The licentiousness which prevailed in Grecian and Roman cities at the height of civilization has generally been regarded as a lapse from a higher and purer condition of virtue and morality. But the fact is capable of a different, or at least of a modified explanation. They had never attained to a pure morality in the intercourse of the sexes from which to decline. Repressed or moderated in the midst of war and strife endangering the national existence, the license revived with peace and prosperity, because the moral elements of society had not risen against it for its extirpation. This licentiousness was, in all probability, the remains of an ancient conjugal system, never fully eradicated, which had followed down from barbarism as a social taint, and now expressed its excesses in the new channel of hetærism. If the Greeks and Romans had learned to respect the equities of monogamy, instead of secluding their wives in the gynæconitis in one case, and of holding them under power in the other, there is reason to believe that society among them would have presented a very different aspect. Since neither one nor the other had developed any higher morality, they had but little occasion to mourn over a decay of public morals. The substance of the explanation lies in the fact that neither recognized in its integrity the principle of monogamy, which alone was able to place their respective societies upon a moral basis. The premature destruction of the ethnic life of these remarkable races is due in no small measure to their failure to develop and utilize the mental, moral and conservative forces of the female intellect, which were not less essential than their own corresponding forces to their progress and preservation. After a long protracted experience in barbarism, during which they won the remaining elements of civilization, they perished politically, at the end of a brief career, seemingly from the exhilaration of the new life they had created.
Among the Hebrews, whilst the patriarchal family in the early period was common with the chiefs, the monogamian, into which the patriarchal soon subsided, was common among the people. But with respect to the constitution of the latter, and the relations of husband and wife in the family, the details are scanty.
Without seeking to multiply illustrations, it is plain that the monogamian family had grown into the form in which it appeared, at the commencement of the historical period, from a lower type; and that during the classical period it advanced sensibly, though without attaining its highest form. It evidently sprang from a previous syndyasmian family as its immediate germ; and while improving with human progress it fell short of its true ideal in the classical period. Its highest known perfection, at least, was not attained until modern times. The portraiture of society in the Upper Status of barbarism by the early writers implies the general practice of monogamy, but with attending circumstances indicating that it was the monogamian family of the future struggling into existence under adverse influences, feeble in vitality, rights and immunities, and still environed with the remains of an ancient conjugal system.
As the Malayan system expressed the relationships that existed in the consanguine family, and as the Turanian expressed those which existed in the punaluan, so the Aryan expressed those which existed in the monogamian; each family resting upon a different and distinct form of marriage.
It cannot be shown absolutely, in the present state of our knowledge, that the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian families of mankind formerly possessed the Turanian system of consanguinity, and that it fell into desuetude under monogamy. Such, however, would be the presumption from the body of ascertained facts. All the evidence points in this direction so decisively as to exclude any other hypothesis. Firstly. The organization into gentes had a natural origin in the punaluan family, where a group of sisters married to each other’s husbands furnished, with their children and descendants in the female line, the exact circumscription as well as the body of a gens in its archaic form. The principal branches of the Aryan family were organized in gentes when first known historically, sustaining the inference that, when one undivided people, they were thus organized. From this fact the further presumption arises that they derived the organization through a remote ancestry who lived in that same punaluan condition which gave birth to this remarkable and wide-spread institution. Besides this, the Turanian system of consanguinity is still found connected with the gens in its archaic form among the American aborigines. This natural connection would remain unbroken until a change of social condition occurred, such as monogamy would produce, having power to work its overthrow. Secondly. In the Aryan system of consanguinity there is some evidence pointing to the same conclusion. It may well be supposed that a large portion of the nomenclature of the Turanian system would fall out under monogamy, if this system had previously prevailed among the Aryan nations. The application of its terms to categories of persons, whose relationships would now be discriminated from each other, would compel their abandonment. It is impossible to explain the impoverished condition of the original nomenclature of the Aryan system except on this hypothesis. All there was of it common to the several Aryan dialects are the terms for father and mother, brother and sister, and son and daughter; and a common term (San., naptar; Lat., nepos; Gr., ἀνεψίος;) applied indiscriminately to nephew, grandson, and cousin. They could never have attained to the advanced condition implied by monogamy with such a scanty nomenclature of blood relationships. But with a previous system, analogous to the Turanian, this impoverishment can be explained. The terms for brother and sister were now in the abstract, and new creations, because these relationships under the Turanian system were conceived universally as elder and younger; and the several terms were applied to categories of persons, including persons not own brothers and sisters. In the Aryan system this distinction is laid aside, and for the first time these relationships were conceived in the abstract. Under monogamy the old terms were inapplicable because they were applied to collaterals. Remains of a prior Turanian system, however, still appear in the system of the Uralian family, as among the Hungarians, where brothers and sisters are classified into elder and younger by special terms. In French, also, besides frère, and sœur, we find aîné, elder brother, pûné and cadet, younger brother, and aînée and cadette, elder and younger sister. So also in Sanskrit we find agrajar, and amujar, and agrajri, and amujri for the same relationships; but whether the latter are from Sanskrit or aboriginal sources, I am unable to state. In the Aryan dialects the terms for brother and sister are the same words dialectically changed, the Greek