The Evolution of Marriage

82:3.1Mar­riage is the in­sti­tu­tional re­sponse of the so­cial or­gan­ism to the ever-pres­ent bi­o­logic ten­sion of man’s un­remit­ting urge to re­pro­duc­tion—self-prop­a­ga­tion. Mat­ing is uni­ver­sally nat­u­ral, and as so­ci­ety evolved from the sim­ple to the com­plex, there was a cor­re­spond­ing evo­lu­tion of the mat­ing mores, the gen­e­sis of the mar­i­tal in­sti­tu­tion. Wher­ever so­cial evo­lu­tion has pro­gressed to the stage at which mores are gen­er­ated, mar­riage will be found as an evolv­ing in­sti­tu­tion.

82:3.2There al­ways have been and al­ways will be two dis­tinct realms of mar­riage: the mores, the laws reg­u­lat­ing the ex­ter­nal as­pects of mat­ing, and the oth­er­wise se­cret and per­sonal re­la­tions of men and women. Al­ways has the in­di­vid­ual been re­bel­lious against the sex reg­u­la­tions im­posed by so­ci­ety; and this is the rea­son for this age­long sex prob­lem: Self-main­te­nance is in­di­vid­ual but is car­ried on by the group; self-per­pet­u­a­tion is so­cial but is se­cured by in­di­vid­ual im­pulse.

82:3.3The mores, when re­spected, have am­ple power to re­strain and con­trol the sex urge, as has been shown among all races. Mar­riage stan­dards have al­ways been a true in­di­ca­tor of the cur­rent power of the mores and the func­tional in­tegrity of the civil gov­ern­ment. But the early sex and mat­ing mores were a mass of in­con­sis­tent and crude reg­u­la­tions. Par­ents, chil­dren, rel­a­tives, and so­ci­ety all had con­flict­ing in­ter­ests in the mar­riage reg­u­la­tions. But in spite of all this, those races which ex­alted and prac­ticed mar­riage nat­u­rally evolved to higher lev­els and sur­vived in in­creased num­bers.

82:3.4In prim­i­tive times mar­riage was the price of so­cial stand­ing; the pos­ses­sion of a wife was a badge of dis­tinc­tion. The sav­age looked upon his wed­ding day as mark­ing his en­trance upon re­spon­si­bil­ity and man­hood. In one age, mar­riage has been looked upon as a so­cial duty; in an­other, as a re­li­gious obli­ga­tion; and in still an­other, as a po­lit­i­cal re­quire­ment to pro­vide cit­i­zens for the state.

82:3.5Many early tribes re­quired feats of steal­ing as a qual­i­fi­ca­tion for mar­riage; later peo­ples sub­sti­tuted for such raid­ing for­ays, ath­letic con­tests and com­pet­i­tive games. The win­ners in these con­tests were awarded the first prize—choice of the sea­son’s brides. Among the head-hunters a youth might not marry un­til he pos­sessed at least one head, al­though such skulls were some­times pur­chasable. As the buy­ing of wives de­clined, they were won by rid­dle con­tests, a prac­tice that still sur­vives among many groups of the black man.

82:3.6With ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, cer­tain tribes put the se­vere mar­riage tests of male en­durance in the hands of the women; they thus were able to fa­vor the men of their choice. These mar­riage tests em­braced skill in hunt­ing, fight­ing, and abil­ity to pro­vide for a fam­ily. The groom was long re­quired to en­ter the bride’s fam­ily for at least one year, there to live and la­bor and prove that he was wor­thy of the wife he sought.

82:3.7The qual­i­fi­ca­tions of a wife were the abil­ity to per­form hard work and to bear chil­dren. She was re­quired to ex­e­cute a cer­tain piece of ag­ri­cul­tural work within a given time. And if she had borne a child be­fore mar­riage, she was all the more valu­able; her fer­til­ity was thus as­sured.

