CHAPTER XLI

141Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 140.Iidem,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 62sq.

142Iidem,Native Tribes, p. 110.

143Westermarck,op. cit.pp. 443-448, 457, 458, 508.

144Cf.Crawley,op. cit.p. 482; Lang,Social Origins, p. 105sq.

145Thomas, in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute in 1905.Cf.Idem,Kinship and Marriage in Australia, p. 138.

146See Westermarck,op. cit.p. 132sq.;infra,p. 460.

147See,e.g., Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes, p. 137sq.

I must admit, therefore, that the facts produced by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and the severe criticism which they have passed on my sceptical attitude towards Mr. Fison’s group marriage theory have not been able to convince me that among the Australian aborigines individual marriage has evolved out of a previous system of marriage between groups of men and women. Nor has Mr. Howitt,in his recent work on the ‘Native Tribes of South-East Australia,’ in my opinion, sufficiently proved that such an evolution has taken place.148He blames certain “ethnologists of the study” for not being willing “to take the opinion of men who have first-hand knowledge of the natives”;149but I think we do well in distinguishing between statements based on direct observation and the observer’s interpretation of the stated facts. Even suppose, however, that group marriage really was once common in Australia, would that prove that it was once common among mankind at large? Mr. Hewitt’s supposition that the practice of group marriage “will be ultimately accepted as one of the primitive conditions of mankind”150is no doubt shared by a host of anthropologists. The group marriage theory will probably for some time to come remain the residuary legatee of the old theory of promiscuity; the important works which have lately been published on the Australian aborigines have made people inclined to view the early history of mankind through Australian spectacles. But even the most ardent advocate of Australian group marriage should remember that the existence of kangurus in Australia does not prove that there were once kangurus in England.

148Mr. Thomas has come to the same result in his book on ‘Kinship and Marriage in Australia,’ which appeared when the present chapter was already in type. A detailed examination of the facts which have been adduced as evidence of Australian group marriage (p. 127sqq.) has led him to the conclusion (p. 147) that prevailing customs in Australia, far from proving the present or former existence of group marriage in that continent, do not even render it probable, and that on the terms of relationship no argument of any sort can be founded which assumes them to refer to consanguinity, kinship, or affinity. “It is therefore not rash to say that the case for group marriage, so far as Australia is concerned, falls to the ground.” Seeinfra,Addit. Notes.

149Howitt, ‘Native Tribes of South-East Australia,’ inFolk-Lore, xvii. 185.

150Idem,Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 281.

The time during which marriage lasts varies extremely in the human race.151There are unions which, though legally recognised as marriages, do not endure long enough to deserve to be so called in the natural history sense of the term; there are others which are dissolved only bydeath. As has already been pointed out, it is probable that among primitive men the union of the sexes lasted till after the birth of the offspring, and we have perhaps some reason to believe that the connection lasted for years. On the whole, progress in civilisation has tended to make marriage more durable. It is evident that at the early stage of development at which women first became valuable as labourers, a wife was united with her husband by a new bond more lasting than youth and beauty. The tie was strengthened by the bride-price and the marriage portion. And a higher development of the paternal feeling, better forethought for the children’s welfare, in some instances greater consideration for women, and a more refined love passion have gradually made it stronger, until it has become in many cases indissoluble. Yet we must not conclude that divorce will in the future be less frequent and more restricted by law than it is now in European countries. It should be remembered that the laws of divorce in Christian Europe owe their origin to an idealistic religious commandment which, interpreted in its literal sense, gave rise to legal prescriptions far from harmonising with the mental and social life of the mass of the people. The powerful authority of the Roman Church was necessary to enforce the dogma that marriage is indissoluble. The Reformation introduced somewhat greater liberty in this respect, and modern legislation has gone further in the same direction. In those Christian states of Europe where absolute divorce is permitted the grounds on which it may be sued for are nearly the same for the man and the woman, except in England, where the husband must be accused of one or other of several offences besides adultery. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal, a judicial separation may always be decreed on the ground of the adultery of the wife, but, on the ground of the adultery of the husband, only if it has been committed under certain aggravating circumstances.152These laws imply that marriage is not yet a contract on the footing of perfect equality between the sexes; but there isa growing opinion that, where it is not, it ought to be so. Again, when both husband and wife desire to separate, it seems to many enlightened minds that the State has no right to prevent them from dissolving the marriage contract, provided the children are properly cared for; and that for the children, also, it is better to have the supervision of one parent only than of two who cannot agree.

