498. Seemliness in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages very great attention was given to seemliness in the private conduct of individuals. Moderation especially was to be cultivated. Women were put under minute rules of dress, posture, walk, language, tone of voice, and attitude. The guiding spirit of the regulations was restraint and limit.[1648] Public life, however, was characterized by great unseemliness, and the examples of it are especially valuable because they show how necessary a sense of seemliness is to prevent great evils, although the virtue itself is vague and refined, and entirely beyond the field of positive cultivation by education or law. When the crusaders captured Mohammedan cities they showed savage ferocity. A case is recorded of a quarrel between a man of rank and a cook. The former proceeded to very extreme measures, and the cook, since he was a cook, could get no redress or attention.[1649] In the fifteenth century a rage for indecent conduct arose. The type which the Germans call the Grobian was affected. Rudeness of manners in eating, dancing, etc., was cultivated as a pose. This fashion lasted for more than a century. In 1570 a society was formed of twenty-seven members, who swore to be nasty, not to wash or pray, and to practice blasphemy, etc. When drunk such persons committed great breaches of order, decency, etc.[1650]

499. Unseemly debate. The folkways of the Middle Ages were fantastic and extravagant. The people had their chief interest in the future world, about which there could be no reality. They lived in a world of phantasms. The phantasms were dictated to them upon authority in the shape of dogmas of world philosophy and precepts of conduct. In discussing the world philosophy and its application they attained to extremes of animosity and ferocity. Whether Jesus and his apostles lived in voluntary beggary; whether any part of the blood of Jesus remained on earth; whether the dead went at once, or only at the judgment day, into the presence of God,—are specimens of the questions they debated. The unseemliness was in the mode of discussion, not in the absurdity of the subject. They all went into the debate understanding that the defeated or weaker party was to be burned. That was the rule of the game. All the strife of sects and parties was carried on in unseemly ways and with scandalous incidents. The lack of control, measure, due limit, was due to the lack of reality. Torture, persecution, violent measures, would all have been impossible if there had been a sense of seemliness. The punishments, executions, and public amusements grossly outraged any human and civilized taste. The treatment of the Templars, although it was no doubt good statecraft to abolish the order, was a scandalous outrage. In the face of Christendom torture was used to extort the evidence which was wanted to destroy the order, without regard to truth and justice.[1651] The crusades were extravagant and fantastic, and were attended by incidents of shameful excess, gross selfishness, venality, and bad faith. It is one of the most amazing facts about witch persecutions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that jurists did not see the unseemliness of their acts compared with the civilization of the period and the character claimed by their states. How was it possible for grave, learned, and honest men to go on torturing and burning miserable old women? It is not until the end of the seventeenth century that we hear of sheriffs in England who refused to burn witches. One of the most unseemly incidents in history is the execution of Damiens for attempting to kill Louis XV. The authorities of the first state in Christendom multiplied tortures of the extremest kind, and caused them to be executed in public on the culprit. The treatment of the Tories in the American Revolution was unseemly. It left a deep stain on our history.

500. Unseemliness of lynching, torture, etc. It is an unseemly thing and unworthy of our age and civilization that persons should be lynched for alleged crime, without the trial and proof which our institutions provide for. The arguments in defense of lynching (except on the frontier, where civil institutions do not yet exist) never touch on this point. It is unseemly that any one should be burned at the stake in a modern civilized state. It is nothing to the purpose to show what a wicked wretch the victim was. Burning alive has long been thrown out of the folkways of our ancestors. The objection to reviving it is not an apology for the bad men or a denial of their wickedness: it is the goodness of the lynchers. They fall below what they owe to themselves. Torture has also long been thrown out of our folkways. It might have been believed a few years ago that torture could not be employed under the jurisdiction of the United States, and that, if it was employed, there would be a unanimous outburst of indignant reprobation against those who had so disgraced us. When torture was employed in the Philippines no such outburst occurred. The facts and the judgment upon them were easily suppressed. The recognition of Panama was unseemly. It was unworthy of the United States. It was defended and justified by the argument that we got something which we very earnestly wanted.

