The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family

by Ch. Letourneau

In the preceding chapters I have attempted to describe how men of all countries and all races have more or less constituted and organised their marriage and their family, and for this purpose I have patiently classified a multitude of facts collected singly by an army of observers.

Moreover, in conformity with the method of evolution, and in order not to neglect the most distant sources, I have prefaced my minute inquiry into marriage and the family among men by an investigation of the same kind in regard to animals. Man is neither a demi-god nor an angel; he is a primate more intelligent than the others, and his relationship with the neighbouring species of the animal kingdom is more strongly shown in his psychic than in his anatomical traits.

More than once, I fear, the accumulation of detailed facts which forms the groundwork of this book may have fatigued my readers; but this is the only condition on which it is possible to give a solid basis to sociology. It is, in fact, nothing less than a matter of creating a new science. We are scarcely beginning to be really acquainted with mankind, to take a complete survey of it in time and space. Now this would be quite impossible without the help of comparative ethnography. We must regard the existing inferior races as survivals, as prehistoric or protohistoric types that have persisted through long ages, and are still on different steps of the ladder of progress; it is this view alone which we shall find suggestive and enlightening; and it is in strict correlation with the method of evolution, to which, indeed, it owes its value.

The innumerable dissertations on the history of marriage and of the family which appeared previous to the rise of scientific method, have necessarily been devoid of accuracy and especially of breadth of thought. A thick veil concealed the real origin of these institutions; religious legends, that had become venerable on account of their antiquity, paralysed scientific investigation. To submit our social institutions to the great law of evolution, by means of disagreeable researches, was not to be tolerated by public opinion. In fact, if marriage and the family have been constantly modified in the past, we cannot maintain that these institutions will remain for ever crystallised in their present state. Until this revolutionary idea had taken root and become sufficiently acclimatised in public opinion, all so-called social studies were scarcely more than empty lucubrations. From time to time, no doubt, a few bold innovators, braving scoffs or even martyrdom, have dared to construct theories of new societies; but, being insufficiently informed, they could only create Utopias contemned by the mass of the public. Scientific sociology builds its edifice stone by stone; its duty is to bind the present to the most distant past; its honour will lie in furnishing a solid basis of operation to the innovators of the future; but this new branch of human knowledge can only grow by submitting to the method of the natural sciences. Before everything else, it is important to classify the facts that have been observed. This course is imperative. It is dry, and lends itself with difficulty to oratorical effusions, but no other path can lead to the truth. My constant anxiety has been to be faithful to it, and as an anthropologist I have especially borrowed my materials from ethnography. Step by step, and following as much as possible the hierarchic order of human races and of civilisations, I have described the modes of marriage and of the family adopted by the numerous varieties of the human type; I have endeavoured to note the phases of their evolution, and to show how superior forms have evolved from inferior ones. Now that I am at the end of my inquiry, it will be well to sum up clearly its result.

The prime cause of marriage and the family is purely biological; it is the powerful instinct of reproduction, the condition of the duration of species, and the origin of which is necessarily contemporaneous with that of primal organisms, of protoplasmic monads, multiplying themselves by unconscious scissiparity. By a slow specialisation of organs and functions, in obedience to the laws of evolutionary selection, various animal types have been created; and when they have been provided with separate sexes and conscious nervous centres, procreation has become a tyrannic need, driving males and females to unite in order to fulfil the important function of reproduction.

In this respect man is strictly assimilable to the other animals, and with him as with them all the intoxication of love has for its initial principle the elective affinity of two generating cellules of different sex. So far, this is mere biology, but it results, among superior animals, in sociological phenomena, in pairings which endure after the satisfaction of procreative needs, and produce in outline some forms of human marriage, or rather, of sexual union in humanity—namely, promiscuity, polygamy, and even monogamy. Our most primitive ancestors, our precursors, half men and half apes, have certainly had extremely gross customs, which are still in great measure preserved among the least developed races.