151Westermarck,op. cit.ch. xxiii.

152Glasson,Le mariage civil et le divorce, pp. 291, 298, 304.

AMONGsavage and barbarous races of men nearly every individual endeavours to marry as soon as he, or she, reaches the age of puberty.1Marriage seems to them indispensable, and a person who abstains from it is looked upon as an unnatural being and is disdained. Among the Santals a man who remains single “is at once despised by both sexes, and is classed next to a thief, or a witch: they term the unhappy wretch ‘No man.’”2Among the Kafirs a bachelor has no voice in the kraal.3In the Tupi tribes of Brazil no man was suffered to partake in the drinking-feast while he remained single.4The natives of Futuna in the Western Pacific maintained that it was necessary to be married in order to hold a part in the happy future life, and that the celibates, both men and women, had to submit to a chastisement of their own before entering thefale-mate, or “home of the dead.”5According to Fijian beliefs, he who died wifeless was stopped by the god Nangganangga on the road to Paradise, and smashed to atoms.6

1Westermarck,History of Human Marriage, p. 134sqq.

2Man,Sonthalia, p. 101.

3von Weber,Vier Jahre in Afrika, ii. 215.

4Southey,History of Brazil, i. 240.

5Percy Smith, ‘Futuna.’ inJour. Polynesian Soc.i. 39sq.

6Pritchard,Polynesian Reminiscences, pp. 368, 372. Seemann,Viti, p. 399sq.Fison, ‘Fijian Burial Customs,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.x. 139. Williams and Calvert,Fiji, p. 206. For other instances see Westermarck,op. cit.p. 136, n. 10.

Among peoples of archaic culture celibacy is likewise a great exception and marriage regarded as a duty. Inancient Peru marriage was compulsory at a certain age.7Among the Aztecs no young man lived single till his twenty-second year, unless he intended to become a priest, and for girls the customary marrying-age was from eleven to eighteen. In Tlascala, we are told, the unmarried state was so despised that a grown-up man who would not marry had his hair cut off for shame.8

7Garcilasso de la Vega,First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 306sq.

8Klemm,Allgemeine Cultur-Geschichte der Menschheit, v. 46sq.Bancroft,Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 251sq.

“Almost all Chinese,” says Dr. Gray, “robust or infirm, well-formed or deformed, are called upon by their parents to marry as soon as they have attained the age of puberty. Were a grown-up son or daughter to die unmarried, the parents would regard it as most deplorable.” Hence a young man of marriageable age, whom consumption or any other lingering disease had marked for its own, would be compelled by his parents or guardians to marry at once.9So indispensable is marriage considered by the Chinese, that even the dead are married, the spirits of all males who die in infancy or in boyhood being in due time married to the spirits of females who have been cut off at a like early age.10There is a maxim by Mencius, re-echoed by the whole nation, that it is a heavy sin to have no sons, as this would doom father, mother, and the whole ancestry in the Nether-world to a pitiable existence without descendants enough to serve them properly, to worship at the ancestral tombs, to take care of the ancestral tablets, and duly to perform all rites and ceremonies connected with the departed dead. For a man whose wife has reached her fortieth year without bringing him a son, it is an imperative duty to take a concubine.11In Corea “the male human being who is unmarried is never called a man, whatever his age, but goes by the name of ‘yatow,’ a name given by the Chinese to unmarriageable young girls; and the man of thirteen or fourteen has aperfect right to strike, abuse, order about the ‘yatow’ of thirty, who dares not as much as open his lips to complain.”12

9Gray,China, i. 186.

