal. We may, therefore, expect to find him adapting without scruple forms of marriage or sexual association quite unusual among Europeans, and which it now remains for me to describe briefly. II. Some Strange Forms of Marriage. In savage societies, where no delicacy yet exists in regard to sexual union, and where, on the other hand, woman is strictly assimilated to things and domestic animals, marriage, or what we please to call so, is an affair of small ^ Strabo, x. 21. AND OF THE FAMIL Y. (i<, importance, which is regulated according to individual caprice. More generally the parents, and sometimes the friends or the chiefs, pair the young people as they think fit, and quite naturally they have little regard for mono- gamic marriage, to the strictness of which, even in civilised societies, man finds it so difficult to bend. The young people, on their part, have hardly any individual preferences. The young boys of the Redskins, as Lafitau tells us, never even troubled to see, before marriage, the wife chosen for them by their parents. ^ In Bargo, according to R. and J. Lander, they marry with perfect indifierence ; " a man does not care any more about choosing a wife than about which ear of corn he shall pick." There is never any question as to the sentiments of the contracting parties.^ It is quite certain, also, that during the first ages of the evolution of societies, the ties of kinship, even those we are accustomed to regard as sacred, and respect for which seems to be incarnate in us, have not been any impediment to sexual unions. Like the sentiment of modesty, the horror of incest has only been engraved on the human con- science with great difficulty and by long culture. Scruples of this kind are unknown to the animal, and before they could arise in the human brain it was first necessary that the family should be constituted, and then that, from some motive or other, the custom of exogamous marriage should be adopted. Now, as we shall see later, the family has at first been matriarchal or rather maternal, and with such a familial system, the children have no legal father; the prohibitions relative to incest could therefore, at the most, only exist in regard to the female line, and, in fact, we find it to be so in many countries where this system of filiation prevails. But primitive morals, existing before the forma- tion of a morality condemning incest, have left many traces in the past, and even in the present. " The Chippeways," says Hearne, " frequently cohabit with their mother, and oftener still with their sisters and daughters."^ And yet he is speaking here of Redskins, a people reputed to be ^ Demeunier, Esprit des Diff^rents Peuples^ t. I^^^' p. 153 - Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xxx. p. 94. 3 H. Spencer, Sociology, vol. ii. p. 218. 5 66 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE fanatical on the matter of exogamy. Langsdorff says the same of the Kadiaks, who unite indiscriminately, brothers with sisters, and parents with children.^ It is well known, besides, that in the matter of sexual unions no race has fewer prejudices than the Esquimaux. The Coucous of Chili, and the Caribs also, willingly married at the same time a mother and daughter. With the Karens, too, of Tenasserim, marriages between brother and sister, or father and daughter, are frequent enough, even in our own day.^ But these unions, though incestuous for us, have not been practised amongst savages and inferior races only. According to Strabo, the ancient Irish married, without distinction, their mothers and sisters.^ We are told by Justin and Tertullian* that the Parthians and Persians married their own mothers without scruple. In ancient Persia, religion went so far even as to sanctify the union of a son with his mother.^ Priscus relates that these marriages were also permitted among the Tartars and Scythians, and it is reported, too, that Attila married his daughter Esca.® Whether from a survival of ancient morals, or the care to preserve purity of race, conjugal unions between brother and sister were authorised, or even prescribed, in various countries, for the royal families. The kings of ancient Egypt were obliged to marry their sisters, and Cleopatra thus became the wife of her brother Ptolemy Dionysius. The Incas of Peru were subject to a similar law ; and at Siam also, when the traveller La Loubbre visited it, the king had married his sister.'' But I shall have to return to the subject of marriage between relations in treating of the endogamic regime which has been, or is, in force among many peoples. These incestuous marriages astonish us, and certain of them are even revolting to our ideas, as, for example, the union of the mother with the son. Another custom 1 Langsdorff, Voyages, t. ii. p. 64. 2 Heber, quoted by H. Spencer, Sociology^ vol. ii. p. 248. * Geov'aphy, Lib. iv. par. 4. ^ Justin, Agatha, vol. ii. Tertullian, in Apologet. 5 A. Hovelacque, L'Avesta, pp. 465, 466. ^ Demeunier, t. ler. pp. 465, 466. ' Ibid. p. 166. AND OF THE FAMILY. 67 will probably surprise, if not shock us quite as much. I allude to experimental marriages, which are far from being rare. They will appear, however, less singular, if we remember that in societies of low order little value is set on the chastity of young girls ; virginal purity is not at all prized, and there are even some peoples, as the Saccalaves of Madagascar, ^ for instance, and also certain indigenous peoples of India,^ among whom it is regarded as a duty for the mothers themselves to deflour their daughters before marrying them. With such morals prevailing, experimental marriages seem natural enough. De Champlain, an ancient French traveller in North America, relates that the Redskins of Canada always lived a few days together, and then quitted each other if the trial had not been satisfactory to either of them.^ A Spanish chronicler, Herrara, reports that the Otomies of Mexico spent a night of trial with the woman that they desired to marry ; they could quit her afterwards, but only on condition of not retaining her during the following day.^ Among the Sonthals also, an aboriginal tribe of India, whose marriages are celebrated simultaneously once a year, the candidates for marriage must first live six days together, and it is only after this trial that it is lawful for them to marry.^ With certain Tartar tribes of Russia in Europe and of Siberia there existed an institution of experimental marriages lasting for a year, if the woman did not become a mother during that period.^ In the island of Ceylon, according to Davy, there are also provisional marriages, confirmed or annulled at the end of a fortnight.'' Among the Jews in Morocco the Rabbis consecrate temporary marriages, for three or six months, according to agreement. The man only engages to acknowledge the child if needful, and to make a certain donation to the mo' her. ^ 1 Noel, Bull, de la Soc. de Giog., Paris, 1843. ^ Collection Ramusio, t. i^r. Ubro di Odoardo Barbosa, portoghese. * Demeunier, t. i^r. p. 155. * /bid. ^ The People of India, vol. i. p. 2. ^ Travels through the Russian Emp're and Tartary^ by D. J. Cook, vol. i. '' Davy, Ceylon, p. 2S6. ^ Dr. Decugis, Bull, de la Soc. de G4og., Paris. 68 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE Strabo tells us of an analogous custom prevailing in antiquity among the Tapyres (Parthians), according to which a woman, after having had two or three children by a man, was forced by law to change her husband.^ This is almost exactly what Marshal Saxe demanded for French- women in the last century. We must not confound these experimental marriages, which are regulated, and in some sort legal, with free and easily cancelled unions still more common, as, for example, those of the Nouka-Hivians, that are broken at will, pro- vided there are no children ;2 those of the Hottentots \^ those of the Abyssinians, who marry, part, and re-marry at will.'* These last unions, founded merely on individual caprice, have nothing extraordinary about them, and we know that they are not rare in civilised countries. Much more curious, from a point of view of sexual and conjugal morality, are the partial marriages, which only bind the parties for certain days of the week. This is a rare kind of marriage that seems improbable to us, yet it has been proved to have existed among the Hassinyehs of the White Nile, of Arab or perhaps Berber race. By an agreement, which is sharply discussed beforehand, the Hassinyeh woman engages to be a faithful wife for a fixed number of days in the week, generally three or four, but this is in proportion to the number of heads of cattle given to the parents by the bridegroom as the price of their daughter, and it is the mother herself who makes the bargain. Naturally, on the days that are not reserved the woman is free, and she has a right to use her liberty as she pleases. ^ These strange customs amongst the Arabs must surely date from old pre-Islamite ages, and we may class them with other antique customs, as, for example, marriage for a term, called mof a marriage, which was in use with the Arabs until the time of Mahomet, and which doubtless they imported later into Persia, where it exists in our own day. 1 Strabo, vol. ii. p. 514. 2 Porter, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t, xvi. p, 323. ^ Levaillant, ibid. t. xxi. p. 164. * Bruce, Travels^ vol. ix. p. 187 ; vol. v. p. I. ^ Ausland, Jan. 1867, p. 114. AND OF THE FAMILY, 69 And again, in the kingdom of Oman, in the fourteenth century, the Sultan could still grant to a woman, indeed to any woman he pleased, the permission to have lovers according to her fancy, and her relations had no right to interfere. 1 The partial marriage of the Hassinyeh Arabs is there- fore not so surprising as it seems at first sight when isolated from other practices of the same kind. And it must be confessed that, immoral as it may appear to us, it is superior to the other modes of primitive conjugal associa- tion in use among the greater number of savage peoples. Doubtless it denotes an extreme of moral grossness, but at the same time it shows a certain respect for feminine independence, contrasting strongly with the animal subjec- tion imposed on women in the greater number of societies of little or no civilisation. The situation of the woman who is owned and treated as a simple domestic animal, hired out or lent to strangers or to friends, according to the caprice of her master, but not allowed, at the peril of her life, to be unfaithful to her owner without his leave, is surely far more abject still. I shall not dwell any more on these mere sketches of marriage, free and transient unions broken as soon as made, experimental marriages, three-quarter marriages, and marriages for a term, all of which show the very slight importance attached to sexual union by man in a low stage of development. And yet we must not refuse the name of marriage to these ephemeral and incomplete unions, since they are arranged by means of serious contracts which have been well discussed beforehand, and by agreements entered into at least between the husband and the relatives of the wife. The men of the horde or tribe do not, however, profess a very strict respect for these marriages; the husband is often uneasy in the enjoyment of his feminine property, and although legally obtained, he must always be ready to defend it. Among the Bochimans, says Liechtenstein, with whom marriage is reduced to its most simple expression, "the strongest man often carries off the wife of the weakest," 1 Ibn Batiita, vol. ii. p. 230 (quoted by R. Smith in Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia). 70 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE because it is the proper thing for him to do, since he is called "the lion." In fact, these abuses of strength exist, more or less, in all countries and all races; but among the Redskins of America and the Esquimaux it seems that public opinion ratifies them, and that might has morally become right. "When a Toski," says Hooper, "desires the wife of another man, he simply fights with her husband." " A very ancient custom," says Hearne, " obliges the men to wrestle for any woman to whom they are attached ; and of course the strongest party always carries off the prize. A weak man, unless he be a good hunter and well beloved, is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger man thinks worth his notice. This custom prevails throughout all the tribes."! In the same way, among the Copper and Chippeway Indians woman is a property which is little respected, and which the strong may always take from the weak.^ Richardson also says that among the Redskins every man has the right to challenge another to fight, and if he is victor, to carry oif his wife.^ The same customs prevail among the Indians of South America — at least among certain of them. Thus Azara relates that the Guanas never marry before they are over twenty, for earlier than this they would be beaten by their rivals.