[1126] Bousset, Relig. des Judenthums, 124.
[1127] W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 290; Isaiah lxv. 4; lxvi. 3, 17; swine, dog, and mouse.
[1128] Kubary, Karolinen Archipel, 168.
CHAPTER IX
SEX MORES
Meaning of sex mores.—The sex difference.—Sex difference and evolution.—The sex distinction; family institution; marriage in the mores.—Regulation is conventional, not natural.—Egoistic and altruistic elements.—Primary definition of marriage; taboo and conventionalization.—Family, not marriage, is the institution.—Endogamy and exogamy.—Polygamy and polyandry.—Consistency of the mores under polygamy or polyandry.—Mother family and father family.—Change from mother family to father family.—Capture and purchase become ceremonies.—Feminine honor and virtue; jealousy.—Virginity.—Chastity for men.—Love marriage; conjugal affection; wife.—Heroic conjugal devotion.—Hindoo models and ideals.—Slavonic sex mores.—Russian sex mores.—Tribes of the Caucasus.—Mediæval sex mores.—The standard of the "good wife"; pair marriage.—"One flesh."—Pair marriage.—Marriage in modern mores.—Pair marriage, its technical definition.—Ethics of pair marriage.—Pair marriage is monopolistic.—The future of marriage.—The normal type of sex union.—Divorce.—Divorce in ethnography.—Rabbis on divorce.—Divorce at Rome.—Pair marriage and divorce.—Divorce in the Middle Ages.—Refusal of remarriage.—Child marriage.—Child marriage in Hindostan.—Child marriage in Europe.—Cloistering women.—Second marriages; widows.—Burning of widows.—Difficulty of reform of suttee in India.—Widows and remarriage in the Christian church.—Remarriage and other-worldliness.—Free marriage.—The Japanese woman.
357. Meaning of sex mores. The sex mores are one of the greatest and most important divisions of the mores. They cover the relations of men and women to each other before marriage and in marriage, with all the rights and duties of married and unmarried respectively to the rest of the society. The mores determine what marriage shall be, who may enter into it, in what way they may enter into it, divorce, and all details of proper conduct in the family relation. In regard to all these matters it is evident that custom governs and prescribes. When positive institutions and laws are made they always take up, ordain, and regulate what the mores have long previously made facts in the social order. In the administration of law also, especially by juries, domestic relations are controlled by the mores. The decisions rendered by judges utter in dogmatic or sententious form the current notions of truth and right about those relations. Our terms "endogamy," "mother family," "polyandry," etc., are only descriptive terms for a summary of the folkways which have been established in different groups and which are capable of classification.
358. The sex difference. The economy and advantage of sex differentiation are primarily physical. "As structural complexity increases, the female generative system becomes more and more complex. All this involves a great expenditure of energy, and we can clearly see how an ovum-producing organism would benefit by being spared the additional effort required for seeking out and impregnating another organism, and how, on the other hand, organisms whose main reproductive feature is simply the production of spermatozoa would be better fitted for the work of search and impregnation if unhampered by a cumbersome female generative system. Hence the advantage of the sexes being separate."[1129] Here we have the reason why the sexes are independent and complementary, but why "equality" can never be predicated of them. Power in the family, in industry, in civil affairs, war, and religion is not the same thing and cannot be. Each sex has more power for one domain, and must have less power for another. Equality is an incongruous predicate. "Under the influence of the law of battle the male has become more courageous, powerful, and pugnacious than the female.... So, too, the male has, in the struggle, often acquired great beauty, success on his part depending largely, in many cases, upon the choice of the females who are supposed to select the most beautiful mates. This is thought to be notably the case with birds."[1130] In some few cases the female seeks the male, as in certain species of birds. Some male fish look after the eggs, and many cock-birds help to build the nest, hatch the eggs, and tend the young.[1131] When the females compete for the males the female is "endowed with all the secondary characters of the polygamous male; she is the more beautiful, the more courageous, the more pugnacious." This seems to show that the secondary characters are due to sex selection.[1132] Men are held to be polygamous by descent and in their "instincts as at present developed." "The instinct for promiscuous intercourse is much stronger among men than women, and unquestionably the husband is much more frequently all in all to the wife than she to him."[1133]