POLYGAMY
Rarity of monogamy.—Taste for change in animals.—Rôles of monogamy and polygamy in the stability or instability of specific types.—Strife of the couple against polygamy.—Couples among insects.—Among fish, batrachians, saurians.—Monogamy of pigeons, of nightingales.—Monogamy in carnivora, in rodents.—Habits of the rabbit.—The ichneumon.—Unknown causes of polygamy.—Rarity and superabundance of males.—Polygamy in insects.—In fish.—In gallinaceæ, in web-footed birds.—In herbivora.—The antelopes harem.—Human polygamy.—How it tempers the couple among civilized races.
There are no monogamous animals save those which love only once during their lifetime. Exceptions to this rule have not sufficient constancy to be erected into a counter-rule. There are monogamists in fact, there are none of necessity, from the time an animal lives long enough to commit the reproductive act several times. Free female mammals nearly always flee the male who has once served them, they need a new one. A bitch does not receive last season's dog save in direst extremity. This appears to me to be the struggle of the specie against variety. The couple is the maker of varieties. Polygamy drags them back to the general type of the specie. Individuals of a specie frankly polygamous should present a very great similarity; if the species incline toward a certain monogamy, the dissemblances become more numerous. It is not an illusion which makes us recognize in human races almost monogamous, a lesser uniformity of type than in polygamous societies or those given over to promiscuity, or among animal species. The example of the dog seems the worst that one could have chosen. It isn't, it is the best, considering that in receiving successively individuals of different variety, the bitch tends to produce individuals not of a specialized breed, but on the contrary of a type where several breeds will be mixed, individuals which in crossing and recrossing in their turn, will end, if the dogs live in a free state, in forming one single specie. Sexual liberty tends to establish uniformity of type; monogamy strives against this tendency and maintains diversity.[1] Another consequence of this manner of seeing is that one must consider monogamy as favourable to intellectual development, intelligence being a differentiation which accomplishes itself more often, in proportion as there are individuals and groups who differ physically. Physical uniformity engenders uniformity of sensibility, thence of intelligence; this does not need to be explained; now intelligences count, and mark only their differences; uniform, they are as if they were not; impotent to hook themselves one onto the other, to react against each other, lacking asperities, lacking contrary currents. This is the flock, in which each member makes the same gesture of flight, of biting, or of roaring.
Neither the conditions of absolute monogamy, nor those of absolute promiscuity seem to be found at present in humanity, nor among animals; but one sees the couple, in several animal and human species, either in state of tendency, or in state of habit. More often, especially among insects, the father, even if he survives it a little while, remains indifferent, to the consequences of the genital act. At other times, the fights between males so reduce their number that a sole male remains the master and servant of a great number of females. So one must distinguish between true, and successive polygamy; between the monogamy of one season, and that of an entire lifetime; and finally one must set apart those animals who make love only once, or during one season which is followed by death. These different varieties and nuances demand methodic classification. It would be a long work, and would perhaps not attain true exactitude, for in animals, as in man, one must count with caprice in sexual matters: when a faithful dove is tired of her lover, she takes flight, and soon forms a new couple with an adulterous male. The couple is natural, but the permanent couple is not. Man has never bent to it, save with difficulty, even though it be one of the principal conditions of his superiority.