* It has been attempted to show that these conflicts are the equivalent of what is called in regard to animals " the law of battle," but the comparison is not exact, for animals seem in this respect much more delicate than men. If they fight it is before pairing, and besides, as we have seen, their combats are often courteous, like the tournaments of our ancestors ; frequently, too, the object of these assaults is much less to capture the female than to seduce her by displaying before her eyes the qualities with which they are endowed — courage, force, address, and beauty. On her part, the female for whom they are competing is so little 1 Hearne, A Journey from Prince of Wales Fori, p. 104 (1796). ^ Franklin, y\\\2i, 1867), p. 296. " /, t. ii. p. 174. ^ Id. p. 175. — E. Meynier, Etudes sur rislaniisme, p. 175. ^ Domenget, Institutes de Gaius, p. 336. 262 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE was the signal for a retrograde movement. Constantine returned to the old ideas of primitive Rome, and went so far as to inflict on second marriages pecuniary penalties, which were to be paid to the children of the first marriage.^ In acting thus, the neophyte emperor was acting up to the logic of the Church, in whose eyes marriage itself was an evil rendered necessary by the sin of Adam, and by whom second marriages were emphatically con- demned. ^ From the fusion of Christian doctrines with the gross customs of more or less barbarous European races, on the subject of women and marriage, there resulted for the widow a position of extreme subjection. Among the Ger- mans, as among the Afghans and Kabyles, the widow became again the property of her own family, and in order to marry her, it was necessary to pay a special price, the reipiis, which was double the mundium or price of the first purchase.^ The Salic law decreed that at the age of fifteen the son should be the guardian of his widowed mother. The Lombard law decides also that the widow shall not marry again without the consent of her son (section xxxvii.); and this consent was necessary even for her to enter a convent. Thus Theodoric, adopting with barbarous fiiry the opinions of the Church on second marriages, promulgated a law interdicting widows from marrying again, and condemning to the flames any man who should be convicted of having had commerce with them. These objections to second marriage, or at least the blame attached to them by public opinion, are common in many ancient societies. We have found them in India, in ancient Rome, and Greece, etc. We can only attribute this way of thinking, senseless and unjust as it is, to a sort of delirium of proprietorship in the husband, who pretends still to rule over and possess his wife from beyond the tomb, but chiefly to the desire of avoiding disturbances in the transmission of hereditary wealth, when the women were able to have possessions of their own. The levirate, of which I am now going to speak, remedied the latter inconveniences. ^ Italie ancienne, p. 488. ^ Lecky, loc. cit,, vol. ii. pp. 321, 324. ^ Giraud-Teulon, Orig. du Manage, etc., p. 336. AND OF THE FAMILY. 263 III. — The Leviraie. The levirate is the name given to the obhgation imposed by custom or law on the brother of the deceased husband to marry his sister-in-law when she became a widow. This custom of the levirate, which for a long time has been thought peculiar to the Hebrews, is very widely spread, and is found among races most widely differing from each other. There is surely good reason for it in savage or barbarous societies where for a woman abandonment would mean death. I will enumerate some of the peoples who practise the levirate, beginning as usual with the inferior races. We meet the levirate first in Melanesia, at New Caledonia, where the brother-in-law, whether he be already married or not, must marry his brother's widow immediately. We also find the levirate among the Redskins, par- ticularly the Chippeways ; and at Nicaragua, where the widow belongs either to the brother or nearest relative of her deceased husband. ^ With the Ostiaks, the next brother of the husband is obliged to marry his widow or widows; for the Ostiaks, like the Redskins, often take for wives a whole set of sisters. 2 It is the same with the Kirghis, and in general with the nomad Mongols.^ The Afghans also make it a duty of the brother-in-law to marry his sister-in-law, on her becoming a widow.'* The Code of Manu imposes the levirate even on the brother of a betrothed man who dies : " When the husband of a young girl happens to die after the betrothal, let the brother of the husband take her for wife."^ The object of this legal precept in India is to give a posterity to the deceased brother ; for the following verse seems to limit the duration of the cohabitation with the widowed 1 Bancroft, Native Races, vol. ii. p. 671. ^ Castren, Reiseberichte und Brief e aus den Jahren^ 1845- 1853, p. 56. * MacLennan, p. 158. * M. Elphinstone, Ficture of the Kingdom of Cabul, vol. i. p. 168. •* Code of Manu, ix. 69. 264 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE fiancee^ and it seems indeed that all commerce is to cease after the first pregnancy. ^ We will now consider the Hebrew levirate, which is only a particular case of a very general fact. We find the levirate mentioned twice in the Bible. At first in Genesis : " Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her, and raise up seed to thy brother."^ Again, in Deuter- onomy: "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger; her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it shall be, that the first-born whom she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel."^ The Hebrew levirate was therefore a sort of obligatory and fictitious adoption of a nephew by the deceased uncle. We shall soon see that in all primitive or barbarous societies this adoption is largely practised, and that it is absolutely equivalent to a real filiation. The verses which follow inform us that, with the Hebrews, the levirate was rather a moral than a legal obligation ; the brother-in-law could even refuse it; but in refusing, he incurred the public contempt, and had to submit to a degrading ceremony : " And if the man like not to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate unto the elders, and say. My husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of an husband's brother unto me ; then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him : and if he stand, and say, I like not to take her; then shall his brother's wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and she shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that doth not build up his brother's house. And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed."^ In India the principal object of the levirate, applied 1 Code of Manu, ix. 70. ^ Deuteronomy, xxv. 5, 6. * Genesis, xxxviii. 8. * Ibid. xxv. 7-10. AND OF THE FAMILY, 265 to the \i'\diOyitd. fiancee, was to furnish the deceased man with a fictitious son, who could perform for him the sacrifices to the manes, a duty of the highest importance in the rehgion of Brahma. For the Hebrews, a much more practical people than the Hindoos, the levirate had only an earthly object — that of keeping up the name or family of the deceased, and all that belonged to it. It may be compared with the obligation imposed at Athens on the nearest relative in the masculine line to marry the heiress, or to supplement at need the impotence of the husband. The old practice of the levirate still exists in Abyssinia with this curious detail, that it is applied during the lifetime of the husband if he has been the victim of an accident, frequent in the Abyssinian wars, of emasculation. The mutilated husband, being thus struck with what might be called "virile death," his brother succeeds him in his marital rights and duties.^ Some sociologists, too much given to theorise, have tried to prove that the levirate was a remnant of polyandry. Certainly the levirate is practised under a polyandric regime^ but polyandry has never been more than an excep- tional mode of marriage, and there is hardly any trace of it among the New Caledonians, the Redskins, the Mongols, the Afghans, the Hindoos, the Hebrews, the Abyssinians, etc., who, all of them, practise different varieties of levirate. The much more natural reasons that I have given above appear to me quite sufficient and more probable. IV. Conclusions. From a consideration of all these facts, we find that the fate of the widow has varied according to the matrimonial form in use, and according to the degree of civilisation, but that it has not always been ameliorated in proportion to the general progress. Laws and customs have ever been kind to the widower. It has been very different for the woman, and her position has perhaps been better, from our point of view, in certain primitive societies, than it became later. Thus, in the confused state of primitive families, ^ A. d'Abbadie, Donze ans cfe sejour dajis la haute Ethiopie, p. 273. 266 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE. when men lived either in a freedom almost bordering on promiscuity, or in groups half polyandric or polygamic, and more especially in polyandrous countries, there was no actual widowhood, or state of being a widow, for woman. The disappearance of one of the men with whom she lived in intimate relations made no great change in her position. Under a polygamic re^^ime it is quite otherwise ; for then the wives are private property. Their master has nearly always bought them, and their subjection is very great. There- fore, at the death of their master, they are treated exactly like things ; they follow the fate of the goods, and pass into the hands of the heir, who can keep or sell them. Some- times, however, they are sacrificed in greater or less num- bers on the tomb of the dead husband, whom they must continue to serve and love in the future life. Under a monogamic regime societies are generally more civilised, and the dominating ideas are then the care of property, and sometimes the perpetuation of the name. The widow cannot inherit, for the property must not be divided. She is then a most embarrassing incumbrance. Sometimes she is persuaded to follow still into the next world the husband who has preceded her thither; this is the most radical solution. Sometimes her relations marry her again, and obtain a second price for her; sometimes she is provided for by the levirate. Traces of these ancestral iniquities are still preserved in our modern codes, which, though nearly emancipating the widow, push the fanaticism of consanguinity so far as not to consider her as the relative of her husband as concerns property. From a social point of view, the whole of this survey of the treatment of widows is not flattering for humanity. In short, from a moral point of view, the easy resignation with which men and women bear widowhood, places mankind, as regards nobility of sentiment, far below certain species of animals, as, for example, the Illinois paraquet {Psiitacus Illinois)^ for whom widowhood and death are synonymous, as well for the male as the female. Doubtless it might be alleged that even in so-called highly civilised societies people do not marry as a rule from any lofty sentiment ; but that is surely a poor excuse. CHAPTER XVI. THE FAMILIAL CLAN IN AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA. I. The Family. II. The Family in Melanesia. — Melanesian rape — First formation of societies — Exogamy — The Australian clans — Native marriage state — Marriage of clans among the Kamilaroi — Their social incest — How a clan originates— Fictitious fraternity and the totem — How individual marriage is made among the Kurnai — Maternal filiation — Agnation tends to be constituted — Evolution of the family in Melanesia. III. The Family in America. — The Redskin clans — Common dwellings — Rights and duties — Exogamy of the clan — Clans of the Pueblos — The family among the Indians of South America — Rela- tionship among the Redskins — Communism — Maternal filiation — Distinction between the matriarchate and the maternal family — Origin of the ideas of relationship. I. The Family, I shall now attempt to retrace as clearly as I can the history of the evolution of the family, first of all ascertain- ing the facts that have been observed, and then using these facts as a touchstone to try the solidity of the various sociological theories that have been put forth on the subject. Among these theories, there are some which have been very favourably received, and not without reason. Insufficient as they might be, they reduced a chaos of facts into order, and contained a certain amount of truth. All of them are open to criticism and contest, both because they are the fruit of a too hasty generalisation, and because their authors have claimed for them a certainty which sociological facts do not easily bear out. Human groups have always lived as they could, without caring about theories ; their social 268 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE conduct inevitably results from a sort of compromise in the conflict between their appetites, their aptitudes, and the necessities dictated by their physical environment. Before hazarding any general conclusions, I shall be careful, as before, to refer to comparative ethnography, and to interrogate the various human races, from the lowest to the most elevated. This inquiry will enable us to form a rough idea, with a certain approximation to truth, in regard to the probable evolution of the family in humanity. But in order to approach this subject with sufficient impartiality, it is absolutely necessary to clear our minds from all the current theories in regard to the family. There is, in fact, no theme which has inspired more empty oratorical