I here conclude my enumeration. Short as it has been, for I have purposely limited my facts to a small number, it is sufficient to prove that for an immense period man has been a very coarse animal. We may, therefore, expect to find him adapting without scruple forms of marriage or sexual association quite unusual among Europeans, and which it now remains for me to describe briefly.
II. Some Strange Forms of Marriage.
In savage societies, where no delicacy yet exists in regard to sexual union, and where, on the other hand, woman is strictly assimilated to things and domestic animals, marriage, or what we please to call so, is an affair of small importance, which is regulated according to individual caprice. More generally the parents, and sometimes the friends or the chiefs, pair the young people as they think fit, and quite naturally they have little regard for monogamic marriage, to the strictness of which, even in civilised societies, man finds it so difficult to bend.
The young people, on their part, have hardly any individual preferences. The young boys of the Redskins, as Lafitau tells us, never even troubled to see, before marriage, the wife chosen for them by their parents.[141] In Bargo, according to R. and J. Lander, they marry with perfect indifference; “a man does not care any more about choosing a wife than about which ear of corn he shall pick.” There is never any question as to the sentiments of the contracting parties.[142]
It is quite certain, also, that during the first ages of the evolution of societies, the ties of kinship, even those we are accustomed to regard as sacred, and respect for which seems to be incarnate in us, have not been any impediment to sexual unions. Like the sentiment of modesty, the horror of incest has only been engraved on the human conscience with great difficulty and by long culture. Scruples of this kind are unknown to the animal, and before they could arise in the human brain it was first necessary that the family should be constituted, and then that, from some motive or other, the custom of exogamous marriage should be adopted. Now, as we shall see later, the family has at first been matriarchal or rather maternal, and with such a familial system, the children have no legal father; the prohibitions relative to incest could therefore, at the most, only exist in regard to the female line, and, in fact, we find it to be so in many countries where this system of filiation prevails. But primitive morals, existing before the formation of a morality condemning incest, have left many traces in the past, and even in the present. “The Chippeways,” says Hearne, “frequently cohabit with their mother, and oftener still with their sisters and daughters.”[143] And yet he is speaking here of Redskins, a people reputed to be fanatical on the matter of exogamy. Langsdorff says the same of the Kadiaks, who unite indiscriminately, brothers with sisters, and parents with children.[144] It is well known, besides, that in the matter of sexual unions no race has fewer prejudices than the Esquimaux. The Coucous of Chili, and the Caribs also, willingly married at the same time a mother and daughter. With the Karens, too, of Tenasserim, marriages between brother and sister, or father and daughter, are frequent enough, even in our own day.[145]
But these unions, though incestuous for us, have not been practised amongst savages and inferior races only. According to Strabo, the ancient Irish married, without distinction, their mothers and sisters.[146]
We are told by Justin and Tertullian[147] that the Parthians and Persians married their own mothers without scruple. In ancient Persia, religion went so far even as to sanctify the union of a son with his mother.[148] Priscus relates that these marriages were also permitted among the Tartars and Scythians, and it is reported, too, that Attila married his daughter Esca.[149]
Whether from a survival of ancient morals, or the care to preserve purity of race, conjugal unions between brother and sister were authorised, or even prescribed, in various countries, for the royal families. The kings of ancient Egypt were obliged to marry their sisters, and Cleopatra thus became the wife of her brother Ptolemy Dionysius. The Incas of Peru were subject to a similar law; and at Siam also, when the traveller La Loubère visited it, the king had married his sister.[150] But I shall have to return to the subject of marriage between relations in treating of the endogamic régime which has been, or is, in force among many peoples.
These incestuous marriages astonish us, and certain of them are even revolting to our ideas, as, for example, the union of the mother with the son. Another custom will probably surprise, if not shock us quite as much. I allude to experimental marriages, which are far from being rare. They will appear, however, less singular, if we remember that in societies of low order little value is set on the chastity of young girls; virginal purity is not at all prized, and there are even some peoples, as the Saccalaves of Madagascar,[151] for instance, and also certain indigenous peoples of India,[152] among whom it is regarded as a duty for the mothers themselves to deflower their daughters before marrying them.
With such morals prevailing, experimental marriages seem natural enough. De Champlain, an ancient French traveller in North America, relates that the Redskins of Canada always lived a few days together, and then quitted each other if the trial had not been satisfactory to either of them.[153]