82:3.8The fact that an­cient peo­ples re­garded it as a dis­grace, or even a sin, not to be mar­ried, ex­plains the ori­gin of child mar­riages; since one must be mar­ried, the ear­lier the bet­ter. It was also a gen­eral be­lief that un­mar­ried per­sons could not en­ter spir­it­land, and this was a fur­ther in­cen­tive to child mar­riages even at birth and some­times be­fore birth, con­tin­gent upon sex. The an­cients be­lieved that even the dead must be mar­ried. The orig­i­nal match­mak­ers were em­ployed to ne­go­ti­ate mar­riages for de­ceased in­di­vid­u­als. One par­ent would ar­range for these in­ter­me­di­aries to ef­fect the mar­riage of a dead son with a dead daugh­ter of an­other fam­ily.

82:3.9Among later peo­ples, pu­berty was the com­mon age of mar­riage, but this has ad­vanced in di­rect pro­por­tion to the prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion. Early in so­cial evo­lu­tion pe­cu­liar and celi­bate or­ders of both men and women arose; they were started and main­tained by in­di­vid­u­als more or less lack­ing nor­mal sex urge.

82:3.10Many tribes al­lowed mem­bers of the rul­ing group to have sex re­la­tions with the bride just be­fore she was to be given to her hus­band. Each of these men would give the girl a pres­ent, and this was the ori­gin of the cus­tom of giv­ing wed­ding pres­ents. Among some groups it was ex­pected that a young woman would earn her dowry, which con­sisted of the pres­ents re­ceived in re­ward for her sex ser­vice in the bride’s ex­hi­bi­tion hall.

82:3.11Some tribes mar­ried the young men to the wid­ows and older women and then, when they were sub­se­quently left wid­ow­ers, would al­low them to marry the young girls, thus in­sur­ing, as they ex­pressed it, that both par­ents would not be fools, as they con­ceived would be the case if two youths were al­lowed to mate. Other tribes lim­ited mat­ing to sim­i­lar age groups. It was the lim­i­ta­tion of mar­riage to cer­tain age groups that first gave ori­gin to ideas of in­cest. (In In­dia there are even now no age re­stric­tions on mar­riage.)

82:3.12Un­der cer­tain mores wid­ow­hood was greatly to be feared, wid­ows be­ing ei­ther killed or al­lowed to com­mit sui­cide on their hus­bands’ graves, for they were sup­posed to go over into spir­it­land with their spouses. The sur­viv­ing widow was al­most in­vari­ably blamed for her hus­band’s death. Some tribes burned them alive. If a widow con­tin­ued to live, her life was one of con­tin­u­ous mourn­ing and un­bear­able so­cial re­stric­tion since re­mar­riage was gen­er­ally dis­ap­proved.

82:3.13In olden days many prac­tices now re­garded as im­moral were en­cour­aged. Prim­i­tive wives not in­fre­quently took great pride in their hus­bands’ af­fairs with other women. Chastity in girls was a great hin­drance to mar­riage; the bear­ing of a child be­fore mar­riage greatly in­creased a girl’s de­sir­abil­ity as a wife since the man was sure of hav­ing a fer­tile com­pan­ion.

82:3.14Many prim­i­tive tribes sanc­tioned trial mar­riage un­til the woman be­came preg­nant, when the reg­u­lar mar­riage cer­e­mony would be per­formed; among other groups the wed­ding was not cel­e­brated un­til the first child was born. If a wife was bar­ren, she had to be re­deemed by her par­ents, and the mar­riage was an­nulled. The mores de­manded that ev­ery pair have chil­dren.

82:3.15These prim­i­tive trial mar­riages were en­tirely free from all sem­blance of li­cense; they were sim­ply sin­cere tests of fe­cun­dity. The con­tract­ing in­di­vid­u­als mar­ried per­ma­nently just as soon as fer­til­ity was es­tab­lished. When mod­ern cou­ples marry with the thought of con­ve­nient di­vorce in the back­ground of their minds if they are not wholly pleased with their mar­ried life, they are in re­al­ity en­ter­ing upon a form of trial mar­riage and one that is far be­neath the sta­tus of the hon­est ad­ven­tures of their less civ­i­lized an­ces­tors.