lucubra- tions. The doctrine has been firmly held that the family, as we have it instituted in Europe and in European colonies, is the beau ideal^ the sacred and immutable sociological type. Ethnography, however, and even history, teach us that the present familial type of Europe has not always existed, and that it is the result, like everything else, of a slow evolution ; from whence it is reasonable to infer that it will still continue to be modified. But facts are more eloquent than reflections ; I will therefore approach them, beginning with the lowest human races, the Melanesians. II. The Family in Melanesia. In my sketch of the family in the animal kingdom, I have already had occasion to remark that the family, such as we understand it, is not indispensable to the maintenance of societies, since the ants do without it in their republics, in which we find neither paternity nor maternity, in the sense we attach to them, but simply three classes of individuals, the breeders, the young, and the educators. With these last, the working ants, by a paradoxical con- tradiction, maternal love has survived the atrophy of the generative function ; it is even purified and widened, for it is lavished without partiality on all the young ones, which form the hope of the republic ; and though thus diluted, it seems to have lost none of its energy. Nothing at all similar is seen in inferior human societies, AND OF THE FAMILY, 269 but the family is still, however, in a confused state ; paternity, in the social sense of the word, does not exist \ filiation is especially maternal, but the actual degrees of consanguinity are not well distinguished in detail ; parenthood is not yet individual, but is constituted in groups. In the present day we may still study this familial con- fusion in certain Australian tribes. We have seen that marriage, or what goes by that name, resulted in Tasmania, Australia, Bali, etc., from a violent and brutal rape, generally ratified by a compensation and a simulation of retaliation between the tribe of the woman and that of the ravisher. Among the least savage tribes of Melanesia, this rape is often fictitious, in which case it is no more than a survival ; but sometimes it is still real, and it surely must always have been so at the origin of the Australian societies. But however gross these societies may be, they are none the less the result of a long evolution. In the interior of Borneo there are still existing human beings compared with whom the Australians are civilised people. These absolutely primitive savages of Borneo are probably the remains of negroid peoples, who must formerly have been the first inhabitants of Malaya. They roam the forests in little hordes, like monkeys ; the man, or rather the male, carries off the female and couples with her in the thickets. The family passes the night under a large tree; the children are suspended from the branches in a sort of net, and a great fire is lighted at the foot of the tree to keep off the wild beasts. As soon as the children are capable of taking care of themselves, the parents turn them adrift as animals do.i It is doubtless thus, after the manner of the great monkeys, that primitive human societies have been formed. With the chimpanzees these hordes can never become very large, for the male progenitor will not endure rivals, and drives away the young males as long as he is the strongest. The first men were surely more sociable, because of their human nature. The young males of the human horde were able to remain, in greater or less number, within the association, but the jealousy of the progenitor-in-chief, the father of the family, must often have obliged them to ^ Lubbock, Ong. Civil ^ p. 9. 2 70 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE procure one or several females by capturing them from neighbouring or rival hordes; they thus became more or less exogamous ; and, in their embryo societies, marriage, or rather sexual union, ended by being prohibited between brothers and sisters, not because there was the least moral scruple about incest, but because, within the limit of the horde, the young women were claimed by the most robust males, who would not yield them up. We know that this is still the case in the Australian tribes.^ In this gross social state it is necessarily the mother who is the centre of the family, just as she is in the families of mammifers ; it is, therefore, quite natural that the children should bear her name and not that of their father, which, for that matter, is not always easy to designate. When once the custom of exogamy was well established, what was at first a necessity ended by becoming an obligation, and men were forbidden to unite themselves with women of the group to which they belonged, and which bore the same name as their own. Such is still the general rule in Australia. 2 But in Australia this group is often only a sub-tribe, a gens or clan ; for the hordes, becoming too numerous, are subdivided into factions or large families, who unite together for common defence or vengeance. The children of each group belong sometimes to the clan of the mother, and there is then no legal parenthood between them and their father;^ also, in case of war, the son must join the maternal tribe.* But this is not a universal rule, and in many tribes the children now belong to the paternal clan.^ These are general cases, common to the greater part of the Australian tribes, but not to all. There are some who have organised their marriage and their family into classes, thus regulating, in a certain measure, the primitive con- fusion, and establishing by this very regulation a sort of ^ Lang, Aborigines of Australia. — Eyre, Discoveries in Central Australia, vol. ii. p. 385. - Grey" s Journal, vol. ii. ch. ii. ^ Tylor, Researches in Early History of Mankind, vol. i. ch. ix. ^ Giraud-Teulon, pere, Origine de la Families p. 44. ^ Folklore, etc., of the Australian Aborigines {AAeXvadQ, 1879), pp. 28, 50. 57> 58, 65, 67, 87, 89, 92, 93. — Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 215. AND OF THE FAMILY. 271 limited promiscuity. The word ''classes," employed by travellers who have made us acquainted with these curious customs, is improper, for neither social classes nor castes exist in Australia. These so-called classes are simply sub- tribes or clans, analogous to the Roman gens. In certain of these tribes a sort of categorical promiscuity is kept up. Thus, among the tribes of Mount Gambier, of the Darling River, and of Queensland, each tribe is divided into two sub-tribes, and within each of these clans all the men are reputed brothers, and all the women are sisters, and all marriage between these brothers and these sisters is strictly forbidden.^ This is a primordial law ; the violation of it is an act of the deepest guilt, which not only stains the individual, but the group to which he belongs ; it is more than incest, and the Australians, who have a very lively sentiment of duty, feel intense horror of such an act. But if every man is brother to all the women in his clan, on the other hand he is husband to all the women of the other clan of his tribe. Consequently, all the men of one group are called husbands by all the women of the other, and inversely. Marriage with these Australians is not therefore an individual act, as with usj it is a social condition, resulting from the fact of birth.^ However, the actual communal union is not obligatory in the least. A man or woman may stop at the nominal or reputed marriage; they may merely call each other husband and wife; but in principle, the right is admitted, and the men some- times offer temporary wives of their own class to strangers who visit them.3 Thus in the tribe of the Kamilaroi, near Sydney, every man of the Kubi clan has the right to call "my wife" every person of feminine sex belonging to the Ipai clan, and to treat her as such. There is no need of proposals, or of contract, or of ceremony; a man is a husband by right of birth, but the intimate union does not imply association by couples; the woman passes from one to the other, or even from several to several others. On the other hand, within the limit of the clan, all the men and all the women call each other brothers and sisters, and are bound to respect each other. In uniting ^ Fison and Howitt, Kajnilaroi and Kurnai, 50. 3 Id.y ibid. 3 7^,^ ji,ij^ 2 7 2 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE with the men of the other sub-tribe having conjugal right over them, the women do not on that account cease to reside in their own clan, the sub-tribe of their " brothers." Marriage within this sub-tribe is the abomination of desolation, the sin for which there is no forgiveness. Who- ever commits it is outlawed from society, driven from the tribe, tracked through the woods like game, and put to death. He has dishonoured the association, and the children who are born of these social incests are exter- minated.i Thus, all real consanguinity has been set aside, and a fictitious fraternity created between all the members of the same clan, similar to paternity by adoption. Is this artificial parenthood the result of practical exogamy, or has it, on the contrary, produced it? We cannot tell; but wherever it exists, its rule is absolutely inflexible. If, for example, as often happens in Australia, the important men, the chiefs, the sorcerers, or the strong adults, seize a certain number of women for their personal use, they only do it in conformity to the law of exogamy between the sub-tribes. If one of the women thus confiscated runs away and is re-taken, she is not restored to the man who had usurped possession of her, but belongs by right to those who have caught her. Moreover, certain neighbouring tribes are subdivided into sub-tribes, or clans of the same name ; they have probably sprung one from the other at some former period. If it happens that a man steals a woman from one of these tribes, the captured woman is immediately incorporated into the corresponding clan of the ravisher's tribe, and she becomes the "sister" of all the women of this clan, to which will also belong her children. As for the ravisher, he is always a member of another gens^ or clan, of the same tribe. If the tribes of the captured woman and of her captor are not symmetrical — that is to say, have not corre- sponding clans — then the woman may become the founder of a new clan belonging to the tribe of the man who has carried her off.^ If a woman is captured by a party of warriors, and not ' Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kuniai, pp. 65, 66. 2 Fison and Howitt, quoted by Giraud-Teulon, ills, in Origines dti Mariage et de la Fami/le, p. 120. AND OF THE FAMILY, 273 by one individual only, the first care of the captors is to inflict on her a collective violation, on the condition, how- ever, that none of them belong^ a clan homonymous with that of the ravished woman ; if lyiy one of their party is an exception to this, he must abstain from so doing.^ The sign of the fictitious fraternity of the Kamilaroi, and of all the Australian tribes organised in the same manner, is a common emblem, the iotem. All the men bearing the same totem are united by the bond of a conventional fraternity, which is none the less strict for that reason. The iote7n has evidently been invented in a primitive epoch, when the different degrees of consanguinity were not easily dis- tinguished, and were therefore replaced by an artificial union far wider than the limits of the natural family. Whenever a single individual wished to escape from this tribal marriage, he was obliged to resort to various artifices. One of these transitional processes has remained in use in the Kurnai tribe, in Gippsland, Victoria. The terms still in use with them to designate kinship recall the former existence of a fraternal marriage; but in practice they have none the less adopted individual marriage. The manner in which these individual marriages are contracted probably indicates what must have happened in primitive times, when some innovators attempted to escape from tribal marriage by carrying off the women they preferred, and were only re-admitted to their tribe after having obtained pardon and the ratification of their audacious enterprise. Among the Kurnai every marriage must be made by the capture of one of the women of their tribe, even when this rape has been pre- ceded by a friendly exchange of sisters, which is usual enough. This simulated rape is punished by a simulation of vengeance. The fugitives are pursued ; they are even ill-treated, but short of being actually killed. Their punish- ment is simply an act of obedience to ancestral customs. When all is concluded, and the fugitive couple reinstated among their people, the woman belongs to the man who has carried her off; he is no longer obliged to offer her to the visitors of his clan, as old Australian hospitality ^ Fison and Howitt, quoted by Giraud-Teulon, fils, in Origines du Mariage et de la Famille^ pp. 86-88- 18 2 74 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE required;^ she belongs to him alone. Sometimes the ravisher legalises his right of sole proprietor by first giving notice to his friends, and offering them the use of his wife, after which he can keep her to himself. ^ In proportion as tribal marriage was being trans- formed, owing to the breaches made in it by individual instinct, the consanguineous family was gradually arising in place of the collective and fictitious family. It seems most likely that uterine filiation, or the maternal family, was first established. The Australian Motas still have filiation by the woman's side, and among them the property of the uncle is transmitted to the uterine nephew ; but already the paternal family is beginning to be constituted, and the relatives on the male side seek to redeem the heritage by means of an indemnity.