501. Good taste. Finally we may notice here also the matter of taste. Good taste is the most subtle of all the codes of judgment which are cultivated by the mores. What we now consider good taste was violated in the dramas of the Greeks and Romans. This is entirely aside from obscenity or vulgarity. For instance, it does not appear that the author of the Medea appreciated the dastardly conduct of Jason. De Julleville[1652] says that in the thirteenth century no one knew the distinction between good and bad taste. The assertion is fully justified. The mediaeval people may have had good taste in architecture, stained glass, and hammered iron (as we are told), but their literature, administration of justice, and politics show that they lacked good taste, and also the case shows what a high protection against folly and error good taste is. This last office it shares with the sense of humor. The sports of that age were cruel. People found fun in the sufferings of the weak under derision and abuse. "The Middle Ages did not shrink from presenting as funny situations which were painful or atrocious, the horror of which we to-day could not endure." Although the age was full of religiosity, the extravagances of which ought to have been restrained by good taste, if it had existed, there was, on the other hand, no true reverence for what were "sacred things." The churches were put to uses which would to-day be considered improper. Parodies and caricatures of ecclesiastical persons, institutions, and ritual called out no remonstrance. Mock sermons were a favorite form of monologue in a theatrical entertainment. In a morality produced late in the fifteenth century, called Les Blasphemateurs, the actors tortured and wounded the figure on a crucifix. The Virgin and two angels came down to catch in a cup the blood which miraculously flowed from the body, but the actors kept on. "The hideous scene is interminable." Personalities were employed beyond all decent toleration, not only in theological disputes, but in political conflicts of all kinds. Of course the fanaticism of the age accounts for the extravagance of the acts and doctrines, and good taste seems to be only a trivial defense against fanaticism, but good taste consists largely in a sense of due limits, and if there had been a good code of social usage tempered by taste, it would have prevented many of the greatest scandals in the history, especially the church history, of the period. Buffoons had a share in the great "moralities," although they did not have a role in the action. Their function was to interject comical comments from time to time. The comments aimed to be witty, but were generally gross, coarse, and obscene. Late in the fifteenth century, in France, a buffoon recited a prelude containing licentious jests to an edifying morality called Charity.[1653]

502. Whence good taste is derived. Good taste is a more delicate and refined philosophy of action than any which have been mentioned above. It would escape from any attempt to formulate it, more completely than propriety or politeness. It floats in the ways of the group, and is absorbed by those who grow up in it. It is a product of breeding. We have a well-worn saying that there is no disputing about it. That is true, but for equal reason there is no disputing about decency, propriety, obscenity, or sex taboo. Good taste is a product of the group. It is absorbed from the group. Like honor, however, it calls for an individual reaction of assent and dissent, and becomes an individual trait or possession in the form which it ultimately takes.

503. The great variety in the codes. All the topics which have been treated in this chapter are branches or outreachings of the social code. They show how deep is the interest of human beings in the sex taboo, and in the self-perpetuation of society. Men have always tried, and are trying still, to solve the problem of well living in this respect. The men, the women, the children, and the society have joint and several interests, and the complication is great. At the present time population, race, marriage, childbirth, and the education of children present us our greatest problems and most unfathomable mysteries. All the contradictory usages of chastity, decency, propriety, etc., have their sense in some assumed relation to the welfare of society. To some extent they have come out of caprice, but chiefly they have issued from experience of good and ill, and are due to efforts to live well. Thus we may discern in them policies and philosophies, but they never proceed to form any such generalities as do rationally adopted motives. There is logic in the folkways, but never rationality. Given the premises, in a notion of kin, for instance, and the deductions are made directly and generally correctly, but the premises could never be verified, and they were oftener false than true. Each group took its own way, making its own assumptions, and following its own logic. So there was great variety and discord in their policies and philosophies, but within the area of a custom, during its dominion, its authority is absolute; and hence, although the usages are infinitely various, directly contradictory, and mutually abominable, they are, within their area of dominion, of equal value and force, and they are the standards of what is true and right. The groups have often tried to convert each other by argument and reason. They have never succeeded. Each one's reasons are the tradition which it has received from its ancestors. That does not admit of argument. Each tries to convince the other by going outside of the tradition to some philosophic standard of truth. Then the tradition is left in full force. Shocking as it must be to any group to be told that there is no rational ground for any one of them to convert another group to its mores (because this seems to imply, although it does not, that their folkways are not better than those of other groups), yet this must be said, for it is true. By experience and science the nations which by name are Christian have reached ways which are better fitted, on the whole, for well living than those of the Mohammedan nations, although this superiority is not by any means so complete and sweeping as current opinion in Christian countries believes. If Christians and Mohammedans come together and argue, they never make the slightest impression on each other. During the crusades, in Andalusia, and in cities of the near East where they live side by side, they have come to peace, mutual respect, and mutual influence. Syncretism begins. There is giving and taking. In Egypt at present the Moslems see the power of the English to carry on industry, commerce, and government, and this observation produces effect on the folkways. That is the chief way in which folkways are modified or borrowed. It was by this process that Greeks and Romans influenced the folkways of barbarians, and that white men have influenced those of negroes, Indians, Polynesians, Japanese, etc.