The breasts of the male do not seem to prove the primordiality of the couple in mammals. Although there are veridic examples of the male's having given suck, it is difficult to consider the male udder as destined for a real rôle, or for an emergency milking.[2] This replacement has been too rarely observed for one to use it as a basis of argument. Embryology gives a good explanation of the existence of this useless organ. An useless instrument is, moreover, quite as frequent in nature as the absence of a useful instrument. Perfect concordance of organ and act is rare. In the case of insects who live but for one love-season, sometimes for two real seasons if they can benumb themselves for the winter, polygamy is nearly always the consequence of the rarity of males, or the superabundance of females. Space is too vast, their food too abundant for there to be truly deadly combats between males. Moreover, their love accomplished, the minuscule folk ask only to die, the couple is formed only for the actual time of fecundation, the two animals at once resume their liberty, that is for the female to deliver her eggs, and for the male to languish, and sometimes to cast a final song to the winds. There are exceptions to this rule, but if one looks upon the exceptions with the same gaze as on the rule, one would see in nature only what one sees on the surface of a river, vague movements and passing shadows. To conceive some reality, one must conceive a rule, first, as an instrument of vision and of measure. With most insects the male does nothing but live; he deposits his seed in the female receptacle, flies on, vanishes. He does not share any of the labours preparatory to laying. Alone the female sphex engages in her terrible and clever strife with the cricket, whom she paralyzes with three stabs of her dagger in his three moto-nervous centres; alone she hollows the oblique burrow at the bottom of which live her larvæ; alone she adorns it, fills it with provisions, closes it. Alone the female cerceris heaps up in the deep gallery the stunned weevils and burn-cows, fruit of her excavations, larder for her progeny. Alone the she-osmie, she-wasp, she-philanthe—one would have to cite nearly all the hymenoptera. One understands better, when the insect deposits her eggs by chance, without prefatory manœuvres, or by special instruments, that the male co-operation is lacking; only the female cicada can sink her clever burrow in the olive bark.
There are however couples among insects. Among coleoptera there are the "purse-maker," the necrophore. Stercorian geotrupes, lunar copris, onitis bison, sisyphus, work soberly side by side preparing the larder for their coming families. In these cases, the male seems master, he directs the manœuvres in the complicated operations of the necrophores. A couple get busy about a corpse, say of a field mouse; nearly always one or two isolated males join them, the troop is organized, one sees the chief engineer explore the territory and give orders. The female awaits them, motionless, ready to obey, to follow the movement. As soon as there is a couple the male necrophore commands. The male assists the female during the work of arranging the cell and the laying. Most purse-makers, sisyphus or copris make and transport together the pill which serves as food for the larvæ; their couple is just like that of birds. One might believe that in this case monogamy is necessitated by the nature of the work; not at all: the male in other quite closely related species, sacred scarab, for example, leaves the female alone to build the excremental ball in which she encloses her eggs.
Coming up to vertebrata one finds also certain examples of a sort of monogamy: when the male fish serves as hatcher for his own eggs, either carrying them in a special pouch, or heroicly sheltering them in his mouth. This is rare, since, usually, the two sexes of fish do not approach each other, do not even know each other. Batrachians, on the contrary, are monogamous; the female does not lay save under male pressure, and it is so slow an operation, preceded by such long manœuvres that the whole season is filled with it. The male of the common land toad rolls the long chaplet of eggs about his feet as soon as it is divided, and goes in the evening to place it in the neighbouring pool. Nearly all saurians seem also to be monogamous. The he and she lizard form a couple said to last several years. Their amours are ardent, they clasp each other closely belly to belly.
Birds are generally considered monogamous, save gallinaceæ and web-footed birds; but exceptions appear so numerous that one would have to name the species one by one. The fidelity of pigeons is legendary, and is perhaps only a legend. The male pigeon certainly has tendencies to infidelity and even to polygamy. He deceives his companion; he goes so far as to inflict upon her the shame of having a concubine under the conjugal roof! And these two spouses, he tyrannizes over them, he enslaves them by beating. The female, it is true, is not always of an easy disposition. She has her caprices. Sometimes, refusing her mate, she deserts him and gives herself to the first comer. One will not find here any of the zoölogical anecdotes on the industry of birds, their union in devotion to the specie. The habits of these new-comers in the world, are very unstable; yet among certain gallinaceæ, monogamous for exception, like the partridge, the males seem pulled by contrary desires, they undergo the couple rather than choose it, and their share in the rearing of young is often very slight. One has seen the male red partridge, after mating, abandon his female and rejoin a troop of male vagabonds. The nightingales, perfect pair, sit on the eggs turn by turn. The male, when the female comes to relieve him, remains near by and sings until she is comfortably settled on the eggs. Still more devoted is the male talegalle, a sort of Australian turkey. He makes the nest, an enormous heap of dead leaves; when the female has laid, he watches the eggs, comes from time to time to uncover them for exposure to the sun. He takes his share of watching the young, sheltering them under leaves until they are able to fly.
