THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES.

Edited by HAVELOCK ELLIS.

EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE

THE EVOLUTION
OF MARRIAGE
AND OF THE FAMILY

BY

CH. LETOURNEAU,

General Secretary to the Anthropological Society of Paris, and Professor in the School of Anthropology.

LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE
PATERNOSTER ROW
1891.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

A few preliminary observations in regard to the aim and method of this work may be useful to the reader.

He will do well to begin by persuading himself, with Montaigne, that the “hinges of custom” are not always the “hinges of reason,” and still less those of reality in all times and places. He will do better still to steep himself in the spirit of scientific evolution, and to bear in mind that incessant change is the law of the social, quite as much as of the physical and organic world, and that the most splendid blossoms have sprung from very humble germs. This is the supreme truth of science, and it is only when such a point of view has become quite familiar to us that we shall be neither troubled nor disconcerted by the sociological history of humanity; and however shocking or unnatural certain customs may appear, we shall guard ourselves against any feeling of indignation at them, and more especially against a thoughtless refusal to give credence to them, simply because they run counter to our own usages and morality.

All that social science has a right to ask of the facts which it registers is that they should be authentic; this duly proved, it only remains to accept, classify, and interpret them. Faithful to this method, without which there could be no science of sociology, I have here gathered together as proofs a number of singular facts, which, improbable as they may appear according to our pre-conceived notions, and criminal according to our moral sense, are nevertheless most instructive. Although in a former work I have taken care to establish the relativity of morality, the explanations that I am about to make are not out of season; for the subject of this book is closely connected with what, par excellence, we call “morals.”

On this point I must permit myself a short digression.

No one will pretend that our so-called civilised society has a very strict practical morality, yet public opinion still seems to attach a particular importance to sexual morality, and this is the expression of a very real sentiment, the origin of which scientific sociology has no difficulty in retracing. This origin, far from being a lofty one, goes back simply to the right of proprietorship in women similar to that in goods and chattels—a proprietorship which we find claimed in savage, and even in barbarous countries, without any feeling of shame. During the lower stages of social evolution, women are uniformly treated as domestic animals; but this female live-stock are difficult to guard; for, on the one hand, they are much coveted and are unskilful in defending themselves, and on the other, they do not bend willingly to the one-sided duty of fidelity that is imposed on them. The masters, therefore, protect their own interests by a whole series of vexatious restraints, of rigorous punishments, and of ferocious revenges, left at first to the good pleasure of the marital proprietors, and afterwards regulated and codified. In the chapter on adultery, especially, will be found a great number of examples of this marital savagery. I have previously shown, in my Evolution de la Morale, that the unforeseen result of all this jealous fury has been to endow humanity, and more particularly women, with the delicate sentiment of modesty, unknown to the animal world and to primitive man.

From this evolution of thousands of years there has finally resulted, in countries and races more or less civilised, a certain sexual morality, which is half instinctive, and varies according to time and place, but which it is impossible to transgress without the risk of offending gravely against public opinion. Civilisations, however, whether coarse or refined, differ from each other. Certain actions, counted as blameworthy in one part of the world, are elsewhere held as lawful and even praiseworthy. In order to trace the origin of marriage and of the family, it is therefore indispensable to relate a number of practices which may be scandalous in our eyes. While submitting to this necessity, I have done so unwillingly, and with all the sobriety which befits the subject. I have striven never to depart from the scientific spirit, which purifies everything, and renders even indecency decent.

Like the savages of to-day, our distant ancestors were very little removed from simple animal existence. A knowledge of their physiology is nevertheless necessary to enable us to understand our own; for, however cultivated the civilised man may be, he derives from the humble progenitors of his race a number of instincts which are energetic in proportion as they are of a low order. More or less deadened, these gross tendencies are latent in the most highly developed individuals; and when they sometimes break out suddenly in the actions of a man’s life, or in the morals or literature of a people, they recall to us our very humble origin, and even show a certain mental and moral retrogression.

Now it is to this primitive man, still in such a rudimentary state, that we must go back for enlightenment on the genesis of all our social institutions. We must take him at the most distant dawn of humanity, follow him step by step in his slow metamorphoses, without either disparaging or poetising him; we must watch him rising and becoming more refined through accumulated centuries, till he loses by degrees his animal instincts, and at length acquires aptitudes, inclinations, and faculties that are truly human.

Nothing is better adapted to exemplify the evolution which binds our present to our past and to our future than the sociological history of marriage and of the family.

After having spoken of the aim of this book, it remains for me to justify its method. This differs considerably from what the mass of the public like far too well. But a scientific treatise must not take purely literary works for its models; and I can say to my readers, with much more reason than old Rabelais, that if they wish to taste the marrow, they must take the trouble to break the bone. My first and chief consideration is to assist in the foundation of a new science—ethnographical sociology. Elegant and vain dissertations, or vague generalities, have no place here. It is by giving way to these, and in attempting to reap the harvest before sowing the seed, that many authors have lost themselves in a pseudo-sociology, having no foundation, and consequently no value.

Social science, if it is to be seriously constituted, must submit with docility to the method of natural science. The first task, and the one which especially falls to the lot of the sociologists of the present day, is to collect the facts which will form materials for the future edifice. To their successors will fall the pleasure of completing and adorning it.

The present work is, therefore, above all, a collection of facts which, even if taken alone, are curious and suggestive. These facts have been patiently gleaned from the writings of ethnographers, travellers, legists, and historians. I have classed them as well as I could, and naturally they have inspired me here and there with glimpses of possible inductions, and with some slight attempts at generalisation.

But whether the reader rejects or accepts my interpretations, the groundwork of facts on which they rest is so instructive of itself that a perusal of the following pages cannot be quite fruitless.

CH. LETOURNEAU.

THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE AND OF THE FAMILY.

CHAPTER I.
THE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE.

I. The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom.—Man is a mammiferous, bimanous vertebrate—Biology the starting-point of sociology—The origin of love.

II. Reproduction.—Nutrition and reproduction—Scissiparity—Budding—Ovulation—Conjugation—Impregnation—Reproduction in the invertebrates—The entity called Nature—Organic specialisation and reproduction—A dithyramb by Haeckel.

III. Rut and Love.—Rut renders sociable—Rut is a short puberty—Its organic adornment—The frenzy of rut—Physiological reason of rut in mammals—Love and rut—Schopenhauer and the designs of Nature.

IV. Love of Animals.—Love and death—The law of coquetry—The law of battle—Jealousy and æsthetic considerations—Love amongst birds—Effects of sexual selection—The loves of the skylark—The males of the blue heron and their combats—Battles of male geese and male gallinaceæ—Courteous duels between males—Æsthetic seduction among certain birds—Æsthetic constructions—Musical seduction—Predominance of the female among certain birds—Greater sensuality of the male—Effect of sexual exaltation—A Cartesian paradox—Individual choice amongst animals—Individual fancies of females—General propositions.

I. The True Place of Man.

We have too long been accustomed to study human society as if man were a being apart in the universe. In comparing human bipeds with animals it has seemed as if we were disparaging these so-called demi-gods. It is to this blind prejudice that we must attribute the tardy rise of anthropological sociology. A deeper knowledge of biological science and of inferior races has at last cured us of this childish vanity. We have decided to assign to man his true place in the organic world of our little globe. Granted that the human biped is incontestably the most intelligent of terrestrial animals, yet, by his histological texture, by his organs, and by the functions of these organs, he is evidently only an animal, and easily classed in the series: he is a bimanous, mammiferous vertebrate. Not that by his most glorious representatives, by those whom we call men of genius, man does not rise prodigiously above his distant relations of the mammal class; but, on the other hand, by imperfectly developed specimens he descends far below many species of animals; for if the idiot is only an exception, the man of genius is still more so. In fact, the lowest human races, with whose anatomy, psychology, and sociology we are to-day familiar, can only inspire us with feelings of modesty. They furnish studies in ethnography which have struck a mortal blow at the dreams of “the kingdom of man.”

When once it is established that man is a mammal like any other, and only distinguished from the animals of his class by a greater cerebral development, all study of human sociology must logically be preceded by a corresponding study of animal sociology. Moreover, as sociology finally depends on biology, it will be necessary to seek in physiological conditions themselves the origin of great sociological manifestations. The first necessity of societies is that they should endure, and they can only do so on the condition of providing satisfaction for primordial needs, which are the condition of life itself, and which imperatively dominate and regulate great social institutions. Lastly, if man is a sociable animal, he is not the only one; many other species have grouped themselves in societies, where, however rudimentary they may be, we find in embryonic sketch the principal traits of human agglomerations. There are even species—as, for example, bees, ants, and termites—that have created true republics, of complicated structure, in which the social problem has been solved in an entirely original manner. We may take from them more than one good example, and more than one valuable hint.

My present task is to write the history of marriage and of the family. The institution of marriage has had no other object than the regulation of sexual unions. These have for their aim the satisfaction of one of the most imperious biological needs—the sexual appetite; but this appetite is only a conscious impulse, a “snare,” as Montaigne calls it, which impels both man and animal to provide, as far as concerns them, for the preservation of their species—to “pay the ancestral debt,” according to the Brahmanical formula. Before studying the sexual relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general, to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental, and to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been determined by physiological causes, and which render the fiercest animals mild and tractable. This is what I shall attempt to do in the following chapter.

II. Reproduction.

Stendhal has somewhere said that the beautiful is simply the outcome of the useful; changing the phrase, we may say that generation is the outcome of nutrition. If we examine the processes of generation in very simple organisms, this great function seems to answer to a superabundance of nutritive materials, which, after having carried the anatomic elements to their maximum volume, at length overflows and provokes the formation of new elements. As long as the new-born elements can remain aggregated with those which already constitute the individual, as long as the latter has not acquired all the development compatible with the plan of its being, there is simply growth. When once the limit is attained that the species cannot pass, the organism (I mean a very rudimentary organism) reproduces itself commonly by a simple division in two halves. It perishes in doubling itself and in producing two beings, similar to itself, and having nothing to do but grow. It is by means of this bi-partition that hydras, vorticellæ, algæ, and the lowest mushrooms are generally propagated.

In the organisms that are slightly more complicated the function of reproduction tends to be specialised. The individual is no longer totally divided; it produces a bud which grows by degrees, and detaches itself from the parent organism to run in its turn through the very limited adventures of its meagre existence.

By a more advanced step in specialisation the function of reproduction becomes localised in a particular cell, an ovule, and the latter, by a series of repeated bi-partitions, develops a new individual; but it is generally necessary that the cellule destined to multiply itself by segmentation should at first dissolve by union with another cell. Through the action of various organic processes the two generating cells arrive in contact. The element which is to undergo segmentation—the female element—then absorbs the element that is simply impulsive; the element called male becomes impregnated with it, and from that moment it is fertilised, that is to say, capable of pursuing the course of its formative work.

This phenomenon, so simple in itself, of the conjugation of two cellules, is the foundation of reproduction in the two organic kingdoms as soon as the two sexes are separated. Whether the sexes are represented by distinct or united individuals, whether the accessory organic apparatus is more or less complicated, are matters of no consequence; the essential fact reappears always and everywhere of the conjugation of two cellules, with absorption, in the case of superior animals, of the male cellule by the female cellule.

The process may be observed in its most elementary form in the algæ and the diatomaceæ, said to be conjugated. To form a reproductive cellule, or spore, two neighbouring cellules each throw out, one towards the other, a prolongation. These prolongations meet, and their sides absorb each other at the point of contact; then the protoplasms of the two elements mingle, and at length the two cellules melt into a single reproductive cellule (Spirogyra longata).