504. Morals and deportment. Different groups and different ages have differed much in the place in the social codes in which certain subjects have been placed; that is, for instance, as to whether the treatment of women by men should be put under morals, or under manners, or under good taste; whether public exhibitions deserved more attention than deportment, etc. For instance: "There is hardly a word, in the instructions of Plutarch, upon schools and schooling, but he alludes casually to the strange scenes which boys were allowed to witness,—criminals dressed up with robes and crowns, and presently stripped and publicly tortured; paintings of subjects so objectionable that we should carefully explain to the child the distinction between art as such and art as a vehicle of morals. On the other hand, deportment was strictly watched: for example, it was the rule not to use the left hand unless it were to hold bread at dinner, while other food was taken with the right; to walk in the street without looking up; to touch salt fish with one finger; fresh fish, bread, and meat, with two; to scratch yourself thus; to fold your cloak thus."[1654]

505. The relation of the social codes to philosophy and religion. Amongst the widest differences of opinion would be that on the question whether the social codes issue out of and are enthused by philosophy or religion. We are told that "for most men, actions stand in no necessary connection with any theoretical convictions of theirs, but are, on the contrary, independent of the same, and are dominated by inherited and acquired motives."[1655] Why is this not true? Also, "the antagonism between the principles of our religion and our actual behavior, even of the faithful, as well as the great difference in the ethical views of different peoples who profess the same religion, sufficiently proves that the motives of our acts, and our judgments on the acts of others, proceed primarily from practical life [i.e. from the current mores], and that what we believe has comparatively little influence on our acts and judgments."[1656] Religion and philosophy are components of the mores, but not by any means sources or regulators of them.

506. Rudeck's conclusions. A recent German writer on the history of public morality[1657] says of the moral development of the German people that one cannot bear to contemplate it, because the people face the facts with absolute indifference. There is not a trace of moral initiative or of moral consciousness. Existing morality presents itself to us as a purely accidental product of forces which act without sense or intelligence. We can find all kinds of forces in history except ethical forces. Those are entirely wanting. There is no development, for development means the unfolding and growth of a germ according to the elements which it contains. The people allow all kinds of mores to be forced on them by the work of their own hands, that is, by the economic and political arrangements which they have adopted. The German people has no subjective notion of public morality and no ethical ideal for public morality. They distinguish only between good and bad mores (Sitten und Unsitten), without regard to their origin.

507. Rudeck's book is really a chapter in the history of the mores. The above are the conclusions which seem to be forced upon him, but he recoils from them in dismay. The conclusions are unquestionably correct. They are exactly what the history teaches. They ought to be accepted and used for profit. The fact that people are indifferent to the history of their own mores is a primary fact. We can only accept it and learn from it. It shows us the immense error of that current social discussion which consists in bringing "ethical" notions to the criticism of facts. The ethical notions are figments of speculation. Criticism of the mores is like criticising one's ancestors for the physique one has inherited, or one's children for being, in body and mind, one's children. If it is true of the German people that there is no moral initiative or consciousness in their tone and attitude towards their mores, they are to be congratulated, for they have kept out one great influx of subjective and dogmatic mischief. Other nations have a "nonconformist conscience" or a party of "great moral ideas," which can be caught by a phrase, or stampeded by a catching watchword with a "moral" suggestion. "Existing morality does present itself as a purely accidental [i.e. not to be investigated] product of forces which act without sense or intelligence," but the product is in no true sense accidental. It is true that there are no ethical forces in history. Let us recognize the fact and its consequences. Some philosophers make great efforts to interpret ethical forces into history, but they play with words. There is no development of the mores along any lines of logical or other sequence. The mores shift in endless readjustment of the modes of behavior, effort, and thinking, so as to reach the greatest advantage under the conditions. "The people allow all kinds of mores to be forced on them by the work of their own hands," that is, by the economic and political arrangements which have been unconsciously forced on them by their instinctive efforts to live well. That is just what they do, and that is the way in which mores come to be. "The German people has no subjective notion of public morality and no ethical ideal for public morality." Nor has any other people. A people sometimes adopts an ideal of national vanity, which includes ambition, but an ethical ideal no group ever has. If it pretended to have one it would be a humbug. That is why the introduction of "moral ideas" into politics serves the most immoral purposes and plays into the hands of the most immoral men. All ethics grow out of the mores and are a part of them. That is why the ethics never can be antecedent to the mores, and cannot be in a causal or productive relation to them. "The German people distinguishes only between customs and abuses [Sitten und Unsitten] without regard to their origin." They are quite right to do so, because the origin is only a matter for historians. For the masses the mores are facts. They use them and they testify that they are conducive to well living (Sitten), or the contrary (Unsitten). The men, women, and children who compose a society at any time are the unconscious depositaries and transmitters of the mores. They inherited them without knowing it; they are molding them unconsciously; they will transmit them involuntarily. The people cannot make the mores. They are made by them. Yet the group is at once makers and made. Each one may put into the group life as much as he can, but the group will give back to him order and determination from which he cannot escape. The mores grow as they must grow under the conditions. They are products of the effort of each to live as well as he can, and they are coercions which hold and control each in his efforts to live well. It is idle to try to get outside of this operation in order to tell which part of it comes first and makes the other. "Our age presents us the incredible spectacle that the dependence of the higher social culture on the economic development is not only clearly recognized by social science, but is proclaimed as the ideal." Social science does not proclaim this as an ideal. It does not deal in ideals. It accepts the dependence of culture on economic development as a fact. In fact, Rudeck is not justified in saying (p. 426) that "culture is the unity of the moral will in all the life phenomena of a people," and that "that people alone is a culture people which sets before itself, as the purpose of its entire existence, the production of the greatest possible amount of specified moral qualities." These are notions of culture and of a culture people which an ethical philosopher might think it fine should be. Rudeck has just found that no such things ever have existed in Germany; yet Germany possesses culture and the Germans are a culture people. He is really complaining that these fine ethical notions have never had any place in history. Such being the case, the true inference would be that they are unrealities and ought to be discarded altogether. Rudeck can find, in the eighteenth century, only one act of the state which had an improving effect on "external morals." That was the abolition of obscene playing cards, and this improving effect was not won intentionally, but as an incidental consequence of a tax which was imposed for revenue. The case is interesting and instructive. It is thus alone that the state acts. It needs revenue and lays a tax. Other consequences follow. Sometimes "moral" consequences follow. The Methuen treaty caused Englishmen to drink port instead of claret for a hundred and fifty years, to the great increase of gout and drunkenness. The statesman might well be appalled if he should realize that he probably never can lay a tax without effects on industry, health, education, morals, and religion which he cannot foresee and cannot control. In the case of the cards, the consequence was favorable to good morals. That consequence was the purest accident. The state went on its way and got its revenue. The people met the effect through the mores and made the best of it, just as they did with the effects of the Methuen treaty. The cases are useful for a statesman to consider, when he needs to get revenue and the question by what taxes to get it is yet in his mind and before him. When he has decided and acted it remains only to take the consequences, for, through the mores, they will enter into the web of life which the people are weaving and must endure. That web contains all the follies and errors, just as well as all the wisdom and all the achievements, of the past. The whole inheritance passes on together, including all the luck.