Of mammals, the carnivora and rodents often practice a certain, at least temporary, monogamy. Foxes live in couples, and educate the young foxes. One finds their real habits in the old "Roman du Renart": Renard the fox goes vagabond, hunting for prey and windfalls, while Madame Hermaline, his wife, waits at home, in her bower at Maupertuis. The vixen teaches her children the art of killing and dividing; their apprenticeship is made on the still living game which the male purveyor has brought to the house. The rabbit is very rough in love; the hamster, another rodent, often becomes carnivorous during the rutting season; they say that he is quite ready to eat his young, and that the female, fearing his ferocity, leaves him before delivery. These aberrations are exaggerated in captivity, and affect even the female. One knows that the she-rabbit sometimes eats her young; this happens especially when one has the imprudence to touch or even to look too closely at the young rabbits. This is enough to bring on a violent disturbance of maternal sentiment. The same dementia has been observed in a vixen who had kittened in a cage; one day someone passed, and looked steadily at the young foxes, a quarter of an hour later they were throttled.
Various explanations are given for this practice among she-rabbits, the simplest being that they are driven by thirst to kill the young in order to drink the blood. This is rather Dantescan for she-rabbits. They say also, regarding both wild and tame rabbits, that the female when surprised kills the young because she has not industry like the doe-hare, cat, or bitch, to transport them to some other place or to save at least one, by the scruff of its neck. The third explanation is that, devouring the afterbirth, like nearly all mammals, and this from physiological motive, the doe-rabbit acquires a taste, and continues the meal, absorbing the young as well. Without rejecting any of these explanations one may present several others. First, it is not only the females who eat the young, the males are equally given to it. Being very lascivious, the male rabbit tries to get rid of his young, in order to stop suckling, and have his female again. On the other hand, it is a regular fact, that as soon as she has retaken the habit of having the male, the mother rabbit, even if she is still giving suck, at once ceases to recognize her offspring, her brief ideas already turned toward her new, coming family. Different causes may engender identical acts, and different lines of reasoning bring the same conclusions. There is reasoning in this case of the rabbit; there is no reasoning save in case of initial error, when there is trouble in the intellect. This trouble and the final massacre is all that one can state definitely: the reasoning escapes our analysis.
Is the rabbit really monogamous? Perhaps, with a monogamy for the season, or from necessity. The male, in any case pays no attention to the young, unless it be to throttle them; thus the female as soon as she is gravid, takes refuge in an isolated burrow. Their coupling, which occurs especially toward evening, is repeated as often as five or six times an hour, the female crouching in a particular manner; the break away is very sudden, the male throwing himself back, sidewise and uttering a short cry. What really makes one doubt the monogamy of the rabbit is that one male is enough for eight or ten females, that he is a great runner, that the males have murderous fights among themselves. Doubtless one must take each specie separately. Buffon pretends that in a warren the oldest buck rabbits have authority over the young. An observer of rabbit habits, M. Mariot-Didieux, admits this trait of superior sociability in angoras, which is just the specie Buffon had studied.
Buck rabbits have still other aberrations, hunters pretend that they pursue doe-hares, tire them and wear them out by their lustiness; it is certain that these couplings give no result.
The Egyptian ichneumon lives in families. It seems that it is very interesting to see them on a hunting expedition, first the male, then the female, then the young in Indian file. Female and young do not take their eyes off father, and imitate all his gestures with care: one might think the train was a large serpent moving in reeds. The wolf who like the fox lives in pairs, helps his female and feeds her, but he does not know his young and will eat them if they come to hand. Certain great apes, gibbon and orang are temporarily monogamous.