Between this marriage of two lower vegetal cellules, which realises to the letter the celebrated biblical words, “they shall be one flesh,” or rather one protoplasm, and the fundamental phenomenon of fecundation in the superior animals, including man, there is no essential dissimilarity. The ovule of the female and the spermatozoon of the male become fused in the same manner, with this difference only, that the feminine cellule, the ovule, preserves its individuality and absorbs the masculine cellule, or is impregnated by it.

But, simple as it is, this phenomenon of fecundation is the sole reason of the duration of bi-sexual species. Thanks to it, organic individuals that are all more or less ephemeral,

“Et, quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt.”

(Lucretius, ii. 78.)

For many organised beings reproduction seems in reality the supreme object of existence. Numbers of vegetables and of animals, even of animals high in the series—as insects—die as soon as they have accomplished this great duty. Sometimes the male expires before having detached himself from the female, and the latter herself survives just long enough to effect the laying of eggs. Instead of laying eggs, the female cochineal fills herself with eggs to such a degree that she dies in consequence, and the tegument of her body is transformed into a protecting envelope for the eggs.

At the not very distant time when animism reigned supreme, these facts were attributed to calculations of design. Nature, it was believed, occupied herself chiefly with perpetuating organised species; as for individuals, she disdained the care of them. We now know that Nature, as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist; that the great forces called natural are unconscious; that their blind action results, however, in the world of life, in a choice, a selection, a progressive evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of the individuals best adapted to the conditions of their existence. Without any intention of Dame Nature, the preservation of the species was necessarily, before anything else, the object of selection; and during the course of geological periods primitive bi-partition gradually became transformed through progressive differentiation into bi-sexual procreation, requiring the concurrence of special and complicated apparatus in order to be effected. But, at the same time as procreation, other functions also became differentiated by the formation of special organs; the nervous system vegetated around the chorda dorsalis; and, finally, conscious life awoke in the nervous centres. Thenceforth the accomplishment of the great function of procreation assumed an entirely different aspect. In the lowest stages of the animal kingdom reproduction is effected mechanically and unconsciously. A paramœcium, observed by M. Balbiani, produced in forty-two days, by a series of simple bi-partitions, 1,384,116 individuals, who very certainly had not the least notion of the phenomena by which they transmitted existence. But with superior animals it is very different; in their case the act of procreation is a real efflorescence, not only physical, but psychical. For the study that I am now undertaking it will not be without use to recall the principal features of this amorous efflorescence, since it is, after all, the first cause of marriage and of the family. At the same time, not to lose our standpoint, it is important to bear in mind that at the bottom all this expenditure of physical and psychical force has for motive and for result, both in man and animal, the conjugation of two generative cellules. Haeckel has written a dithyramb on this subject in his Anthropogenia, which is in the main so true that I take pleasure in quoting it—“Great effects are everywhere produced, in animated nature, by minute causes.... Think of how many curious phenomena sexual selection gives rise to in animal life; think of the results of love in human life; now, all this has for its raison d’être the union of two cellules.... There is no organic act which approaches this one in power and in the force of differentiation. The Semitic myth of Eve seducing Adam for the love of knowledge, the old Greek legend of Paris and Helen, and many other magnificent poems, do they not simply express the enormous influence that sexual love and sexual selection have exercised since the separation of the sexes? The influence of all the other passions which agitate the human heart cannot weigh in the balance with love, which inflames the senses and fascinates the reason. On the one hand, we celebrate in love the source of the most sublime works of art, and of the noblest creations of poetry and of music; we venerate it as the most powerful factor in civilisation, as the prime cause of family life, and consequently of social life. On the other hand, we fear love as a destructive flame; it is love that drives so many to ruin; it is love that has caused more misery, vice, and crime than all other calamities together. Love is so prodigious, its influence is so enormous on psychic life and the most diverse functions of the nervous system, that in regard to it we are tempted to question the supernatural effect of our natural explanation. Nevertheless, comparative biology and the history of development conduct us surely and incontestably to the simplest, most remote source of love; that is to say, the elective affinity of two different cellules—the spermatic cell and the ovulary cell.”[1]

III. Rut and Love.

In a former work on the evolution of morality I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of the same acts. The instinct of procreation has, and can have, no other origin. The animal species, during the long phases of their evolution, have reproduced themselves unconsciously, and by very simple processes, which we may still observe in certain zoophytes. By degrees these mere sketches of animals have become perfected and differentiated, and have acquired special organs over which the biological work has been distributed; thenceforth the play of life has echoed in the nervous centres, and has awakened in them impressions and desires, the energy of which strictly corresponds to the importance of the functions. Now, there is no more primordial function than procreation, since on it depends the duration even of the species; and for this reason the need of reproduction, or the rut, breaks out in many animals like a kind of madness. The psychic faculties of the animal, whether great or small, are then over-excited, and rise above their ordinary level; but they all tend to one supreme aim—the desire for reproduction. At this period the wildest and most unsociable species can no longer endure solitude; both males and females seek each other; sometimes, even, they are seen to form themselves into groups, or small provisional societies, which will dissolve again after the coupling time is over.

Each period of rut is for animals a sort of puberty. The hair, the plumage, and the scales often assume rich tints which afterwards disappear. Sometimes special epidermic productions appear in the male, and serve him for temporary weapons with which to fight his rivals, or for ornaments to captivate the female. It is with a veritable frenzy that the sexual union is accomplished among certain species. Thus Dr. Günther has several times found female toads dead, smothered by the embrace of the males.[2] Spallanzani was able to amputate the thighs of male frogs and toads during copulation, without diverting them from their work.

In the animal class which more particularly interests us, that of mammals, rut produces analogous, though less violent, phenomena. Now, in this case, we know that erotic fury is closely related to congestive phenomena, having for their seat the procreative glands, which swell in both male and female, and provoke in the latter a veritable process of egg-laying. We must not forget that man, in his quality of mammal, is subject to the common law, that female menstruation is essentially identical with the intimate phenomena of rut in the females of mammals, and corresponds also to an ovarian congestion, or to the swelling and bursting of one or more of the Graafian follicles; it is, in short, a production of eggs. I need not lay stress on these facts, but it is right to recall them by the way, since they are the raison d’être of sexual attraction, without which there would be neither marriage nor family.

If we are willing to descend to the foundation of things, we find that human love is essentially rut in an intelligent being. It exalts all the vital forces of the man just as rut over-excites those of the animal. If it seems to differ extremely from it, this is simply because in man the procreative need, a primordial need beyond all others, in radiating from highly developed nervous centres, awakens and sets in commotion an entire psychic life unknown to the animal.

There is nothing surprising to the naturalist in this procreative explosion, which evolves altruism out of egotism. We know too well, however, that it has not appeared so simple a matter to many philosophers and celebrated literary men, little familiar with biological sciences. A belated metaphysician, Schopenhauer, who has lately become fashionable, adopting the ancient stereotyped doctrine which makes Nature an anthropomorphic personage, has gratuitously credited her with quite a profound diplomatic design. According to him, it is a foregone conclusion that she should intoxicate individuals with love, and thus urge them on, without their suspecting it, to sacrifice themselves to the major interest of the preservation of the species. The glance that we have just thrown on the processes of reproduction, from the paramœcium up to man, suffices to refute this dream. I will not, however, dwell on this. What is here of great interest is to inquire how the superior animals comport themselves when pricked by desire, and to note the principal traits of their sexual psychology; for here again we shall have to recognise more than one analogy to what happens in regard to man; and we shall also see later that there exists both in the animal and the man some relation between the manner in which sexual attraction is felt and the greater or less aptitude for durable pairing, and consequently for marriage and the family.

Without giving more time than is necessary to these short excursions into animal psychology, it will be well to pause on them for a moment. They throw a light on the sources of human sociology; they force us also to break once for all with the abstract and trite theories which have inspired, on the subject of marriage and the family, so much empty writing and so many satiating trivialities. It is in animality that humanity has its root; it is there, consequently, that we must seek the origins of human sociology.

IV. Loves of Animals.

In a well-known mystic book occurs an aphorism which has become celebrated—“Love is strong as death.” The expression is not exaggerated; we may even say that love is stronger than death, since it makes us despise it. This is perhaps truer with animals than with man, and is all the more evident in proportion as the rational will is weaker, and prudential calculations furnish no check to the impetuosity of desire. For the majority of insects to love and to die are almost synonymous, and yet they make no effort to resist the amorous frenzy which urges them on. But however short may be their sexual career, one fact has been so generally observed in regard to many of them, that it may be considered as the expression of a law—the law of coquetry. With the greater number of species that are slightly intelligent, the female refuses at first to yield to amorous caresses. This useful practice may well have arisen from selection, for its result has invariably been to excite the desire of the male, and arouse in him latent or sleeping faculties. However brief, for example, may be the life of butterflies, their pairing is not accomplished without preliminaries; the males court the females during entire hours, and for a butterfly hours are years.

We can easily imagine that the coquetry of females is more common amongst vertebrates. When the season of love arrives, many male fishes, who are then adorned with extremely brilliant colours, make the most of their transient beauty by spreading out their fins, and by executing leaps, darts, and seductive manœuvres around the females.

Among fishes we begin already to observe another sexual law, at least as general as the law of coquetry, which Darwin has called the law of battle. The males dispute with each other for the females, and must triumph over their rivals before obtaining them. Thus, whilst the female sticklebacks are very pacific, their males are of warlike humour, and engage in furious combats in their honour. In the same way the male salmon, whose lower jaw lengthens into a crook during the breeding season, are constantly fighting amongst each other.[3]

The higher we ascend in the animal kingdom the more frequent and more violent become two desires in the males—the desire of appearing beautiful, and that of driving away rivals. In South America, the males of the Analis cristellatus, a fissilingual saurian, have terrible battles in the breeding season, the vanquished habitually losing his tail, which is bitten off by the victor. An old observer also describes the amorous male alligator as “swollen to bursting, the head and tail raised, spinning round on the surface of the water, and appearing to assume the manner of an Indian chief relating his exploits.”[4]

But it is particularly among birds that the sentiment, or rather the passion, of love breaks out with most force and even poetry. It is especially to birds that the celebrated Darwinian theory of sexual selection applies. It is difficult, indeed, not to attribute to this influence the production of the offensive and defensive arms, the armaments, the organs of song, the glands of odoriferous secretion of many male birds, also their courage, the warlike instinct of many of them, and lastly, the coquetry of the females. Let us listen to Audubon, as he relates the loves of the skylark:—“Each male is seen to advance with an imposing and measured step, swinging his tail, spreading it out to its full extent, then closing it again like a fan in the hands of a fine lady. Their brilliant notes are more melodious than ever; they repeat them oftener than usual as they rest on the branch or summit of some tall meadow reed. Woe to the rival who dares to enter the lists, or to the male who simply comes in sight of another male at this moment of veritable delirium: he is suddenly attacked, and, if he is the weaker, chased beyond the limits of the territory claimed by the first occupant. Sometimes several birds are seen engaged in these rude combats, which rarely last more than two or three minutes: the appearance of a single female suffices to put an instant end to their quarrel, and they all fly after her as if mad. The female shows the natural reserve of her sex, without which, even among larks, every female would probably fail to find a male [this is a little too flattering for larks, and even for men]. When the latter,” continues Audubon, “flies towards her, sighing forth his sweetest notes, she retreats before her ardent admirer in such a way that he knows not whether he is repulsed or encouraged.”[5]

In this little picture the author has noted all the striking traits of the love of birds—the courage and jealousy of the male, his efforts to charm the female by his beauty and the sweetness of his song, and finally, the coquetry of the female, who retreats, and thus throws oil on the fire. The combats of the amorous males among many species of birds have been observed and described minutely. “The large blue male herons,” says Audubon, “attack each other brutally, without courtesy; they make passes with their long beaks and parry them like fencing masters, often for half-an-hour at a time, after which the vanquished one remains on the ground, wounded or killed.”[6]

The male Canadian geese engage in combats which last more than half-an-hour; the vanquished sometimes return to the charge, and the fight always takes place in an enclosed field, in the middle of a circle formed by the band or clan of which the rivals form part.