^ With other and more advanced Australian tribes, fanatical evolution is more complete; masculine filiation is already instituted, and agnation adopted ; there is even a worship of the manes of male ancestors.* The Melanesians of Australia and Tasmania present, therefore, a tolerably complete picture of the evolu- tion of marriage and of the family, from the primitive rape, followed by a tribal period in which marriage is merely a limited and regulated promiscuity, and in which real con- sanguinity is replaced by a fictitious fraternity, down to the regime of individual marriage and masculine filiation, pre- viously passing through uterine filiation, or the maternal family. We shall find traces of this evolution among other races, but nowhere is the lower stage so well preserved as in Australia. III. The Family in America. Nothing similar to the gross tribal marriage of the Australian Kamilaroi is to be found among the American Indians, whose familial organisation, however, strikingly recalls that of the Melanesian clans, though already in a higher degree of evolution. ^ Fison and Howitt, loc. cit., p. 200. ^ Id., ibid. ^ Giraud-Teulon, loc. cit., p. 447. ^ Giraud-Teulon, fils, loc. cit., p. 446. AND OF THE FAMILY. 275 The tribes of the Redskins were, and are still, divided into phratries, which are again subdivided into clans. Now these clans are composed of real or fictitious relatives. In each phratry the corresponding clans have the same totem^ and it is strictly forbidden to marry a woman belonging to the group bearing the same totem. This organisation is very ancient; it existed in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest, and the French found it in the eighteenth century among the Redskins of Canada. The Hurons, Charlevoix tells us, were divided into three clans : the wolf, the tortoise, and the bear.^ The totetn^ or emblem of the clan, served to sign treaties.^ This is a general fact, and the subdivision of the tribe into clans or gentes is observed among the Tinneh Indians, the Choctaws, the Iroquois, the Omahas, the Indians of Columbia, etc., etc. Each clan forms one large family, inhabiting sometimes a common house, as do still the Indians of the Pueblos, as did the Iroquois at the time they were first discovered, and as did the Mexicans at the epoch of the Spanish conquest. The "long houses" of the Iroquois were buildings a hundred feet in length. A large corridor, closed at the two ex- tremities by a door, traversed its entire length. To the right and left of this central corridor, and opening on it, were stalls, or niches, each serving as the apartment of a family. The number of these families varied from five to twenty.^ The members of a Redskin clan had common rights and duties. When a man died, any personal objects he might possess were deposited in his tomb, for they might be useful to him in the future life. The remaining property of the deceased belonged principally to the clan, or the gentiks ; his near relatives, however, were considered first. Thus, among the Iroquois, the widow, the children, and the maternal uncles claimed the largest part, while a very small portion of the heritage came to the brothers. The general principle was that the property should remain in the clan. In the present day the old customs are modified, and with * Hist, et descrip. gSnerak de la Nouvelle- France^ etc. a Ibid. t. V. p. 393. * L. Morgan, Ancient Societies y p. 70. — Lahontan, Voy.^ etc., t. ii. pp. 104, 183. 2 76 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE the Iroquois, the Creeks, the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Crows, etc., there is no longer any gentile heritage; all passes to the children,^ The political organisation was, or still is, republican. The members of a Redskin clan have the right to elect and to depose the chief of the community, and the liberty to adopt strangers. They are united by a strict solidarity, and have a mutual duty to help and to avenge each other. And lastly they have their council and their sepulture in common. 2 But the most rigorous obligation for the members of the same clan is that of not marrying in it. To take a wife having the same ioiem is considered as a most cul- pable act; it is a crime sometimes punished by death. ^ The Iroquois law regulating marriages recalls, in a certain degree, that which takes place among the Kamilaroi of Australia. Thus an Iroquois of the Seneca tribe and of the Wolf clan must not marry a woman belonging, not only to his own clan, but to all the clans of the same name in the five other tribes of the Iroquois. On the other hand, he is perfectly free to marry in any of the seven other clans of his own Seneca tribe.* In short, an Iroquois may be endogamous in the tribe, but he must be exogamous from the point of view of the clan or clans. The motive of the prohibition of marriage within the clan is always the supposed relationship. Thus the law of the Tinneh Indians forbids a man of the Chitsang clan to marry a woman of the same clan because that woman is his sister.* The children always belong to the gens^ or clan, of their mother. These rules vary more or less from tribe to tribe, except the prohibition of marriage within the clan, which is strict and general. Thus, among the Omahas, a man may take a wife in another tribe, even if this woman belongs to a clan of the same name as his own ; but he cannot marry within his own clan, because all the women of this clan are 1 L. Morgan, Ancient Societies, pp. 528-531. 2 Id., ibid. pp. 70, 71. 3 2d., ibid. p. 97. < L. Morgan, loc. cit. p. 513. ^ Notes on the linneh, Plardisly, in Smithsonian Reports, 1866. AND OF THE FAMILY. 277 reputed to 1)6 his relations — sisters, aunts, nieces, daughters, etc. We shall see presently to what women these various appellations, which among the Redskins have a much wider sense than with us, are applied.^ These customs, or very analogous ones, were in force with a great number of American tribes. At the present day the Indians of the Moqui Pueblos still live in their common habitations, as at the time of the conquest, and they are divided into nine clans. ^ In the Pueblo of Orayba the relatives of a married woman who dies take her property and her children, only leaving to the husband his horse, his clothes, and his weapons ; ^ for by marrying the woman does not cease to belong to her original clan. Among the Pipiles of Salvador a genealogical tree with seven branches was painted on the wall of the common house, and save in the case of a great service rendered to the clan, a man could not intermarry with any persons related up to the degree indicated by the genealogical tree.* In reality, this people had got beyond familial confusion, or of purely toiemic relationship, but the principle regulating conjugal unions had not yet changed. In Yucatan marriage between persons of the same name — that is to say, of the same clan — entailed the penalty of being considered as a renegade.'' The savage Abipones were also exogamous, according to Dobritzhoffer. This rule naturally gives way in proportion as civilisation develops. The Nahuas still prohibited marriage between consanguineous relatives ; but at Nicaragua the prohibition only applied to relatives of the first degree. ^ We have previously seen, in describing the family amongst the animals, that it is habitually maternal; it is around the female that the young group themselves. As for the male, if he does not abandon the family, he exercises no other function but that of chief of the band. It must surely have been thus that the first human hordes were formed, and when man became intelligent enough to take note of filiation, it was uterine parenthood alone that he * Omaha Sociology, p. 255, in Smithsonian Reports, 1885. * L. Morgan, Ancient Societies, p. 178. • /' ••• 1^8 35 '. 40 » ••• 257 769 IN ENGLAND. Age of Bachelors. Number of Marriages. 16 to 20 years 20 ,. 25 „ •• 5 25 ,, 30 „ 12 30 n 35 n .. 22 35 » 40 „ .. 40 79 We must remark, in comparing these tables, that the first group, including the married men from eighteen to twenty years with women of fifty and upwards, is unknown in England; and that the second group, that of the married men of twenty to twenty-five years with women of fifty years and upwards, is scarcely represented. The com- parison is not flattering for us. It is important to note, also, that these figures only refer to first marriages. Tables of the same kind, showing the marriages between young ^ A. Bertillon, loc, cit. 23 354 THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE girls and old men, or between aged widows and young men, would add to our confusion, and bring to our thoughts the picturesque exclamation which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of King Lear—" Fie ! Fie ! Fie ! Pah ! Pah ! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination."^ Marriages with Men of Sixty Years and upwards. IN FRANCE. IN ENGLAND. Age of Girls. SS^.' Age of Girls. Number of Marriages. 15 to 20 years ... 94 15 to 20 years . 2 20 „ 25 „ ... 139 20 „ 25 „ •• 15 25 » 30 » — 176 25 „ 30 M .. 32 30 „ 35 „ ... 242 30 » 35 » .. 49 651 III. The Future. 98 What will marriage and the family become in the future ? For one who is not a prophet by supernatural inspiration, it is hazardous to make predictions. The future, neverthe- less, is born from the womb of the past, and, after having patiently scrutinised the evolution of bygone ages, we may legitimately risk a few inductions with regard to the ages to come. Doubtless the primitive forms of marriage and the family will persist, if not for ever, as Herbert Spencer believes, at least for a very long time among certain inferior races, protected and at the same time oppressed by climates which the civilised man cannot brave with impunity. These backward prehistoric races will continue to subsist in unwholesome regions, as witnesses of a distant past, recalling to more developed races their humble origin. But with these last the form of marriage and of the family, which has incessantly been evolving, cannot evidently remain immutable in the future. The little human world knows no more repose than the cosmic environment from whence it has sprung, and which encloses it. Among ^ King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 6. AND OF THE FAMILY. 355 peoples, as among individuals, vital concurrence and selec- tion do their work. Now, when it is a matter of institutions so essentially vital as marriage and the family, the least amelioration is of the highest importance ; it has an influ- ence on the number and quality of fresh generations, and on the flesh and spirit of peoples. All things being equal, the preponderance, whether pacific or not, will always fall to the nations which produce the greatest number of the most robust, most intelligent, and best citizens. These better endowed nations will often absorb or replace the others, and always in the long run will be docilely imitated by them. Ethnography and history show us the true sense of evolution in the past. Societies have constantly advanced from con- fusion to distinction. Monogamic marriage has succeeded to various more confused modes of sexual association. So also the family is the ultimate residuum of vast communities of ill-defined relationships. In its turn, the family itself has become restricted. At first it was still a sort of little clan ; and then it was reduced to be essentially no more than the very modest group formed by the father, the mother, and the children. At the same time the familial patrimony crumbled, just as that of the clan had been previously parcelled out \ it became individual. What is reserved for us in the future ? Will the family be reconstituted by a slow movement of retrogression, as Herbert Spencer believes?^ Nothing is less probable. ^ Institutions have this in common with rivers, that they do not easily flow back towards their source. If they some- times seem to retrograde, it is generally a mere appearance, resulting from a sort of sociologic rhythm. In truth, the end and the beginning may assume a superficial analogy, masking a profound difference. Thus the unconscious atheism of the^ Kaffirs has nothing in common with that of Lucretius, and nothing can be less analogous than the anarchic equality of the Fuegians and American individualism. If, as is probable, the individualist evolution, already so long begun, continues in the future, the civilised family — that is to say, the last collective unit of societies — must again be dis- integrated, and finally subsist no longer except in genealogy scientifically registered with ever-increasing care ; for it is, ^ Sociology^ vol. ii. p. 418. 