10Ibid.i. 216sq.

11Giles,Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, i. 64, n. 10. de Groot,Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 617.Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 58.

12Ross,History of Corea, p. 313.

Among the Semites, also, we meet with the idea that a dead man who has no children will miss something in Shĕol through not receiving that kind of worship which ancestors in early times appear to have received.13The Hebrews looked upon marriage as a religious duty.14According to the Shulchan Aruch, he who abstains from marrying is guilty of bloodshed, diminishes the image of God, and causes the divine presence to withdraw from Israel; hence a single man past twenty may be compelled by the court to take a wife.15Muhammedanism likewise regards marriage as a duty for men and women; to neglect it without a sufficient excuse subjects a man to severe reproach.16“When a servant [of God] marries,” said the Prophet, “verily he perfects half his religion.”17

13Cheyne, ‘Harlot,’ in Cheyne and Black,Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1964.

14Mayer,Rechte der Israeliten, pp. 286, 353. Lichtschein,Ehe nach mosaisch-talmudischer Auffassung, p. 5sqq.Klugmann,Die Frau im Talmud, p. 39sq.

15Schulchan Aruch, iv. (‘Eben haezer’) i. 1, 3. See alsoYebamoth, fol. 63 bsq., quoted by Margolis, ‘Celibacy,’ inJewish Encyclopedia, iii. 636.

16Lane,Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, i. 197.

17Idem,Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 221.

The so-called Aryan nations in ancient times, as M. Fustel de Coulanges and others have pointed out, regarded celibacy as an impiety and a misfortune: “an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because he himself would receive no worship after his death.” A man’s happiness in the next world depended upon his having a continuous line of male descendants, whose duty it would be to make the periodical offerings for the repose of his soul.18According to the ‘Laws of Manu,’ marriage is the twelfth Sanskāra, and as such a religious duty incumbent upon all.19Among the Hindus of the present day aman who is not married is generally considered to be almost a useless member of the community, and is indeed looked upon as beyond the pale of nature;20and the spirits of young men who have died without becoming fathers are believed to wander about in a restless miserable manner, like people burdened with an enormous debt which they are quite unable to discharge.21Similar views are expressed in Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda said to Zoroaster:—“The man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man.”22The greatest misfortune which could befall an ancient Persian was to be childless.23To him who has no child the bridge of Paradise shall be barred; the first question the angels there will ask him is, whether he has left in this world a substitute for himself, and if the answer be “No” they will pass by and he will stay at the head of the bridge, full of grief. The primitive meaning of this is plain: the man without a son cannot enter Paradise because there is nobody to pay him the family worship.24Ashi Vanguhi, a feminine impersonification of piety, and the source of all the good and riches that are connected with piety, rejects the offerings of barren people—old men, courtesans, and children.25It is said in the Yasts, “This is the worst deed that men and tyrants do, namely, when they deprive maids that have been barren for a long time of marrying and bringing forth children.”26And in the eyes of all good Parsis of the present day, as in the time of king Darius and the contemporaries of Herodotus, the two greatest merits of a citizen are the begetting and rearing of a numerous family, and the fruitful tilling of the soil.27

18Fustel de Coulanges,La cité antique, p. 54sq.Hearn,The Aryan Household, pp. 69, 71. Mayne,Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage, p. 68sq.

19Laws of Manu, ii. 66sq.Monier-Williams,Indian Wisdom, p. 246.Cf.Mayne,op. cit.p. 69.

20Dubois,Description of the Character, &c. of the People of India, p. 132.

21Monier-Williams,Brāhmanism and Hindūism, p. 243sq.

22Vendîdâd, iv. 47.

23Rawlinson, in his translation of Herodotus, i. 262, n. 1.Cf.Herodotus, i. 133, 136;Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xxxv. 19.