But it is especially among the gallinaceæ that love inspires the males with warlike fury. In this order of birds nearly all the males are of bellicose temperament. Our barn-door cock is the type of the gallinaceæ—vain, amorous, and courageous. Black cocks are also always ready for a fight, and their females quietly look on at their combats, and afterwards reward the conqueror. We may observe analogous facts, only somewhat masked, in savage, and even in civilised humanity. The conduct of certain females of the Tetras urogallus is still more human. According to Kowalewsky, they take advantage of a moment when the attention of the old cocks is entirely absorbed by the anxiety of the combat, to run off with a younger male.[7]

If we may believe certain authors, these amorous duels must not always be taken seriously. They are often nothing more than parades, tourneys, or courteous jousts, merely giving the males an opportunity of showing their beauty, address, or strength. This is the case, according to Blyth, with the Tetras umbellus.[8] In the same way, the grouse of Florida (Tetras cuspido) are said to assemble at night to fight until the morning with measured grace, and then to separate, having first exchanged formal courtesies.[9]

But among animals, as well as men, love has more than one string to his bow. It is especially so with birds, who are the most amorous of vertebrates. They use several æsthetic means of attracting the female, such as beauty of plumage and the art of showing it, and also sweetness of song. Strength seems often to be quite set aside, and the eye and ear are alone appealed to by the love-stricken males.

Every one has seen our pigeons and doves courteously salute their mates. Many male birds execute dances and courting parades before their females. Thus, for example, do the Tetras phasaniellus of North America, herons (Cathartes jota), vultures, etc. The male of the red-wing struts about before his female, sweeping the ground with his tail and acting the dandy.[10] The crested duck raises his head gracefully, straightens his silky aigrette, or bows to his female, while his throat swells and he utters a sort of gutteral sound.[11] The male chaffinch places himself in front of the female, that she may admire at her ease his red throat and blue head.[12]

All this æsthetic display is quite intentional and premeditated; for while many pheasants and gallinaceous birds parade before their females, two pheasants of dull colour, the Crossoptilon auritum and the Phasianus Wallichii, refrain from doing so,[13] being apparently conscious of their modest livery.

Birds often assemble in large numbers to compete in beauty before pairing. The Tetras cuspido of Florida and the little grouse of Germany and Scandinavia do this. The latter have daily amorous assemblies, or cours d’amour, of great length, which are renewed every year in the month of May.[14]

Certain birds are not content with their natural ornaments, however brilliant these may be, but give the rein to their æsthetic desire in a way that may be called human. Mr. Gould assures us that some species of humming-birds decorate the exterior of their nests with exquisite taste, making use of lichens, feathers, etc. The bower-birds of Australia (Chlamydera maculata, etc.) construct bowers on the ground, ornamented with feathers, shells, bones, and leaves. These bowers are intended to shelter the courting parades, and both males and females join in building them, though the former are more zealous in the work.[15] But in this erotic architecture the palm is carried off by a bird of New Guinea, the Amblyornis inornata, made known to us by M. O. Beccari.[16] This bird of rare beauty, for it is a bird of Paradise, constructs a little conical hut to protect his amours, and in front of this he arranges a lawn, carpeted with moss, the greenness of which he relieves by scattering on it various bright-coloured objects, such as berries, grains, flowers, pebbles, and shells. More than this, when the flowers are faded, he takes great care to replace them by fresh ones, so that the eye may be always agreeably flattered. These curious constructions are solid, lasting for several years, and probably serving for several birds. What we know of sexual unions among the lower human races suffices to show how much these birds excel men in sexual delicacy.

Every one is aware that the melodious voice of many male birds furnishes them with a powerful means of seduction. Every spring our nightingales figure in true lyric tournaments. Magpies, who are ill-endowed from a musical point of view, endeavour to make up for this organic imperfection by rapping on a dry and sonorous branch, not only to call the female, but also to charm her; we may say, in fact, that they perform instrumental music. Another bird, the male of the weaver-bird, builds an abode of pleasure for himself, where he goes to sing to his companion.[17]

Audubon has made one observation in regard to Canadian geese which is in every point applicable to the human species. The older the birds are, he says, the more they abridge the preliminaries of their amours. Their poetic and æsthetic sense has become blunted, and they go straight to their object.

Wherever amongst the animal species supremacy in love is obtained by force, the male, nearly always the more ardent, has necessarily become, through the action of selection, larger, stronger, and better armed than the female. Such is in reality the case in regard to the greater number of vertebrates; certain exceptions, however, exist, and naturally these are chiefly found among birds, as they are more inclined than other types to put a certain delicacy in their sexual unions. With many species of birds, indeed, the female is larger and stronger than the male. It is well known to be the same with certain articulates, and these facts authorise us to admit that there is no necessary correlation between relative weakness and the female sex. Must we therefore conclude, with Darwin, that the females of certain birds owe their excess of size and height to the fact that they have formerly contested also for the possession of the males? We may be allowed to doubt it. Almost universally, whether she is large or small, the female is less ardent than the male, and in the amorous tragi-comedy she generally plays, from beginning to end, a passive rôle; in the animal kingdom, as well as with mankind, amazons are rare.

Among birds and vertebrates generally the male is much more impetuous than the female, and therefore he has no difficulty in accepting for the moment any companion whatever.[18] This uncontrollable ardour sometimes even urges the males to commit actual attempts on the safety of the family. Thus it happens that the male canary (Fringilla canaria) persecutes his female while she is sitting, tears her nest, throws out the eggs, and, in short, tries to excite his mate to become again a lover, forgetting that she is a mother. In the same way our domestic cock pursues the sitting hen when she leaves her eggs in order to feed.[19]

With the cousins-german of man, the mammals, sexual psychology has a general resemblance to that of birds, but more often it is far less delicate. And besides this, the sexual customs are naturally less refined in proportion as the nervous centres of the species are less perfected. Thus the stupid tatoways meet by chance, smell each other, copulate and separate with the greatest indifference. Our domestic dog himself, although so civilised and affectionate, is generally as gross in his amours as the tatoway.

With birds, as we have seen, the law of battle plays an important part in sexual selection; but it is often counter-balanced by other less brutal influences. This is rarely the case in regard to mammals, with whom especially the right of the strongest regulates the unions. The law of battle prevails among aquatic as well as land mammals. The combats of the male stags, in the rutting season, are celebrated. The combatants have been known to succumb without being able to disentangle their interlocked antlers; but seals and male sperm-whales fight with equal fury, and so also do the males of the Greenland whale.[20]

In mammals, as in birds, and as in man, sexual desire raises and intensifies all the faculties, and seems to elevate the individual above the level of normal life. Animals in a state of rut become bolder, more ferocious, and more dangerous. The elephant, pacific enough by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. The Sanskrit poems constantly recur to the simile of the elephant in rut to express the highest degree of strength, nobility, grandeur, and even beauty.

But obviously I must not linger very long over the loves of the animals. My chief object is to study sexual union and marriage amongst human beings. The rut of animals and their sexual passions merely interest us here as preliminary studies, which throw light on the origin of analogous sentiments in mankind. Before leaving this subject, however, it will be useful to note a few more facts which, from the point of view of sexual psychology, bring animals and men near to each other.

The old Cartesian paradox, which makes the animal an unconscious machine, has still many partisans. A widely-prevailing prejudice insists that animals always obey blind instincts, while man alone, homo sapiens, made after the image of God, weighs motives, deliberates and chooses. Now, as procreation constitutes one of the great necessities of organised beings, and is an imperious law which no species can elude without disappearing, surely we ought to find amongst animals the most exact regularity in the acts connected with it. Man alone ought to have the privilege of introducing caprice and free choice into love. It is not so, however. On this side of his nature, as on all the others, man and animal approach, resemble, and copy each other. In his celebrated invocation to Venus, Lucretius has truly said, proclaiming the universal empire of the instinct of reproduction—

“Per te quoniam genus omne animantum
Concipitur, visitque exortum lumine solis.”

The animal, as well as the morally developed man, is capable of preference and individual passion; he does not yield blindly and passively to sexual love.

According to observers and breeders, it is the female who is specially susceptible of sentimental selection. The male, even the male of birds, is more ardent than the female, that is to say, more intoxicated and more sharply pricked by instinct, and thus generally accepts any female whatever: all are alike to him. This is the rule, but it is not without exceptions; thus, the male pheasant shows a singular aversion to certain hens. Amongst the long-tailed ducks some females have evidently a particular charm for the males, and are courted more than the others.[21] The pigeon of the dovecot shows a strong aversion to the species modified by breeders, which he regards as deteriorated.[22] Stallions are often capricious. It was necessary, for example, to use stratagem in order to induce the famous stallion Monarch to beget Gladiateur, who became still more famous.[23] Analogous facts have been observed in regard to bulls.[24]

But it is more especially the females who introduce individual fancy into sexual love. They are subject to singular and inexplicable aversions. Mares sometimes resist, and it is necessary to deceive them.[25] Female pigeons occasionally show a strong dislike to certain males without apparent cause, and refuse to yield to their caresses. At other times a female pigeon, suddenly forgetting the constancy of her species, abandons her old mate or legitimate spouse to fall violently in love with another male. In the same way peahens sometimes show a lively attachment to a particular peacock.[26] High-bred bitches, led astray by passion, trample under foot their dignity, honour, and all care for nobility of blood, to yield themselves to pug-dogs of low breed or mongrel males. We are told of some who have persisted for entire weeks in these degrading passions, repulsing between times the most distinguished of their own race.[27]

Even among species noted for their fidelity it sometimes happens that acts of sexual looseness are committed. The female pigeon often abandons her mate if the latter is wounded or becomes weak.[28] Misfortune is not attractive, and love does not always inspire heroism.

In concluding this short study of sexual union in the animal kingdom, I will attempt to formulate the general propositions which may be drawn from it.

All organic species undergo the tyranny of the procreative function, which is a guarantee of the duration of the type.

The phenomenon of reproduction, when detached from all the complicated accessories which often conceal it in bi-sexual species, goes back essentially to the conjugation of two cellules.

With intelligent animals the procreative function echoes in the nervous centres under the form of violent desires, which intensify all the psychic and physical faculties in awakening what we call love.

At its base, the love of animals does not differ from that of man. Doubtless it is never such a quintessence as the love of Petrarch, but it is often more delicate than that of inferior races, and of ill-conditioned individuals, who, though belonging to the human race, seek for nothing in love but, to use an energetic expression of Amyot’s Plutarch, to “get drunk.”

But among many of the animal species the sexual union induces a durable association, having for its object the rearing of young. In nobility, delicacy, and devotion these unions do not yield precedence to many human unions. They deserve attentive study.

I have now, therefore, to consider marriage and the family amongst the animals.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Anthropogenia, p. 577.

[2] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 384.

[3] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 365.

[4] Bartram, Travels through Carolina, p. 128 (1791).

[5] Audubon, Scènes de la Nature dans les États-Unis, vol. i. p. 383.

[6] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 66.

[7] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 399.

[8] Ibid. p. 403.

[9] Espinas, Sociétés Animales, p. 326.

[10] Audubon, loc. cit., vol. i. p. 305.

[11] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 50.

[12] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 438.

[13] Ibid. p. 438.

[14] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 433.—Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 326.

[15] Ibid. pp. 418, 453.

[16] Annali del Museo civico di storia naturale di Genova, t. ix. fase 3-4, 1877.

[17] Espinas, loc. cit., pp. 299, 438.

