Part 1 of Spencer’s write-ups of nineteenth century worldwide ethnographic accounts of male-female and household & family relations among relatively ‘pristine’ hunter-gatherer societies...
... are, apart from the 'savagery' of Victorian language, surprisingly not so out of sync with the contemporary sciences of ape-human evolution recently exhibited in our Social Science Files Archives.
PART III DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER II
THE DIVERSE INTERESTS OF THE PARENTS AND THE OFFSPRING
§ 277 … Commonly, when discussing domestic institutions, the welfare of those immediately concerned is almost exclusively regarded. The goodness or badness of given connexions between men and women, is spoken of as though the effects on the existing adult generation were chiefly to be considered; and, if the effects on the rising generation are taken into account, little if any thought is given to the effects which future generations will experience. This order has, as we see, to be reversed.
Family organizations of this or that kind have first to be judged by the degrees in which they help to preserve the social aggregates they occur in; for, in relation to its component individuals, each social aggregate stands for the species. Mankind survives not through arrangements which refer to it as a whole, but by survival of its separate societies; each of which struggles to maintain its existence in presence of other societies. And survival of the race, achieved through survival of its constituent societies, being the primary requirement, the domestic arrangements most conducive to survival in each society, must be regarded as relatively appropriate.
In so far as it consists with preservation of the society, the next highest end is raising the largest number of healthy offspring from birth to maturity. The qualification does not seem needed; but we shall find evidence that it is needed. Societies, and especially primitive groups, do not always thrive by unchecked increase in their numbers; but, contrariwise, in some cases preserve themselves from extinction at the cost of increased mortality of the young.
After welfare of the social group and welfare of progeny, comes welfare of parents. That form of marital relation must in each case be held the best which, subject to these preceding requirements, furthers most, and burdens least, the lives of adult men and women.
And as a last end to be contemplated comes that furtherance of individual life which we see when the declining years of parents, lengthened and made pleasurable by offspring, also become sources of pleasure to those offspring.
Uniting these propositions, we draw the corollary that the highest constitution of the family is reached when there is such conciliation between the needs of the society and those of its members, old and young, that the mortality between birth and die reproductive age falls to a minimum, while the lives of adults have their subordination to the rearing of children reduced to the smallest possible. The diminution of this subordination takes place in three ways: first, by elongation of that period which precedes reproduction; second, by decrease in the number of offspring borne, as well as by increase of the pleasures taken in the care of them; and third, by lengthening of the life which follows cessation of reproduction.
This ideal of the family suggested by a survey of the sexual and parental relations throughout the organic world, is also the ideal to which comparisons between the lower and the higher stages of human progress point. In savage tribes we find great juvenile mortality: there is commonly more or less infanticide; or there are many early deaths from unfavourable conditions; or there are both. Again, these inferior races are characterized by early maturity and commencing reproduction; implying shortness of that first period during which the individual life is carried on for its own sake. While fertility lasts, the tax, especially on the women, who are also exhausted by drudgeries, is great. The marital and parental relations are sources of pleasures neither so high nor so prolonged as in the civilized races. And then after children have been reared, the remaining life of either sex is brief: often being ended by violence; often by deliberate desertion; and otherwise by rapid decay unchecked by filial care.
We are thus furnished with both a relative standard and an absolute standard by which to estimate domestic institutions in each stage of social progress. While, judging them relatively, by their adaptations to the accompanying social requirements, we may be led to regard as needful in their times and places, arrangements that are repugnant to us; we shall, judging them absolutely, in relation to the most developed types of life, individual and national, find good reasons for reprobating them. For this preliminary survey reveals the fact that the domestic relations which are the highest as ethically considered, are also the highest as considered both biologically and sociologically.
CHAPTER III
PRIMITIVE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES
§ 278. Most readers will have thought it strange to begin an account of domestic institutions by surveying the most general phenomena of race-maintenance. But they may see the propriety of setting out with a purely natural-history view, on being shown that among low savages the relations of the sexes are substantially like those common among inferior creatures.
The males of gregarious mammals usually fight for possession of the females; and primitive men do not in this respect differ from other gregarious mammals. Hearne says of the Chippewayans that "it has ever been the custom among these people for the men to wrestle for any woman to whom they were attached." According to Hooper, a Slave Indian, desiring another one's wife, fights with her husband. Among the Bushmen, "the stronger man will sometimes take away the wife of the weaker." Narcisse Peltier, who from twelve years of age up to twenty-nine was detained by a tribe of Queensland Australians, states that the men "not unfrequently fight with spears for the possession of a woman." And summing up accounts of the Dogrib Indians, Sir John Lubbock says — "In fact, the men fight for the possession of the women, just like stags."
Nor is it on the part of males only, that this practice exists. Peltier tells us that in the above-named tribe, the women, of whom from two to five commonly belong to each man, fight among themselves about him: "their weapons being heavy staves with which they beat one another about the head till the blood flows." And the trait of feminine nature thus displayed, is congruous with one indicated by Mitchell, who says that after battle it frequently happens among the native tribes of Australia, that the wives of the vanquished, of their own free will, pass over to the victors: reminding us of a lioness which, quietly watching the fight between two lions, goes off with the conqueror.
