Chapter 110

28A. R. Wallace, in his ‘Introductory Note’ to myHistory of Human Marriage, p. vi. Giddings,Principles of Sociology, p. 267. Howard,History of Matrimonial Institutions, i. 125sqq.Sir E. B. Tylor (inAcademy, xl. 289) says with regard to my theory that, at any rate, I am “well on the track.” See also Crooke,Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, i. pp. clxxix, clxxx, ccii.

29Robertson Smith, inNature, xliv. 271.

30Lang,Social Origins, p. 33.

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

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

32Cf.Bentham,Theory of Legislation, p. 220:—“Individuals accustomed to see each other and to know each other, from an age which is neither capable of conceiving the desire nor of inspiring it, will see each other with the same eyes to the end of life.”

33For advocates of such a view see Westermarck,op. cit.p. 310sqq.More recently it has been expressed by Krauss, inAm Ur-Quell, iv. 151, and Finck,Primitive Love, p. 49.

34Plato,Leges, viii. 838. Among the Maoris of New Zealand, according to Mr. Colenso (Maori Races, p. 47sq.), adult brothers and sisters slept together, as they had always done from their birth, “not only without sin, but without thought of it.”

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

35Havelock Ellis,Studies in the Psychology of Sex, ‘Sexual Selection in Man,’ p. 205sq.

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

37Havelock Ellis,op. cit.p. 164.

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

38Steinmetz, ‘Die neueren Forschungen zur Geschichte der menschlichen Familie,’ inZeitschr. f. Socialwiss.ii. 818sq.

39Ibid.ii. 818.

40Westermarck,op. cit.p. 321sqq.Among the Western Islanders of Torres Straits marriage was forbidden, “with a remarkable delicacy of feeling, to the sister of a man’s particular friend” (Haddon, ‘Ethnology of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xix. 315).

41Lucina Hagman, ‘Från samskolan,’ inHumanitas, ii. 188sq.

42For the connection between religious feelings and the sexual impulse, see Vallon and Marie, ‘Des psychoses religieuses,’ inArchives de Neurologie, ser. ii. vol. iii. 184sq.; Gadelius,Om tvångstankar, p. 120sq.; Starbuck,Psychology of Religion, p. 401sqq.

43Veniammof, quoted by Petroff,Report on Alaska, p. 155.

44Shooter,Kafirs of Natal, p. 45.

45von Brenner,Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 212.

46van Baarda, ‘Fabelen, verhalen en overleveringen der Galelareezen,’ inBijdragen tot detaal-,land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xlv. (ser. vi. vol. 1.) p. 514. See also Frazer,Golden Bough, ii. 212sq.

47Westermarck,op. cit.p. 308. Katz,Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts, p. 116sq.

48Stephen,History of the Criminal Law of England, ii. 411.

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

49Cunow,op. cit.p. 185. Durkheim, inL’année sociologique, i. 39, n. 2. Steinmetz, inZeitschr. f. Socialwiss.ii. 819.

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

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

52Maine,Dissertations, p. 257sq.

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

53Westermarck,op. cit.p. 363sqq.

54Rossbach,Römische Ehe, p. 465.

55Lewin,Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 201.

56Dalton,Ethnology of Bengal, p. 28.

57Garcilasso de la Vega,First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 308.

58Müller,History of the Doric Race, ii. 302. Hearn,The Aryan Household, p. 156sq.

59Gaius,Institutiones, i. 56.

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

60Westermarck,op. cit.p. 368sqq.

61von Martius,Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika’s, i. 71. von Spix and von Martius,Travels in Brazil, ii. 74.

62Ellis,Polynesian Researches, i. 256. Cook,Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, ii. 171sq.

63Westermarck,op. cit.p. 371.

64Monier-Williams,Hinduism, p. 155.

65Mommsen,History of Rome, i. 371. Rossbach,op. cit.pp. 249, 456sq.

66Winroth,Äktenskapshindren, p. 227.

67Ibid.p. 230sq.Weinhold,Deutsche Frauen in dem Mittelalter, i. 349, 353sq.

68Weinhold,op. cit.i. 349sq.

69Behrend, in von Holtzendorff,Encyclopädie der Rechtswissenschaft, i. 478.

70Maine,Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, p. 224sq.

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

71Lane,Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, i. 123. d’Escayrac de Lauture,Die afrikanische Wüste, p. 68.

72Frankel,Grundlinien des mosaisch-talmudischen Eherechts, p. xx. Ritter,Philo und die Halacha, p. 71.

73Andree,Zur Volkskunde der Juden, p. 48. Neubauer, ‘Notes on the Race-Types of the Jews,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xv. 19.

741 Corinthians, vii. 39.

75Tertullian,Ad uxorem, ii. 3 (Migne,Patrologiæ cursus, i. 1292sq.).

76Concilium Eliberitanum, cap. 15sq.(Labbe-Mansi,Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, ii. 8). See also Müller,Das sexuelle Leben der christlichen Kulturvölker, p. 54.

77Winroth,op. cit.p. 213sqq.

78Ibid.p. 220sq.

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

79de Gobineau,Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, p. 174, n. 1.Cf.d’Escayrac de Lauture,op. cit.p. 155.

80Westermarck,op. cit.p. 372.

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

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

81Westermarck,op. cit.ch. xvii.

82Dr. Grosse (Die Formen der Familie, p. 105) goes so far as to believe that marriage by capture has never been a form of marriage recognised by custom or law, but only an occasional and punishable act of violence. But, as Dr. Havelock Ellis justly observes (Studies in the Psychology of Sex, ‘Analysis of the Sexual Impulse,’ p. 62, n. 2), this position is too extreme.

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

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