[18] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 460.

[19] Houzeau, Facultés mentales des animaux, t. I^er. p. 292.

[20] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 550, 556.

[21] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 460, 461.

[22] Ibid. p. 457.

[23] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 575.

[24] Ibid. p. 576.

[25] Ibid. p. 576.

[26] Ibid. pp. 458, 459.

[27] Ibid. p. 574.

[28] Ibid. p. 234.

CHAPTER II.
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY AMONGST ANIMALS.

I. The preservation of species.—Two great processes of preservation—Different rôles of the male and the female in the animal family.

II. Marriage and the rearing of the young among animals.—Abandonment of the young in the inferior species—The superior molluscs guard their eggs—Solicitude of spiders for their eggs and their young—Instinctive foresight of insects—Its origin—Larvæ are ancestral forms—The familial instinct amongst birds—Frequency of monogamy amongst birds.

III. The family amongst animals.—Intoxication of egg-laying with birds—Absence of paternal love in certain birds—The familial instinct very developed in certain species—Transient nature of their love for the young—Promiscuity, polygamy, and monogamy among mammals—Hordes of sociable animals—Polygamous monkeys—Monogamous monkeys—General observations.

I. The Preservation of Species.

Two great processes are employed in the animal kingdom to assure the preservation of the species: either the parents do not concern themselves at all with their progeny, in which case the females give birth to an enormous number of young; or, on the other hand, they are full of solicitude for their offspring, cherishing and protecting them against the numerous dangers that menace them; and, in this last case, the young are few in number. Nature (since the expression is consecrated) proceeds sometimes by a lavish and lawless production, and sometimes by a sort of Malthusianism. Thus a cod lays every year about a million eggs, on which she bestows no care, and of which only the thousandth, or perhaps even the hundred thousandth part, escapes destruction; turtle-doves, on the contrary, only lay two eggs, but nearly all their young attain maturity. In short, the species is maintained sometimes by prodigality of births and sometimes by a great expenditure of care and affection on the part of the parents, especially of the female. It is almost superfluous to remark that analogous facts are observed in human natality, according as it is savage or civilised.

With animals, as with men, sexual association, when it endures, becomes marriage, and results in the family, that is to say, a union of parents for the purpose of protecting their young. The care of the male for his progeny is more rare and tardy than that of the female. Among animals, as among men, the family is at first matriarchal, and it is only in the higher stages of the animal kingdom that the male becomes a truly constituent part of the family group; but even then, except among certain species of birds, his chief care is less to rear the young than to govern in order to protect them. He plays the rôle of a despotic chief, guiding the family when it remains undivided after the rearing of the young, and most frequently acting like a polygamous sultan, without the purely human scruple in regard to incest.

Just as we find amongst animals the two principal types of the human family, the matriarchate and the patriarchate, or rather the maternal and paternal family, so we may observe equally among them all the forms of sexual union from promiscuity up to monogamy; but for enlightenment on these interesting points of sociology, a rapid examination of the animal kingdom is worth far more than all generalities.

II. Marriage and the Rearing of Young amongst Animals.

We shall leave entirely unnoticed the inferior kingdom of zoophytes, which are devoid of coalescing nervous centres, and consequently of conscious life. Even the lower types of molluscs do not begin to think of their progeny; they scatter their eggs as plants do their seeds, and leave them exposed to all chances. We must go to the superior molluscs to see any care of offspring awakening. In this order, indeed, the most highly developed species watch more or less over their eggs. The taredos carry them stuck together in rings round their bodies; snails often deposit them in damp ground, or in the trunk of a tree; cephalopods fix them in clusters round algæ, and sometimes watch them till they open, after which they leave them to get on as they can in the great world.

With spiders and insects the eggs are often the object of a solicitude and even prolonged forethought, which rejoice greatly the lovers of design. We must observe, however, that the males of spiders and that of the greater number of insects entirely neglect their young; it is again in the female that the care for offspring first awakens. And this is natural, for the eggs have been formed in her body; she has laid them, and has been conscious of them; they form, in a way, an integral part of her individuality.

The females of spiders also take care of their eggs after laying them, enclose them in a ball of thread arranged in cocoons, carry them about with them, and at the moment of hatching set them free, one by one, from the envelope. Amongst some species there is even a certain rearing of the young. Thus the Nemesia Eleonora lives for some time in her trapped nest with her young, numbering from twenty to forty.[29]

With insects maternal forethought sometimes amounts to a sort of divining prescience, which the doctrine of evolution alone can explain. There is really something wonderful in the actions of a female insect, as she prepares for her descendants, whom she will never see any more than she has seen her own parents, a special nourishment which differs from her own. It is thus that the sphinx, the pompilus, the sand-wasp, and the philanthus dig holes in the sand, in which they deposit with the eggs a suitable food for the future larvæ.[30]

In order to understand these facts, apparently so inexplicable, we must look not only to the powerful influence of selection, but also to the zoögenic past of the species. With the insect the perfect form is always the last which it assumes, the outcome of all the previous metamorphoses. But the larval form, though actually transitory, must have been for a long time the permanent form, and it had different tastes and needs. At the present time there are still numbers of insects whose larval existence has a much longer duration than that of the so-called perfect insect (May-flies, cockchafers). There are even larvæ which reproduce themselves. Certain others, even though sterile, have not lost the maternal instinct. Thus at the time of the hatching of the nymphs the larvæ of the termites assist the latter to get rid of their envelope. It is therefore probable that, though now transitory, the larval forms of insects have formerly been permanent; they represent ancestral types, which evolution has by degrees metamorphosed into insects that we call perfect. The larvæ, now actually sterile, descend from ancestors which were not so, and in the larvæ of certain species the maternal instinct has survived the reproductive function.[31]

This is doubtless the case with bees and ants; their workers must represent an ancestral form, having preserved the maternal fervour of its anterior state; the winged form, on the contrary, must be relatively recent. It even appears probable that in the republics of ants and bees the laborious workers may have succeeded, in a certain way, in getting rid of sexual needs which cause animals and even men to commit so many mad actions. With them the old maternal instinct has taken the place ceded to it by sexual instinct, and has become enlarged and ennobled. Their affection is no longer exclusively confined to a few individuals produced from their own bowels, but is shared by all the young of the association. In their sub-œsophagian ganglion one care takes precedence of all others—the care of rearing the young. This is their constant occupation and the great duty to which they sacrifice their lives. Maternal love, usually so selfish, expands with them into an all-embracing social affection. It is not impossible that a psychic metamorphosis of the same kind may one day take place in future human societies.

It would even seem that the workers appreciate the faculty of reproduction all the more for being deprived of it. The queen bee, or rather the fertile female, who is the common mother of all the tribe, has every possible care lavished on her, and is publicly mourned when she dies. If she happens to perish before having young, and then cannot be replaced, the virgin workers despair of the republic; losing for ever “les longs espoirs et les vastes pensées,” they give way to an incurable and mortal pessimism.

One primitive form of the family, the matriarchate, which we shall study later, is realised, even in an exaggerated form, by ants and bees. In human societies we shall only find very faint imitations of this system, which has been so strictly carried out by the primates of the invertebrates, and which seems to have inspired the ancients with their fables about the amazons.

The vertebrated species, with the exception of mankind, have founded no society that can be even distantly compared to that of hymenoptera and of ants. With nearly all fishes and amphibia the parents are very poorly developed as regards consciousness, and take no care of their eggs after fecundation. Some species of fishes are, however, endowed with a certain familial instinct, and strange to say, here it is the male who tends his offspring. So true is it, that the imaginary being called Nature has no preference for any special methods, and that in her eyes all processes are good on the one condition that they succeed! Thus the Chinese Macropus gathers the fecundated eggs into his jaws, deposits them in the midst of the froth and mucous exuding from his mouth, and watches over the young when they are hatched.[32] The male of synagnathous fishes and the sea-horses carry their eggs in an incubating pouch; the Chromis paterfamilias, of the lake of Tiberias, protects and nourishes in his mouth and bronchial cavity hundreds of small fishes.[33]

Other fishes also have more or less care for their young. Salmon and trout deposit their eggs in a depression which they have hollowed out in the sand for the purpose. Fishes, belonging to various families, construct nests and watch over the young when hatched (Cranilabrus massa, Cranilabrus melops). Often again it is the male who undertakes all the work. Thus the male of the Gasterosteus leiurus is incessantly occupied in fetching the young ones home, and driving away all enemies, including the mother.[34] The male stickleback, who is polygamous, builds a nest and watches with solicitude over the safety and rearing of the young.[35]

Many reptiles are unnatural parents; some, however, already possess some degree of familial instinct. Thus several males of the batrachians assist the female to eject her eggs. The male accoucheur toad rolls the eggs round his feet, and carefully carries them thus. The Surinam toad, the Pipa Americana, after having aided the female in the operation of laying the eggs, places them on the back of his companion, in little cutaneous cavities formed for their reception.[36]

The Cobra capella bravely defends its eggs. The saurians often live in couples, and the females of crocodiles escort their new-born little ones. Female tortoises go so far as to shelter their young in a sort of nest.[37]

But it is especially among birds and mammals that we find forms of union or association very similar to marriage and the family in the human species. Nothing is more natural; for anatomical and physiological analogy must of necessity lead in its train the analogy of sociology. There is no more uniformity either amongst mammals than amongst men; the needs, the habitat, and the necessities of existence dominate everything, and in order to secure adjustment to these, recourse is had to various processes.

Like men, birds live sometimes in promiscuity, and sometimes in monogamy or polygamy; the familial instinct is also very unequally developed among them. Sometimes even we find their conjugal customs modified by the kind of life they lead. Thus the wild duck, which is strictly monogamous in a wild state, becomes very polygamous when domesticated, and it is the same with the guinea fowl. Civilisation depraves these birds, as it does some men. As may be supposed, it is generally the animals living in troops who are degraded most easily by habitual promiscuity. But this is not always the case; the character of the animal, his mode of life, and the degree of morality previously acquired, determine his manner of acting. It is probable also that certain animals, living in troops during the breeding season, have formerly been less sociable than at present, for they leave the troop and retire apart in couples as soon as they have paired. Social life is burdensome to them.

It is especially interesting to study the various modes of conjugal and familial association amongst birds. This may easily be inferred from the ardour, the variety, and the delicacy they bring to their amours; the moral level among them, to borrow a human expression, is very diverse, according to the species. There are some birds absolutely fickle and even debauched—as, for example, the little American starling (Icterus pecoris), which changes its female from day to day; that is to say, it is in the lowest stage of sexual union, a debauched promiscuity, which we only exceptionally find in some hardly civilised human societies.[38] The starling, nevertheless, is not ferocious, like the asturides, to whom, according to Brehm, love seems unknown, and amongst whom the female devours her male, the father and the mother feast on their own young, and the latter, when full grown, willingly eat their parents. These ferocious habits denote a very feeble moral development. But if we may believe a French missionary, Mgr. Farand, bishop of the Mackenzie territory, similar customs still prevail among the Redskins of the extreme north.[39] We shall not, therefore, be too much scandalised at the birds. These cases of moral grossness are, besides, rare enough with them.

Other species, while they have renounced promiscuity, are still determined polygamists. The gallinaceæ are particularly addicted to this form of conjugal union, which is so common, in fact, with mankind, even when highly civilised and boasting of their practice of monogamy. Our barn-door cock, vain and sensual, courageous and jealous, is a perfect type of the polygamous bird. But the polygamous habits of the gallinaceæ do not prevent them from experiencing very strong sexual passion. When seized by this frenzy of desire, some of them appear to be senseless of all danger. The firing of a gun, for example, does not alarm a male grouse when swinging his head and whistling to charm his female;[40] but this ardour does not hinder him from being a fickle animal, always in search of new adventures, and always seeking fresh mates.[41]

These examples of wandering fancy are for the most part rare among birds, the majority of whom are monogamous, and even far superior to most men in the matter of conjugal fidelity.