356 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE and always will be, important to be able to prejudge how "the voice of the ancestors" may speak in the individual. But even from the crumbling of the family will result the reconstitution of a larger collective unit, having common interests and resuscitating under another form that solid- arity without which no society can endure. But this new collectivity will in no way be copied from the primitive clan. Whether it be called State, district, canton, or commune, its government will be at once despotic and liberal ; it will repress everything that would be calculated to injure the community, but in everything else it will endeavour to leave the most complete independ- ence to individuals. Our actual family circle is most often very imperfect ; so few families can give, or know how to give, a healthy, physical, moral, and intellectual education to the child, that in this domain large encroachments of the State, whether small or great, are probable, even desirable. There is, in fact, a great social interest before which the pretended rights of families must be effaced. In order to prosper and live, it is necessary that the ethnic or social unit should incessantly produce a sufficient number of individuals well endowed in body, heart, and mind. Before this primordial need all prejudices must yield, all egoistic interests must bend. But the family and marriage are closely connected ; the former cannot be modified so long as the latter remains unchanged. If the legal ties of the family are stretched, while social ties are drawn closer, marriage will have the same fortune. For a long time, more or less silently, a slow work of disintegration has begun, and we see it accentuated every day. Leaving aside morals, which are difficult to appre- ciate, let us simply take the numerical results which statistics furnish us with in regard to divorce and illegitimate births. In the five countries compared as follows, the increase of divorces has been continuous and progressive during thirty years, and in France the number has doubled. The number of illegitimate births followed simultaneously an analogous progression. In France, during the period 1800-1805, it was 4.75 per 100; now, wrote M. Block in 1869, it has gradually risen to 7.25 per loo.i At the same 1 M. Block, Europe politique et sociale, p. 204. AND OF THE FAMILY. 357 time, and as a consequence of this demographic movement, the proportion of free unions has considerably increased. Increase of Divorces.^ The frequency of divorces in 1851-55 being lOO, what has it become during the following years ? France. Separations, Saxony, Divorces. Belgium. Divorces. Holland. Divorces. Sweden. Divorces 1851-55 . 100 . 100 100 100 ICO 1856-60 1861-65 128 . 150 . 83 75 . 140 . 160 100 112 98 109 1866-70 1871-75 1876-80 . 190 . 163 . 225 . 72 80 105 190 . 280 . 420 151 113 132 161 A. Bertillon calculated this proportion for Paris at about a tenth. But these results are simply the logical continuation of the evolution of marriage. It is in the sense of an ever- increasing individual liberty, especially for woman, that this evolution is being effected. Between men and women the conjugal relations have at first been nearly everywhere from masters to slaves ; then marital despotism became slowly attenuated, and at Rome, for example, where the gradual metamorphosis may be traced during a long historic period, the power of the paterfamilias^ which at first had no limit, at length became curbed ; the personality of the woman was more and more accentuated, and the rigid marriage of the first centuries of the Republic was replaced under the Empire by a sort of free union. Doubtless this movement necessarily retrograded under the influence of Christianity ; but, as always happens in the logic of things, it has, never- theless, resumed its course ; it will become more and more evident, and will surely pass the point at which it stopped in imperial Rome. Monogamic marriage will continue to subsist ; it is the last-comer, and much the most worthy, and besides, the balance of the sexes makes it almost a necessity; but it will have more and more equality in it, and less and less of legal restraint. On this point I am glad to find myself in^ ^ J. Bertillon, Etude demographique dti divorce, p. 61. 358 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE accord with the most celebrated of modern sociologists, Herbert Spencer, who is not very bold, however, on these delicate points. "In primitive phases," he says, "while permanent monogamy was developing, union in the name of the law — that is, originally, the act of purchase — was accounted the essential part of the marriage, and union in the name of affection was not essential. In the present day union in the name of the law is considered the most important, and union by affection as less important. A time will come when union by affection will be considered the most important, and union in the name of the law the least important, and men will hold in reprobation those conjugal unions in which union by affection is dissolved." ^ Montaigne once wrote : " We have thought to make our marriage tie stronger by taking away all means of dissolving it ; but the more we have tightened the constraint, so much the more have we relaxed and detracted from the bond of will and affection. "^ It is therefore probable that a future more or less distant will inaugurate the regime of monogamic unions, freely con- tracted, and, at need, freely dissolved by simple mutual consent, as is already the case with divorces in various European countries — at Geneva, in Belgium, in Roumania, etc., and with separation in Italy. In these divorces of the future, the community will only intervene in order to safe- guard that which is of vital interest to it — the fate and the education of the children. But this evolution in the manner of understanding and practising marriage will operate slowly, for it supposes an entire corresponding revolution in public opinion; moreover, it requires as a corollary, profound modifications in the social organism. The r'egime of liberty in marriage and the disintegration of our actual familial type are only possible on condition that the State or the district, in a great number of cases, is ready to assume the role of guardian and educator of children ; but, before it can take on itself these important functions, it must have considerable resources at its disposal which to-day are wanting. In our present regime^ the family, however defective it may be, still constitutes the ^ Herbert Spencer, Sociology^ vol. ii. p. 410. ^ Montaigne, Essays y vol. ii. p. I5» AND OF THE FAMILY, 3^9 safest, and almost the only shelter for the child, and we cannot think of destroying this shelter before we have constructed a larger and better one. Transformations so radical as these cannot evidently be wrought instantaneously, by a mere change of view, after the fashion of political revolutions. Nothing is more chimerical than to fear or to hope for the sudden destruc- tion of our actual forms of marriage, of the family, and of property ; but there is no doubt that all this is tottering. The alarm and the lamentations of so many moralists, both lay and religious, are not therefore without some founda- tion. Societies have always evolved, but the rapidity of this evolution is accelerating ; it is, in some sort, propor- tionate to the square of the time elapsed. I fear that in the eyes of our descendants we shall appear slaves of routine, as our ancestors are in ours. For those who have not firmly rallied to the side of the great law of progress, the future is full of terror. It has always been thus; the apostles of progress have always had to overcome the resistance of the sectaries of the past. From time immemorial, certain Dyak tribes were accustomed to fell trees by chopping at the trunk with a hatchet, perpendicularly to the fibres. One day some revolutionaries proposed making V-shaped cuttings, in the European method. The Dyak conservative party, inspired by the regard due to custom, were wroth at this, and punished the innovators by a fine. ^ Nevertheless, I do not doubt that the new method has triumphed in practice ; it was found advantageous. But this incident is, in miniature, the history of all transformations, small or great. It is very certain that in societies where marriage by groups half polyandric and half polygamic had been instituted for centuries, the bold agitators who attempted to substitute individual union were considered at first as dangerous revolutionaries, and those who dismembered into families the comnmnal clan only succeeded at the cost of great difficulty and peril. Thus in the Oresieia of ^schylus, of which I have spoken in the last chapter, the chorus of the Eumenides gives voice to the protestations of public opinion against the establishment of the paternal family in Greece. ^ Journal Ind. Archip., vol, ii. p. 54. 36o THE E VOL UTION OF MARRIA GE. The prospects which alarm the conservative spirits of to-day are, in truth, but the last consequence of that ancient evolution. Statisticians who are not evolutionists prove, without understanding it, that the indissolubility of marriage becomes more and more intolerable for individuals.^ There is, as it were, a tide of discord continually rising which renders conjugal stability more and more precarious. This grievous state of things distresses, on the other hand, the moralists, for neither do they see the reason of it. The surprise of the former is not more justified than the lamentation of the latter. It is nothing more than the future, which, with its habitual effrontery, persists in rising out of the past. The faint-hearted cry to us that everything is coming to an end. It is not so; on the contrary, everything is about to be renewed. From the most distant stone age, the history of humanity has only been a long series of regenerations. Far from mourning when the world seems to be entering a period of fresh life, let us rather rejoice and say again with Lucretius — "Cedit enim rerum novitate extrusa vetustas Semper et ex aliis aliud reparare necesse est.'' * J. Bertillon, loc. at., p. 6i. INDEX. Abyssinia, The concubiuate in, 162 . . Monogamy in, 179 . . Dissolute morals of women in, 181 . . Facilitj^ of divorce in, 181 . , Cicisbei in, 181 . . Divorce in, 232 . . Levirate bj emasculation in, 265 . . Adoption m, 316 Abyssinian women. Licentious manners of, 51 Adoption among the Redskins, 291 . . in Polynesia, 296 . . in Abyssinia, 316 Adultery in the Middle Ages, 204, 226 . . Of, in general, 208 . . considered as a theft, 208 . . in Melanesia, 209 . . in New Caledonia, 209 . . in negro Africa, 210 . . among the Hottentots, 210 . . at the Gaboon, 210 .. in Bornou, 211 . . at Kaarta, 211 . . among the Soulimas, 211 . , at Youida, 211 . . in Uganda, 211 . . in Senegal, 212 . . in Abyssinia, 212 . . in Polynesia, 212 . . in New Zealand, 212 .. at Tahiti, 212 . . at Noukahiva, 213 .. in the American savage, 213 . . among the Esquimaux, 213 . . among the Redskins, 213 . . among the Omahas. 214 ..in South America, 2:4 . . in barbarous America, 214 . . in ancient Mexico, 215 . . in Peru, 215 . . in Guatemala, 215 . . among the Mongols, 216 . . in Thibet, 216 . . in China, 216 . . in Japan, 217 Adultery in Malaya, 217 . . in Egypt, 218 . . among the Hebrews, 218 . . among the Arabs, 218 . . among the Kabyles, 219 . . in Persia and India, 220 . . in the Greco-Roman world, 222 . . at Sparta, 222 . . at Athens, 223 . . at Rome, 222-225 .. among the Tcherkesses of the , Caucasus, 225 . . in barbarous Europe, 225 . . among the ancient Saxons, 226 . . among the Germans, 226 . , in feudal France, 226 . . The evolution of, 227 . . and Christianity, 245 Africa, The concubinate in middle, 161 . . Adultery in negro, 210 . . The family in, 305 Agathyrses, Promiscuity of the, 40 Akilisenus, Sacred prostitution in, 46 Amazons, The so-called age of, 105 Amhlyornis inornata, Love architecture of, 14 America, Prostitution in central, 156 . . Concubinate in, 163 . . Familial clan in, 267 . . The family in, 274 Amorous combats of sticklebacks, 10 Analis erystellatus. Amorous combats of, 11 Andamanites, Promiscuity of, 43 . . Prostitution of girls amongst the, 58 Animals, Love among, 10 , . Amorous preferences of, 17 Grossness of the male among, 18 Durable pairing among, 18 Marriage and the family among, 20 Matriarchate among, 21 Patriarchate among, 21 Divers types of sexual association among, 21 Marriage among, 21 23* 362 INDEX, Animals, Inferior, have not maternal love, 21 .. Various forms of sexual associa- tion among, 26 . . The family among, 29 .. Shortness of love for the young among, 31 . . Variation of the matrimonial type among, 35 . . Divers types of marriage among, 35 Ansarians, Religious promiscuity of, 43 Anses, Promiscuity of, 41 Anthropophagy, Familial, of the Red- skins, 26 Ants, Originality of Republics of, 23 . . Workers, ancestral forms, 23 Arabs, Fraternal polyandry of the ancient, 39 . . Loan of wife among the, 52 . . Temporary marriages among, 68 . . Causes of polyandry of the, 82 . . Polyandry of ancient, 82 ,. Infanticide of daughters among the ancient, 83 , . Cais, legend of infanticide, 83 . . Community of wives among the, 81 . . Fraternal polyandry of the, 84 . . Term-marriage among the, 85 .. Patriarchal marriage among the. 86 . . Marriage by capture among the, 99 . . Polygamy of the, 139 . . Concubinate among the, 161 . . Adultery among the, 218 . . Repudiation among the, 237, 239 . . Widowhood among the, 259 Areois in Polynesia, 61 Aryas, Polygamy among Vedic, 135, 150 . . Infanticide among, 150 Aryomania, 134 Association, Singular forms of sexual. 