We have thus to begin with a state in which the family, as we understand it, does not exist. In the loose groups of men first formed, there is no established order of any kind: everything is indefinite, unsettled. As the relations of men to one another are undetermined, so are the relations of men to women. In either case there are no guides save the passions of the moment, checked only by fears of consequences. Let us glance at the facts which show the relations of the sexes to have been originally unregulated by the institutions and ideas we commonly regard as natural.
§ 279. According to Sparrman, there is no form of union between Bushmen and Bushwomen save "the agreement of the parties and consummation." Keating tells us that the Chippewas have no marriage ceremony. Hall says the same thing of the Esquimaux, Bancroft of the Aleuts, Brett of the Arawâks, Tennent of the Veddahs; and the Lower Californians, Bancroft says, "have no marriage ceremony, nor any word in their language to express marriage. Like birds or beasts, they pair off according to fancy."
Even where a ceremony is found, it is often nothing more than either a forcible or a voluntary commencement of living together. Very generally there is a violent seizure of the woman by the man — a capture; and the marriage is concluded by the completion of this capture. In some cases the man and woman light a fire and sit by it; in some cases, as among the Todas, the union is established when the bride performs "some trifling household function;" in some cases, as among the Port Dory people of New Guinea, "the female gives her intended some tobacco and betel-leaf." When the Navajos desire to marry, "they sit down on opposite sides of a basket, made to hold water, filled with atole or some other food, and partake of it. This simple proceeding makes them husband and wife." Nay, we have the like in the old Roman form of confarreatio — marriage constituted by jointly eating cake. These indications that the earliest marriage-ceremony was merely a formal commencement of living together, imply a preceding time when the living together began informally.
Moreover, such domestic union as results is so loose, and often so transitory as scarcely to constitute an advance. In the Chippewayan tribes divorce "consists of neither more nor less than a good drubbing, and turning the woman out of doors." The Pericúi (Lower Californian) "takes as many women as he pleases, makes them work for him as slaves, and when tired of any one of them turns her away." Similarly, when one of the Tupis "was tired of a wife, he gave her away, and he took as many as he pleased." For Tasmanians not to change their wives, was "novel to their habits, and at variance with their traditions." Among the Kasias, "divorce is so frequent that their unions can hardly be honoured with the name of marriage." Even peoples so advanced as the Malayo-Polynesians furnish kindred facts. In Thomson's New Zealand we read that "men were considered to have divorced their wives when they turned them out of doors." And in Tahiti "the marriage tie was dissolved whenever either of the parties desired it." It may be added that this careless breaking of marital bonds is not peculiar to men. Where women have the power, as among the above-named Kasias, they cavalierly turn their husbands out of doors if they displease them; and the like happened with some of the ancient Nicaraguans.
These facts show us that the marital relations, like the political relations, have gradually evolved; and that there did not at first exist those ideas and feelings which among civilized nations give to marriage its sanctity.
§ 280. Absence of these ideas and feelings is further shown by the prevalence in rude societies of practices which are to us in the highest degree repugnant
Various of the uncivilized and semi-civilized display hospitality by furnishing guests with temporary wives. Herrera tells us of the Cumana people, that "the great men kept as many women as they pleased, and gave the beautifullest of them to any stranger they entertained." Savages habitually thus give their wives and daughters. Among such Sir John Lubbock enumerates the Esquimaux, North and South American Indians, Polynesians, Australians, Berbers, Eastern and Western Negroes, Arabs, Abyssinians, Kaffirs, Mongols, Tutski, etc. Of the Bushman's wife Lichtenstein tells us that when the husband gives her permission, she may associate with any other man. Of the Greenland Esquimaux, Egede states that "those are reputed the best and noblest tempered who, without any pain or reluctancy, will lend their friends their wives."
Akin is the feeling shown by placing little or no value on chastity in the young. In Benguela (Congo) poor maidens are led about before marriage, in order to acquire money by prostitution. The Mexicans had an identical custom: "parents used when the maidens were marriageable, to send them to earn their portions, and accordingly they ranged about the country in a shameful manner till they had got enough to marry them off." The ancient people of the Isthmus of Darian thought "prostitution was not infamous; noble ladies held as a maxim, that it was plebeian to deny anything asked of them" — an idea like that of the Andamanese, among whom "any woman who attempted to resist the marital privileges claimed by any member of the tribe was liable to severe punishment." Equally strange are the marital sentiments displayed by certain peoples, both extant and extinct. Of the Hassanyeh Arabs, whose marriages are for so many days in the week, usually four, Petherick says that during a preliminary negotiation the bride's mother protests against "binding her daughter to a due observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to command, for more than two days in the week;" and there exists on the part of the men an adapted sentiment. The husband, allowing the wife to disregard all marital obligations during the off days, even considers an intrigue with some other man as a compliment to his own taste. Some of the Chibchas betrayed a kindred feeling. Not simply were they indifferent to virginity in their brides, but if their brides were virgins "thought them unfortunate and without luck, as they had not inspired affection in men: accordingly they disliked them as miserable women."