Nearly all the rapacious animals, even the stupid vultures, are monogamous. The conjugal union of the bald-headed eagle appears even to last till the death of one of the partners. This is indeed monogamic and indissoluble marriage, though without legal constraint.[42] Golden eagles live in couples, and remain attached to each other for years without even changing their domicile.[43] But these instances, honourable as they are, have nothing exceptional in them; strong conjugal attachment is a sentiment common to many birds.

With the female Illinois parrot (Psittacus pertinax) widowhood and death are synonymous, a circumstance rare enough in the human species, yet of which birds give us more than one example. When, after some years of conjugal life, a wheatear happens to die, his companion hardly survives him a month. The male and female of the panurus are always perched side by side. When they fall asleep, one of them, generally the male, tenderly spreads its wing over the other. The death of one, says Brehm, is fatal to its companion. The couples of golden wood-peckers, of doves, etc., live in a perfect union, and in case of widowhood experience a violent and lasting grief. The male of a climbing wood-pecker, having seen his mate die, tapped day and night with his beak to recall the absent one; then at length, discouraged and hopeless, he became silent, but never recovered his gaiety (Brehm). These examples of a fidelity that stands every test, and of the religion of memory, although much more frequent in the unions of birds than in those of human beings, are not, however, the unfailing rule. With birds, as with men, there seems to be a good number of irregular cases—individuals of imperfect moral development and of fickle disposition. This may be inferred from the facility with which, among certain species of monogamous birds, the dead partner is replaced. Jenner, who introduced vaccination, relates that in Wiltshire he has seen one of a couple of magpies killed seven days in succession, and seven times over immediately replaced. Analogous facts have been observed of jays, falcons, and starlings. Now, when it concerns animals that are paired, each substitution must correspond to a desertion, the more so as the observations were made in the same locality and in the height of the breeding season.[44]

Very peculiar fancies sometimes arise in the brains of certain birds. Thus we see birds of distinct species pairing, and this even in a wild state. These illegitimate unions have been observed between geese and barnacle geese, and between black grouse and pheasants.

Darwin relates a case of this kind of passion suddenly appearing in a wild duck. The fact is related by Mr. Hewitt as follows:—“After breeding a couple of seasons with her own mallard, she at once shook him off on my placing a male pintail in the water. It was evidently a case of love at first sight, for she swam about the new-comer caressingly, though he appeared evidently alarmed and averse to her overtures of affection. From that hour she forgot her old partner. Winter passed by, and the next spring the pintail seemed to have become a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and produced seven or eight young ones.”[45] It is difficult not to attribute such deviations as these to motives similar to those by which we are ourselves actuated—to passion, caprice, or depravity. They certainly cannot be accounted for by the theory of mechanical and immutable instinct. Such facts clearly prove that animal psychology, although less complicated than our own, does not differ essentially from it, and consequently throws much light on our present investigation. The adventure of the wild duck, for example, may, without any alteration, be read as a human adventure, proving for the hundred-thousandth time that the heart, or what we call by that name, is versatile; that conjugal fidelity does not always resist a strong impression arising from a chance encounter; that novelty has a disturbing effect; and, finally, that indifference and coldness can rarely hold out against the persistent advances of one who loves ardently enough not to yield to discouragement. Dante has already made this last reflection in his celebrated line—

“Amor ch’a nullo amato amar perdona.”

To quote Dante à propos of the illicit amours of a pintail and a wild duck may shock the learned, but the aptness of the quotation proves once more the essential identity of the animal and human organisms.

III. The Family amongst Animals.

If the study of the modes of sexual union amongst animals is not useless to the sociologist, that of the animal family is at least quite as interesting. This latter confirms the inductions of theorists relative to the primitive form of the human family. The animal family is especially maternal. The female of birds, immediately she has laid her eggs, experiences a sort of intoxication; to sit becomes for her an imperious need, which completely transforms her moral nature. In January 1871, during the bombardment of Paris, a German shell, bursting in the loft of a house inhabited by one of my friends, was powerless to disturb a female pigeon absolutely enchained by the passion of incubation.

It is amongst birds that the animal family is best constituted; this, however, differs much according to the species, especially as regards the participation of the male in the rearing of the young.

Amongst ducks, the male has no care for his progeny. The male eider resembles the duck in this respect (Audubon). Male turkeys do much worse: they often devour the eggs of their females, and thus oblige the latter to hide them.[46] Female turkeys join each other with their young ones for greater security, and thus form troops of from sixty to eighty individuals, led by the mothers, and carefully avoiding the old males, who rush on the young ones and kill them by violent blows on the head with their beaks.[47]

Among certain species of gallinaceæ the male leaves to the female the care of incubation and of rearing the young. During this time he is running after adventures, but returns when the young are old enough to follow him and form a docile band under his government.[48] It is important to notice that, amongst birds, the fathers devoid of affection generally belong to the less intelligent species, and are most often polygamous. It seems, therefore, that polygamy is not very favourable to the development of paternal love.[49]

But bad fathers are rare amongst birds. Often, on the contrary, the male rivals the female in love for the young; he guards and feeds her during incubation, and sometimes even sits on the eggs with her. The carrier pigeon feeds his female while she is sitting;[50] the Canadian goose[51] and the crow do the same; more than that, the latter takes his companion’s place at times, to give her some relaxation. The blue marten behaves in the same manner.[52] Among many species, male and female combine their efforts without distinction of sex; they sit in turn, and the one who is free takes the duty of feeding the one who is occupied. This is the custom of the black-coated gull,[53] the booby of Bassan,[54] the great blue heron,[55] and of the black vulture.[56] According to Audubon, the blue bird of America works so ardently at the propagation of its species that a single brood does not satisfy him; each couple, therefore, exerts itself zealously, rearing two or three broods at the same time, the female sitting on one, while the male feeds the little ones of the preceding brood.[57]

But however violent the love of birds for their progeny may be, it lasts only a short time, and is suddenly extinguished when the young can manage for themselves. It is then quite surprising to see the parents drive away by strokes of the beak the little ones they had been nursing with such devoted tenderness a few days before. The birds of several species, however, teach their young to fly before separating from them. The white-headed sea-eagle carries them on its back to give them lessons in flying; grebes, swans, and eiders teach their young to swim, etc. But the family is only of short duration among birds and animals generally, unless, as is the case with some gallinaceæ, the male keeps a few of his daughters to enrich his harem. As a matter of fact, both with birds and other animals, the paternal or maternal sentiment hardly lasts longer than the rearing time. When once the young are full grown, the parents no longer distinguish them from strangers of their species, and it is thus even with monogamic species when the conjugal tie is lifelong; the marriage alone endures, but the family is intermittent and renewed with every brood. We may remark that it is almost the same with certain human races of low development. But, before speaking of man, it will be well to investigate conjugal union and the family amongst the animals nearest to man—the mammals.

From the point of view of duration and strength of the affections, or that which we as men should call their morality, the mammals are far from occupying the first rank in the animal hierarchy; many birds are very superior to them. We find, however, great differences in the morals, according to the species. Many mammals have stopped at the most brutal promiscuity; males and females unite and separate at chance meetings, without any care for the family arising in the mind of the male. The females of mammals being always weaker than the males, no sexual association comparable to polyandry is possible in this class, since, even if she wished it, the female could not succeed in collecting a seraglio of males. But as to polygamy, it is quite different, and this is very common with mammals, especially with the sociable kinds, living in flocks. It is even a necessity of the struggle for existence. Sociability generally proceeds from weakness. The species that are badly armed for fierce combats, and that have besides some difficulty in finding food, are glad to live in association. Union is strength. The ruminants, for example, do this. Certain carnivorous animals, ill-furnished with teeth and claws, dogs also, and jackals, live in troops for the same reason—that of opposing a respectable front to the enemy. This life in common is certainly favourable to the development of social virtues; it cannot but soften primitive cruelty, and develop altruistic qualities; but it is little conducive to sexual restraint and monogamy. Thus the greater number of sociable mammals are polygamous. The ruminants live in hordes composed of females and young, grouped around a male who protects them, but who expels his rivals and becomes a veritable chief of a band. Very various species compose familial societies in the same manner, and strongly resembling each other.

When the Indian adult elephant renounces the solitary life which strong animals generally adopt, it is in order to found a little polygamous society, from which he expels all the males weaker than himself.[58]

The moufflons of Europe and of the Atlas also form little societies of the same kind in the breeding season.[59]

Among the walrus, says Brehm, the male, who is of very jealous temperament, collects around him from thirty to forty females, without counting young, making altogether a polygamous family sometimes amounting to a hundred and twenty individuals.

The male of the Asiatic antilope saiga is inordinately polygamous; he expels all his rivals, and forms a harem numbering sometimes a hundred females.[60]

The polygamic régime of animals is far from extinguishing affectionate sentiments in the females towards their husband and master. The females of the guanaco lamas, for example, are very faithful to their male. If the latter happens to be wounded or killed, instead of running away, they hasten to his side, bleating and offering themselves to the shots of the hunter in order to shield him, while, on the contrary, if a female is killed, the male makes off with all his troop; he only thinks of himself.

In regard to mammals, there is no strict relation between the degree of intellectual development and the form of sexual union. The carnivorous animals often live in couples for the reason previously given; but this is not an absolute rule, for the South African lion is frequently accompanied by four or five females.[61] Bears, weasels, whales, etc., on the contrary, generally go in couples. Sometimes species that are very nearly allied have different conjugal customs; thus the white-cheeked peccary lives in troops, whilst the white-ringed peccary lives in couples.[62]

There is the same diversity in the habits of monkeys. Some are polygamous and others monogamous. The wanderoo (Macacus silenus) of India has only one female, and is faithful to her until death.[63] The Cebus capucinus, on the contrary, is polygamous.[64]

Those cousins-german of man, the anthropoid apes, have sometimes adopted polygamy and sometimes monogamy. Savage tells us that the Gorilla gina forms small hordes, consisting of a single adult male, who is the despotic chief of many females and a certain number of young.

Chimpanzees are sometimes polygamous and sometimes monogamous. The polygamous family of monkeys is always subject to the monarchic régime. The male, who is at the same time the chief, is despotic; he exacts a passive obedience from his subordinates, and he expels the young males as soon as they are old enough to give umbrage to him. To sum up, he is at once the father, the protector, and the tyrant of the band. Nevertheless, the females are affectionate to him, and the most zealous among them prove it by assiduously picking the lice from him, which, with monkeys, is a mark of great tenderness.[65] But the master who has been thus flattered and cringed to sometimes comes to a bad end. One fine day, when old age has rendered him less formidable, when he is no longer capable of proving at every instant that right must yield to might, the young ones, so long oppressed, rebel, and assassinate this tyrannous father. We must here remark, that whatever the form of sexual association among mammals, the male has always much less affection for the young than the female. Even in monogamous species, when the male keeps with the female, he does so more as chief than as father. At times he is much inclined to commit infanticides and to destroy the offspring, which, by absorbing all the attention of his female, thwart his amours. Thus, among the large felines, the mother is obliged to hide her young ones from the male during the first few days after birth, to prevent his devouring them.

I shall here conclude this very condensed study of sexual association and the family in the animal kingdom. My object is not so much to exhaust the subject, as to bring into relief the analogies existing between man and the other species. The facts which have been cited are amply sufficient for this purpose, and we may draw the following general conclusions from them:—

In the first place there is no premeditated design in nature; any mode of reproduction, of sexual association and of rearing of young that is compatible with the duration of the species may be adopted. But in a general manner it may be said that a sort of antagonism exists between the multiplicity of births and the degree of protection bestowed on the young by the parents.