56 Assyria, Concubinate in, 165 Athens, Dotal marriage in, 120 . . Prostitution at, 156 .. Adultery at, 222 . . Widowhood at, 261 Attica," Density of population in, 198 Australia, Licentious morals of young girls in, 50 . . Rape in, 90 . . Capture of women in, 90 , . Loan of wife in, 123 . . Familial clan in, 261, 270 . . Communal marriage in, 270, 272 . . Fraternity of clan in, 271 , . Totem amongst the Kamilaroi of, 273 . . Communal marriage transitory in, 273 . . Maternal family in, 274 Australians, Law of amorous battle among the, 58 Avesta, Marriage in the, 191 Avunculate, The, among the Nairs, 311 Babylon, Hetairism at, 45 . . Religious prostitution at, 45 Battas, Monogamic tendencies of, 134 Battle, Law of, among vertebrates, 16 . . Law of, 11 . . Amorous, among the Analii cristel- latus, 11 . . of blue herons, 12 . . of Canadian geese, 12 . . of gallinacese, 12 . . of grouse, 12 . . of Tetras urogalltis, 12 . . of Tetras umbellus, 13 Bees, Republic of, 23 . . Workers, ancestral forms, 23 . . Matriarchate of, 24 . . Death of Queen of, 24 Berbers, The family amongst, 327 . . Meaning of the word, 408 . . The maternal family amongst, 328 Birds, Love amongst, 11 . . Esthetic tournaments of, 13 . . Love dances of, 13 . . Love parades of, 13 , . Intentional love parades of, 13 . . Cours d'amour of, 13 . . Decorated nests of humming, 14 . . Preliminaries abridged with old, 15 . . Females of certain, stronger than males, 15 . . Males more ardent, 15 . . Amorous attempts of males of, 15 . . more delicate in love than other vertebrates, 15 . . Amorous selection among the females of, 17 . , Monogamy among, 27 . . Fickle monogamy of certain, 28 . . Amorous fancies of certain, 28 . . The family amongst, 29 . . Absence of paternal love amongst certain males of, 29 . . Polygamous, often devoid of pater- nal love, 30 . . PateiTial love developed among many, 30 ,. Shortness of love for the young amongst, 31 Births, Sexual relation of, and mar- riage, 73 . . Sexual relation of, 74 Bitches, Amorous preferences of, 18 Blackcock, Amorous battles of, 12 Bochimans, Loan of woman among the, 58 Californian Indians, Promiscuity of, 43 Celibacy, Disadvantages of , according to A. Bertillon, 349 Celibates comprise the waste of the population, 350 Celts, Warlike rape among the, 93 Ceylon, Polyandry in, 78 Child marriages in Rome, 198 ('hina. Primitive promiscuity in, 42 . . Marriage by capture in, 116 INDEX. 363 China, Prostitution in, 156 . . Concubinate in, 1G4 . . Monogamy in, 183 . . Marriage by purchase in, 183 . . Submission of woman in, 185 . . Adultery in, 216 . . Repudiation in, 245 . . Widowhood in, 255 . . Widowhood of brides in, 255 . . The family in, 322 . . Family nomenclature in, 323 .. Trace of fraternal marriage in, 323 . . Traces of familial clan in, 324 . . The paternal family in, 324 . . Fictitious kinship in, 324 Chlamydera maculata. Love bowers of, 14 Chorda dorsalis, 6 Chromis paterfamilias, Paternal love of, 24 Civilisation depraves certain birds, 25 Clan, Familial, in America, 267 . . Familial, in Australia, 267, 270 . . Fraternity of, in Australia, 271 . . Exogamy of, among the Redskins, 275 . . Duties of, among the Redskins, 275 . . Common house of the, among the Redskins, 275 . . The, of the Pueblos, 277 . . Communism in the Redskin, 278 . . The familial, and its evolution, 286 . . among the Redskins, 285 . . and the family, 301 .. "i^ocial cellule," 301 . . Familial, and the family, 303 . . Traces of the familial, in China, 323 .. Traces of communal, among the Hebrews, 326 . . Traces of ancient, among the Kabyles, 828 . . Not found in Persia, 330 . . Vestiges of ancient, in India, 334 . . Primitive, at Rome, 334 . . Primitive, in Greece, 334 . . Primitive, in Ireland, 338 Clergy, The concubinate among ancient Catholic, 168 Clergymen, Sexual relation of births among, 75 Coemptio at Rome, 201 Communism in the Redskin clan, 278 . . From, to individualism, 347 Concubinage in general, 154 Concubinage and prostitution, 154 . . Various forms of, 160 . . in Europe, 168 . . Absence of, in Kabylie, 169 . . Evolution of, 169 . . and morality, 170 Concubinate, 160 . . among the Hebrews, 161 . . among the Arabs, 161 . . in primitive Greece, 161 . . in modern Peru, 162 Concubinate in Livonia, 162 . . in middle Africa, 162 . . in Abyssinia, 102 . . in Central America, 163 . . in ancient Mexico, 163 . . in Mongolia, 164 . . in China, 164 . . in ancient Assyria, 165 . . at Mecca, 165 . . in ancient Persia, 166 . . in Greece, 166 . . at Rome, 166 . . among the Catholic clergy, 108 Concubine bought by labour of wife among Zulus, 125 . . offered by wife at Fiji, 124 Confarreatio at Rome, 201 Conjugation, 4 . . among algae, 4 Conservation of species, 20 Coquetry among insects, 10 . . The law of, 10 . . among butterflies, 10 . . among fishes, 10 . . among vertebrates, 11 Couvade, 316 . in New Mexico, 316 . . among the Redskins, 317 . . among the Abipones, 317 . . among the Galibis, 317 . . in California, 318 . . in South America, 318 . . among the Tartars, 318 . . in Bengal, 318 . . among the Celts, 818 . . among the Thracians, 318 . . among the Scythians, 318 . . in Corsica, 318 . . in the Tibarenede, 318 . . in Europe of to-day, 318 . . Reason of the, 319 Crete, Sodomy in, 63 Culage, Droit de, 48 Cynicism, Erotic, in India, 40 . . of the Massagetes, 40 Debauchery, Savage, and that of civilised peoples, 72 Decency, Rules of, among Redskins, 290 Defloration, Religious, in Cambodia, 47 . . Maternal, with the Saccalaves, 67 . . in India, 67 Divorce, Facility of, in Abyssinia, 181 . . in savage countries, 228 . . among the Bou^os, 229 . . among the Soulimas, 229 . . among the Fantees, 230 . . in Polynesia, 230 . . in the Caroline Islands, 230 . . among the Moxos, 231 . . in Abyssinia, 232 . . among the Arabs, 238 . . in ancient Peru, 240 , . in lamaic Thibet, 240 . . among the Mongols, 241 . . among the Hebrews, 242 3^4 INDEX, Divorce in Greece, 243 . . at Rome, 244 . . and repudiation, 228 . . among barbarous peoples, 232 . . condemned by Christianity, 245 . . The evolution of, 247 . . and Christianity, 247 . . among the Germans, 246 . . among the ancient Irish, 246 . . Modern, 247 . . Increase in number of, in Europe, 357 Dogs, Sexual coarseness of, 18 Dower and its results in France, 352 Duck, Love at fli-st sight in a wild, 28 Egypt, Polygamy in, 149 . . Royal incest in, 66 . . Monogamy in ancient, 175 . . Pretended gynecocracy in ancient, 176, 177 . . Adultery in, 218 . . The maternal family in, 308 . . The paternal family in, 308 Emasculation in Abyssinia, 265 Endogamy in New Zealand, 294 . . in Bengal, 315 . . Incestuous, in Persia, 330 Esquimaux, Licentious morals of, 58 . . Letting of wives among the, 58 . . Sodomy among the, 58 . . Marriage by capture among the, 94 Etruscans, The maternal family among the, 336 Europe, Increase of illegitimate births in, 169 Exogamy in Bengal, 315 . . of the clan among the Redskins, 276 . . at Samoa, 294 Family, R6le of the male in the animal, 21 . . Maternal, amongst the animals, 21 . . amongst the mammifers, 25 . . amongst the animals, 29 . . Maternal, amongst the Nairs, 81 . . Maternal, at Rome, 202 .. 233 . . in Melanesia, 335, 268 .. Origin of the, 267 . . Maternal, in Australia, 274 . . in America, 274 .. Maternal, among the Redskins, 278 . . Origin and evolution of the, 284 .. Maternal, and the matriarchate, 282 . . among the Omahas, 287 . . among the Redskins, 287 . . among the Iroquois Senecas, 287 . . Nomenclature of, among the Red- skins, 288 . . Evolution of the, among the Red- skins, 292 .. Genesis of the paternal family among the, 292 Family, The paternal, among the Incas, 293 . . Maternal, in Peru, 293 . . Paternal, in Peru, 293 . . Paternal, in Mexico, 293 . . in Polynesia, 294 .. Nomenclature of the, at Hawaii, 295 . . Genesis of the maternal, at Hawaii, 295 . . Genesis of the paternal, in Poly- nesia, 295 . . among the Mongols, 296 . . among the Tamils, 296 . . and the clan, 301 . . The maternal, 303 . . and the familial clan, 303 . . Genesis of the uterine, 301 . . in Africa, 305 . . The maternal, in Kaffirland, 305 . . among the Fantees, 305 . . in eastern Africa, 306 . . among the Nubians, 307 . . in Egypt, 307 . . The paternal, in Dahomey, 305 . . The maternal, in Africa, 305 . . The maternal, in Madagascar, 307 , . The paternal, in Egypt, 308 . . in Malaya, 309 . . among the Nairs, 311 . . among the aborigines of Bengal, 313 . . The maternal, in Bengal, 313 . . The paternal, in Bengal, 314 . . The primitive, 320 . . in civilised countries, 322 .. in China, 322 . . in Japan, 323 . . The paternal, in China, 323 . . among the Semites, 325 . . Traces of the maternal, among the Hebrews, 326 . . The maternal, in Phoenicia, 327 . . among the Berbers, 327 . . The maternal, among the Berbers, 327 . . in Persia, 330 , . in India, 332 . . The patriarchal, in Vedic India, 332 . . The maternal, in India, 333 . . The maternal, among the Tamils, 334 . , The Greco-Roman, 334 , . The maternal, in Greece, 335 . . The maternal, in Etruria, 336 . , Genesis of the paternal, in Greece, 336 . . Evolution of the, at Rome, 347 . . in barbarous Europe, 338 . . The paternal, in barbarous Europe, 339 . . The maternal, in Germany, 339 . . in the past, present, and future, 341 . . in the past, 341 INDEX. 365 Family, Stages of the, according to L. Morgan, 347 . . Actual state of tlie, 349 Father, The pote^tas of, at Rome, 199 Fecundation, 4 . . among superior animals, 7 Feudality, Polyandric, in Malabar, 311 Filiation, Maternal, among the Toua- regs, 179 Fishes, Paternal love in certain, 24 . . Coquetry in, 10 France, Prostitution in mediaeval, 160 . . Adultery in feudal, 226 . . Repudiation in feudal, 246 . . Late marriages in, 352 . . Malthusianism in, 352 .. Dowry and its results on mar- riage in, 352 . . Disproportionate marriages in, 323 Gallinaceae, Amorous combats of, 12 . . Vertigo of love in, 27 Gasterosteus leiurus. Paternal love of, 25 Gauls, Polygamy of, 135 Geese of Canada, Amorous battles of, 12 Generation by budding, 4 . . by division, 4 . . a product of nutrition, 4 . . among animals, 18 . . by ovulation, 5 . . by conjugation, 4 . . the aim of life, 5 . . in the cochineal, 5 . . Evolution of, 5 . . in the paramcecia, 6 . . Essential phenomenon of, 6 Gens in Greece, 835 . . at Rome, 334 Germans, Polygamy of, 135 .. The maternal family among the, 339 .. The paternal family among the, 339 , . Laws of succession among the, 339 . . Marriage by purchase among the, 204 . . Subjection of women among the, 204 . . Adultery among the, 225 . . Repudiation among the, 246 . . Divorce among the, 246 . . Widowhood among the, 262 Girls, Prostitution of, among the Anda- manites, 58 . , Prostitution of, in Polynesia, 59 . . married by the father in India, 192 . . Marriage of little, in India, 193 .. Gymnastic exercises of naked, in Sparta, 195 . . Marriage of little^ at Rome, 198 . . Conjugal sale of little, 107 .. married by the grandmother at Boussa, 112 . . Free conjugal choice of, at Nicar- agua, 115 . . Consent of the, in Mussulman mar- riage, 144 Girls, How, inherit in India, 334 Greece, Loan of wife in ancient, 53 , . Sodomy in, 63 . . Marriage by capture in, 100 . , Concubinate in primitive, 161 . . Concubinate in, 166 . . Subjection of women in, 195 . . Hetairse in, 166 . . Subjection of women in, 194 . . Marriage in ancient, 194 . . Dotal marriage in, 196 . . Evolution of marriage in, 197 . . Adultery in, 222 . . Repudiation in, 243 . Divorce in, 243 . . The primitive clan in, 334 . . The maternal family in, 335 • . . The gens in, 335 . . Genesis of the paternal family in, 336 Greeks, Promiscuity of the ancient, 41 Guaranis, Qualities exacted of the hus- band among the, 115 Gynecocracy according to Bachofen, 172 . . Pretended, in ancient Egypt, 175 .. Pretended, among the Touaregs, 179 Hawaii, Kinship by classes in, 294 . . Familial nomenclature at, 295 . , Genesis of the maternal family in, 294 Hebrews, Concubinate among the, 161 . . Marriage among the, 189 . . Monogamy among the, 189 . . Virginity among the, 190 . . Levirate among the, 190 . . Adultery among the, 218 . . Divorce among the, 242 . . Repudiation among the, 242 . . Widowhood among the, 259 . . The levirate among the, 263 . . Laws of succession among the, 326 .. Traces of communal clans among the, 826 Herons, Amorous battles of blue, 12 Hetai'rse in Greece, 166 Hetairism, 45 . . No primitive, 45 . . at Babylon, 45 Hiring out of wives in Polynesia, 60 Humming-birds, Decorated nests of, 14 Husbands, Brutality of, at Gaboon, 125 . . Jealousy of, unknown in Africa, 128 . . Duties of Mussulman, 145 .. Rights of punishment of Kabyle, 147 . . Manus of, at Rome, 200 Icterus pecoris, Promiscuity of the, 26 Immodesty, Primitive, 56 Immorality, Primitive sexual, 56 Incas, Polygamy of the, 148 Incest permitted among various Ameri- can peoples, 65 . . permitted among the Karens, 66 S66 INDEX. Incest among the Parthiana, 06 . . in ancient Persia, 66 . . among the Scythians, 66 . . Royal, in Egypt, 66 . . of the Incas, 66 . . in ancient Ireland, 66 . . Royal, in Siam, 66 . . in Bhootan, 133 . . among the Malagasies, 809 . . Horror of, in Kabylie, 309 India, Primitive promiscuity in, 42 . . Religious prostitution in, 46 . . Marriage by capture in, 93 . . Polygamy in Brahmanic, 151 . . Prostitution in, 159 .. Polygamy among the aborigines of, 135 . . Monogamic tendencies in the abori- gines of, 133 . . Repudiation in, 242 . . Widowhood in, 256 . . Mitigated monogamy in, 191 . . Inferiority