[1380] Ammianus Marcellinus, XXVIII, 4.

[1381] Darmstetter, Zend-Avesta, I, 100.

[1382] Marsden, Sumatra, 52.

[1383] Curr, Austr. Race, I, 109.

[1384] Borneo's Wester-Afdeeling, 251.

[1385] JAI, XII, 94, 135.

[1386] Schultz, D. L., 283.

[1387] Sieroshevski, Yakuty (Polish), 342.

[1388] Holm, Angmagslikerne, 54.

[1389] Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued-Afr., 444.

[1390] Amer. Antiq., XXIV, 77.

[1391] Une Femme chez les Sahariennes.

[1392] Bancroft, Races of the Pacific, I, 123; II, 676.

[1393] Kubary, Soc. Einricht. der Pelauer, 51, 55, 91.

[1394] Palau, 65, 324.

[1395] Cf. Christian, Caroline Isl., 290.

[1396] JAI, XV, 8; U. S. Nat. Mus., 1888, 339.

[1397] Duveyrier, Touaregs du Nord, 340, 429.

[1398] Rubruck, Eastern Parts, 79, Rockhill's note.

[1399] Sprenger, Geographie Arabiens, 97.

[1400] Probably 31 deg. E. 13-1/2 deg. N.

[1401] Wilson and Felkin, Uganda and Sudan, II, 309.

[1402] On Tranquil., 17.

[1403] Nich. Ethics., IV, 9.

[1404] Ethik, 127.

[1405] Umschau, VI, 52, after Haeckel, Aus Insulinde.

[1406] Goodrich-Frear, Inner Jerusalem, 257.

[1407] Il., XIV, 179; cf. Od., XVI, 416; XVIII, 210.

[1408] Vambery, Sittenbilder aus dem Morgenlande, 49.

[1409] Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du Nord, 391.

[1410] Une Femme chez les Sahariennes, 310.

[1411] Berl. Mus., 1888, 199.

[1412] Nieuwenhuis, In Centraal Borneo, I, 48.

[1413] Zimmer, Altind. Leben, 196.

[1414] Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, 194.

[1415] Herodotus, I, 100.

[1416] Ratzel, Hist. of Mankind, II, 444.

[1417] Von Kremer, Kulturgesch. des Orients, II, 247, 250, 269.

[1418] De Civilit. Morum Pueril., I, 3, 9, 10.

[1419] Genesis iii. 7.

[1420] Berl. Mus., 1888, 431; cf. 191, 192, 195; also Globus, LXXV, 6; Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, I, 225, 298; Berl. Mus., II, Plates II, III, XIII, XIV; Hutchinson, Living Races, 59; Jhrb. d. Dtschen Archeolog. Instit., 1886, 295.

[1421] Waitz (Anthrop., VI, 567 ff.) gives a number of cases from the islands of the Pacific.