A rough outline of the family is already found in the animal kingdom; it is sometimes patriarchal, as with sticklebacks, etc., but most often it is matriarchal. In the latter case the female is the centre of it, and her love for the young is infinitely stronger and more devoted than that of the male. This is especially true of mammals, with whom the male is generally an egoist, merely protecting the family in his own personal interest.

The familial instinct, more or less developed, exists in the greater number of vertebrates, and in many invertebrates. From an early period it must have been an object of selection, since it adds considerably to the chances of the duration of the species. With some species (ants, bees, termites) this instinct has expanded into a wide social love, resulting in the production of large societies of complex structure, in which the family, as we understand it, is unknown. I lay stress on this fact, for it is of great importance in theoretical sociology; it proves, in fact, that large and complicated societies, with division of social labour, can be maintained without the institution of the family. We are not, therefore, warranted in pretending, as is usually done, that the family is absolutely indispensable, and that it is the “cellule” of the social organism. Let us observe, by the way, that the expression “social organism” is simply metaphorical, and we must beware of taking it literally, as Herbert Spencer, with a strange naïveté, seems to have done. Societies are agglomerations of individuals in which a certain order is necessarily established; but it is almost puerile to seek for, and to pretend to find in them, an actual organisation, comparable, for example, to the anatomic and physiologic plan of a mammal.

Terminating this short digression, I revert to my subject by summing up the results of our examination of sexual associations among the animals.

In regard to marriage, as well as to the family, nature has no preference; all means are welcome to her, provided the species profits by them, or, at least, does not suffer too much from them.

We find amongst animals temporary unions, at the close of which the male ceases absolutely to care for the female; but we also find, especially among birds, numbers of lasting unions, for which the word marriage is not too exalted. It does not appear that polyandry—that is, a durable society between one female and many males—has been practised by animals. The female, nearly always weaker than the male, could not reduce a number of them to sexual servitude, and the latter have never been tempted to share one female systematically. On the contrary, they are often polygamous. But it is especially amongst mammals that polygamy is common, and it must often have had its raison d’être either in the sexual proportion of births, or in a greater mortality of males. These are reasons I shall have to refer to later, in speaking of human polygamy.

But if polygamy is frequent with mammals, it is far from being the conjugal régime universally adopted; monogamy is common, and is sometimes accompanied by so much devotion, that it would serve as an example to human monogamists.

It is important also to notice that, in regard to animals, the mode of sexual association may vary without much difficulty. No species is of necessity and always restricted to such or such a form of sexual union. An animal belonging to a species habitually monogamous may very easily become polygamous. In short, there does not seem to be any relation between the degree of intelligence in a species and its conjugal customs.

In the following chapters it will be seen that, in great measure, these observations do not apply exclusively to animals.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Espinas, Soc. Animales, pp. 343, 344.

[30] Ibid. pp. 344, 345.

[31] Espinas, Soc. Animales, pp. 336-396.

[32] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 375.

[33] Lortet, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, 1878.

[34] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 379.

[35] Ibid. p. 244.

[36] Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 415.

[37] Ibid. pp. 416, 417.

[38] Houzeau, Fac. mentales des animaux, t. ii. p. 380.

[39] Dix-huit ans chez les sauvages, etc., p. 374.

[40] Espinas, Soc. anim., p. 427.

[41] Ibid. p. 421.

[42] Audubon, loc. cit., vol. i. p. 83.

[43] Ibid. t. I^er. p. 292.

[44] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 446, 449.

[45] Ibid. p. 455.

[46] Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 422.

[47] Audubon, Scènes de la Nature, t. I^er. p. 29.

[48] Espinas, loc. cit. pp. 421-423.

[49] Audubon, loc. cit. t. I^er. p. 209.

[50] Ibid. t. ii. p. 13.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid. t. I^er. p. 167.

[53] Ibid. t. ii. p. 199.

[54] Ibid. t. ii. p. 476.

[55] Ibid. t. ii. p. 70.

[56] Ibid. t. I^er. p. 347.

[57] Audubon, Scènes de la Nature, t. I^er. p. 317.

[58] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 238.

[59] Espinas, Soc. Animales, p. 448.

[60] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 238.

[61] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 443.

[62] Espinas, loc. cit. p. 443.

[63] Houzeau, Facultés mentales des animaux, t. ii. p. 394.

[64] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 238.

[65] Espinas, loc. cit. p. 453.

CHAPTER III.
PROMISCUITY.

I. Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity?—Promiscuity rare among the superior vertebrates—It has been exceptional in mankind.

II. Cases of Human Promiscuity.—Promiscuity among the Troglodytes, the ancient Arabs, the Agathyrses, the Anses, the Garamantes, the ancient Greeks, in the Timæus, in China, in India, among the Andamanites, in California, among the aborigines of India, among the Zaporogs, and the Ansarians—Insufficience of these proofs.

III. Hetaïrism.—Jus primæ noctis—Religious hetaïrism at Babylon, in Armenia—Religious prostitution—Religious defloration—The jus primæ noctis with the Nasamons, in the Balearic Isles, in ancient Peru, in Asia, etc.—The right of the chief with the Kaffirs, in New Zealand, in New Mexico, in Cochin-China, in feudal Europe—The right of religious prelibation—Religious defloration in Cambodia—The reason of the right of prelibation—The jus primæ noctis confounded with the simple licence of unmarried women—Shamelessness of girls in Australia, Polynesia, America, Malaya, Abyssinia, etc.—The indotata in primitive Rome—Loan and barter of women in America and elsewhere, and among the ancient Arabs—Actual promiscuity has been rare in humanity.

I. Has there been a Stage of Promiscuity?

Having made our preliminary investigation of love, sexual unions, marriage, or what corresponds to it, and the family in the animal kingdom, we are now in a position to approach the examination of corresponding social facts in regard to man. The method of evolution requires us to begin our inquiry with the lowest forms of sexual association, and there is none lower, morally and intellectually, than promiscuity; that is to say, a social condition so gross that within a group, a horde, or a tribe, all the women belong, without rule or distinction, to all the men. In a society so bestial there is surely no room for what we call love, however grossly we may understand this sentiment. There is no choice, no preference; the sexual need is reduced to its simplest expression, and absolutely debased to the level of the nutritive needs; love is no more than a hunger or thirst of another kind; there is no longer any distinction between the man and the tatoway.

Some sociologists have affirmed, without hesitation, that community of women represented a primitive and necessary stage of the sexual associations of mankind. Surely they would have been less dogmatic on this point if, before approaching human sociology, they had first consulted animal sociology, as we have done. We have seen that many vertebrated animals are capable of a really exclusive and jealous passion, even when they are determined polygamists. As a matter of fact, the vertebrates with whom love is merely a need, like any other, seem to be a very small minority. Some among them, especially birds, are models of fidelity, constancy, and devoted attachment, which may well inspire man with feelings of modesty. Mammals, while less delicate in their love than many birds, are, however, for the most part, already on a moral level incompatible with promiscuity. The mammals nearest to man, those whom we may consider as the effigies of our nearest animal ancestors, the anthropoid apes, are sometimes monogamous and sometimes polygamous, but, as a rule, they cannot endure promiscuity. Now, this fact manifestly constitutes a very strong presumption against the basis of the theory according to which promiscuity has been, with the human species, the primitive and necessary stage of sexual unions. Do we thus mean to say that there is no example of promiscuity in human societies, primitive or not? Far from it. It would be impossible to affirm this without neglecting a large number of facts observed in antiquity or observable in our own day. But we are warranted in believing that the very inferior stage of promiscuity has never been other than exceptional in humanity. If it has existed here and there, it is that by the very reason of the relative superiority of his intelligence, man is less rigorously subject to general laws, and that he knows sometimes how to modify or infringe them; there is more room for caprice in his existence than in the life of the animals.

II. Some Cases of Human Promiscuity.

Human groups have, then, practised promiscuity, and it is not quite impossible that some of them practise it still. Exceptional as these facts may be, they are interesting to sociologists, and it is important to mention and to criticise them also. We are indebted for our knowledge of a certain number of them to the writers of Greco-Latin antiquity. I will give them in full, at least those that deserve or have obtained more or less credit.

“Throughout the Troglodyte country,” relates Strabo, “the people lead a nomad life. Each tribe has its chief, or tyrant. The women and the children are possessed in common, with the exception of the wives and children of the chief, and whoever is guilty of adultery with one of the wives of the chief is punished by a fine consisting of the payment of a sheep.”[66]

Another passage of Strabo’s, which is better known, is often quoted as proving a primitive epoch of promiscuity among the ancient Arabs also. This passage is curious and interesting, but it has not in the least the extent of signification that is attributed to it. Concerning the conjugal customs of the peoples of Arabia Felix, Strabo speaks as follows:—“Community of goods exists between all the members of the same family, but there is only one master, who is always the eldest of the family. They have only one wife between them all, and he who can forestall the others enters her apartment the first, and enjoys her, after having taken the precaution of placing his staff across the door (it is the custom for every man to carry a staff). She never spends the night with any but the eldest, the chief. This promiscuity makes them all brothers. We must add that they have commerce with their own mothers. On the other hand, adultery, which means for them commerce with a lover who is not of the family, is pitilessly punished with death. The daughter of one of the kings of the country, who was marvellously beautiful, had fifteen brothers, all desperately in love with her, and who, for this reason, took turns in enjoying her without intermission. Fatigued with their assiduity, she invented the following stratagem. She procured staffs exactly similar to those of her brothers, and when one of them left her, she quickly placed across the door the staff similar to that of the brother who had just quitted her, then replaced it shortly after by another, and so on, taking care not to place there the staff like the brother’s whose visit she was expecting. Now, one day, when all the brothers were together in the public place, one of them went to her door, and concluded, at the sight of the staff, that some one was with her; but, as he had left all his brothers together, he believed in a flagrant act of adultery, hastened to seek their father, and led him to the spot. He was, however, forced to acknowledge in his presence that he had slandered his sister.”[67]

Even admitting the perfect accuracy of the fact related by Strabo (and there is nothing in it to surprise an ethnographical sociologist), the word promiscuity is here quite inappropriate. The custom of maternal incest, which is not without example, perhaps warrants the supposition of ancient familial promiscuity; but in reality the Arabs of whom Strabo speaks were simply polyandrous, and they were so precisely in the manner of the Thibetans of the present day; they practised fraternal polyandry—a conjugal form to which we shall presently return.

The other examples of so-called promiscuity related by the writers of antiquity are, unfortunately, so briefly given that it is difficult to judge of their value.