24Darmesteter, inSacred Books of the East, iv. 47.Cf.Idem,Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 294.

25Yasts, xvii. 54.

26Ibid.xvii. 59.

27Darmesteter, inSacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxii.Cf.Ploss-Bartels,Das Weib, i. 173.

The ancient Greeks regarded marriage as a matter both of public and private importance.28In various places criminal proceedings might be taken against celibates.29Plato remarks that every individual is bound to provide for a continuance of representatives to succeed himself as ministers of the Divinity;30and Isaeus says, “All those who think their end approaching look forward with a prudent care that their houses may not become desolate, but that there may be some person to attend to their funeral rites and to perform the legal ceremonies at their tombs.”31So also the conviction that the founding of a house and the begetting of children constituted a moral necessity and a public duty had a deep hold of the Roman mind in early times.32Cicero’s treatise ‘De Legibus’—which generally reproduces in a philosophical form the ancient laws of Rome—contains a law according to which the Censors had to impose a tax upon unmarried men.33But in later periods, when sexual morality reached a very low ebb in Rome, celibacy—as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520B.C.—naturally increased in proportion, especially among the upper classes. Among these marriage came to be regarded as a burden which people took upon themselves at the best in the public interest. Indeed, how it fared with marriage and the rearing of children is shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium thereon;34and later the Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea imposed various penalties on those who lived in a state of celibacy after a certain age,35though with little or no result.36

28Müller,History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, ii. 300sq.Fustel de Coulanges,op. cit.p. 55. Hearn,op. cit.p. 72. Döllinger,The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 234sq.

29Pollux,Onomasticum, iii. 48.

30Plato,Leges, vi. 773.

31Isaeus,Oratio de Apollodori hereditate, 30, p. 66. Rohde observes (Psyche, p. 228), however, that such a belief did not exist in the Homeric age, when the departed souls in Hades were supposed to be in no way dependent upon the survivors.

32Mommsen,History of Rome, i. 74.

33Cicero,De legibus, iii. 3. Fustel de Coulanges,op. cit.p. 55.

34Mommsen,op. cit.iii. 121; iv. 186sq.

35Rossbach,Römische Ehe, p. 418.

36Mackenzie,Studies in Roman Law, p. 104.

Celibacy is thus disapproved of for various reasons. Itappears unnatural. It is taken as an indication of licentious habits. Where ancestors are worshipped after their death it inspires religious horror: the man who leaves himself without offspring shows reckless indifference to the religion of his people, to his own fate after death, and to the duties he owes the dead, whose spirits depend upon the offerings of their descendants for their comfort. The last point of view, as we have seen, is particularly prominent among peoples of archaic culture, but it is not unknown at a lower stage of civilisation. Thus the Eskimo about Behring Strait “appear to have great dread of dying without being assured that their shades will be remembered during the festivals, fearing if neglected that they would thereby suffer destitution in the future life”; hence a pair of childless Eskimo frequently adopt a child, so that when they die there will be some one left whose duty it will be to make the customary feast and offerings to their shades at the festival of the dead.37Finally, in communities with a keen public spirit, especially in ambitious states frequently engaged in war, celibacy is regarded as a wrong committed against the State.

37Nelson, ‘Eskimo about Bering Strait,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xviii. 290.

Modern civilisation looks upon celibacy in a different light. The religious motive for marriage has ceased to exist, the lot of the dead being no longer supposed to depend upon the devotion of the living. It is said, in a general way, that marriage is a duty to the nation or the race, but this argument is hardly applied to individual cases. According to modern ideas the union between man and woman is too much a matter of sentiment to be properly classified among civic duties. Nor does the unmarried state strike us as particularly unnatural. The proportion of unmarried people is gradually growing larger and the age at which people marry is rising.38The chief causes of this increasing celibacy are the difficulty of supporting a family under present conditions of life, and the luxurioushabits of living in the upper classes of society. Another reason is that the domestic circle does not fill so large a place in life as it did formerly; the married state has in some measure lost its advantage over the single state, and there are many more pleasures now that can be enjoyed as well or even better in celibacy. Moreover, by the diffusion of a finer culture throughout the community, men and women can less easily find any one whom they are willing to take as a partner for life; their requirements are more exacting, they have a livelier sense of the serious character of the marriage union, and they are less willing to contract it from any lower motives.39

38Westermarck,op. cit.p. 146.