While lacking the ideas and feelings which regulate the relations of the sexes among advanced peoples, savages often exhibit ideas and feelings no less strong, but of quite contrary characters. The Columbian Indians hold that "to give away a wife without a price is in the highest degree disgraceful to her family;" and by the Modocs of California "the children of a wife who has cost her husband nothing are considered no better than bastards, and are treated by society with contumely." In Burton's Abeokuta, we read that "those familiar with modes of thought in the East well know the horror and loathing with which the people generally look upon the one-wife system" — a statement we might hesitate to receive were it not verified by that of Livingstone concerning the negro women on the Zambesi, who were shocked on hearing that in England a man had only one wife, and by that of Bailey, who describes the disgust of a Kandyan chief when commenting on the monogamy of the Veddahs.
§ 281. Still more are we shown that regular relations of the sexes are results of evolution, and that the sentiments upholding them have been gradually established, on finding how little regard is paid by many uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples to those limitations which blood-relationships dictate to the civilized.
Among savages, connexions which we condemn as in the highest degree criminal, are not infrequent The Chippewayans "cohabit occasionally with their own mothers, and frequently espouse their sisters and daughters;" and Langsdorff asserts the like of the Kadiaks. So, too, among the Karens of Tenasserim, "matrimonial alliances between brother and sister, or father and daughter, are not uncommon." To these cases from America and Asia may be added a case from Africa. To keep the royal blood pure, the kings of Cape Gonzalves and Gaboon are accustomed to marry their grown-up daughters, and the queens marry the eldest sons.
Incest of the kind that is a degree less shocking is exemplified by more numerous peoples. Marriage between brother and sister was not prohibited by the "barbarous Chechemecas" and "the Panuchese." The people of Cali, "married their nieces, and some of the lords their sisters." "In the district of New Spain four or five cases ... of marriage with sisters were found." In Peru, the "Yncas from the first established it as a very stringent law and custom that the heir to the kingdom should marry his eldest sister, legitimate both on the side of the father and the mother." So is it in Polynesia. Among the Sandwich Islanders, near consanguineous marriages are frequent in the royal family — brothers and sisters sometimes marrying; and among the Malagasy, "the nearest of kin marry, even brother and sister, if they have not the same mother." Nor do ancient peoples of the old world fail to furnish instances. That the restriction, prohibiting marriage with a uterine sister, was not observed in Egypt, we have sufficient evidence "from the sculptures of Thebes" agreeing "with the accounts of ancient Greek and Roman writers in proving that some of the Ptolemies adopted this ancient custom." Even our own Scandinavian kinsmen allowed incest of this kind. It is stated in the Ynglinga Saga that Niord took his own sister in marriage, "for that was allowed by" the Vanaland law.
It may be said that certain of these unions are with half-sisters (like the union of Abraham and Sarah); that such occurred among the Canaanites, Arabians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians; and that they go along with non-recognition of kinship in the male line. But admitting this to be true in some of the cases, though clearly not in others, we are still shown how little warrant exists for ascribing to primitive instinct the negations of unions between those nearly related; for the very words forbidding marriage to a half-sister having the same mother, though not to one having the same father, clearly imply that the male parenthood is habitually known though disregarded.
As further proving that sentiments such as those which among ourselves restrain the sexual instincts, are not innate, I may add the strange fact which Bailey tells us concerning the Veddahs. Their custom "sanctions the marriage of a man with his younger sister. To marry an elder sister or aunt would, in their estimation, be incestuous, a connexion in every respect as revolting to them as it would be to us — as much out of the question and inadmissible as the marriage with the younger sister was proper and natural. It was, in fact, the proper marriage."
§ 282. While the facts show us the general association between the rudest forms of social existence and the most degraded relations of the sexes, they do not show us that social progress and progress towards a higher type of family life, are uniformly connected. Various anomalies meet us.
Unenduring unions characterize many of the lowest races; and yet the miserable Veddahs, lower than most in their social state, form very enduring unions. Bailey writes — "Divorce is unknown among them. ... I have heard a Veddah say, 'Death alone separates husband and wife'"; a trait in which their Kandyan neighbours, otherwise superior, differ from them widely.
Nor does the diminution of incestuous connexions preserve a constant ratio to social evolution. Those extreme forms of them which we have noted among some of the most degraded races of North America, are paralleled among royal families in African kingdoms of considerable size; while forms of them a degree less repulsive are common to savage and semi-civilized.
Though that type of family-life in which one wife has several husbands is said to occur among some of the lowest tribes, as the Fuegians, yet it is by no means common among the lowest; while we meet with it among relatively-advanced peoples, in Ceylon, in Malabar, and in Thibet. And the converse arrangement, of many wives to one husband, almost universally allowed and practised by savages, not only survives in semi-civilized societies but has held its ground in societies of considerably-developed types, past and present.