“The Agathyrses” (Scythians), says Herodotus, “are the most delicate of men; their ornaments are chiefly of gold. They have their women in common in order that they may all be brothers, and that, being so nearly related, they may feel neither hatred nor envy against each other.”[68]

In another passage Herodotus says of the Massagetes (Scythians), “Each man marries a wife, but they use them all in common.” The assertion is grossly contradictory, and can only relate to the extremely loose manners of the unmarried women. As a matter of fact, amongst many savage or barbarous peoples chastity is not imposed on the women, as long as they have no proprietors. “When one of them desires a woman,” continues Herodotus, “he suspends his quiver in front of his chariot, and tranquilly unites with her.”[69]

This is merely a trait of very free manners, which may be placed by the side of many others, proving that modesty has been slow of growth in the human brain. The Tahitians were still more cynical than the Massagetes. Herodotus himself speaks of black Indians (Tamils) “who coupled as publicly as beasts” (iii. 101), and V. Jacquemont has related that Runjeet Singh would ride with one of his wives on the back of an elephant and take his pleasure publicly with his companion, careless of censure (V. Jacquemont, Corres., 16th March 1831). It would be very easy, by searching into ethnography, to accumulate facts of this kind; but for the moment I have only to continue my examination of old Greco-Roman texts relating more or less to promiscuity. I therefore return to them. Herodotus again relates, in speaking of the Anses, an Ethiopian tribe: “Their women are common; they do not live with them, but couple after the manner of beasts. When a vigorous child is born to a woman, all the men go to see it at the third month, and he whom it most resembles acknowledges it for his.”[70] And here we have Pliny saying also of the Garamantes: Garamantes matrimoniorum exsortes, passim cum feminis degunt.[71]

Strabo, too, affirms of the Celtic population of Ierne (Ireland), “the men have public commerce with all kinds of women, even with their mothers and sisters.”[72]

The passages that I have just quoted are those which are most frequently used to support the pretension that human societies have begun with promiscuity; they are at once the most ancient, most authentic, and most explicit. We may add to them the assertion of Varro, quoted by Saint Augustine,[73] according to which the Greeks, prior to the time of Cecrops, lived in promiscuity. But how is it possible not to be struck with the weakness of these historical proofs? Some of them are mere general assertions, while others plainly relate either to social anomalies or to cases of polyandry. There is no doubt as to this in regard to the ancient Arabs of whom Strabo speaks, and also to the Protohellenes of Varro. This last instance certainly relates to the matriarchal family, of which I shall have to speak again at some length. In fact, after having stated that the Protohellenes had no marriage, Varro adds that the children only knew their mother and bore her name. The proof is decisive, for the matriarchate does not in the least exclude marriage, as we shall see later, and in the case of the Lydians it lasted until the time of Herodotus.

In order to complete this review of ancient texts, I will mention further the passage of the Timæus in which Socrates speaks of the community of wives:—“On the subject of the procreation of children we established a community of wives and children; and we devised means that no one should ever know his own child. They were to imagine that they were of one family, and to regard those who were within a certain limit of age as brothers and sisters; and again, those who were of an elder generation as parents and grandparents, and those who were of a younger generation as children and grandchildren.”

But Plato had a lively imagination. He was a “great dreamer,” as Voltaire said of him, and this passage evidently describes a purely utopian society.

Traditions relative to a very ancient epoch of promiscuity are found here and there outside the Greco-Roman world. In China, for example, the women are said to have been common until the reign of Fouhi.[74] A tradition of the same kind, but more explicitly stated, is mentioned in the Mahabharata (i. 503): “Formerly it was not a crime to be faithless to a husband; it was even a duty.... This custom is observed in our own days among the Kourous of the north.... The females of all classes are common on the earth; as are the cows, so are the women; each one has her caste.... It is Civéta-Ketou who has established a limit for the men and women on the earth.”[75] This assertion is vague, and has not the least proof to support it.

If, continuing our inquiry, we attempt to correct these historical documents by ethnographical information, we shall hardly find, on this side of the subject more than on the other, anything but simple assertions, which are either too vague or too brief, or evidently open to dispute.

In the Andaman Islands, or at least in certain of them, the women are said to have been held in common till quite recently. Every woman belonged to all the men of the tribe, and resistance to any of them was a crime severely punished.[76] This time we seem to have found, at length, a case of actual legal promiscuity. But, according to other accounts, the Andamanite man and woman contract, on the contrary, a monogamic and temporary union, and remain together, in case of pregnancy and maternity, until the child is weaned, as do many animals.[77] Now, however short a conjugal union may be, it is incompatible with promiscuity.

The indigenous Indians of California, who are among the lowest of human races, couple after the manner of inferior mammals, without the least formality, and according to the caprice of the moment.[78] They are said even to celebrate feasts and propitiatory dances, which are followed by a general promiscuity.[79]

According to Major Ross King, some aboriginal tribes of India, notably the Kouroumbas and the Iroulas, have no idea of marriage, and live in promiscuity.[80] The only prohibitory rule consists in not having intimate commerce with a person belonging to another class or caste; but there seem only to be two classes in the tribe.

Barbarous tribes belonging to white races are said also to have practised promiscuity in modern times. Among certain tribes of the Zaporog Cossacks the women are said to be common, and are confined in separate camps.[81] Besides these, the Ansarians, mountaineers of Syria, are said to practise, not promiscuity pure and simple, or civil promiscuity, but a religious promiscuity, analogous to that of the ancient Gnostics[82] and the Areoïs of Tahiti. These Ansarians must doubtless have been confounded with the Yazidies, a sect of Arabs, also Syrians, practising a sort of manichæism, and who, it is said, assemble periodically every month, or every three months, in fraternal agapæ, at the conclusion of which they unite in the darkness without heed as to adultery or incest. Throughout the Syrian Orient the erotic festival of the Yazidies is called by a significant name, Daour-el-Cachfeh—the game of catching.[83] But even if the fact were true, what does it show? Only one more aberration to the score of the phallic religions.

Here I end my enumeration. Evidently nothing very convincing results from it. The greater number of the facts that I have just quoted have either been carelessly observed, or contested, or affirmed by a single witness, or depend merely on hearsay evidence. It is prudent, therefore, to regard them with lawful suspicion, and even if certain of them are exact, we must be careful not to draw general conclusions from them. Promiscuity may have been adopted by certain small human groups, more probably by certain associations or brotherhoods. Thus the chiefs of the Namaquoi Hottentots willingly held their wives in common.

When we come to study the family we shall find that among the Kamilaroi of Australia all the women of one clan are reputed to be the wives of all the men of another. But this community is often only fictitious, and, besides, it is already regulated; it is not promiscuity pure and simple. So far, nothing proves sufficiently that there has been a universal stage of promiscuity among mankind. Some theorists have been so hasty to come to a conclusion on this point that they have gone beyond actual experience. Moreover, as I have been careful to remark, the simple fact that man is a mammalian primate weakens this hypothesis in advance, since the nearest relations of man in the animal kingdom are in general polygamous, and even sometimes monogamous.

III. Hetaïrism.—Jus primæ noctis.

Not only is it impossible to admit that mankind has, in all times and places, passed through a necessary stage of promiscuity, but we must go further, and also renounce a theory which has had some degree of success lately—the theory of obligatory primitive hetaïrism. According to this theory, when the instinct of holding feminine property arose in man, some individuals arrogated the right to keep for themselves one or more of the women hitherto common. The community then protested, and while tolerating this derogation from ancient usage, exacted that the bride, or purchased woman, should make an act of hetaïrism, or prostitution, before belonging to one man only.

It is Herodotus who has transmitted to us the most striking example of this kind, the one invoked by all the theorists of hetaïrism. I shall, therefore, quote it at length: “The most disgraceful of the Babylonian customs is the following. Every native woman is obliged, once in her life, to sit in the temple of Venus and have intercourse with some stranger. And many, disdaining to sit with the rest, being proud on account of their wealth, come in covered carriages, and take up their station at the temple with a numerous train of servants attending them. But the far greater part do this: many sit down in the temple of Venus, wearing a crown of cord round their heads; some are continually coming and others are going out. Passages marked out in a straight line lead in every direction through the women, along which strangers pass and make their choice. When a woman has once seated herself, she must not return home till some stranger has thrown a piece of silver into her lap and lain with her outside the temple. He who throws the silver must say thus: ‘I beseech the goddess Mylitta to favour thee;’ for the Assyrians call Venus Mylitta. The silver may be ever so small, for she will not reject it, inasmuch as it is not lawful for her to do so, for such silver is accounted sacred. The woman follows the first man that throws, and refuses no one. But when she has had intercourse, and has absolved herself from her obligations to the goddess, she returns home; and after that time, however great a sum you may give her, you will not gain possession of her. Those that are endowed with beauty and symmetry of shape are soon set free; but the deformed are detained a long time, from inability to satisfy the law, for some wait for a space of three or four years. In some parts of Cyprus there is a custom very similar.”[84]

After having read this passage, we are surprised at the import that has been attributed to it. Even admitting the obligation and universality of the custom in ancient Babylon, it is only an example of religious prostitution, with traces of exogamy. The Babylonians honoured Mylitta, just as the Armenians, according to Strabo,[85] venerated the goddess Anaïtis. “They have erected temples to Anaïtis in various places, especially in the Akilisenus, and have attached to these temples a good number of hierodules, or sacred slaves, of both sexes. So far, indeed, there is no ground for astonishment; but their devotion goes further, and it is the custom for the most illustrious personages to consecrate their virgin daughters to the goddess. This in no way prevents the latter from easily finding husbands, even after they have prostituted themselves for a long time in the temples of Anaïtis. No man feels on this account any repugnance to take them as wives.”

I quote in full these venerable passages, which have been so much used and abused, in order that it may not be possible to mistake their signification. Once more we repeat that they merely relate to erotico-religious aberrations. The procreative need, or delirium, has inspired men with many foolish ideas, and probably will continue to do so. A very slight knowledge of mythology is enough to show us that numerous cults have been founded on the sexual instinct, and these cults are naturally accompanied by special practices, little in accordance with our European morality. Religious prostitution, which was widely spread in Greek antiquity, has been also found in India, where every temple of renown had its bayadères, the only women in India to whom, until quite recently, any instruction was given.

The far more peculiar custom of Tchin-than, or religious defloration, formerly in use in Cambodia[86] and in Malabar, is evidently akin to religious prostitution. But this custom is nothing else than a mystic transformation of what was called the jus primæ noctis, of which I must first speak. It is important to distinguish several varieties of it. The first and most simple was the custom by which every newly-married woman, before belonging to her husband, was obliged to give herself, or be given, to a certain number of men, either relatives, friends, or fellow-citizens. This was the custom among the Nasamons, according to Herodotus: “When a Nasamon marries, custom requires that his bride should yield herself on the first night to all his guests in turn; each one who has had commerce with her makes her a present, which he has been mindful to bring with him.”[87]

A similar custom is said to have existed in various countries of the globe, in ancient times in the Balearic Isles, more recently among the ancient Peruvians, in our own times among several aboriginal tribes of India; in Burmah, in Cashmere, in the south of Arabia, in Madagascar, and in New Zealand;[88] but always as an exceptional practice, in use only in a small group or tribe. It is not impossible that here and there this usage, which is rare enough, may have been derived traditionally from an ancient marriage by classes, analogous to that still found among the Kamilaroi of Australia; but it may have been simply a mark of good-fellowship, or of conjugal generosity on the part of the bridegroom.

The seignorial jus primæ noctis, the right of the lord, is much more widely spread, and its existence cannot be contested. Among the Kaffirs, says Hamilton,[89] the chiefs have the choice of the women for several leagues round. So also, until lately, in New Zealand, every pretty girl was taboo for the vulgar, and had to be first reserved for the chief.[90] In New Mexico, with the Tahous, as Castañeda informs us, it is necessary, after having purchased the girl from her parents, to submit her to the seignorial right of the cacique, or to a priest of high rank. Religion already begins to insinuate itself into this singular right.[91]

According to Marco Polo, the same custom existed in the thirteenth century in Cochin-China. “Know,” says the old chronicler, “no woman can marry without the king first seeing her. If she pleases him, he takes her to wife; if she does not please him, he gives her enough from his own property to enable her to marry.

“In the year 1280 of Christ, when Messire Marco Polo was in that country, the king had three hundred and eighty-six children, male and female.”[92]

Under the feudal system in Europe this right of prelibation, or marquette (designated in old French by the expressive term droit de culage), has been in use in many fiefs, and until a very recent epoch. Almost in our own days certain lords of the Netherlands, of Prussia, and of Germany, still claimed it. In a French title-deed of 1507 we read that the Count d’Eu has the right of prelibation in the said place when any one marries.[93] More than this, ecclesiastics, and even bishops, have been known to claim this right in their quality of feudal lords. “I have seen,” says Boetius, “in the court at Bourges, before the metropolitan, an appeal by a certain parish priest, who pretended to claim the first night of young brides, according to the received usage. The demand was rejected with indignation, the custom unanimously proscribed, and the scandalous priest condemned to pay a fine.”