of women in, 191 . . Daughter married by the father in, 192 . . Marriage by purchase in, 192 . . Prohibitions to marriage in, 192 . . Subjection of woman in, 192 . . Marriage of little girls in, 193 .. Adultery in, 220 . . The levirate in, 263 . . The family in, 332 .. The patriarchal family in Vedic, 832 . . The patriarchate in, 332 . . Primogeniture in, 333 . . Paternity by suggestion in, 333 . . How daughters inherit in, 333 . . The maternal family in, 334 . . Vestiges of ancient clans in, 334 Individualism has succeeded to com- munism, 347 Infanticide committed by male mam- mifers, 34 . . of girls among the ancient Arabs, 83 . . Legend of Cais, 83 . . The paternal right of, in Polynesia, 113 . . among the Vedic Aryans, 150 Innovators, Fate of, 359 Insects, Maternal prescience of, 22 . . Coquetry amongst, 10 Ireland, The primitive clan in, 338 Irish, Ptomiscuity of the ancient, 41 . . Incest among the ancient, 66 .. Temporary marriages among the, 246 . . Divorce among the ancient, 246 Japan, Prostitution of young girls in, 51 . . Prostitution in, 157 . . Marriage in, 185 . . Adultery in, 217 . . The maternal family in, 322 . . Familial nomenclature in, 324 Jews of Morocco, Temporary marriages among the, 67 Jus primce noctis, 45 . . Religious, in Malabar, 47 . . among the Nasamons, 47 . . in the Balearic Isles, 47 . . Seignorial, 47 . . in Cochin China, 48 . . of parents and friends, 50 Kabyles, Adultery amongst the, 219 Repudiation amongst the, 234 Right of insurrection of the wife, 236 Widowhood among the, 260 Horror of incest among the, 309 Traces of the clan among the, 328 Mutual assistance amongst the, 329 Disinheritance of the wife, 329 Laws of succession among the, 329 Kabylie, Marriags by purchase in, 145 . . Tariff of the woman in, 146 . . Essential condition of marriage in, 146 . . Loan of jewels to the wife in, 146 . . Subiection of the wife in, 145 . . Rights of correction of the husband in, 147 . . The wife a thing possessed in, 147 . . Fate of woman m, 147 . . Absence of concubinage in, 169 Kaffirs, Right of the chief among the, 47 Kamilaroi, Regulated promiscuity of the, 44 . . Marriage among the, 271 Kinship, Origin of ideas of, 283 . . by classes in the Hawaii Isles, 294 . . The evolution of, by classes, 297, 801 . . Fictitious, in China, 325 Koran, The, and the inferiority of women, 140 .. Restrictions on polygamy in the, 140 . . Celestial polygamy in the, 142 . . Purchase of the wife in the, 141 Kurnai, Marriage among the, of Austra- lia, 273 Lark, Loves of, 12 Larva, The, is a survival, 23 Larvae, Fertile, 23 . . Maternal love in sterile, 23 Law of amorous battle among the Aus- tralian women, 57 Levirate, The, among the Hebrews, 191 . . and widowhood, 191 . . The, 263 . , in Malaya, 263 . . in New Caledonia^ 263 . . among the Redskins, 263 , . among the Mongols, 263 . . among the Afghans, 263 INDEX. 3«7 Levirate in India, 263 . . among the Hebrews, 263 . . in Abyssinia, 265 Loan of the wife among savages, 52 . . among the Redskins, 62 . , amon§ the Arabs, 53 . . in antique Greece, 53 . . in antique Rome, 53 .. 53 . . in Australia, 57 . . among the Bushmen, 58 Love, The snare of, 3 . . according to Haeckel, 6 . . and rut, 7, 8 . . according to Schopenhauer, 9 . . and pairing, 9 . . according to Imitation of Christ, 10 . . in insects, 10 . . in birds, 11 . . in the lark, 12 . . dances of birds, 13 . . parades of Tetras phasaniellus, 13 . . parades of birds, 13 . . Intentional, parades of birds, 13 .. courts of birds, 14 .. bowers of Chlamydera maadata, U . . house of the Amhlyomis inornata, 14 . . tourneys of nightingales, 14 . . songs of weaver birds, 15 . . The instinct of, is not blind, 17 . . Choice in, among animals, 17 . . Selection in, among females, 17 . . Selection in, among female birds, 17 . . Exclusive, of bitches, 18 . . Essential identity of, with animals and man, 19 .. Maternal, wanting in lower ani- mals, 21 . . Maternal, in spiders, 22 . . Paternal, wanting in spiders, 22 . . Biological reason of maternal, 22 . . Maternal, in the sterile larvpe, 23 . . Paternal, in certain fishes, 24 . . Paternal, of Chinese Maeroptts, 24 .. Paternal, of Chromis paterfa- milias, 24 .. Paternal, of the Gasterosteus leiurus, 25 . . Paternal, of toads, 25 . . Paternal, in the Pipa, 25 . . Maternal, in reptiles, 25 . . Vertigo of, in gallinacefe, 26 . . at first sight in a wild duck, 28 .. Passion of, analogous in animal and man, 29 .. Paternal, absent in certain male birds, 29 .. Paternal, wanting in polygamous birds, 31 . . Paternal, developed in many birds, 31 . . Paternal and maternal, is brief in duration with birds, 31 Love, Coi^ugal, in female chimpanzees. Maeropua, Chinese, paternal love of, 24 Madagascar, The maternal family in, 307 . . Incest in, 309 Mahomet, Conjugal freedom of, 141 . . and the debitum conjugate, 142 Malagasies, Civil marriage among the, 129 Malaya, Adultery in, 217 . . The levirate in, 263 . . The family in, 309 . . Marriage by purchase in, 310 Malays of Sumatra, Three modes of marriage with the, 119 Male, Part of the, in the animal family, 21 Malthusianism, Natural, 20 . . in France, 352 Mammals, Marriage among, 25 . . Marriage and the family among, 25 . . Promiscuity in the, 31 . . No polyandry in the, 31 . . Polygamous societies of, 32 .. Conjugal devotion of females of, 32 . . Male infanticides amongst, 34 Man, The taxonomic place of, 2 . . Grandeur and inferiority of, 2 . . Real place of, 2 . . Origin of, 71 Manus, The, of husband at Rome, 200 Marquette, Right of, 48 Marriage, Biological origin of, 1 . . Object of, 2 . . among animals, 20 . . among mammals, 25 . . Various types of, among animals, 35 . . Primitive evolution of, 54 . . Strange forms of, 64 ,. a simple pairing with many savages, 64 . . Experimental, 67 . . Experimental, in Canada, 67 , . Experimental, among the Otomies, 67 . . Experimental, among the Sonthals, 67 . . Experimental, among the Tartars, 67 . . Experimental, at Ceylon, 67 . , Temporary, among the Jews of Morocco, 67 . . Temporary, among the Tapyres, 68 . . Free, at Noukahiva, 68 . . Free, among the Hottentots, 68 . . Free, in Abyssinia, 68 . . Partial, of the Hassinyehs, 68 . . Temporary, in Persia, 68 . . Temporary, among the Arabs, 69 . . the right of the strongest among many savage peoples, 69 . . and the sexual proportion of births, 73 368 INDEX. Marriage, Initiation into, by the Nairs, 80 . . Term, moVa, with the Arabs, 85 . . Patriarchal, with the Arabs, 85 . . by capture, 89 . . by capture in India, 93 . . by capture, 93 . . by capture among the Esquimaux, 95 . . by capture among the Redskins, 95 . . among the Kamschatdales, 95 . . among the Kalmucks, 96 . . among the Tannganses, 96 . . among the Turcomans, 97 . . among the aborigines of Bengal, 97 .. in New Zealand, 98 . . in Arabia, 99 . . in Java, 100 . . among the Beotians, 100 . . at Sparta, 100 . . at Rome, 100 . . in Circassia, 101 ., in Wales, 101 . . among the Slavs, 101 . . by capture. Signification of, 102 . . by purchase at Fiji, 103 . . by purchase of servitude, 106 .. Premature, by girls in New Cale- donia, 107 . . among the Hottentots, 107 . . in Ashantee, 107 . . in Polynesia, 107 . . in South America, 107 ., in India, 108 . . in ancient Italy, 108 . . Premature, of little boys among the Red dies, 108 . . in Russia, 108 .. of deceased children among the Tartars, 108 . . by servitude, 109 . . among the Redskins, 109 . . in Central America, 109 . . among the aborigines of Bengal, 110 . . among the Hebrews, 110 . . by purchase, 110 . . among the Hottentots, 111 . . among the KaflSrs, 111 . . in Central Africa, 111 . . at Sackatoo, 112 . . at Kouranko, 112 . . in Polynesia, 113 . , among the Redskins, 113 . . in California, 114 . . in New Mexico, 114 . . in Central America, 115 , . among the Guaranis, 115 .. among the Mongols, 115 .. among the Turcomans, 116 .. in China, 116 .. among the aborigines of India, 117 . . among the Arabs, 118 .. among the Afghans, 118 .. in Brahmanic India, 119 . . amoQg the Scandinavians, 119 . . among the Germans, 119 Marriage in primitive Greece, 120 . . at Rome, 120 . . by capture in China, 116 . . by usu% at Rome, 120 . . Dotal, at Athens, 120 . . Dotal, at Rome, 120 . . by coemption at Rome, 120 . . by confarreation at Rome, 120 . . State, among the Bongos, 129 . . by purchase, Signification of, 120 . . Civil, with the Malagasies, 129 . . Mussulman and laic, 143 . . by purchase with the Mussulmans, 143 . . Mussulman, is a contract of sale, 143 . . Virginity in the Mussulman, 143 .. Consent of girl in Mussulman, 144 .. Debitum conjugate in Mussulman, 144 . . Marital rights in Mussulman, 145 . . by purchase in Kabylie, 145 . , Essential condition of Kabyle, 146 . . Free, at Paris, 169 . . The form of, and civilisation, 173 .. Civil, in Thibet, 182 . . by purchase in China, 183 . . in Japan, 185 . . Hebrew, 184 . . in ancient India and Persia, 191 .. in the Avesta, 191 . . by purchase in India, 191 . . Prohibitions of, in India, 192 . . in ancient Greece, 194 . . obligatory at Sparta, 195 . . Dotal, in Greece, 196 . . in ancient Rome, 198 . . Evolution of, in Greece, 198 . . by confarreatio at Rome, 201 . . by coemptio at Rome, 201 . . by ibsus at Rome, 201 . . Dotal, at Rome, 200 , . The evolution of, at Rome, 201 . . Barbarous and Christian, 204 , . by purchase with the Germans, 204 . . Christian, 205 . . Free, at Hayti, 233 .. Temporary, among the Irish, 246 . . Communal, in Australia, 270 .. Communal, transitory in Austra- lia, 273 . . among the Redskins, 275 . . Ijjcestuous, with the Redskins, 293 . , Three sorts of, at Sumatra, 309 . . by purchase in Malaya, 309 . . by purchase in Bengal, 315 . . Traces of fraternal, in China, 323 . . Terra, in Persia, 331 . . in the past, present, and future, 341 . . Influence of money on the frequency of, 351 . . The age of election of, 352 . . Late, m France, 352 . . Disproportionate in France, 353 , . The future of, 354 . . by affection in the future, 358 INDEX. 369 Matriarchate in animals, 24 . . in bees, 24 . . and the maternal family, 202 . . Pecuniar'y, of the Touareg women, 328 Mecca, The concubinate in, 165 Melanesia, Adultery in, 209 . . The family in, 268 Menstruation and ovulation, 8 Mexico, Polygamy of the great in, 148 . . Monogamy of the people in, 149 . . The concubinate in ancient, 163 . . Monogamy In, 174 . . The paternal family in, 293 .. Adultery in, 215 Modesty, Genesis of, 56 Mongols, Polygamy of the, 133 . . The concubinate among the, 164 . . Monogamy among the, 182 . . Adultery among the, 216 . . Repudiation among the, 240 . . Divorce among the, 240 . . The family among the, 296 Monkeys, Polygamy of certain, 33 . . Monogamy in certain, 33 . . Polygamy of anthropomorphous, 33 , . Monogamy of, 33 . . Conjugal love of females amongst, 33 Monogamy of golden woodpeckers, 27 , . of the Illinois parrot, 27 . . of rapacious animals, 27 . . of anthropomorphous apes, 33 . . of certain apes, 42 . . in Polynesia, 129 . . dawning among the Battas, 133 .. dawningamong the Redskins, 131 .. dawning among the aborigines of India, 133 . . Proletarian, obligatory in Peru, 149 . . of the populace in Mexico, 149 , , Primitive, 171 . . of inferior races, 171 . . Causes of, 171 .. Ideal of, 171 . . in Central America, 174 . . Administrative, in Peru, 174 . . in Mexico, 175 ., in ancient Egypt, 175 .. of the Touaregs and Abyssinians, 179 , . among the Mongols, 182 ,. in Thibet, 182 , , in China, 185 . . and civilisation. 186 , . Hebraic and Aryan, 189 . . of superior races, 189 . . Hebrew, 189 . . Ideal, and in reality, 189 . . mitigated in India, 191 . . in the future, 357 .. Advantages of, according to A. Bertillon, 349 Montaijine, Origin of laws of conscience according to, 349 Morality, Variability of, 73 Morality various amongst birds, 27 Morgan, L., Stages of the family accord- ing to, 347 Moses and rape in war, 93 Mumho Jumbo, 128 Nairs, Polyandry of, 80 . . Initiation in marriage among the, 80 . . The maternal family among the, 81 . . The avuncular family among the, 311 . . The family among the, 311 . . Rational polyandry of the, 312 Namaquois, Promiscuity of chiefs of the, 44 Natality, unregulated, among fishes, 24 Nature, the personification of natural forces, 5 . . Absence of design in, 34 Nefir, The, among the Djebel-Taggal^, 233 Nemesia Eleonora, Rearing of young with the, 22 Nests, Decorated, of humming-birds, 14 New Caledonia, Sodomy in, 62 . . Adultery in, 209 . . The levirate in, 263 Nightingale, Amorous song of, 14 Noces, pistes, at Rome, 202 Nutrition the basis of generation, 3 Omahas, The family amongst the, 287 Paramcecia, Generation in the, Parents, The power of, 105 . . Right of propriety of, over children, 106 Paris, Free marriages at, 169 Parrot, Conjugal fidelity of Illinois, 27 Paterfamilias at Rome, 333 Paternity by suggestion in India, 333 Patria Potestas at Rome, 337 Patriarchate among the animals, 21 . . Semitic, 325 . , in India, 332 . . at Rome, 337 Persia, Incest in ancient, 66 . . Polygamy in ancient, 150 . . The concubinate in ancient, 166 . . Adultery in, 220 . . The family in, 330 . . No clans in, 330 . . Incestuous endogamy in, 330 . . Term -marriage in, 331 . . Laws of succession in, 332 Peru, Sodomy in, 62 . . Proletarian monogamy obligatory in, 149 . . Concubinage in, 162 . . Administrative monogamy in, 174 . . Adultery in, 215 . . Divorce in ancient, 240 .. The paternal family among the Incas of, 293 Pigeons, Matenial love in, 30 370 INDEX. Pipa, Paternal love in, 25 Polyandry does not exist in