In no respect has modern civilization acted more beneficently than as a promoter of religious toleration. In our time difference of faith discourages sympathy to a much less extent than it did in former ages. Hence the number of mixed marriages everywhere tends to increase. In Bavaria, for instance, they amounted in 1835-1850 to 2·8 per cent. of the whole number of marriages, in 1850-1860 to 3·6 per cent., in 1860-1870 to 4·4 per cent., in 1870-1875 to 5·6 per cent., and in 1876-1877 to 6·6 per cent.[2215]
While, therefore, civilization has narrowed the inner limit, within which a man or woman must not marry, it has widened the outer limit within which a man or woman may marry, and generally marries. The latter of these processes has been one of vast importance in man’s history. Originating in race-or caste-pride, or in religious intolerance, the endogamous rules have, in their turn, helped to keep up and strengthen these feelings. Law is by nature conservative, maintaining sentiments developed under past conditions. It is only by slow degrees that the ideas of a new time become strong enough to release mankind from ancient prejudices.
We have hitherto dealt only with the poetry of sexual selection—love; now something is to be said of its prose—dry calculation. And we may conveniently begin with man’s appreciation of woman’s fertility, as this has some of the characteristics of an instinct. Desire for offspring is universal in mankind. Abortion, indeed, is practised now and then, and infanticide frequently takes place among many savage peoples; but these facts do not disprove the general rule.
Speaking of the Crees, Chippewyans, and other Indians on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, Harmon says that “all Indians are very desirous of having a numerous offspring.”[2216] Among the Ingaliks, “children are anxiously desired, even when women have no husbands.”[2217] Among the Mayas, disappointed couples prayed earnestly, and brought many offerings to propitiate the god whose anger was supposed to have deferred their hopes.[2218] “Be numerous in offspring and descendants,” is a frequent marriage benediction or salutation in Madagascar; for to die without posterity is looked upon as a great calamity, and is termed “dead as regards the eye.”[2219] A negro considers childlessness the greatest disaster which can happen to him;[2220] Bosman once asked one of the king’s captains in Fida how many children he had, and he answered, sighing, that he was so unhappy as not to have many—he could not pretend to have had above seventy, including those who were dead. Among the Waganda and Wanyoro, great rejoicings take place in the case of the birth of twins.[2221] The Shaman heathens of Siberia regarded an abundance of children and cattle as the most essential condition of a man’s happiness.[2222] “Honest people have many children,” a Japanese proverb says;[2223] the Chinese regard a large family of sons as a mark of the divine favour;[2224] and to become the father of a son is described in Indian poems as the greatest happiness which may fall to the share of a mortal.[2225] In Persia, childlessness is considered the most horrible calamity.[2226] One of the chief blessings that Moses in the name of God promised the Israelites was a numerous progeny; and the ancient Romans regarded the procreation of legitimate children as the real end of marriage.[2227] “He who has no children, has no happiness either,” the South Slavonians say;[2228] and German folk-lore compares a marriage without offspring with a world without sun.[2229]
A woman therefore is valued not only as a wife but as a mother. Nowhere has greater stress been laid on this idea than in ancient Lacedaemon. A husband, if he considered that the unfruitfulness of the marriage was owing to himself, gave his matrimonial rights to a younger man, whose child then belonged to the husband’s family; and to the wives of men who, for example, fell in battle before having children, other men, probably slaves, were assigned, that there might be heirs and successors to the deceased husband.[2230] Among many peoples the respect in which a woman is held is proportionate to her fecundity,[2231] and a barren wife is frequently despised as an unnatural and useless being.[2232] In Angola, according to Livingstone, in the native dances, “when any one may wish to deride another, in the accompanying song a line is introduced, 'So and so has no children, and never will get any.’” The offended woman feels the insult so keenly that it is not uncommon for her to rush away and commit suicide.[2233] Among the Creeks, a man always calls his wife his son’s mother;[2234] and, among the Todas, in addressing a man with the casual question, “Are you married?” the ordinary way of putting it would be to say, “Is there a son?”[2235]
It is obvious, then, that fecundity must be one of the qualities which a man most eagerly requires from his bride. Mr. Reade tells us that, in certain parts of Africa, especially in malarious localities, where women are so frequently sterile, no one cares to marry a girl till she has borne a child; and among the Votyaks, according to Dr. Buch, a girl gets married sooner if she is a mother.[2236]
We have seen several instances of husband and wife not living together as married people before the birth of a child. Among the Creeks, marriages were contracted for a year, but if they proved fruitful, they were, as a rule, renewed.[2237] Again, with regard to an order of the Essenes, Josephus states that, considering succession to be the principal part of human life, they tried their spouses for three years, and then married them only if there was a prospect of the union being fruitful.[2238] Among many peoples it is the practice for a man to repudiate a barren wife.
The desire for offspring, with its consequence, the appreciation of female fecundity, is due to various causes. First, there is in man an instinct for reproduction. Mr. Marshall remarks, “Of this desire for progeny I have seen many examples amongst the Todas, so strongly marked, but to all appearances apart from the sense of personal ambition, and separate from any demands of religion or requirements for support in old age, as to give the impression that it was the primitive faculty of Philoprogenitiveness, acting so insensibly, naturally, as to have the character more of a plain instinct, than of an intelligent human feeling.”[2239] With this instinct a feeling of parental pride is associated. “Children,” says Hobbes, “are a man’s power and his honour.”[2240]
Among the Hebrews and the ancient Aryan nations, the desire for offspring, particularly sons, had its root chiefly in religious belief, being a natural outcome of the idea that the spirits of the dead were made happy by homage received at the hands of their male posterity. The same is the case with the Chinese[2241] and Japanese,[2242] and perhaps, to a certain extent, with some peoples at a lower stage of civilization. The savage believes that the life which goes on after death, differs in nothing from this life, that wants and pursuits remain as before, that consequently the dead man’s spirit eats and drinks, and needs fire for warmth and cooking. It is, of course, his surviving descendants who have to see that he is well provided for in these respects. Hence the offerings to deceased ancestors for various periods after death and the feasts for the dead.[2243] Among the Thlinkets according to Holmberg, it sometimes happens that a man spends his whole fortune as well as his wife’s marriage portion on such a feast, and has to live as a poor man for the rest of his life.[2244]