The most ancient form of marriage under father-right was polygamy. Wives and children were a source of wealth in primitive communities. As a rule there was a principal wife for the procreation of legitimate children, but in addition a wealthy man had several subordinate wives or concubines. Polygamy has always been dependent on the possession of property. The position of each wife and that of her children was fixed by custom, sometimes enforced by law; in no case was a man free from obligations in regard to any woman who had “been to him as a wife”; even an unfruitful and childless woman could not be cast aside without provision being made for her. It is important to remember this. However distasteful the idea of legalised polygamy must be, and I believe it is distasteful to the majority of women and men (and this not from ethical reasons, but on account of deep and instinctive desires), it is certain that an open recognition of unions outside of marriage does prevent an escape from sexual responsibility on the part of men. I shall consider this question in fuller detail in a later chapter,[78] just now we are concerned with the development of marriage.
Out of this patriarchal polygamy monogamic marriage gradually arose. The long upward process by which the change was accomplished cannot be stated here. One factor I would emphasise, as its force has never, I think, been sufficiently recognised. Polygamy tends to disappear with the development of the conception of fatherhood. As I have asserted already, the child is bound to its mother and belongs to her whatever the form of marriage, but the same force does not act in the case of the father. The child belongs to him much more closely under monogamy than under polygamy or any other form of marriage. Now men do want the possession of their children. Thus a desire to have many children by several wives gives place to the desire to have a closer connection with fewer children born of one loved wife. As the marriage relations become more firmly established the partners in each union are held more closely to each other and to their children, and are pledged to greater purity of life.
There were, of course, many causes that contributed to this result. Chastity, first imposed upon the wife because she was the property of her husband and might transgress this rule only with his permission, came in time to bind men, though for a different reason. For the limits set to the sexual freedom of women acted also on them, since they were thus deprived of the means of obtaining women for themselves, without violating the rights of other men.
In this and other ways we find that polygamy was threatened on many sides. As an accepted and legalised form of marriage it tends to disappear with the conditions under which social life is developed. Like the maternal marriage, and other primitive experiments in sexual associations, polygamy is not a form of marriage that can be regarded as a permanent expression of the marriage law: that is, it is experimental and suitable to special conditions; it is not a final form, growing up by custom from earlier practices, or one which strives for mastery and will not tolerate other co-existent forms. On the other hand, monogamy has always been characterised by the strongest self-assertion, and from the earliest times we find it triumphing, and more and more seeking to exclude other forms of marriage.
These facts of the past history of marriage need to be considered by those who seek to bring discredit on monogamous marriage. Various reformers, too frightenedly concerned with the present shortage of men, increasing as it will enormously the disproportion between the number of the two sexes, have jumped to the conclusion that polygamy is likely to be legalised in the near future. I do not believe it. At least, it will not be polygamy under the form we have known it in the past. Polygamy has always been connected with the property value of woman and is dependent upon wealth. For this reason, even if for no other, polygamy will not replace monogamous marriages. Such a marriage system could not be supported by war-impoverished countries. The remedy must be a different one, as presently I shall show.
There is a strange idea among some people that sexual happiness can be gained by breaking away from the traditional bonds; it is the visible sign of our confusion as a people and the want of happiness in our lives. We should not set at naught the experience of the ages. Polygamy is an institution which in the growth of civilisation belongs only to primitive or non-progressive states. No race or nation has ever risen to front rank, or even secondary rank, under this marriage system. Our preference for monogamy goes beyond laws and religions. It is that deeply rooted thing—a matter of racial experience and desire. It is the best way that we have yet found of men and women living together.
The individual household, where both parents share in the common interest of bringing up the children, is the foundation on which monogamy has been built up and on which it must stand. If the conditions of the home are seriously changed, and the duty of providing and caring for the children is taken out of the hands of either or of both parents, a change in marriage practice will follow. I do not think you can hold the one if you let the other go. For Westermarck is right, and children should not be regarded as the result of marriage, but rather marriage is the result of children. And love between parents implies duties and sorrows on each side; without this, love, even of the most passionate kind, loses its quality and tends to become an ephemeral or even a corrupt thing.
There is much stupidity in the view of many reformers of marriage who fail to see that, however hard it is to live faithfully as man and wife, the monogamic ideal of marriage does so appeal to our emotional nature, that men and women are seriously unhappy in trying to destroy it. Fortunately it is easier to talk of “love’s freedom” than it is to act as if it ever could be free. In spite of what advanced people say, some feeling of duty will always exist as long as it at all hurts us to hurt others. The immorality that says, “Do what you desire irrespective of others,” is as yet beyond most of us.
Attempts to solve these problems quickly are bound to fail. Intellectual revolutionists are, I think, too hopeful with regard to what may be done to produce a harmony of sexual needs. The optimism that once prevailed in economics is being transformed to sexual matters. Once people supposed that if every one followed his own interests, a harmony would automatically establish itself in the economy of society. Now they tend to say the same about sex. They put forward many solutions, but they do not as a rule make use of these solutions, even when they could, in their own lives. They say what they do not believe, either with conscious insincerity, or because they are ignorant of life and are used to trying to get effects with words.
Intellectual views of life and of what is right and wrong always tend to break people into groups, each struggling to explain everything according to one theory, built on a single principle. And as the result of caring so much for one thing people seem quite unable to grasp any facts that do not refer to their own one particular reform, they are not even able to consider it as part of a world in which there is anything else. All the evil in marriage is due to too large families and population pressing on the food supply, we are told by one class of enthusiasts, while others point to men’s tyranny over women. Votes for women would have a magical effect: men are all bad, say some. The father is a parasite, unnecessary except for his share in begetting the child; the mother is the one parent. All would be well if legal marriage were abolished and motherhood made free, is the view common among one class of reformers. Eugenical breeding and the sterilisation of the unfit is the remedy brought forward by others. Many suggest economic changes and the endowment of motherhood.