The study, however, of contemporary savage societies proves to us that absolutely unbridled promiscuity, without rule or restraint, is very rare even in inferior humanity. In exceptional cases, individuals of both sexes may have abandoned themselves, of common accord, to promiscuity, as did the Polynesian areoïs; but these instances relate to acts of debauchery, and not to a regulated social condition compatible with the maintenance of an ethnic group. The conjugal form nearest to promiscuity is the collective marriage of clan to clan—as, for example, that of the Kamilaroi, amongst whom all the men of one clan are reputed brothers to each other, and at the same time husbands of all the women of a neighbouring clan, reputed also sisters to each other. Other varieties of sexual association are more common, and may be arranged under the general heads of promiscuity, polygamy, polyandry, and monogamy. We hear also of temporary unions, marriages for a term, and partial marriages concluded at a debated price for certain days of the week only, etc. Every possible experiment, compatible with the duration of savage or barbarous societies, has been tried, or is still practised, amongst various races, without the least thought of the moral ideas generally prevailing in Europe, and which our metaphysicians proclaim as innate and necessary. Having elsewhere demonstrated at length the relativity of morality, I will not go over the ground again, but will quote on this point some lines of Montaigne:—“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom; every one having an inward veneration for the opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people, cannot without very great reluctancy depart from them, nor apply himself to them without applause.... The common fancies that we find in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our mind with the seed of our fathers, appear to be most universal and genuine. From whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges of custom is believed to be also off the hinges of reason.”[1108] The partial marriages of the Hassinyeh Arabs are surely off the hinges of our custom; and it is the same with polyandry, which borders on these partial marriages, but is much more widely spread. Like everything else, polyandric marriage has evolved, from its most complete form, that of the Naïrs, to the polyandry in use in Thibet, which already inclines towards monandry and the paternal family. Primitive polyandry has easily arisen from the marriage by classes practised by many savage clans; but most often it is polygamy which has sprung from it. And the latter must frequently have been established from the first in primitive hordes, simply by the right of the strongest.

Man may be monogamous in the very lowest degree of savagery and stupidity; certain animals are so; but in humanity it is more often the instinct of polygamy which predominates; and therefore, when in the course of the progressive evolution of societies monogamy at length became moral and legal, men have been careful to soften its rigour by maintaining together with it concubinage and prostitution, and by generally leaving to the husband the right of repudiation, which has nearly always been refused to the wife. This injustice appeared quite natural, for as the wife had usually been captured or bought, she was considered as the property of the man, and held in strict subjection. At length, in its last form, monogamic marriage, which had at first been the association of a master and a slave, tended more and more to become the union of two persons, living on a footing of equality.

The family has undergone a similar evolution. Apart from a few exceptional cases of precocious monogamy (Veddahs, Boshimans, etc.), ethnography shows us the greater number of savage races living in little consanguine groups, in which the kinship is still confused and the solidarity strong. The degrees of consanguinity are not well defined; real kinship is easily confounded with fictitious kinship, and classes of relations are created, ranged under the same title, although very differently united by ties of blood. The woman nearly always bears children for her group, or clan, and this clan is very often exogamic; this exogamy is practised from clan to clan, and only within the tribe. There is no absolute rule, however, and it is not unusual to see endogamy elbow exogamy.

In the large and confused family of the clan, all the members of which were bound together by a strict solidarity of interests and a real or fictitious kinship, the restricted family became gradually established by a reaction of individual interests. On account of the more or less complete confusion of sexual unions, the first to become detached from the consanguine clan was the maternal family, based on uterine filiation, the only filiation capable of sure proof; but the great association of all the members of the clan still existed. By the simple fact of birth in this little ethnic group, the individual had rights to the territory of the clan and his share in the common resources; his clan were bound to give him aid, assistance, and, at need, vengeance also. In proportion as the family assumed more distinct proportions in the clan, it tended to become separate from it, and then, nearly always, it was based not on maternal but on paternal filiation. This did not come to pass in a day; it took a long time to arrive at the point of attributing to such or such a man the ownership of one or more women and their progeny. The ridiculous ceremonial of the couvade was probably invented during this period of transition, when it was no easy matter for a man to obtain the recognition of his paternal title and rights by the other men of the clan. For a long time the maternal family resisted the enthronisation of the paternal family, and here and there it succeeded in maintaining its existence, and in serving as a basis for the transmission of inheritance. For, whether paternal or maternal, the institution of the family, when well consolidated, had for its result the parcelling out of the possessions of the ancient clans, and the creation of familial or individual property on the ruins of the ancient common property. Finally, nothing more remained of the clan, or gens, but the sign or totem, the name, and a kinship, also nominal, between the various families that had come from it.