The Evolution of Marriage

82:2.1The story of the evo­lu­tion of mar­riage is sim­ply the his­tory of sex con­trol through the pres­sure of so­cial, re­li­gious, and civil re­stric­tions. Na­ture hardly rec­og­nizes in­di­vid­u­als; it takes no cog­nizance of so-called morals; it is only and ex­clu­sively in­ter­ested in the re­pro­duc­tion of the species. Na­ture com­pellingly in­sists on re­pro­duc­tion but in­dif­fer­ently leaves the con­se­quen­tial prob­lems to be solved by so­ci­ety, thus cre­at­ing an ever-pres­ent and ma­jor prob­lem for evo­lu­tion­ary man­kind. This so­cial con­flict con­sists in the un­end­ing war be­tween ba­sic in­stincts and evolv­ing ethics.

82:2.2Among the early races there was lit­tle or no reg­u­la­tion of the re­la­tions of the sexes. Be­cause of this sex li­cense, no pros­ti­tu­tion ex­isted. To­day, the Pyg­mies and other back­ward groups have no mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion; a study of these peo­ples re­veals the sim­ple mat­ing cus­toms fol­lowed by prim­i­tive races. But all an­cient peo­ples should al­ways be stud­ied and judged in the light of the moral stan­dards of the mores of their own times.

82:2.3Free love, how­ever, has never been in good stand­ing above the scale of rank sav­agery. The mo­ment so­ci­etal groups be­gan to form, mar­riage codes and mar­i­tal re­stric­tions be­gan to de­velop. Mat­ing has thus pro­gressed through a mul­ti­tude of tran­si­tions from a state of al­most com­plete sex li­cense to the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury stan­dards of rel­a­tively com­plete sex re­stric­tion.

82:2.4In the ear­li­est stages of tribal de­vel­op­ment the mores and re­stric­tive taboos were very crude, but they did keep the sexes apart—this fa­vored quiet, or­der, and in­dus­try—and the long evo­lu­tion of mar­riage and the home had be­gun. The sex cus­toms of dress, adorn­ment, and re­li­gious prac­tices had their ori­gin in these early taboos which de­fined the range of sex lib­er­ties and thus even­tu­ally cre­ated con­cepts of vice, crime, and sin. But it was long the prac­tice to sus­pend all sex reg­u­la­tions on high fes­ti­val days, es­pe­cially May Day.

82:2.5Women have al­ways been sub­ject to more re­stric­tive taboos than men. The early mores granted the same de­gree of sex lib­erty to un­mar­ried women as to men, but it has al­ways been re­quired of wives that they be faith­ful to their hus­bands. Prim­i­tive mar­riage did not much cur­tail man’s sex lib­er­ties, but it did ren­der fur­ther sex li­cense taboo to the wife. Mar­ried women have al­ways borne some mark which set them apart as a class by them­selves, such as hair­dress, cloth­ing, veil, seclu­sion, or­na­men­ta­tion, and rings.