The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family

by Ch. Letourneau

I. The Family in China.

In order to study the family under the latest forms that it has assumed, we must set aside all strict distinction of race. Doubtless the white races have ended by excelling the others, and by attaining a higher degree of moral, social, and intellectual development. Nevertheless, the ethnic groups, belonging to the races classed together en bloc as inferior, have emerged from savagery, and formed large societies, which have been veritable training schools for the men of their race.

Now, in all the States which have succeeded in attaining some degree of civilisation, the paternal family is the type that has been finally adopted. It was thus in Peru, in Mexico, and even in ancient Egypt, where King Philometor gave the finishing stroke to the maternal family which had so long flourished in the valley of the Nile. With much more reason in China, a country very civilised after its own fashion, an analogous evolution must have been effected. Indeed, in China proper, there are scarcely any traces of the maternal family left; but they are still visible in Japan, whose civilisation has been entirely borrowed from China.

In Japan, as formerly among the Basques, filiation is subordinated to the transmission of the patrimony whole and inalienated. It is to the first-born, whether boy or girl, that the inheritance is transmitted, and he or she is forbidden to abandon it. At the time of marriage the husband or wife must take the name of the heir or heiress, who marries and personifies the property. Filiation is therefore sometimes maternal and sometimes paternal; but the maternal uncle still bears the name of “second little father”; the paternal aunt is called “little mother,” the paternal uncle is called “little father,” etc.[1038] Marriage between groups of brothers and other groups of sisters has been common enough in primitive societies to enable us to see in this familial nomenclature the traces of one of those ancient unions at once monogamic and polygamic.

In China the language itself attests the ancient existence of a marriage contracted by a group of brothers having their wives in common, but not marrying their sisters. A Chinaman always calls the sons of his brother his “sons,” whilst he considers those of his sister as his nephews;[1039] but the virtual, or rather fictitious fathers, brothers, and sons, are distinguished from the real fathers, brothers, and sons, by the epithet “class” added to their appellation. Thus they say, “class-father, class-son, class-brother”—that is to say, the man who belongs to the class of the father, to that of the son, or to that of the brother. It is therefore simply the American nomenclature perfected.[1040] We have previously seen that in China proper, not only the paternal family, but the patriarchate, are rigorously established; that woman is in extreme subjection, and always disinherited;[1041] but certain impediments to marriage can only relate to an ancient familial organisation which has now disappeared. In all the vast Chinese empire there are scarcely more than from one to two hundred family names, and the Chinese call themselves the “people of a hundred families.” Now in China all marriage between persons bearing the same name is prohibited.[1042] In certain villages every one has the same family name; two or three thousand persons, for example, are called “sheep,” “ox,” “horse,” etc., all of them appellations agreeing well with clans having corresponding totems.[1043] But however it may have been in the past, at the present day masculine filiation is well established in China, and nine degrees of kinship in the direct line are distinguished, which an old Chinese author has enumerated as follows:—“All men who come into the world have nine degrees of kinship—namely, my own generation in the first place, then that of my father, of my grandfather, and of the father and grandfather of my grandfather. In a descending line come the generation of my son, that of my grandson, then that of his son and his grandson. All the members of one same generation are brothers to each other.”[1044] Let us note that this filiation, short as it is, is still associated with kinship by classes.

Doubtless these accounts, taken alone, would be insufficient, but united with those which the study of the family among the Australians, the Redskins, the Tamils, etc., has furnished us with, they warrant us in believing that the Chinese paternal family is the last term of an evolution having for its starting-point the familial clan, and having passed through the maternal family.

Let us add, in conclusion, that the system of fictitious kinships is reflected throughout the governmental organisation of China. In reality the political structure of China is only an enlarged copy of the family. The emperor is the reputed father and even mother of all the empire. The mandarin who governs a town is the “father” of that town, and he himself has for “governmental father” the mandarin of a superior grade, whom he obeys.[1045]

We shall now discover traces of a similar evolution of the family among the Semites and Berbers.

II. The Family among Semitic Races.

When we read the word “patriarch” in our current literature, our thoughts instantly fly to the chief of the ancient Semitic, and especially the Hebraic family, the little tyrant holding grouped under his despotic sway his wives, children, and slaves—that is to say, the patriarchate in all its severity, with the power of life and death attributed to the patriarch. But this Semitic patriarch has not existed from the beginning; he is the result of a long anterior evolution, and, like so many other peoples, the Semites have begun with the confused kinship of the familial clan. We have previously found, in studying primitive marriage among the Arabs, an ancient régime of free polyandry, analogous to that of the Naïrs. At this distant epoch the woman still bore children for her clan, and this clan was so much like a large family, that in the present day even, in certain parts of Arabia, the word used for clan literally signifies “flesh.”[1046] To be of the same clan, therefore, was to be of the same flesh.