The Evolution of Marriage

82:1.1Not­with­stand­ing the per­son­al­ity gulf be­tween men and women, the sex urge is suf­fi­cient to in­sure their com­ing to­gether for the re­pro­duc­tion of the species. This in­stinct op­er­ated ef­fec­tively long be­fore hu­mans ex­pe­ri­enced much of what was later called love, de­vo­tion, and mar­i­tal loy­alty. Mat­ing is an in­nate propen­sity, and mar­riage is its evo­lu­tion­ary so­cial reper­cus­sion.

82:1.2Sex in­ter­est and de­sire were not dom­i­nat­ing pas­sions in prim­i­tive peo­ples; they sim­ply took them for granted. The en­tire re­pro­duc­tive ex­pe­ri­ence was free from imag­i­na­tive em­bel­lish­ment. The all-ab­sorb­ing sex pas­sion of the more highly civ­i­lized peo­ples is chiefly due to race mix­tures, es­pe­cially where the evo­lu­tion­ary na­ture has been stim­u­lated by the as­so­cia­tive imag­i­na­tion and beauty ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the Nod­ites and Adamites. But this And­ite in­her­i­tance was ab­sorbed by the evo­lu­tion­ary races in such lim­ited amounts as to fail to pro­vide suf­fi­cient self-con­trol for the an­i­mal pas­sions thus quick­ened and aroused by the en­dow­ment of keener sex con­scious­ness and stronger mat­ing urges. Of the evo­lu­tion­ary races, the red man had the high­est sex code.

82:1.3The reg­u­la­tion of sex in re­la­tion to mar­riage in­di­cates:

82:1.41. The rel­a­tive prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion. Civ­i­liza­tion has in­creas­ingly de­manded that sex be grat­i­fied in use­ful chan­nels and in ac­cor­dance with the mores.

82:1.52. The amount of And­ite stock in any peo­ple. Among such groups sex has be­come ex­pres­sive of both the high­est and the low­est in both the phys­i­cal and emo­tional na­tures.

82:1.6The San­gik races had nor­mal an­i­mal pas­sion, but they dis­played lit­tle imag­i­na­tion or ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the beauty and phys­i­cal at­trac­tive­ness of the op­po­site sex. What is called sex ap­peal is vir­tu­ally ab­sent even in pres­ent-day prim­i­tive races; these un­mixed peo­ples have a def­i­nite mat­ing in­stinct but in­suf­fi­cient sex at­trac­tion to cre­ate se­ri­ous prob­lems re­quir­ing so­cial con­trol.

82:1.7The mat­ing in­stinct is one of the dom­i­nant phys­i­cal driv­ing forces of hu­man be­ings; it is the one emo­tion which, in the guise of in­di­vid­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion, ef­fec­tively tricks self­ish man into putting race wel­fare and per­pet­u­a­tion high above in­di­vid­ual ease and per­sonal free­dom from re­spon­si­bil­ity.

82:1.8As an in­sti­tu­tion, mar­riage, from its early be­gin­nings down to mod­ern times, pic­tures the so­cial evo­lu­tion of the bi­o­logic propen­sity for self-per­pet­u­a­tion. The per­pet­u­a­tion of the evolv­ing hu­man species is made cer­tain by the pres­ence of this racial mat­ing im­pulse, an urge which is loosely called sex at­trac­tion. This great bi­o­logic urge be­comes the im­pulse hub for all sorts of as­so­ci­ated in­stincts, emo­tions, and us­ages—phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and so­cial.

82:1.9With the sav­age, the food sup­ply was the im­pelling mo­ti­va­tion, but when civ­i­liza­tion in­sures plen­ti­ful food, the sex urge many times be­comes a dom­i­nant im­pulse and there­fore ever stands in need of so­cial reg­u­la­tion. In an­i­mals, in­stinc­tive pe­ri­od­ic­ity checks the mat­ing propen­sity, but since man is so largely a self-con­trolled be­ing, sex de­sire is not al­to­gether pe­ri­odic; there­fore does it be­come nec­es­sary for so­ci­ety to im­pose self-con­trol upon the in­di­vid­ual.

82:1.10No hu­man emo­tion or im­pulse, when un­bri­dled and over­in­dulged, can pro­duce so much harm and sor­row as this pow­er­ful sex urge. In­tel­li­gent sub­mis­sion of this im­pulse to the reg­u­la­tions of so­ci­ety is the su­preme test of the ac­tu­al­ity of any civ­i­liza­tion. Self-con­trol, more and more self-con­trol, is the ever-in­creas­ing de­mand of ad­vanc­ing man­kind. Se­crecy, in­sin­cer­ity, and hypocrisy may ob­scure sex prob­lems, but they do not pro­vide so­lu­tions, nor do they ad­vance ethics.