[1422] Globus, LXXIX, 197.

[1423] Krieger, Neu Guinea, 373.

[1424] No ethnographic evidence is known to exist to prove that there is an original sentiment of disgust in regard to the organs (Ellis, "Evolution of Modesty," Psychol. Rev., VI, 134).

[1425] Anthrop., VI, 575-576.

[1426] Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, II, 284.

[1427] Roth, Queensland Aborig., 114.

[1428] JAI, XXIII, 368.

[1429] Berl. Mus., 1888, 173.

[1430] Holm, Angmagslikerne, Plates VII, XX, XXII.

[1431] Afr. Cent., 155.

[1432] Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued-Afr., 230, 311, 349.

[1433] N. S. Amer. Anthrop., II, 470.

[1434] Sieroshevski, Yakuty (russ.), 562, 570.

[1435] Weinhold, D. F., I, 164.

[1436] U. S. Nat. Mus., 1888, 257.

[1437] Races of Man, 172.

[1438] Illustrations of China, II, No. 39.

[1439] Lane, Mod. Egyptians, I, 69, 266.

[1440] JAI, XIV, 123.

[1441] Ztsft. fuer Ethnol., XXVIII, 170.

[1442] Berl. Mus., 1888, 65.

[1443] Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 87.

[1444] Austral. Bush, 350.

[1445] Johnston, Uganda Protect., 765.

[1446] Deipnosophists, XII, 14.

[1447] Austral. Race, 99, 183.

[1448] Uganda and Sudan, I, 223.

[1449] JAI, XIII, 290.

[1450] Spencer and Gillen, Cent. Austral., 471.

[1451] Finsch, Ethnol. Erfahr., I, 92; II, 298.

[1452] Semper, Palau Ins., 68.

[1453] Ling Roth, Sarawak, I, 133.

[1454] JAI, XXIV, 292.

[1455] Afr. Cent., 55, 264.

[1456] Sahara and Sudan, II, 590.

[1457] Johnston, Uganda Protect., 37, 114, 642, 685.

[1458] Ibid., 728, 730.

[1459] Papuas, 169.

[1460] Puini, Origine della Civilta, 147.

[1461] Globus, LXXVI, 306.

[1462] Vannutelli e Citerni, L'Omo, 294, 305.

[1463] Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued-Afr., 59.

[1464] Globus, LXXXV, 73, 311.

[1465] Holub, Sieben Jahre in Sued-Afr., II, 293.

[1466] Wilson and Felkin, Uganda and Sudan, II, 53.

[1467] Ratzel, Hist. of Mankind, II, 469.

[1468] Ling Roth, Tasmanians, 21, 144.

[1469] JAI, XXI, 200.

[1470] Berl. Mus., 1885, 60.

[1471] Codrington, Melanesians, 321.

[1472] Berl. Mus., 1888, 193.

[1473] W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 437. Whatever the purpose of the loin cloth of the ancient Egyptians may have been, it cannot have been decency. The monuments show men at work with the loin cloth turned hindside foremost as if to save it from wear (Meyer, Egypt, II, 116).

[1474] Globus, LXXVIII, 5.

[1475] Brunache, Afr. Cent., 207.

[1476] Johnston, Uganda Protect., 781.

[1477] Johnston, Uganda Protect, 853.

[1478] Ibid., 220.

[1479] Wilson and Felkin, Uganda and Sudan, II, 49, 96.

[1480] E.g. JAI, XXIV, 255, 281.

[1481] Spix and Martius, Brasilien, 1224; Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 388.

[1482] Schweinfurth, Heart of Afr., II, 104.

[1483] Globus, LXXXVIII, 89.

[1484] Schweinfurth, Heart of Afr., I, 152.

[1485] South Africa, II, 590.

[1486] Bock, Reis in Borneo, 78.

[1487] JAI, XIX, 391.

[1488] JAI, XXVIII, 208.

[1489] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N. O. Afr., I, 80.

[1490] Schmidt, Ceylon, 37.

[1491] Gli Amori degli Uomini, 40.

[1492] Madras Gov. Mus., II, 198.

[1493] Ztsft. fuer Ethnol., XIV, (181).

[1494] Baelz in Ztsft. fuer Ethnol., XXXIII, 178.

[1495] Vererbung und Auslese, 281.

[1496] Humbert, Japan, 269.

[1497] Ibid., 295, 334.

[1498] Japan, 13.

[1499] Pacific Tales, 276.

[1500] JAI, XXVI, 394.

[1501] Finsch, Ethnol. Erfahr., III, 26.

[1502] Schweinfurth, Heart of Afr., II, 98.

[1503] Century Mag., January, 1904.

[1504] JAI, XII, 135.

[1505] Reisen in Siberien, IV, 1429.

[1506] Holm, Angmagslikerne, 34, 50-56, 112, 117, 162.