Polygamy would be explained by the rarity of males; which is not the case with most mammals, among whom the males are almost constantly more numerous. Buffon was the first to note this predominance, neither has he nor has anyone since, given a satisfactory explanation. People have said that in man, at least, the elder parent gives the sex to the offspring, and the more surely as the difference in age is greater, but, by this reckoning one would have almost nothing but males. People have also said that the younger the woman, the more likely the child to be male. The early marriages of the past are supposed to have yielded more males than the late marriages of the present. None of these statements is serious. What remains past doubt is that European humanity, to consider only that, gives an excess of males. The general average is about 105, with extremes of 101 in Russia, and 113 in Greece; the French average is the same as the general average. One has not been able to make out, in these variations, either influence of race, or of climate, or of taxes, or of nationality, or anything else in particular. There are more male humans, more male sheep: it is a fact, which being regular, will be difficult to explain.
We find here superabundance, there penury of males, but neither does the abundance determine the customs, nor is it likely the lack of males would do so. There are so few males among gnats that Fabre was the first to recognize them, the proportion about one male to ten females. This in no way produces polygamy, for the male dies the instant after coupling. Nine out of ten gnat females die virgin, and even without having seen a male, without knowing that males exist: perhaps celibacy augments their ferocity, for it is the female gnat and she alone who sucks our gore. One supposes also that female spiders outnumber the males ten or twenty to one: perhaps the buck who has escaped the jaws of one mistress has the courage to risk his life yet again? It is possible, the male spider who survives his amours may live on for several years. Polygamy seems to exist, and in its most refined form, with one sort of spider, the ctenize, whose males are peculiarly rare. The female digs a nest in the earth, into which the male descends; he lives there some time, then he leaves, comes back: there are several houses between which he divides his time equitably.
The polygamy of a curious little fish, the stickleback, is of the same sort, although more naive. The male builds a grass nest, then goes in search of a female, brings her back to the nest, invites her to lay; scarcely has his first companion departed when he brings in another. He only stops when there is a satisfactory treasure of eggs, then he fecundates them in the usual manner. Thence on he guards the nest against malefactors, and watches the hatching. In the odd reversal of rôles, the young recognize their father; their mother may be the fish passing between them, or the one gliding off like a shadow, or the one chewing a grass blade. When the stickleback world becomes reasonable, that is to say absurd, it will perhaps give itself up to the "recherche de la maternité"? Their philosophers will demand "Why should the father alone be charged with the education of his offspring?" Up to the present one knows nothing except that he educates them with joy and affection. Among sticklebacks and among men there is no answer to such question save the answer given by facts. One might as well ask why humanity is not hermaphrodite, like the snails, who strictly divide the pleasures and burdens of love, for all snails commit the male act, and all lay. Why has the female ovaries, and the male testicles: and this flower pistils, and this one stamens? One ends in baby-talk. The wish to correct nature is unnecessary. It is hard enough to understand her, even a little, as she is. When she wishes to establish the absolute responsibility of the father, she establishes the strict couple, and especially, absolute polygamy. The pigeon is no longer certain of being the father of his young; the cock can not doubt it, he being the sole male among all his hens. But nature has no secondary intentions, she keeps watch that, temporary or durable, fugitive or permanent the couples are fecund; that is all.
Gallinaceæ and web-feet present certain birds best known and most useful to us. They are nearly all polygamous. The cock needs about a dozen hens, he can do with a much larger number, but in that case his ardour wears itself out. The duck, very licentious, is accused of sodomy. Not only is he polygamous, but anything will serve him. He might better be a natural example of promiscuity. A gander is good for ten or twelve geese, the cock-pheasant for eight or ten hens. The lyrure tetras needs many more, he leads a sultan's harem behind him. At dawn, in the season of amours, the male starts whistling with a noise like steel on a grindstone, simultaneously stretching himself up, and spreading the fan of his tail, opening and puffing his wings. When the sun clears the horizon he rejoins his females, dances before them, while they devour him with their eyes, then he mounts them, according to his caprice, and with great vivacity.
