Whilst civilisation is thus up to a certain point favourable to polygyny, it leads in its higher forms to monogamy. Owing to the decrease of wars, the death-rate of the men becomes less, and the considerable disproportion between the sexes which among many warlike peoples makes polygyny almost a law of nature no longer exists among the most advanced nations. No superstitious belief keeps the civilised man apart from his wife during her pregnancy and while she suckles her child; and the suckling time has become much shorter since the introduction of domesticated animals and the use of milk. To a cultivated mind youth and beauty are by no means the only attractions of a woman; and civilisation has made female beauty more durable. The desire for offspring becomes less intense. A large family, instead of being a help in the struggle for existence, is often considered an insufferable burden. A man’s kinsfolk are no longer his only friends, and his wealth and power do not depend upon the number of his wives and children. A wife ceases to be a mere labourer, and manual labour is to a large extent replaced by the work of domesticated animals and the use of implements and machines. Moreover, the sentiment of love becomes more refined, the passion for one more absorbing. The feelings of the weaker sex are frequently held in higher regard. And the better education bestowed on women enables them to live comfortably without the support of a husband.
As for the moral valuation of the various forms of marriage, it should be noticed that even among polygynous and polyandrous peoples monogamy is permitted by custom or law, although in some instances it is associated with poverty and considered mean, whereas polygyny, as associated with greatness, is thought praiseworthy.[133] Again, the notion that monogamy is the only proper form of marriage, and that any other form is immoral, is due either to the mere force of habit; or, possibly, to the notion that it is wrong of some men to appropriate a plurality of wives when others in consequence can get none; or to the feeling that polygyny is an offence against the female sex; or to the condemnation of lust. As regards the obligatory monogamy of Christian nations, we have to remember that monogamy was the only recognised form of marriage in the societies on which Christianity was first engrafted, and that it was the only form that could be tolerated by a religion which regarded every gratification of the sexual impulse with suspicion and incontinence as the gravest sin. In its early days the Church showed little respect for women but its horror of sensuality was immense.
[133] Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 657.
A few words still remain to be said of a form of marriage which has of late been the subject of much discussion in connection with Australian ethnology. Many years ago attention was drawn to the fact that the Kamilaroi tribes in South Australia are divided into four classes, in which brothers and sisters are respectively Ipai and Ipātha, Kŭbi and Kubĭtha, Mŭri and Mātha, Kumbu and Būtha; and that the members of one class are forbidden to marry among themselves, but bound to marry into a certain other class. Thus Ipai may only marry Kubĭtha; Kŭbi, Ipātha; Kumbu, Mātha; and Mŭri, Būtha. In a certain sense, we were told, every Ipai is regarded as married, not by any individual contract, but by organic law, to every Kubĭtha; every Kŭbi to every Ipātha, and so forth. If, for instance, a Kŭbi meet a stranger Ipātha, they address each other as “spouse”; and “a Kŭbi thus meeting an Ipātha, though she were of another tribe, would treat her as his wife, and his right to do so would be recognised by her tribe.”[134] The institution according to which the men of one division have as wives the women of another division, the Rev. L. Fison called “group marriage.” He contends that among the natives of South Australia it has given way in later times, in some measure, to individual marriage. But theoretically, he says, marriage is still communal: “it is based upon the marriage of all the males in one division of a tribe to all the females of the same generation in another division.” The chief argument advanced by Mr. Fison in support of his theory is grounded on the terms of relationship in use in the tribes. These terms belong to the “classificatory system” of Mr. Morgan;[135] but he admits that he is not aware of any tribe in which the actual practice is to its full extent what the terms of relationship imply. “Present usage,” he says, “is everywhere in advance of the system so implied, and the terms are survivals of an ancient right, not precise indications of custom as it is.”[136] The same is granted by Mr. Howitt.[137] Yet I have pointed out, in my criticism of the classificatory system, to what absurd results we must be led if, guided by such terms, we begin to speculate upon early marriage.[138] Moreover, as I have said, “if a Kŭbi and an Ipātha address each other as spouse, this does not imply that in former times every Kŭbi was married to every Ipātha indiscriminately. On the contrary, the application of such a familiar term might be explained from the fact that the women who may be a man’s wives, and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him.”[139] This suggestion derives support from the following statement made by Dr. Codrington with reference to the Melanesians:—“Speaking generally, it may be said that to a Melanesian man all women, of his own generation at least, are either sisters or wives, to the Melanesian woman all men are either brothers or husbands…. It must not be understood that a Melanesian regards all women who are not of his own division as, in fact, his wives, or conceives himself to have rights which he may exercise in regard to those women of them who are unmarried; but the women who may be his wives by marriage and those who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation to him.”[140]
[134] Ridley, Kámilarói, p. 161 sq. (edit. 1866, p. 35 sqq.). Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 36, 51, 53.
[135] Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 60.
[136] Ibid. p. 159 sq.
[137] Howitt, ‘Australian Group Relations,’ in Smithsonian Report, 1883, p. 817.
[138] Westermarck, op. cit. ch. v.
[139] Ibid. p. 56.