Neither are there connexions so clear as might have been expected, between sexual laxity and general debasement, moral or social; and conversely. The relations between the men and women in the Aleutian Islands are among the most degraded. Nevertheless these islanders are described by Cook as "the most peaceful, inoffensive people I ever met with. And, as to honesty, they might serve as a pattern to the most civilized nation upon earth." On the other hand, while the Thlinkeet men are said to "treat their wives and children with much affection," and the women to show "reserve, modesty, and conjugal fidelity," they are described as thievish, lying, and extremely cruel: maiming their prisoners out of pure wantonness and killing their slaves. Similarly, though the Bachapins (Bechuanas) are reprobated as lamentably debased, having a universal disregard to truth and indifference to murder, yet the women are modest and "almost universally faithful wives." A kindred anomaly meets us on contrasting societies in higher stages. We have but to read Cook's account of the Tahitians, who were not only advanced in arts and social arrangements, but displayed the kindlier feelings in unusual degrees, to be astonished at their extreme disregard of restraints on the sexual instincts. Conversely, those treacherous, bloodthirsty cannibals the Fijians, whose atrocities Williams said he dared not record, are superior to most in their sexual relations. Erskine states of them that "female virtue may be rated at a high standard for a barbarous people."
Moreover, contrary to what we should expect, we find great sexual laxity in some directions joined with rigidity in others. Among the Koniagas "a young unmarried woman may live uncensured in the freest intercourse with the men; though, as soon as she belongs to one man, it is her duty to be true to him." In Cumana "the maidens . . . made little account of their virginity. The married women . . . lived chaste." And Pedro Pizarro says of the Peruvians that "the wives of the common people were faithful to their husbands. . . . Before their marriage, their fathers did not care about their being either good or bad, nor was it a disgrace with them" to have loose habits. Even of those Chibcha husbands above referred to as so strangely indifferent, or less than indifferent, to feminine chastity before marriage, it is said that "nevertheless, they were very sensitive to infidelity."
The evidence, then, does not allow us to infer, as we should naturally have done, that advance in the forms of the sexual relations and advance in social evolution, are constantly and uniformly connected.
§ 283. Nevertheless, on contemplating the facts in their ensemble, we see that progress towards higher social types is joined with progress towards higher types of domestic institutions. Comparison of the extremes make this unquestionable. The lowest groups of primitive men, without political organization, are also without anything worthy to be called family organization: the relations between the sexes and the relations between parents and offspring are scarcely above those of brutes. Contrariwise, all civilized nations, characterized by definite, coherent, orderly social arrangements, are also characterized by definite, coherent, orderly domestic arrangements. Hence we cannot doubt that, spite of irregularities, the developments of the two are associated in a general way.
Leaving here this preliminary survey, we have now to trace, so far as we can, the successively higher forms of family structure. We may expect to find the genesis of each depending on the circumstances of the society: conduciveness to social self-preservation under the conditions of the case, being the determining cause. Setting out with wholly-unregulated relations of the sexes, the first customs established must have been those which most favoured social survival; not because this was seen, but because the societies that had customs less fit, disappeared. But before considering the several kinds of sexual relations, we must consider a previous question — Whence come the united persons? — Are they of the same tribe or of different tribes? or are they sometimes one and sometimes the other? …
CHAPTER VII
POLYGYNY
§ 304. Were it not for the ideas of sacredness associated with that Hebrew history which in childhood familiarized us with examples of polygyny, we should probably feel as much surprise and repugnance on first reading about it as we do on first reading about polyandry. Education has, however, prepared us for learning without astonishment that polygyny is common in every part of the world not occupied by the most advanced nations.
It prevails in all climates — in the Arctic regions, in arid burning tracts, infertile oceanic islands, in steaming tropical continents. All races practise it. We have already noted its occurrence among the lowest tribes of men — the Fuegians, the Australians, the Tasmanians. It is habitual with the Negritos in New Caledonia, in Tanna, in Vate, in Eromanga, in Lifu. Malayo-Polynesian peoples exhibit it everywhere — in Tahiti, the Sandwich Islands, Tonga, New Zealand, Madagascar, Sumatra. Throughout America it is found among the rude tribes of the northern continent, from the Esquimaux to the Mosquitos of the isthmus, and among the equally rude tribes of the southern continent, from the Caribs to the Patagonians; and it prevailed in the ancient semi-civilized American states of Mexico, Peru, and Central America. It is general with African peoples — with the Hottentots, Damaras, Kaffirs of the south; with the East Africans, Congo people. Coast Negroes, Inland Negroes, Dahomans, Ashantis of mid-Africa; with the Fulahs and Abyssinians of the north. In Asia it is common to the settled Cingalese, the semi- nomadic Hill-tribes of India, the wandering Yakutes. And its prevalence in ancient eastern societies needs but naming. Indeed, on counting up all peoples, savage and civilized, past and present, it appears that the polygynous ones far outnumber the rest.
Plurality of wives would be even more general were it not in some cases checked by the conditions. We learn this when told that among the poverty-stricken Bushmen, polygyny, though perfectly allowable, is rare; when Forsyth states that among the Gonds "polygamy is not forbidden, but, women being costly chattels, it is rarely practised;" when Tennent tells us of the Veddahs that "the community is too poor to afford polygamy;" when, concerning the Ostyaks, we read that "polygamy is allowed, but it is not common: for a plurality of wives the country is too poor." And though the occurrence of polygyny among some of the poorest peoples, as the Australians and the Fuegians, shows that poverty does not prevent it if the women can get enough food for self-maintenance, we may understand its exclusion where the mode of life does not permit them to do so.