[1507] Scribner's Mag., February, 1895.

[1508] Bur. Ethnol., V, 479.

[1509] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 663.

[1510] Globus, LXXVIII, 272.

[1511] JAI, XXVII, 410.

[1512] Pereiro, La Isla de Ponape, 112.

[1513] Reis in Borneo, 39.

[1514] Powers, Calif. Indians, 55.

[1515] Smithson. Rep., 1885, Part II, 86.

[1516] Hinduism, 219.

[1517] Weinhold, D. F., II, 259; Schultz, Hoef. Leben, II, 168.

[1518] Scherr, D. F. W., I, 191.

[1519] Lund, Norges Historie, II, 246, 380.

[1520] Scherr, D. F. W., I, 191.

[1521] Weinhold, D. F., II, 115.

[1522] D'Aussy, Fabliaux, IV, passim.

[1523] Weinhold, D. F., II, 114.

[1524] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 311.

[1525] Hefele, Conciliengesch., III, 310.

[1526] Weinhold, D. F., II, 117.

[1527] Prutz, Kulturgesch. der Kreuzzuege, 528 note.

[1528] Zappert in Arch. fuer Kunde der Oester. Gesch.-Quellen, XXI, 41, 82, 132.

[1529] The queen of Charles VII of France (1422-1461) said that she owned but two chemises of linen (Clement, Jacques Coeur, 246).

[1530] Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit, 399.

[1531] Schultz, D. L., 136.

[1532] Dulaure, Hist. de Paris, 268; Schultz, D. L., 277, 283; cf. Janssen, VIII, 391.

[1533] Coryate's Crudities, II, 244.

[1534] Finska Kranier, 118.

[1535] D'Ancona, Origine del Teatro in Italia (1st ed.), I, 213, 218, 280, 375.

[1536] Herodotus, I, 10.

[1537] Lucius, Essenismus, 62, 68.

[1538] Grupp, Kulturgesch. der Roem. Kaiserzeit, I, 24; cf. sec. 211.

[1539] Siberien i Vore Dage, 146.

[1540] Hearn, Japan, 188-200.

[1541] Cf. sec. 462.

[1542] Berl. Mus., 1888, 199, 302.

[1543] Nieuwenhuis, Centraal Borneo, I, 146.

[1544] Erman, Aegypten, I, 223.

[1545] Jhrb. des Dtschen Archaeolog. Instit., 1886, 260; Arch. fuer Anthrop., XXIX, 136.

[1546] On the connection of these see Bethe, Gesch. des Theaters im Alt., 299 ff.

[1547] Reich, Der Mimus, I, 17, 29, 58, 93, 95, 258, 321, 496, 498, 626, 691, 733.

[1548] Burckhardt, Arabic Proverbs, 115.

[1549] Stieda, Infibulation, 23, 25, 36, 40, 44, 56, 66.

[1550] Reich, 503.

[1551] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 457.

[1552] Griech. Lit. in der Alexandrinerzeit, II, 574.

[1553] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 457.

[1554] Bull., Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, 1904, 404.

[1555] Od., VIII, 332.

[1556] Il., XIV, 334.

[1557] Od., III, 464; IV, 49; VI, 15, 109, 276; Keller, Hom. Soc., 209.

[1558] Od., VI, 136.

[1559] JAI, XXIV, 444.

[1560] Bur. Eth., III, 365.

[1561] Smithson. Rep., 1885, Part II, 457.

[1562] Afrika, III, 633.

[1563] Burrows, Land of Pygmies, 85.

[1564] JAI, XII, 355.

[1565] Bishop, Korea, 341.

[1566] Globus, LXXVIII, 263.

[1567] Ibid., LXXXII, 192 ff.

[1568] JAI, XI, 199.

[1569] Pischon, Einfluss des Islam, 17.

[1570] Kubary, Soc. Einrichtungen der Pelauer, 73, 90.

[1571] Pfeil, Aus der Suedsee, 48, 74.

[1572] Globus, LXXXVII, 129, 130.

[1573] Darinsky in Ztsft. fuer vergleich. Rechtswssnsft., XIV, 189.

[1574] Russ. Ethnog. (russ.), 219, 225, 291, 340, 355, 358.

[1575] Von Kremer, Kulturgesch. des Orients, II, 250.

[1576] Ibid., 215.

[1577] Exod. iii. 5; Josh. v. 15.

[1578] Relig. of the Semites, 453.

[1579] Sura XXIV.

[1580] Tornauw, Mosl. Recht., 86.

[1581] Burckhardt, Arabic Proverbs, 1.

[1582] Sittenbilder aus dem Morgenlande, 16.

[1583] The Churchman, September 2, 1905, 343.

[1584] Goodrich-Frear, Inner Jerusalem, 57.