having substituted ἀδελφός for φράτηρ. If common terms once existed in these dialects for elder and younger brother and sister, their previous application to categories of persons would render them inapplicable, as an exclusive distinction, to own brothers and sisters. The falling out from the Aryan system of this striking and beautiful feature of the Turanian requires a strong motive for its occurrence, which the previous existence and abandonment of the Turanian system would explain. It would be difficult to find any other. It is not supposable that the Aryan nations were without a term for grandfather in the original speech, a relationship recognized universally among savage and barbarous tribes; and yet there is no common term for this relationship in the Aryan dialects. In Sanskrit we have pitameha, in Greek πάππος, in Latin avus, in Russian djed, in Welsh hendad, which last is a compound like the German grossvader and the English grandfather. These terms are radically different. But with a term under a previous system, which was applied not only to the grandfather proper, his brothers, and his several male cousins, but also to the brothers and several male cousins of his grandmother, it could not be made to signify a lineal grandfather and progenitor under monogamy. Its abandonment would be apt to occur in course of time. The absence of a term for this relationship in the original speech seems to find in this manner a sufficient explanation. Lastly. There is no term for uncle and aunt in the abstract, and no special terms for uncle and aunt on the father’s side and on the mother’s side running through the Aryan dialects. We find pitroya, πάτρως, and patruus for paternal uncle in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin; stryc in Slavonic for the same, and a common term, eam, oom, and oheim in Anglo-Saxon, Belgian, and German, and none in the Celtic. It is equally inconceivable that there was no term in the original Aryan speech for maternal uncle, a relationship made so conspicuous by the gens among barbarous tribes. If their previous system was Turanian, there was necessarily a term for this uncle, but restricted to the own brothers of the mother, and to her several male cousins. Its application to such a number of persons in a category, many of whom could not be uncles under monogamy, would, for the reasons stated, compel its abandonment. It is evident that a previous system of some kind must have given place to the Aryan.
Assuming that the nations of the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian families formerly possessed the Turanian system of consanguinity, the transition from it to a descriptive system was simple and natural, after the old system, through monogamy, had become untrue to descents as they would then exist. Every relationship under monogamy is specific. The new system, formed under such circumstances, would describe the persons by means of the primary terms or a combination of them: as brother’s son for nephew, father’s brother for uncle, and father’s brother’s son for cousin. Such was the original of the present system of the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian families. The generalizations they now contain were of later introduction. All the tribes possessing the Turanian system describe their kindred by the same formula, when asked in what manner one person was related to another. A descriptive system precisely like the Aryan always existed both with the Turanian and the Malayan, not as a system of consanguinity, for they had a permanent system, but as a means of tracing relationships. It is plain from the impoverished conditions of their nomenclatures that the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian nations must have rejected a prior system of consanguinity of some kind. The conclusion, therefore, is reasonable that when the monogamian family became generally established these nations fell back upon the old descriptive form, always in use under the Turanian system, and allowed the previous one to die out as useless and untrue to descents. This would be the natural and obvious mode of transition from the Turanian into the Aryan system; and it explains, in a satisfactory manner, the origin as well as peculiar character of the latter.
In order to complete the exposition of the monogamian family in its relations to the Aryan system of consanguinity, it will be necessary to present this system somewhat in detail, as has been done in the two previous cases.
A comparison of its forms in the several Aryan dialects shows that the original of the present system was purely descriptive.[490] The Erse, which is the typical Aryan form, and the Esthonian, which is the typical Uralian, are still descriptive. In the Erse the only terms for the blood relationships are the primary, namely, those for father and mother, brother and sister, and son and daughter. All the remaining kindred are described by means of these terms, but commencing in the reverse order: thus brother, son of brother, and son of son of brother. The Aryan system exhibits the actual relationships under monogamy, and assumes that the paternity of children is known.
In course of time a method of description, materially different from the Celtic, was engrafted upon the new system; but without changing its radical features. It was introduced by the Roman civilians to perfect the framework of a code of descents, to the necessity for which we are indebted for its existence. Their improved method has been adopted by the several Aryan nations among whom the Roman influence extended. The Slavonic system has some features entirely peculiar and evidently of Turanian origin.[491] To obtain a knowledge historically of our present system it is necessary to resort to the Roman, as perfected by the civilians.[492] The additions were slight, but they changed the method of describing kindred. They consisted chiefly, as elsewhere stated, in distinguishing the relationships of uncle and aunt on the father’s side from those on the mother’s side, with the invention of terms to express these relationships in the concrete; and in creating a term for grandfather to be used as the correlative of nepos. With these terms and the primary, in connection with suitable augments, they were enabled to systematize the relationships in the lineal and in the first five collateral lines, which included the body of the kindred of every individual. The Roman is the most perfect and scientific system of consanguinity under monogamy which has yet appeared; and it has been made more attractive by the invention of an unusual number of terms to express the marriage relationships. From it we may learn our own system, which has adopted its improvements, better than from the Anglo-Saxon or Celtic. In a table, at the end of this chapter, the Latin and Arabic forms are placed side by side, as representatives, respectively, of the Aryan and Semitic systems. The Arabic seems to have passed through processes similar to the Roman, and with similar results. The Roman only will be explained.