CHAPTER III INSTITUTIONAL MARRIAGE AND ITS ECONOMIC ASPECTS
I
Marriage, by a strictly technical definition, is a natural habit; that is to say, it is a relationship proceeding out of the common instinct of male and female to mate, and to remain together until after the birth of one or more children.[10] Organized society, on the other hand, always makes it a civil institution, and sometimes a religious institution. So long as man remained in the natural state, roaming about in search of his food as do the apes today, it may be supposed that marriage was based on personal preference and involved only the selective disposition of the individual man and woman and their common concern for the safety of their offspring. But as advancing civilization enabled mankind more easily to obtain and augment its food-supply, and consequently to secure greater safety and also to satisfy its gregarious instinct by living in numerous communities, the habit of marriage underwent a process of sanction and regulation by the group, and was thus transformed into a civil institution. While society remains ethnical, the family exercises supervision over the sexual relations of its members, but always subject to the approval or disapproval of the larger group—the tribe or clan. When the political State emerges, this function continues to be exercised by the family, but it is subject to sanction by the State and is gradually absorbed by it. Yet even where the State has usurped almost all the prerogatives of the family, custom continues to give powerful sanction to interference in marriage both by relatives and by the community.
Where the tribal religion takes on the form of ancestor-worship, or where much importance is attached to burial-rites, marriage and reproduction take on a religious significance. “As the dead,” says Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons, “are dependent on the living for the performance of their funeral rites and sacrificial observances, marriage itself as well as marriage according to prescribed conditions, child-begetting and bearing, become religious duties. Marriage ceremonial not infrequently takes on a religious character. Infanticide, abortion, celibacy other than celibacy of a sacerdotal character, and adultery, become sins. The punishment of the adulteress is particularly severe, although in some cases her value as property may guarantee her against punishment by death.”[11]
Thus there may be, and in most civilized societies there is, a fourfold interference in marriage: interference by the family, by the community, by the State, and by the Church. An old Russian song had it that marriages were contracted
By the will of God,
By decree of the Czar,
By order of the Master,
By decision of the community,