This natural restriction of polygyny by poverty, is not the only natural restriction. There is another, recognition of which modifies considerably those ideas of polygynous societies conveyed by travellers. Their accounts often imply that plurality of wives is, if not the uniform, still, the most general, arrangement. Yet a little thought makes us hesitate to accept the implication. Turner tells us that in Lifu, "Bula [a chief] has forty wives: common men three or four." How can that be? we may fitly ask — How come there to be so many women? Scepticism such as is raised by this statement, is raised in smaller degrees by many other statements. We read in Park that the Mandingoes are polygamists, and each of the wives "in rotation is mistress of the household." Anderson says of the Damaras that "polygamy is practised to a great extent . . . each wife builds for herself a hut." We are told by Lesseps that "obliged to make frequent journeys, a Yakout has a wife in every place where he stops." Of the Haidahs, it is alleged that "polygamy is universal, regulated simply by the facilities for subsistence." Acceptance of these statements involves the belief that in each case there is a great numerical preponderance of women over men. But unless we assume that the number of girls born greatly exceeds the number of boys, which we have no warrant for doing, or else that war causes a mortality of males more enormous than seems credible, we must suspect that the polygynous arrangement is less general than these expressions represent it to be. Examination confirms the suspicion. For habitually it is said, or implied, that the number of wives varies according to the means a man has of purchasing or maintaining them; and as, in all societies, the majority are comparatively poor, only the minority can afford more wives than one. Such statements as that among the Comanches "every man may have all the wives he can buy;" that the Nufi people "marry as many wives as they are able to purchase;" that "the number of a Fijian's wives is limited only by his means of maintaining them;" that "want of means forms the only limit to the number of wives of a Mishmee; " warrant the inference that the less prosperous men, everywhere likely to form the larger part, have either no wives or but a single wife each.
For this inference we find definite justification on inquiring further. Numerous accounts show that in polygynous societies the polygyny prevails only among the wealthier or the higher in rank. Lichtenstein says "most of the Koossas have but one wife; the kings and chiefs of the kraals only, have four or five." Polygyny is permitted in Java, says Raffles, but not much practised except by the upper classes. "The customs of the Sumatrans permit their having as many wives by jujur as they can compass the purchase of, or afford to maintain; but it is extremely rare that an instance occurs of their having more than one, and that only among a few of the chiefs." In ancient Mexico "the people were content with one legitimate wife, except the lords, who had many concubines, some possessing more than 800." The Honduras people "generally kept but one wife, but their lords as many as they pleased." And Oveido says that among the inhabitants of Nicaragua, "few have more than one wife, except the principal men, and those who can support more."
These statements, joined with others presently to be cited, warn us against the erroneous impressions likely to be formed of societies described as polygynous. We may infer that in most cases where polygyny exists, monogamy coexists to a greater extent.
§ 305. The prevalence of polygyny will not perplex us if, setting out with the primitive unregulated state, we ask what naturally happened.
The greater strength of body and energy of mind, which gained certain men predominance as warriors and chiefs, also gave them more power of securing women; either by stealing them from other tribes or by wresting them from men of their own tribe. And in the same way that possession of a stolen wife came to be regarded as a mark of superiority, so did possession of several wives, foreign or native. Cremony says the Apache "who can support or keep, or attract by his power to keep, the greatest number of women, is the man who is deemed entitled to the greatest amount of honour and respect." This is typical. Plurality of wives has everywhere tended to become a class-distinction. In ancient Mexico, Ahuitzotl's "predecessors had many wives, from an opinion that their authority and grandeur would be heightened in proportion to the number of persons who contributed to their pleasures." A plurality of wives is common among chiefs and rich people in Madagascar, and "the only law to regulate polygamy seems to be, that no man may take twelve wives excepting the sovereign." Among the East Africans "the chiefs pride themselves upon the number of their wives, varying from twelve to three hundred." In Ashantee "the number of wives which caboceers and other persons possess, depends partly on their rank and partly on their ability to purchase them." Joining which facts with those furnished by the Hebrews, whose judges and kings — Gideon, David, Solomon — had their greatness so shown; and with those furnished by extant Eastern peoples, whose potentates, primary and secondary, are thus distinguished; we may see that the establishment and maintenance of polygyny has been largely due to the honour accorded to it, originally as a mark of strength and bravery, and afterwards as a mark of social status. This conclusion is verified by European history: witness the statement of Tacitus that the ancient Germans, "almost alone among barbarians," "are content with one wife," except a very few of noble birth; and witness the statement of Montesquieu that the polygyny of the Merovingian kings was an attribute of dignity.
From the beginning, too, except in some regions where the labour of women could not be utilized for purposes of production, an economic incentive has joined with other incentives. We are told that in New Caledonia, "chiefs have ten, twenty, and thirty wives. The more wives the better plantations, and the more food." A like utilization of wives prompts to a plurality of them throughout Africa. On reading in Caillié that Mandingo wives "go to distant places for wood and water; their husbands make them sow, weed the cultivated fields, and gather in the harvest;" and on reading in Shooter that among the Kaffirs, "besides her domestic duties, the woman has to perform all the hard work; she is her husband's ox, as a Kaffir once said to me, — she had been bought, he argued, and must therefore labour;" we cannot fail to see that one motive for desiring many wives, is desiring many slaves.