[1585] This explanation is no doubt a product of later rationalization. The rule is a very ancient Semitic one, due to the old connection between sacrifice and commensality. W. Rob. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 283.

[1586] Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, II, and III, 190, 237, 240.

[1587] Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du Nord, 430.

[1588] Russ. Ethnog. (russ.), II, 445.

[1589] Holtzmann, Ind. Sagen, II, 267.

[1590] Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 396.

[1591] Ibid., 376.

[1592] Ibid., 375.

[1593] Nivedita, Web of Indian Life, 14.

[1594] Dubois, Moeurs de l'Inde (1825), II, 280, 329, 332, 334, 441, 476, 480.

[1595] Nivedita, Web of Indian Life, 11.

[1596] JAI, XXVII, 27.

[1597] Lane, Mod. Egyptians, I, 265.

[1598] Alec-Tweedie, Sunny Sicily, 265.

[1599] Od., VI, 285.

[1600] De Civilitate Morum Puerilium, I, 1, 3, 5, 52, 54.

[1601] JAI, XXIV, 231.

[1602] Crawley gives a list of cases (JAI, XXIV, 435).

[1603] Ibid., 433.

[1604] Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1892, 660.

[1605] JAI, XII, 344.

[1606] W.R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 279.

[1607] Berl. Mus., 1888, 66.

[1608] Bent, Ethiopia, 32.

[1609] Bastian, Loango-Kueste, I, 262.

[1610] Junker, Afrika, I, 156.

[1611] Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 128.

[1612] Borneo, II, 168.

[1613] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., I, 248.

[1614] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 96.

[1615] Becke, Pacific Tales, 179.

[1616] Denecke, Anstandsgefuehl in Deutschland, VII.

[1617] Lenient, La Satire en France au M. A., 310.

[1618] De Maulde la Claviere, Femmes de la Renaissance, 320.

[1619] Globus, LXXXV, 80.

[1620] See Mallory in Amer. Anthrop., III, 201.

[1621] JAI, XII, 93.

[1622] Lewin, Races of S. E. India, 311.

[1623] Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1892, 630.

[1624] JAI, XXI, 223.

[1625] Ibid., XXII, 119.

[1626] Junker, Afr., II, 481.

[1627] Hiekisch, Tungusen, 68.

[1628] Sieroshevski, Yakuty, (russ.), I, 440.

[1629] Scribner's Mag., February, 1895.

[1630] Globus, LXXIII, 253.

[1631] Globus, LXXXVII, 128.

[1632] Heart of Africa, I, 157.

[1633] Century Mag., January, 1904.

[1634] Anstandesgefuehl in Deutschland.

[1635] Denecke, XII.

[1636] Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, III, 436-439.

[1637] Professor Keller calls my attention to a number of words used by Homer to subject conduct to this test of seemliness. It seems to be for him the standard of right.

[1638] Il., XXII, 395; XXIV, 51.

[1639] Ibid., XXIII, 164.

[1640] Ibid., XXII, 338.

[1641] Ibid., XI, 147; XIII, 102.

[1642] Od., XXII, 441, 447.

[1643] Il., XXII, 226.

[1644] Voelkerideale, I, Chap. I.

[1645] Burckhardt, Griech. Kulturgesch., I, 314.

[1646] Herodotus, IX, 78.

[1647] Beloch, Griech. Kulturgesch., I, 470, 594; II, 103, 107, 364, 441.

[1648] Weinhold, D. F., I, 159-168.

[1649] Schultz, Hoef. Leben, II, 448.

[1650] Denecke, Anstandsgefuehl in Deutschland, XXI.

[1651] Lea, Inquis., III, 238, 260, 319; Schotmueller, Der Untergang des Templer-Ordens, I, 625.

[1652] Comedie en France au M. A., 21.

[1653] De Julleville, 21, 74, 86, 89, 107, 304.

[1654] Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway, 324.

[1655] Schultze-Gaevernitz in Ammon, Gesellschaftsordnung, 117.

[1656] Schallmeyer, Vererbung und Auslese, 231.

[1657] Rudeck, Gesch. der Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit in Deutschland, 422.



CHAPTER XII

INCEST

Definition.—Incest notion was produced from the folkways.—The notion that inbreeding is harmful.—Status-wife, work-wife, love-wife.—The abomination of incest.—The incest taboo is strongest in the strongest groups.—Incest in ethnography.— Incest in civilized states.—Where the line is drawn, and why.— Human self-selection.—Restriction by biological doctrine not sufficiently warranted.—Summary of the matter now.