Polygamy is the rule among herbivora; bulls, bucks, stallions, bison are made to reign over a troop of females. Domesticity changes their permanent polygamy into successive polygamy. Stags go from female to female without tying up to any; the females follow this example. A specie immediately akin gives, on the contrary, an example of the couple; the roebuck and his doe live in family, and bring up their young until these are ready to mate. The male of a certain Asian antelope needs more than a hundred docile females. Naturally, these harems can only be formed by the destruction of other males. This hundred females represents possibly more than a hundred males put out of business, males being always the more numerous sex, among mammals. The utility of such hecatombs to the race is not certain. Doubtless one may suppose that the surviving male is the strongest, or one of the strongest of his generation, that is the lucky element, but whatever his vigour it may be expected to wane at some point or other before a hundred females desiring satisfaction. Some females are forgotten, others fecundated in moments of weariness: for a certain number of good products, there are a number of mediocre creations. True, these are destined, if male, to perish in future combats; but if they are female, and if they receive the favours of the chief, this system might have for consequence the progressive degradation of the specie. It is however, probable that the necessary equilibrium is re-established; combats between females, combats of coquetry, incitements of femininity, doubtless take place, and it is the triumph of the malest male and of the most female females.
Virey asserts, in Déterville's "Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle," that the greater polygamous apes get on very well with women indigenes. It is possible, but no product has ever been born of these aberrations, which we must leave to theological works on bestialitas. Men and women, even of the Aryan race have at times set out to prove the radical animality of the human specie by the peculiarity of their tastes. The interest in these matters is chiefly psychological, and if one can draw no proof of evolution from the chance relations between woman and dog, man and goat, the coupling of primates of different orders offers no evidence either. There is however a relation between man and apes, it is that they are both divisible into polygamists and monogamists, at least temporary; but this does not differentiate them from most other animal species.
In most human races there is a radical polygamy, dissimulated under a show-front of monogamy. Here generalizations are no longer possible, the individual emerges and with his fantasy upsets all observations, and annihilates all statistics. The monogamist's brother is polygamous. A woman has known only one man, and her mother was every one's fancy. One may assert the universal custom of marriage and deduce monogamy as a conclusion, and this will be false or true according to the epoch, milieu, race, moral tendencies of the moment. Moral codes are essentially unstable, since they represent only a hand-book ideal of happiness; morality will modify itself according to the mobility of this ideal.
Physiologically, monogamy is in no way required by the normal conditions of human life. Children? If the father's help is necessary it can be exercised over the children of several women as well as over those of one woman only. The duration of tutelage among civilized people is, moreover, excessive; it is dragged out, when it is a matter of certain careers, almost until ripe age. Normally puberty ought to liberate the young human, as it liberates the young of other mammals. The couple need then last only ten or fifteen years; but female fecundity accumulates children at a year's interval, so that, as long as the father's virility lasts, there might be, always one feeble creature having right to demand protection. Human polygamy could then, never be successive polygamy, save by exception, that is, if man were an obedient animal, submitting to normal sexual rules, and always fecund; but this successivity is frequent and divorce has legalized it. The other and true polygamy, polygamy actual, temporary or permanent, is still less rare among people of European civilization, but nearly always secret and never legal; it has for corollary a polyandry exercised under the same conditions. This sort of polygamy is very different from that of Mormons, Turks, gallinaceæ and antelopes, it is nothing more than promiscuity. It does not dissolve the couple, in diminishing its tyranny it renders it more desirable. Nothing so favours marriage, and consequently, social stability, as the de facto indulgence in temporary polygamy. The Romans well understood this, and legalized concubinage. One can not here deal with a question so remote from, natural questions. To condense one's answer into briefest possible space, one would say that man, and principally civilized man, is vowed to the couple, but he only endures it on condition that he may leave and return to it at will. This solution seems to conciliate his contradictory tastes, and is more elegant than the one offered by divorce, which is always the same thing over again; it is in conformity not only with human, but also with animal tendencies. It is favourable to the species, in assuring the suitable up-bringing of children, and also to the complete satisfaction of a need, which, in a state of civilization is inseparable either from æsthetic pleasure or sentimental pleasure.
[1] That is to say in the eye of some imaginary divinity who might be supposed to regard humanity, or even the slower mammals from a timeless or say five century altitude.—Translator's note.
[2] One believes nevertheless that the male bat suckles one of the two young that the couple regularly produces. But these animals are so odd and so heteroclite that this example, if it is authentic, would not be a decisive argument.