Since in every society the doings of the powerful and the Wealthy furnish the standards of right and wrong, so that even the very words "noble" and "servile," originally expressive of social status, have come to be expressive of good and bad in conduct, it results that plurality of wives acquires, in places where it prevails, an ethical sanction. Associated with greatness, polygyny is thought praiseworthy; and associated with poverty, monogamy is thought mean. Hence the reprobation with which, as we have seen, the one-wife system is regarded in polygynous communities. Even the religious sanction is sometimes joined with the ethical sanction. By the Chippewayans "polygamy is held to be agreeable in the eyes of the Great Spirit, as he that has most children is held in highest estimation" — a belief reminding us of a kindred one current among the Mormons. And that among the Hebrews plurality of wives was not at variance either with the prevailing moral sentiments or with supposed divine injunctions, is proved by the absence of any direct or implied reprobation of it in their laws, and by the special favour said to have been shown by God to sundry rulers who had many wives and many concubines.
It should be added that in societies characterized by it, this form of marital relation is approved by women as well as by men — certainly in some cases, if not generally. Bancroft cites the fact that among the Comanches "as polygamy causes a greater division of labour, the women do not object to it." And of the Makalolo women, Livingstone says: — "On hearing that a man in England could marry but one wife, several ladies exclaimed that they would not like to live in such a country; they could not imagine how English ladies could relish our custom; for in their way of thinking, every man of respectability should have a number of wives as a proof of his wealth. Similar ideas prevail all down the Zambesi."
Initiated, then, by unrestrained sexual instincts among savage men, polygyny has been fostered by the same causes that have established political control and industrial control. It has been an incidental element of governmental power in uncivilized and semi-civilized societies.
§ 306. In contrast with the types of marital relations dealt with in the preceding two chapters, polygyny shows some advance. That it is better than promiscuity needs no proof; and that it is better than polyandry we shall find several reasons for concluding.
Under it there arise more definite relationships. Where the unions of the sexes are entirely unsettled, only the maternal blood is known. On passing from the lower form of polyandry in which the husbands are unrelated, to that higher form in which the husbands are something more than half-brothers, we reach a stage in which the father's blood is known, though not with certainty the father. But in polygyny, fatherhood and motherhood are both manifest. In so far, then, as paternal feeling is fostered by more distinct consciousness of paternity, the connexion between parents and children is strengthened: the bond becomes a double one. A further result is that traceable lines of descent on the male side, from generation to generation, are established. Hence greater family cohesion. Beyond definite union of father and son, there is definite union of successive fathers and sons in a series. But while increased in a descending direction, family cohesion is little, if at all, increased in a lateral direction. Though some of the children may be brothers and sisters, most of them are only half-brothers and half-sisters; and their fraternal feeling is possibly less than in the polyandric household. In a group derived from several unrelated mothers by the same father, the jealousies fostered by the mothers are likely to be greater than in a group derived from the same mother and indefinitely affiliated on several brothers. In this respect, then, the family remains equally incoherent, or becomes perhaps, more incoherent. Probably to this cause is due the dissension and bloodshed in the households of eastern rulers.
Save, however, where there result among sons struggles for power, we may conclude that by definiteness of descent the family is made more coherent, admits of more extensive ramifications, and is thus of higher type.
§ 307. The effects of polygyny on the self-preservation of the society, on the welfare of offspring, and on the lives of adults, have next to be considered.
Barbarous communities surrounded by communities at enmity with them, derive advantages from it. Lichtenstein remarks of the Kaffirs that "there are fewer men than women, on account of the numbers of the former that fall in their frequent wars. Thence comes polygamy, and the women being principally employed in all menial occupation." Now, without accepting the inference that polygyny is initiated by the loss of men in war, we may recognize the fact which Lichtenstein does not name, that where the death-rate of males considerably exceeds that of females, plurality of wives becomes a means of maintaining population. If, while decimation of the men is habitually going on, no survivor has more than one wife — if, consequently, many women remain without husbands; there will be a deficiency of children: the multiplication will not suffice to make up for the mortality. Food being sufficient and other things equal, it will result that of two conflicting peoples, the one which does not utilize all its women as mothers, will be unable to hold its ground against the other which does thus utilize them: the monogamous will disappear before the polygynous. Hence, probably, a chief reason why in rude societies and little-developed societies, polygyny prevails so widely. Another way in which, under early conditions, polygyny conduces to social self-preservation, is this. In a barbarous community formed of some wifeless men, others who have one wife each, and others who have more than one, it must on the average happen that this last class will be the relatively superior — the stronger and more courageous among savages, and among semi-civilized peoples the wealthier also, who are mostly the more capable. Hence, ordinarily, a greater number of offspring will be left by men having natures of the kind needed. The society will be rendered by polygyny not only numerically stronger, but more of its units will be efficient warriors. There is also a resulting structural advance. As compared with lower types of the family, polygyny, by establishment of descent in the male line, conduces to political stability. It is true that in many polygynous societies succession of rulers is in the female line (the savage system of kinship having survived); and here the advantage is not achieved. This may be a reason why in Africa, where this law of descent is common, social consolidation is so incomplete: kingdoms being from time to time formed, and after brief periods dissolved again, as we before saw. But under polygyny, inheritance of power by sons becomes possible; and where it arises, government is better maintained. Not indeed that it is well maintained; for when we read that among the Damaras "the eldest son of the chiefs favourite wife succeeds his father; and that among the Koossa Kaffirs, the king's son who succeeds is "not always the eldest; it is commonly him whose mother was of the richest and oldest family of any of the king's wives;" we are shown how polygyny introduces an element of uncertainty in the succession of rulers, which is adverse to stable government. Further, this definite descent in the male line aids the development of ancestor-worship; and so serves in another way to consolidate society. With subordination to the living there is joined subordination to the dead. Rules, prohibitions, commands, derived from leading men of the past, acquire sacred sanctions; and, as all early civilizations show us, the resulting cult helps to maintain order and increase the efficiency of the offensive and defensive organization.