“In a kingdom of Malabar,” says J. Forbes, “the ecclesiastical power took precedence of the civil on this particular point, and the sovereign himself passed under the yoke. Like the other women, the queen had to submit to the right of prelibation exercised by the high priest, who had a right to the first three nights, and who was paid fifty pieces of gold besides for his trouble.”[94] In Cambodia, according to an ancient Chinese traveller, religious prelibation was obligatory on all the young girls, and was performed every year with great ceremony. The parents who had daughters to marry made a declaration of it, and a public functionary fixed the day for the celebration of Tchin-than, or the legal and religious defloration. For this the intervention of a Buddhist priest, or a tao-sse priest, was indispensable. The parents entreated his service, which was very costly, and for this reason girls who were poor retained their virginity longer than the rich. It even sometimes happened that pious persons, moved by a sentiment of charity, took on themselves the payment of the costs of the ceremony for those who had been waiting a long time. Great display attended it. On the appointed day the officiating priest was carried in the evening with much pomp to the festive house, and the next morning he was reconducted home in a palanquin with parasol, drum, and music, and not without being offered fresh presents. A. de Rémusat has given, in Latin, some curious particulars of the intimate details of the ceremony, which I cannot relate here.[95]

These few examples suffice to show how very much morality is a relative thing, but they cannot serve as a basis to a general theory of hetaïrism.

The seignorial right of prelibation is simply an abuse of force and good pleasure; only, viewed in the light of our morality, it shocks us more than the others. One might justify it, however, by reasons which Bossuet considered sufficient to render slavery lawful. The right of conquest has given, or still gives, all over the world, every sort of right over the vanquished, even the right of life and death. The conqueror, “in a just war,” says the sage of Meaux, may legitimately kill the vanquished and, a fortiori, enslave him; and one may add, following out a logical conclusion, that it is lawful for him to dispose as he pleases of his wife and daughter. As a matter of course, the priest, in his quality of lord, can claim the same privileges as the layman; but besides this, if it should happen that his particular religion lends itself to the idea by being founded in some manner on the worship of the principle of procreation, as is so frequently the case with oriental religions, a sort of superstitious prestige will come to adorn and clothe this sacerdotal shamelessness.

In all this there is hardly any room for hetaïrism considered as a compensation to the community for damage to its ancient rights.

Admitting that the jus primæ noctis of relatives and friends does not imply simple polyandry, it may very naturally be explained by primitive laxity of morals. Among the greater number of peoples who are very slightly or not at all civilised, the women are free to give or sell themselves before marriage as they please, and as it does not entail any disgrace, they use the liberty largely. Besides, in many countries the husband had, or still has, over his wife or wives all the rights of a proprietor over the thing possessed. Now, considering he is a stranger to all modesty and sexual restraint, nothing seems more natural, if he has some instinct of sociability, than to lend his wife to his friends, just as he would do them an act of politeness, make them a present, or invite them to a feast, all without thinking any evil. This view of the practice is supported by many facts.

Doubtless it is the great sexual licence accorded to young girls in so many countries which has led many observers and travellers to conclude that promiscuity has been systematically established. In Australia the girls cohabit from the age of ten with young boys of fourteen or fifteen, without rebuke from any one, and there are even great sexual orgies in which the signal is given to the young people for liberty to unite freely in open day.[96]

In the greater number of savage countries these customs are common. At Nouka-Hiva, or more generally all over Polynesia, the young girls did not marry, that is to say, did not become the chattel of a man, before the age of nineteen or twenty, and until then they contracted a great number of capricious unions, which became lasting only in case of the birth of children.[97]

In all these islands, moreover, modesty was unknown, and the members of each family passed the night side by side on mats, and entirely naked. The place of honour, in the centre, was occupied by the master of the house, flanked by his wife or wives.[98]

Analogous customs, extremely licentious in our eyes, but perfectly natural for primitive peoples, were in full force among all the indigenous races of America.

The Chinouk girls give or hire themselves out as they please. In the latter case the parents often take the payment.[99]

The Aymaras, who have no word for marriage, and who are such a simple folk that, in their opinion, any crime can be committed with impunity on Good Friday, since God is dead on that day, contract without scruple free unions merely for the duration of the evening of a feast. The contract is made in mimic language, and in settling it the man and woman exchange head-gear only.[100]

Similar manners prevail among the Esquimaux, the Kaffirs, and the Dyaks of Borneo. In Japan the parents willingly hire out their daughters, either to private individuals or to houses of prostitution, for a period of several years, and the girls are in no way dishonoured thereby. In Abyssinia, says Bruce, outside of the conjugal bond, which is easily tied or untied, the women dispose of their person as they please.

In primitive Rome, as with us, the young girl without dowry, the indotata, was held in moderate esteem; and therefore many young girls procured themselves a dowry by trafficking their persons. An old Latin proverb has handed down the souvenir of this ancient fashion of procuring a dowry: Tusco more, tute tibi dotem quæris corpore.[101]

Now, in all these customs, at once so simple and so gross, it is impossible to see the traces of an enforced hetaïrism, derived from an antique period of promiscuity, which was also equally obligatory. They are simply traits of animal laxity. Men were still almost devoid of moral training, and the care for decency and modesty was of the slightest.

If in a primitive country a certain amount of restraint is imposed on a woman who is married, or rather owned by a man, it is solely because she is considered as property, held by the same title as a field or a domestic animal. For her to dispose of her person without authorisation is often a capital crime; but the husband, on the contrary, has in many countries the undisputed right to lend, let out, or barter his wife or wives: jus utendi et abutendi. I will mention a few of these marital customs.

In America, from the land of the Esquimaux to Patagonia, the loan of the wife is not only lawful, but praiseworthy. Egidius says of the Esquimaux, “that those who lend their wives to their friends without the least hesitation are reputed in the tribe as having the best and noblest character.”[102] The English traveller, Captain Ross, relates that one of the Esquimaux prowling around his ship was accompanied by the wives and children of one of his intimate friends, to whom he had, in the preceding autumn, confided, on his side, his own two wives. The exchange was to terminate at a fixed time, and the Esquimaux of whom Captain Ross speaks was very indignant with his friend because the latter, having forgotten himself while chasing the deer in distant regions, was not exact in keeping the engagement.[103]

On this point the Redskins are not more delicate than the Esquimaux. Thus the Natchez make no difficulty of lending their wives to their friends.[104] In New Mexico the Yuma husbands willingly hire out their wives and their slaves, without making any difference. And, besides, with them, as in many other countries, to furnish a guest with a temporary wife is simply one of the duties of hospitality.[105] The chiefs of the Noutka Columbians barter their wives among each other as a sign of friendship.[106] Nothing would be easier than to enumerate a great number of facts of the same kind observed in Australia, Africa, Polynesia, Mongolia, and almost everywhere. But it is more remarkable to meet with the same custom in a Mussulman country. Nevertheless, Burckhardt relates that the Merekedeh, a branch of the great tribe of Asyr, understood hospitality in this primitive manner. To every stranger received under their tents or in their houses, they offered a woman of the family, and most often a wife of the host himself. The young girls alone were exempt from this strange service. It was considered the duty of the traveller to conform with a good grace to the custom, otherwise he was hooted and chased from the village or camp by the women and children. This extreme manner of understanding hospitality was very ancient and deeply rooted, and it was not without difficulty that the conquering Wahabites brought the Asyrs to renounce it.[107] But these customs were not specially confined to the Asyrs; they were in force throughout prehistoric Arabia. An old Arab writer, Ibn al Moghawir, mentions them. “Sometimes,” he says, “the wife was actually placed at the disposition of the guest; at other times, the offer was only symbolic. The guests were invited to press the wife in their arms, and to give her kisses, but the poignard would have revenged any further liberties.”[108] It is not very long since the same practice prevailed in Kordofan and Djebel-Taggale.[109] Certain traits of morals related by the Greco-Latin writers show that in Rome, and Greece also, if it was not the husband’s duty to lend his wife to his friends, he had at least the right to do so. At Sparta, Lycurgus authorised husbands to be thus liberal with their wives whenever they judged their friends worthy of this honour. And, further, the public opinion of Sparta strongly approved the conduct of an aged husband who took care to procure for his wife a young, handsome, and virtuous substitute.[110]

The same customs prevailed at Athens, where Socrates, it is said, lent his wife Xantippe to his friend Alcibiades; and at Rome,[111] where the austere Cato the elder gave up his wife Marcia to his friend Hortensius, and afterwards took her back, much enriched, it is true, at the death of this friend.

All these facts relate, therefore, to a very widely-spread and almost universal custom, which is in perfect accord with the extremely low position that has been granted to women in the greater number of savage and barbarous societies. The married woman, being exactly assimilated to a slave or a thing possessed, might thenceforth be treated as such; and the right of property, soon becoming sacred, easily stood before any scruples of decency which were still rare and weak.

After the preceding investigation, there appears to be no difficulty in refuting the sociological theory, far too prevalent, according to which the entire human race has passed through a primitive period of promiscuity followed by hetaïrism. Our first ancestors, the precursors of man, were surely very analogous to the other primates. We may, therefore, conclude that, like them, they generally lived in polygamous families. When these almost human little groups were associated in hordes or tribes, it is quite possible that great laxity of morals may have prevailed amongst them, but not a legal or obligatory promiscuity. In a society sufficiently numerous and savage it is no easy task for a man to guard his feminine property, for the women are not by any means averse to adventures. Their modesty is still very slight, and before belonging specially to one man they have generally been given or sold to many others. At that period of the social evolution public opinion saw no harm in all this. And, besides, the husband or the proprietor of the woman considered her absolutely as his thing, and did not scruple to lend her to his friends, to barter her, or to hire her out.

These primitive customs, combined with polyandrous or collective marriage and the matriarchate, have deceived many observers, both ancient and modern.

When we come to scrutinise these facts, and to view them in the light of animal sociology, we arrive at the conclusion that human promiscuity can only have been rare and exceptional, and that the theory of the community of wives and of obligatory hetaïrism will not bear examination.

The procreative need is one of the most tyrannical, and primitive man has satisfied it as he best could, without the least delicate refinement; but the egotism of individuals has had for its result, from the origin of human societies, the formation of unions based on force, and, correlatively, a right of property which fettered more or less rigorously the liberty of the women who were thus possessed.

These primitive unions were concluded according to the chance caprices or needs of extremely gross societies, who cared little to submit to a uniform conjugal type. There are some very singular ones among them, which differ essentially from the legal forms of marriage finally and very tardily adopted by the majority of mankind. It is these isolated conjugal unions, extravagant and immoral in our eyes, that we now have to consider.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] Herodotus, Book xvi. p. 17.

[67] Strabo, vol. xvi. ch. iv. p. 25.

[68] Herodotus, Book i. p. 216.

[69] Herodotus, iv. 104.

[70] Ibid. iv. 180.

[71] Pliny, v. 8.

[72] Strabo, iv. 4.

[73] Varro, Apud. August. de Civit. Dei., xviii. 9.

[74] Goguet, Orig. des lois, t. iii. p. 388.

[75] Quoted by Giraud-Teulon, Orig. de la Famille, p. 66.

[76] Trans. Ethn. Soc., New Series, vol. ii. p. 35.

[77] Ibid. vol. v. p. 45.

[78] Bagaert, Smithsonian Report, p. 368, 1863.

[79] Bancroft, Native Races of Pacific, vol. i. p. 352.

[80] Wake, Evolution of Morality, vol. i. p. 110.