39Ibid.p. 147sqq.‘Why is Single Life becoming more General?’ inThe Nation, vi. 190sq.

Nay, far from enjoining marriage as a duty incumbent upon all, enlightened opinion seems to agree that it is a duty for many people never to marry. In some European countries the marriages of persons in receipt of poor-law relief have been legally prohibited, and in certain cases the legislators have gone further still and prohibited all marriages until the contracting parties can prove that they possess the means of supporting a family.40The opinion has also been expressed that the State ought to forbid the unions of persons suffering from certain kinds of disease, which in all probability would be transmitted to the offspring. People are beginning to feel that it entails a heavy responsibility to bring a new being into existence, and that many persons are wholly unfit for such a task.41Future generations will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and lust.

40Lecky,Democracy and Liberty, ii. 181.

41See Mr. Galton’s papers on “Eugenics” and the discussions of the subject inSociological Papers, vols. i. and ii.

Side by side with the opinion that marriage is a duty for all ordinary men and women we find among many peoplesthe notion that persons whose function it is to perform religious or magical rites must be celibates.42The Thlinkets believe that if a shaman does not observe continuous chastity his own guardian spirits will kill him.43In Patagonia the male wizards were not allowed to marry.44In some tribes of the Guaranies of Paraguay “the female Payes were bound to chastity, or they no longer obtained credit.”45Celibacy was compulsory on the priests of the Chibchas in Bogota.46The Tohil priests in Guatemala were vowed to perpetual continence.47In Ichcatlan the high-priest was obliged to live constantly within the temple, and to abstain from commerce with any woman whatsoever; and if he failed in this duty he was cut in pieces, and the bloody limbs were given as a warning to his successor.48Of the women who held positions in the temples of ancient Mexico we are told that their chastity was most zealously guarded; during the performance of their duties they were required to keep at a proper distance from the male assistants, at whom they did not even dare to glance. The punishment to be inflicted upon those who violated their vow of chastity was death; whilst, if their trespass remained entirely secret, they endeavoured to appease the anger of the gods by fasting and austerity of life, dreading that in punishment of their crime their flesh would rot.49In Yucatan there was, connected with the worship of the sun, an order of vestals the members of which generally enrolled themselves for a certain time, but were afterwards allowed to leave and enter the married state. Some of them, however, remained for ever in the service of the temple and were apotheosised. Their duty was to attend to the sacred fire, and to keep strictly chaste,those who broke their vows being shot to death with arrows.50In Peru there were likewise virgins dedicated to the sun, who lived in perpetual seclusion to the end of their lives, who preserved their virginity and were forbidden to converse or have sexual intercourse with or to see any man, or even any woman who was not one of themselves.51And besides the virgins who thus professed perpetual virginity in the monasteries, there were other women, of the blood royal, who led the same life in their own houses, having taken a vow of continence. These women “were held in great veneration for their chastity and purity, and, as a mark of worship and respect, they were calledOcllo, which was a name held sacred in their idolatry”; but if they lost their virtue, they were burnt alive or cast into “the lake of lions.”52

42Some instances of this are stated by Landtman,Origin of Priesthood, p. 156sq.

43Veniaminof, quoted by Landtman,op. cit.p. 156.

44Falkner,Description of Patagonia, p. 117.

45Southey,History of Brazil, ii. 371.

46Simon, quoted by Dorman,Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 384.

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