The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family

by Ch. Letourneau

I. The Stage of Polygamy.—Primitive polygamy—Man resigns himself to monogamy.

II. Arab Polygamy.—Why the Mussulmans have remained polygamous—The inferiority of woman proclaimed by the Koran—Polygamic restrictions in the Koran—Religion sanctions the right of conjugal property—The purchased woman—The conjugal prerogatives of the prophet—Duties of the polygamous husband—Celestial polygamy—The Mussulman marriage is laic—Female merchandise—The preliminaries of marriage—Duties and obligations of the Mussulman husband; his rights—Marriage in Kabyle—Cruel subjection of the Kabyle wife—Sale and purchase of the wife—Excessive rights of the Kabyle husband—The Kabyle marriage is inferior to the Arab marriage—Polygamy and the subjection of women.

III. Polygamy in Egypt, Mexico, and Peru.—Monogamy of the priests in Egypt—Polygamy of the Incas and of the nobles in Peru—Polygamy of the nobles in Mexico—Polygamy with monogamic tendency.

IV. Polygamy in Persia and India.—Polygamy and concubinage of princes in Persia—Severity of sexual morality in the Avesta—Polygamy according to the Rig-Veda—Polygamy in the Code of Manu—Evolution of polygamy in India—How monogamy became established.

I. The Stage of Polygamy.

Our inquiry is already sufficiently advanced to give us an idea of the first phases of the evolution of marriage. To begin with, both in the case of human beings and of anthropoid apes, sexual unions have not been reduced to any rule; promiscuity has been rare and exceptional, but polygamy has been very common, at least a gross polygamy, not regulated in any way, and merely resulting from the monopoly of the women by the strongest or the richest men. It has been a sort of conjugal anarchy, admitting simultaneously of various matrimonial forms, as polyandry, term marriage, experimental marriage, etc., during periods of more or less length.

Besides their primordial rôle as child-bearers, wives were found very useful in other ways—either for the satisfaction of sensual desires, or for the execution of a number of painful labours; and therefore men endeavoured to procure as many of them as possible, first by capture, and then by purchase, or by giving a certain amount of work in submitting to a temporary servitude. In the preceding chapter I have given the history of this primitive, savage polygamy which as yet no law regulated.

During the first phases of their social evolution, all the human races have practised, with more or less brutality, this gross polygamy. We have seen—and it is a subject to which I shall have to return—how, in the bosom of the polygamic régime, monogamic tendencies have appeared, which by degrees have ended by prevailing amongst all the more civilised races. These races have resigned themselves to adopt monogamy, or at least legal monogamy. I say “resigned,” for it seems that monogamy costs much to man; in reality laws and customs have everywhere attenuated the severity of it for him by various compromises of which I shall soon have to speak.

II. Arab Polygamy.

However, among the superior races, there is one, the Arab race, which, up to our own time, has maintained and legalised the polygamic régime, while propagating and regulating it among the various peoples that have come under its domination. If, in this respect, the Arab race has been an exception to the general evolution, it is not because it is less gifted than the others; it has sufficiently proved this. According to the ancients, a fantastic fish, the remora, had the power of suddenly stopping the passage of ships at sea; religion has played this part for the Arabs. Theoretically, all the great and solidly constituted religions are incompatible with progress. Although relatively they may appear innovations at the moment of their birth, yet they bar the route of the future, and, as much as is in their power, oppose all ulterior evolution. This is imperative, since they pretend to declare the immutable will of divine personages, who are omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly wise, and who cannot consequently either re-touch or amend the laws that they make, and the commands they give to poor human creatures. Now, Islamism arose amidst the full polygamic régime; its founder could not even dream of establishing any other. Polygamy was therefore established by divine right among the faithful, and as at the bottom it is in accord with the primitive instincts of man, it has maintained itself in Mussulman countries from the time of Mahomet to our own days. From the sociological point of view this is a most interesting fact, for it gives us the opportunity of studying and estimating the polygamic régime in its full development.