In regions where food is scarce, the effects on the rearing of offspring are probably not better than, if as good as, those of polyandry; but in warm and productive regions the death-rate of offspring from innutrition is not likely to be higher, and the establishment of positive paternity conduces to protection of them. In some cases, indeed, polygyny tends directly to diminish the mortality of children: cases, namely, in which a man is allowed, or is called upon, to marry the widow of his brother and adopt his family. For what we have seen to be originally a right, becomes, in many cases, an obligation. Even among inferior races, as the Chippewas, who require a man to marry his dead brother's widow, an ostensible reason is that he has to provide for his brother's children. And on reading that polygyny is not common with the Ostyaks because "the country is too poor," but that "brothers marry the widows of brothers," we may infer that the mortality of children is, under such conditions, thereby diminished. Very possibly the Hebrew requirement that a man should raise up seed to his dead brother, may have originally been that he should rear his dead brother's children, though it was afterwards otherwise interpreted; for the demand was made on the surviving brother by the widow, who spat in his face before the elders if he refused. The suspicion that obligation to take care of fatherless nephews and nieces, entailed this kind of polygyny, is confirmed by current facts; as witness the following passage in Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt: — "I met Hasan the janissary of the American Consulate, a very respectable good man. He told me he had married another wife since last year. I asked. What for? It was the widow of his brother, who had always lived in the same house with him, like one family, and who died, leaving two boys. She is neither young nor handsome, but he considered it his duty to provide for her and the children, and not let her marry a stranger." But though in most rude societies polygyny may not be unfavourable to the rearing of children, and may occasionally check juvenile mortality in societies where philanthropic feeling is undeveloped, yet its moral effects on children can scarcely be better than those of still lower marital relations. Where there is but one household, dissensions caused by differences of origin and interest, must be injurious to character. And even where, as happens in many places, the mothers have separate households, there cannot be escaped the evils of jealousies between the groups; and there still remain the evils caused by a too-diffused paternal care.
On the lives of adults in undeveloped societies, the effects of polygyny are not in all respects bad. Where the habitat is such that women cannot support themselves, while the number of men is deficient, it results that, if there is no polygyny, some of them, remaining uncared for, lead miserable lives. The Esquimaux furnish an illustration. Adequate food and clothing being under their conditions obtainable only by men, it happens that widows, when not taken by surviving men as additional wives, soon die of starvation. Even where food is not difficult to procure, if there is much mortality of males in war, there must, in the absence of polygyny, be many women without that protection which, under primitive conditions, is indispensable. Certain ills to which adult females of rude societies are inevitably exposed, are thus mitigated by polygyny — mitigated in the only way practicable among unsympathetic barbarians. Of course the evils entailed, especially on women, are great. In Madagascar the name for polygyny — "famporafesana" — signifies "the means of causing enmity;" and that kindred names are commonly applicable to it, we are shown by their use among the Hebrews: in the Mischna, a man's several wives are called "tzarôt," that is, troubles, adversaries, or rivals. Sometimes the dissension is mitigated by separation. Marsden says of the Battas that "the husband finds it necessary to allot to each of them [his wives] their several fire-places and cooking utensils, where they dress their own victuals separately, and prepare his in turns." Of the wives of a Mishmi chief, Wilcox writes — "The remainder, to avoid domestic quarrels, have separate houses assigned them at some little distance, or live with their relations." Throughout Africa there is usually a like arrangement. But obviously the moral mischiefs are thus only in a small degree diminished. Moreover, though polygyny may not absolutely exclude, still, it greatly represses, those higher emotions fostered by associations of the sexes. Prompted by the instincts of men and disregarding the preferences of women, it can but in exceptional cases, and then only in slight degrees, permit of better relations than exist among animals. Associated as it is with the conception of women as property, to be sold by fathers, bought by husbands, and afterwards treated as slaves, there are negatived those sentiments towards them into which sympathy and respect enter as necessary elements. How profoundly the lives of adults are thus vitiated, may be inferred from the characterization which Monteiro gives of the polygynous peoples of Africa.