mammals, 31 .. Fraternal, of the ancient Arabs, 39,73 .. and the sexual proportion of births, 74 . . and infanticide of girls, 76 . . and sale of girls, 76 . . has not been general, 76 . . The ethnography of, 77 . . of the ancient Britons, 77 . . of the Arabs, 77 . . of the Guanches, 77 . . of the New Zealanders, 77 . . of the Marquesas Islanders, 77 . . in America, 77 . . of the aborigines of India, 77 . . of the Hindoos, 77 . . at Ceylon, 78 . . Fraternal, in Thibet, 78 . . among the Todas, 80 . . of the Nairs, 80 . . of Thibet and of Nairs, 81 . . in ancient Arabia, 82 . . Causes of Arab, 84 . . Fraternal, in Arabia, 84 . . in general, 86 . . Matriarchal, 87 . . Patriarchal, 87 . . ^he evolution of, 88 . . and polygamy in Bhootan, 133 . . Feudal, in Malabar, 311 . . Rational, of the Nairs, 312 Polygamy of gallinacese, 26 . . favoured by sociability, 31 . . of mammals, 32 . . of certain monkevs, 33 , . of anthropomorphous apes, 33 . . Primitive, 122 . . in Oceania, Africa, and America, 122 . . Causes restraining, 122 . . Object of, in New Caledonia, 123 . . and concubinage at Fiji, 124 . . tlie measure of wealth on the Zam- besi, 125 .. Economic motives for, in Africa, 125 .. restrained by the dearness of women amongst the Bongos, 126 . . Excessive, in Central Africa, 127 . . in Polynesia, 129 .. of the Indians in South America, 180 , . among the Redskins, 131 .. a sign of wealth among the Red- skins, 131 . . in Asia and in Europe, 132 . . and polyandry in Bhootan, 133 . . of the Vedic Aryans, 136 . . of the Gauls, 135 . . of the Germans, 135 .. Primitive, 136 .. Evolution of, 137 .. of civilised peoples, 138 .. The stage of , 138 Polygamy, Arab, 189 . . Islamism and, 139 , . Restrictions on, in the Koran, 140 . . Celestial, in the Koran, 142 . . in Egypt, in Mexico, and in Peru, 148 . . and the subjection of women, 148 . . in Egypt, 148 . . of the great in Mexico, 148 . . in ancient Persia, 160 . . among the Vedic Aryans, 150 . . in Brahmanic India, 151 . . The evolution of, 162 . . Genesis of the instinct of, 155 . . may favour the growth of popula- tion, 849 Polynesia, Licentious morals of young girls in, 50 . . Licentious morals in, 59 . . Prostitution of girls in, 59 . . Leasing of wives in, 60 . . Freedom of women in, 60 . . Shameless language of the women in, 61 . . The Areois of, 61 . . Sodomy in, 61 . . Paternal right of infanticide in, 113 . . Polygamy in, 129 . . Monogamy in, 129 . . Adultery m, 212 .. Tlie family In, 294 . . Genesis of paternal family in, 295 . . Adoption in, 296 Population, density of, in Attica, 198 . . Increase of, favoured sometimes by polygamy, 349 Potestas, The, of the father at Rome, 199 Prelibation, Right of, 48 . . The right of, and the right of con- quest, 48 Prescience, Maternal, of insects, 22 Primogeniture, Right of, 333 Procreative instinct. Origin of, 9 Promiscuity among sociable animals, 26 . . of the Icterus pecoris, 26 . . among the mammals, 81 . . If there has been a stage of, 37 , . is the lowest form of sexual associa- tion, 38 . . rare amongst vertebrates, 38 . . is exceptional in humanity, 39 . . Case of human, 39 . . in the Troglodyte, 39 . . of the Agathyrses, 40 . . of the Anses, 41 . . of the ancient Irish, 41 . . of primitive Greeks, 42 . . in the Timmiis, 42 . . Primitive, in China, 42 . . Primitive, in India, 42 . . of the Andamanites, 43 . , of the Indians of California, 43 . . of certain aborigines of India, 43 . . of the Zaporog Cossacks, 43 . . Religious, of the Ansarians, 43 .. of the Yazidies, 44 INDEX, 371 Promiscuity of the Namaqiioia chiefs, 44 . . Regulated, of the Kamilaroi, 44 . . No universal stage of, 44 Property, Right of, of parents over children, 106 Prostitution, Religious, in India, 46 . . Religious, at Babylon, 46 . . Religious, in the Akilisenus, 46 . . of young girls in Japan, 51 . . Dotal, in ancient Rome, 51 . . honoumble in Tasmania, 57 . . of girls among the Andamanites, 58 . . of girls in Polynesia, 59 . . Religious, among the ancient Sem- ites, 86 . . Evolution of, 155 . . in primitive Athena, 156 . . in Central America, 156 . . in Japan, 157 . . in Brahmanic India, 159 . . in Buddhist India, 159 . . in modem India, 159 . . in France in the Middle Ages, 160 . . and concubinage, 154 Pueblos, Marriages of love in the, 114 . . The clans of the, 277 Rapacious animals, Monogamy of, 27 Rape, 89 . . in Australia, 90 . . among the negroes of Africa, 92 . . The expiation of, in Austi-alia, 91 , . in New Guinea, 91 . . among the Indians of America, 92 . . among the Tartars, 93 . . among the Hebrews, 93 . . in war, and Moses, 93 . . in war among the Celts, 93 Rearing of young among animals, 21 . . with the Nemesia Meonora, 22 Redskins, Familial anthropophagy of the, 26 . . Sodomy among the, 62 . . Marriage by capture among the, 95 .. Right of protection of relations over women of, 114 . . Polygamy among the, 131 . . Sister wives among the, 131 . . Polygamy a sign of wealth among the, 132 .. Conjugal submission of women among the, 132 . . Monogamic tendencies among the, 130 .. Subjection of women among the, 132 . . Adultery among the, 213 , . Widowhood among the, 252 . . Rules of decency among the, 298 . . The levirate among the, 263 . . The totems of the, 275 . . The clan among the, 275 .. The common house of the clan among the, 275 . . Duties of the clan among the, 275 .. Exogamy of the clan among the, 276 Redskins, Marriage among the, 276 . . Inheritance among the, 275 .. The maternal family among the, 277 . . Communism in the clan of the, 278 .. The power of the women among the, 278 .. Subjection of woman among the, 283 . . The clan among the, 285 . , The family among the, 286 . . Familial nomenclature among the, 287 . . Adoption among the, 291 .. Incestuous marriages among the, . . The evolution of the family among the, 292 . . Genesis of paternal filiation among the, 293 Repudiation and divorce, 228 . . in savage countries, 228 . . in New Caledonia, 229 . . among the Hottentots, 229 . . among the Redskins, 231 . . among the Esquimaux, 231 . . at Madagascar, 233 . . among the Djebel-Taggale, 233 . . among the Touaregs, 234 . . among the Kabyles, 234 . . among the Arabs, 237 . . among the Mongols, 240 . . in China, 241 . . in India, 242 , . among the Hebrews, 242 . . in Greece, 243 . . at Rome, 244 . . among the Germans, 246 . . among the Scandinavians, 246 . . among the Tcherkesses, 246 . . in feudal France, 246 Rome, Loan of the wife in ancient, 53 . . Marriage by capture at, 100 . . The wife assimilated to a slave at, 104 . . Marriage by confarreation at, 120 . . Marriage by purchase at, 120 . . Marriage by usus at, 120 . . Marriage by coemption at, 120 . . Dotal marriage at, 120 . . The concubinate at, 166 . . Marriage in ancient, 198 . . Marriages of children at, 198 . . Relative liberty of the wife at, 198 . . The wife considered as a daughter of her husband at, 198 . . The potestas of the father at, 199 . . The munus of the husband at, 200 . . Dotal marriage at, 200 . . Marriage by usus at, 201 . . Marriage by coemptio at, 201 . . Marriage by confarreatio at, 201 . , Loan of women at, 201 . . The evolution of marriage at, 201 . . The j«« connvi)ii at, 202 . . The maternal family at, 202 372 INDEX. Rome, The s-purii at, 202 . . Divorce at, 244 . . Repudiation at, 244 . . Widowhood at, 261 . . The gens at, 335 . . The primitive clan at, 335 . . The patriarchate at, 337 . . The right of succession of the gen- tiles at, 838 .. The evolution of the family at, 338 . . The evolution of marriage at, 357 Rut and love, 7 . . Sociologic importance of, 7 . . The madness of, 8 . . a sort of puberty, 8 . . among toads, 8 . . among mammals, 8 . . The pnysiological reason of, 9 , . and human love, 9 . . Moral position of, 17 Salmon, Battles of amorous, 11 . . Maternal love among, 24 Savages, Loan of the wife among, 52 Schopenhauer and his theory of love, 9 Scythians, Incest among the, 66 Seignor, Right of the, among the Kaffirs, in New Zealand and New Mexico, etc., 47 Selection, Sexual, by females, 17 Semites, The family among the, 325 . . The patriarchate of the, 325 Senecas, The family among the Iroquois, 287 Sexes, Proportion of the, 75 . . The proportion of the, and infanti- cide, 75 Sociability often comes from weakness, 81 . . engenders altruism, 81 . . favourable to polygamy, 31 Sociology, Biological origin of, 3 . . The animal sources of, 10 . . The rhythms of, 355 , . The method of, 842 Sodomy among the Esquimaux, 58 . . in New Caledonia, 62 .. in New Zealand, C2 . . among the Redskins, 62 . . in Peru, 62 . . at Mecca, 63 . . in the East, 63 .. repressed by the Celts and the Germans, 63 . . in Greece, 63 . . in Crete, 63 Sparta, Gymnastic exercises of naked girls at, 195 , . Obligatory marriage at, 195 . . Adultery at, 322 Species, Pi-eservation of, 20 Spiders, Maternal love of, 22 Spurii at Rome, 202 Sticklebacks, Amorous battles of, 11 Suttees of widows in India, 257 Suttees, Indian, in the time of Alexander^ 257 . , in modern times, 258 Succession, Customs of, among the Red- skins, 277, 278 . . Laws of, among the Kabyles, 329 . . Laws of, in Persia, 331 .. The right of, of the gentiles at Rome, 338 . . Laws of, among the Germans, 339 Tamils, The family among the, 296 . . The maternal family among the, 334 Tasmania, Honourable prostitution in, 57 Tatoways, Coupling of the, 16 Tchin-than, Cambodian, 49 Termites, Republics of, 3 Tetras phasaniellus, Amorous parades of, 13 Tetras nmbellus, Amorous combats of, 13 Tetras urogalhis. Amorous battles of, 12 Thibet, Polyandry in, 78 Civil marriage in, 182 Monogamy in, 182 Adultery in, 216 Divorce in, 240 Widowhood in, 254 Toads, Paternal love of, 25 Todas, Polyandry among the, 80 Totem, The, among the Kamilaroi of Australia, 273 . . of the Redskins, 275 Touaregs, Paternal right redeemed by prostitution among the, 118 . . Monogamy among the, 179 . . Maternal filiation among the, 179 .. Independence of woman among the, 179 . . Pretended gynecocracy of, 181 . . Repudiation among the, 234 . . The pecuniary matriarchate of the women, 328 Tournaments, ^^sthetic, of birds, 13 Troglodytes, Promiscuity among the, 39 Turkeys, League of female, against the males, 30 Usiis at Rome, 200 Vertebrates, Coquetry among the, 10 .. Strength greater in males among the, 15 . . Law of battle among the, 16 . . Promiscuity rare among the, 38 Virginity among the Hebrew;*, 190 Weaver bird, Amorous music of, 15 Widowhood and the levirate, 249 . . in savage countries, 249 . . Societies without, 250 . . among the Hottentots, 250 , . at the Gaboon, 250 . . in equatorial Africa, 250 . . at Madagascar, 251 . . in Central America, 251 INDEX. 373 Widowhood among the Redskins, 252 . . in Bhootan, 254 . . in Thibet, 254 .. in China, 255 . . of brides in China, 266 . . in India, 256 . . in the Koran, 259 . . in the Bible, 259 . . in Afghanistan, 260 . . among the Kabyles, 260 . . among the Arabs, 260 . . at Athens, 261 . . at Rome, 261 . . among the Germans, 262 . . among the Lombards, 262 . . in general, 265 Widows, Right of, at Kouranko, 112 .. Immolation of, 253 . . Suicides of, in China, 255 . . Suttees of, in India, 257 Wives, Loan of, in America, 52 . . Loan of, among the Esquimaux, 52 . . Loan of, 52 . . Loan of, among the Redskins, 52 . . Loan of, among the Arabs, 53 . . Loan of, in antique Greece, 53 , . Loan of, in antique Rome, 53 . . Loan of, in Australia, 57 . . Loan of, among Bushmen, 58 , . Lease of, among the Esquimaux, 68 . . Lease of, in Polynesia, 60 , . Community of, among Arabs, 84 . . Assimilated to slaves at Rome, 104 . . Right of refusal of the, among the Moors of Senegambia, 112 . . Subjection of, 105 . . Food in reserve in Melanesia, 106 . . Seizure of, in Australia, 123 . . Servility of, in Africa, 136 . . the " oxen " of the husband, among Kaffirs, 128 ., Labour of, among the Guaranis, 130 . . Sister, among the Redskins, 131 .. Conjugal submission of Redskin, 132 . . Subjection of, by Redskins, 132 .. Sisters, in Bhootan, 133 . . Sisters, among the Ostiaks, 133 Wives, Purchase of, in the Koran, 141 . . Rights of the, in Mussulman mar- riage, 144 . . Subjection of, in Kabylie, 145 . . Loan of jewels to the Kabyle, 146 . . Price of the, tariffed in Kabylie, 146 . . Kabyle, is a thing possessed, 146 . . Fate of the Kabyle, 147 . . Independence of Touareg, 149 . . considered as daughters of husband at Rome, 199 - . . Loan of, at Rome, 201 . . Christian subjection of, 205 . . Independence of, among the Saxons of England, 205 . . Subjection of, among the Germans, 204 .. Kabyle, have "right of insurrec- tion," 236 . . Power of, among Redskins, 280 .. Subjection of, among Redskins, 282 Women, Freedom of, in Polynesia, 60 .. Shameless language of, in Poly- nesia, 61 . . Shamelessness of, in Africa, 127 . . Inferiority of, in the Koran, 140 .. Dissolute morals of, in Abyssinia, 181 . . Submission of, in China, 185 . . Emancipated by money, 187 . . Virtuous, of Proverbs, 190 . . Inferiority of, in India, 191 . . Subjection of, in India, 192 . . Subjection of, in primitive Greece, 194 . . Subjection of, in Greece, 195 . . Relative liberty of, in Rome, 198 Yazidies, Promiscuity of, 44 Young girls. Licentious manners of, in Australia, 50 . . Licentious manners of, in Poly- nesia, 50 . . Licentious manners of, in savage countries, 50 Zaporogs, Promiscuity of, 43 THE WALTER SCOTT PKESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TY'NE. Crown Svo, Cloth. Price ^s. 6d. per Vol.; Half Mor.^ 6s. 6d. 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