THE

HUMAN MARRIAGE

HISTORY OF HUMAN

INTRODUCTION

ON THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION

IT is in the firm conviction that the history of human civilization should be made an object of as scientific a treatment as the history of organic nature that I write this book. Like the phenomena of physical and psychical life those of social life should be classified into certain groups, and each group investigated with regard to its origin and development. Only when treated in this way can history lay claim to the rank and honour of a science in the highest sense of the term, as forming an important part of Sociology the youngest of the principal branches of learning.

Descriptive historiography has no higher object than that of offering materials to this science. It can, however, but very inadequately fulfil this task. The written evidences of history do not reach far into antiquity. They give us information about times when the scale of civilization was already comparatively high-but scarcely anything more. As to the origin and early development of social institutions, they leave us entirely in the dark. The sociologist cannot rest content with this. But the information which historical documents are unable to afford him, may be, to a great extent, obtained from ethnography.

B

The admirable works of Dr. Tylor, Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. Herbert Spencer have already made us familiar with the idea of a history of primitive civilization, based on ethnographical grounds. This new manner of treating history has, since the publication of their writings on the subject, gained adherents day by day. Immeasurable expanses have thus been opened to our knowledge, and many important results have been reached. But it must, on the other hand, be admitted that the scientific value of the conclusions drawn from ethnographical facts has not always been adequate to the labour, thought, and acumen bestowed on them. The various investigators have, in many important questions, come to results so widely different, that the possibility of thus getting any information about the past might easily be doubted. These differences, however, seem to me to be due, not to the material, but to the manner of treating it.

"The chief sources of information regarding the early history of civil society," says Mr. McLennan, "are, first, the study of races in their primitive condition; and, second, the study of the symbols employed by advanced nations in the constitution or exercise of civil rights." 1

Yet nothing has been more fatal to the Science of Society than the habit of inferring, without sufficient reasons, from the prevalence of a custom or institution among some savage peoples, that this custom, this institution is a relic of a stage of development that the whole human race once went through. Thus the assumption that primitive men lived in tribes or hordes, all the men of which had promiscuous intercourse with all the women, where no individual marriage existed, and the children were the common property of the tribe, is founded, in the first place, on the statements of some travellers and ancient writers as to peoples among whom this custom is said actually to prevail, or to have prevailed. Dr. Post has gone still further in his book, 'Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit und die Entstehung der Ehe.' Without adducing any satisfactory reason for his opinion, he considers it probable that "monogamous marriage originally emerged everywhere from pure communism in women, through the intermediate 1 McLennan, 'Studies in Ancient History,' p. 1.

stages of limited communism in women, polyandry, and polygyny." Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, in his 'Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,' has suggested no fewer than fifteen normal stages in the evolution of marriage and the family, assuming the existence and general prevalence of a series of customs and institutions "which must of necessity have preceded a knowledge of marriage between single pairs, and of the family itself, in the modern sense of the term." According to him, one of the first stages in this series is the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, as evidence of which he adduces, besides other facts, the historical statements that one of the Herods was married to his sister, and Cleopatra was married to her brother.3

Again, in the study of symbols, or survivals, the sociologists have by no means always been so careful as the matter requires. True enough that "wherever we discover symbolical forms, we are justified in inferring that in the past life of the people employing them, there were corresponding realities." But all depends upon our rightly interpreting these symbols, and not putting into them a foreign meaning. The worst is, however, that many customs have been looked upon as survivals that probably are not so. Thus, for instance, I think that Mr. McLennan is mistaken in considering the system of the Levirate, under which, at a man's death, his wife or wives pass to his brother, as a test of the former presence of polyandry, the brothers of a family having a common wife,

Similar conclusions being of common occurrence in modern Sociology, it is not surprising that different writers dissent so frequently from each other. This should be a strong reason for every conscientious investigator first of all putting to himself the question: how can we from ethnographical facts acquire information regarding the early history of mankind?

I do not think that this question can be correctly answered

1 Post, 'Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit,' p. 17. In his later works, however, Dr. Post has changed his opinion (see, especially, 'Studien zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des Familienrechts,' p. 58). 2 Morgan, 'Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity.' p. 479. 3 Ibid., p. 480. 4 McLennan, loc. cit. p. 5

in more than one way. We have first to find out the causes of the social phenomena; then, from the prevalence of the causes, we may infer the prevalence of the phenomena themselves, if the former must be assumed to have operated without being checked by other causes.

If, then, historical researches based on ethnography are to be crowned with success, the first condition is that there shall be a rich material. It is only by comparing a large number of facts that we may hope to find the cause or causes on which a social phenomenon is dependent. And a rich material is all the more indispensable, as the trustworthiness of ethnographical statements is not always beyond dispute. Without a thorough knowledge of a people it is impossible to give an exact account of its habits and customs, and therefore it often happens that the statements of a traveller cannot, as regards trustworthiness, come up to the evidences of history. As the sociologist is in many cases unable to distinguish falsehood from truth, he must be prepared to admit the inaccuracy of some of the statements he quotes. What is wanting in quality must be made up for in quantity; and he who does not give himself the trouble to read through a voluminous literature of ethnography should never enter into speculations on the origin and early development of human civilization.

Often, no doubt, it is extremely difficult to make out the causes of social phenomena. There are, for instance, among savage peoples many customs which it seems almost impossible to explain. Still, the statistical method of investigating the development of institutions,' admirably set forth in the paper which Dr. Tylor recently read before 'The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland," will throw light upon many mysterious points. Dr. Tylor has there shown that causal relations among social facts may be discovered by way of tabulation and classification. The particular rules of the different peoples are to be scheduled out into tables, so as to indicate the " adhesions," or relations of coexistence of each custom, showing which peoples have the same custom, and what other customs accompany it or lie apart from it. If, then,

1 'Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,' vol. xviii. pp. 245-269.

starting with any two customs, the number of their "adhesions" is found to be much greater than the number of times they would coexist according to the ordinary law of chancedistribution-which number is calculated from the total number of peoples classified and the number of occurrences of each custom-we may infer that there is some causal connection between the two customs. Further on, I shall mention some few of the inferences Dr. Tylor has already drawn by means of this method.

The causes on which social phenomena are dependent fall within the domain of different sciences-Biology, Psychology, or Sociology. The reader will find that I put particular stress upon the psychological causes, which have often been deplorably overlooked, or only imperfectly touched upon. And more especially do I believe that the mere instincts have played a very important part in the origin of social institutions and rules.

We could not, however, by following the method of investigation here set forth, form any idea of the earlier stages of human development, unless we had some previous knowledge of the antiquity of mankind. Otherwise we should, of course, be quite ignorant whether the causes in question operated or not in the past. Fortunately, in this respect also, modern science has come to results which scarcely admit any longer of being considered as mere hypotheses. It teaches us, to quote Sir John Lubbock, "that man was at first a mere savage, and that the course of history has on the whole been a progress towards civilization, though at timesand at some times for centuries-some races have been stationary, or even have retrograded;" that, however, all savage nations now existing are raised high above primitive men; and that the first beings worthy to be called men, were probably the gradually transformed descendants of some apelike ancestor. We may, further, take for granted that all the physical and psychical qualities that man, in his present state, has in common with his nearest relatives among the lower animals, also occurred at the earlier stages of human

1 Lubbock, 'The Origin of Civilisation,' p. 487.