"The negro knows not love, affection, or jealousy. ... In all the long years I have been in Africa I have never seen the negro manifest the least tenderness for or to a negress. ... I have never seen a negro put his arm round a woman’s waist, or give or receive any caress whatever that would indicate the slightest loving regard or affection on either side. They have no words or expressions in their language indicative of affection or love."
And this testimony harmonizes with testimonies cited by Sir John Lubbock, to the effect that the Hottentots "are so cold and indifferent to one another that you would think there was no such thing as love between them;" that among the Koossa Kaffirs, there is "no feeling of love in marriage;" and that in Yariba, "a man thinks as little of taking a wife as of cutting an ear of corn — affection is altogether out of the question." Not, indeed, that we can regard polygyny as causing this absence of the tender emotion associated among ourselves with the relations of the sexes; for lack of it habitually characterizes men of low types, whether they have only one wife each or have several. We can say merely that the practice of polygyny is unfavourable to the development of the emotion.
Beyond this resulting inferiority in the adult life, there is abridgment of the life which remains after the reproductive age is passed. Naturally the women already little regarded, then become utterly unregarded; and the men, if in a less degree, also suffer from lack of the aid prompted by domestic affection. Hence an early close to a miserable old age.
§ 308. A few words must be added respecting the modifications which polygyny undergoes in progressing societies, and which accompany the spread of monogamy.
Between the two or more wives which the stronger man among savages secures to himself, there tend to arise distinctions. Here he has an older and a younger wife, like the Australian, and occasionally the Bushman. Here he has wives purchased at intervals, of which he makes one or other a favourite; as does the Damara or the Fijian. Here of the several married by him the earliest only is considered legitimate; as with the Tahitians of rank and with the Chibchas. Here the chief wife is one who has been given by the king. From the beginning the tendency has been to establish differences among them, and for the differences to grow, in course of time, definite. Then there comes also the contrast between wives who are native women, and wives who are women taken as spoils of war. Hence, probably, the original way in which results the marking off into wives proper and concubines — a way indicated even among the Hebrews, who, in Deuteronomy xxi. 10-14, are authorized to appropriate individually the women of conquered enemies —women who, as they may be repudiated without formal divorce, stand in the position of concubines rather than wives. Once made, a difference of this kind was probably extended by taking account of the ranks from which the women married were derived— wives from the superior class, concubines from the inferior; some exempt from labour, some slaves. And then, from the tendency towards inequity of position among the wives, there at length came in advancing societies the recognized arrangement of a chief wife; and eventually, with rulers, a queen, whose children were the legitimate successors.
Along with the spread of monogamy in ways to be hereafter described, the decay of polygyny may be regarded as in part produced by this modification which more and more elevated one of the wives, and reduced the rest to a relatively servile condition, passing gradually into a condition less and less authorized. Stages in this transformation were exhibited among the Persians, whose king, besides concubines, had three or four wives, one of whom was queen, "regarded as wife in a different sense from the others;" and again among the Assyrians, whose king had one wife only, with a certain number of concubines; and again among the Egyptians, some of whose wall-paintings represent the king with his legitimate wife seated by his side, and his illegitimate wives dancing for their amusement. It was so, too, with the ancient Peruvian rulers and Chibcha rulers; as it is still with the rulers of Abyssinia.
Naturally the polygynic arrangement as it decayed, continued longest in connexion with the governing organization, which everywhere and always displays a more archaic condition than other parts of the social organization. Recognizing which truth we shall not be surprised by the fact that, in modified forms, polygyny survived among monarchs during the earlier stages of European civilization. As implied above, it was practised by Merovingian kings: Clothair and his sons furnishing instances. And after being gradually repressed by the Church throughout other ranks, this plurality of wives or concubines long survived in the royal usage of having many mistresses, avowed and unavowed: polygyny in this qualified form remaining a tolerated privilege of royalty down to late times.
§ 309. To sum up, we must say, firstly, that in degree of evolution the polygynous type of family is higher than the types we have thus far considered. Its connexions are equally definite in a lateral direction and more definite in a descending direction. There is greater filial and parental cohesion, caused by conscious unity of blood on both male and female sides; and the continuity of this cohesion through successive generations, makes possible a more extensive family integration.
Under most conditions polygyny has prevailed against promiscuity and polyandry, because it has subserved social needs better. It has done this by adding to other causes of social cohesion, more widely ramifying family connexions. It has done it by furthering that political stability which results from established succession of rulers in the same line. It has done it by making possible a developed form of ancestor-worship.
While it has spread by supplanting inferior types of the marital relations, it has, in the majority of cases, held its ground against the superior type; because, under rude conditions, it conduces in a higher degree to social self-preservation by making possible more rapid replacement of men lost in war, and so increasing the chance of social survival.
But while it has this adaptation to certain low stages of social evolution — while in some cases it diminishes juvenile mortality and serves also to diminish the mortality of surplus women; it repeats within the household the barbarism characterizing the life outside the household.
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The Source:
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 (1874–75; enlarged 1876, 1885, 1895), London [multiple publishers]
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