508. Definition of incest. Incest is the marital union of a man and a woman who are akin within the limits of a prohibition current at the time in the laws or mores of the group. The primitive notion of kinship did not divide kinship into grades of remoteness as we do. Very often it was counted by classes or age strata. In the totem system all the women of his mother's totem were tabooed to a man, although their cousinship to himself might be very remote. At the same time, he could marry his father's sister's daughter, or his mother's brother's daughter, unless his father and his uncle had married women of the same totem. Inasmuch as a man and his wife must have different totems and the children took the totem of their mother, a man might marry his own daughter. Generally this was forbidden by supplementary rules, but in Buka and North Bougainville it occurs not infrequently.[1658] The varieties of the consanguinity taboo are very numerous. They are entirely different in theory under the mother family and the father family. They are now very different in different states of our Union.[1659] If the taboo on marriage is not defined in terms of "blood" or assumed kinship, violation of it is not incest. For instance, in the mediaeval church, two persons who had been sponsors in baptism to the same child might not marry. Also, if two persons are debarred by affinity, violation is not incest. In England a man may not marry his deceased wife's sister. If he does it, his marriage is unlawful, but it is not incest. The definition of incest must include the notion of a blood connection as blood connection is understood in that group at the time. Other prohibitions may be expedient, or may seem required by propriety (e.g. the marriage of a man with his father's widow), but they do not come under incest.

Restrictions on marriage by kinship, as the people in question construed kinship, go back to the most primitive society. Some very primitive people have intricate restrictions, and they maintain them by the severest social sanctions.

509. Incest notion produced from the folkways. It is evident that primitive people must have received a suggestion or impression of some important interest at stake in this matter. They adopted taboos and established folkways to protect interests. In time these taboos and folkways won very great force and high religious sanction; also a sense of abomination was produced which seemed to be a "natural" feeling. There certainly is no natural feeling. The abomination is conventional and traditional. The Pharaohs, Ptolemies, and Incas, also the Zoroastrians, are sufficient to show that there is no reason for the abomination in any absolute or universal facts. The sanctions by which savage people sustained the taboo were the strongest possible,—exile and death. Here we have, therefore, a social limitation of the greatest force, sanctioned by religion and group consent and growing into an abomination which has come down to us and which we all feel, but which is a product of the most primitive folkways; and yet we do not know the motive for it in the minds of primitive men. In the matter of cannibalism we saw (Chapter VIII) that with advancing civilization a taboo has been set up against a food custom which appears to have been universal amongst primitive men; that is, we have reversed and hold in abomination what they did. In regard to incest we have accepted and fully ratified their taboo.

510. Notion that inbreeding is harmful. This taboo and the reasons for it are a complete enigma unless the primitive people had observed the evils of close inbreeding. Inbreeding maintains the excellence of a breed at the expense of its vigor. Outbreeding (unless too far out) develops vigor at the expense of the characteristic traits. It is very probable, but not absolutely certain, that inbreeding is harmful. Any marriage between persons who have the same faults of inheritance causes the offspring to accumulate faults and to degenerate. Close kinship creates a probable danger that faults will be accumulated. This is a logical deduction. Embryology, at present, seems to teach that there is a combination and extrusion of germ units of such a kind that the physiological process conforms only in a measure to this logical deduction, and the historical-statistical verification of the harm of inbreeding remains very imperfect. It is possible that at first, and within limits, inbreeding is not harmful, but becomes such if repeated often. Is it possible that the lowest savages can have perceived this and built a policy on it? Morgan[1660] thinks that it is possible. Westermarck[1661] thinks it beyond the mental power of the lowest races. He thinks that, by natural selection, those groups which practiced inbreeding for any reason died out or were displaced by those who followed the other policy. He goes on to propose a theory that persons who grew up, or who now grow up, in intimacy develop an instinctive antipathy to sex relations with each other.[1662] While it is true that primitive savages do not observe and reflect, it is also true that, in their own blundering way, when their interests are sharply at stake, they do observe, and they change their ways accordingly. Therefore they appear to us at one time hopelessly brutish; at another time we are amazed at their ingenuity and their mental activity (myths, legends, proverbs, maxims). If the loss or pain is great enough, the savage man is capable of astounding cleverness to escape it. After animal breeding began men had ample opportunity to observe the effects of close inbreeding. There is more doubt now about the penalties of inbreeding than there is about the power of savage men to perceive them and try to escape them, if they exist.

511. Status-wife, work-wife, love-wife. In the primitive horde it appears that there was a prescribed wife for each man, or the classification was such that his choice was restricted to a very small number. The prescribed wife was a status-wife. She alone could hold the position of a true "wife." The man might also capture a woman abroad who would be a worker, or work-wife, and she might win the man, so that she became a love-wife. There would often be a comparison between the children of the status-wife and the children of a work-wife or love-wife, in which the latter would appear the more vigorous. If so, there would be a school in which the advantages of outbreeding would appear as a fact, although not explained.

512. Abomination of incest. The taboos in the mores contain prescriptions as to the allowable consanguinity of spouses. There is a great horror of violating them. This sentiment is met with amongst people who have scarcely any other notion of crime, or of right and wrong. The rules are enforced by death or banishment as penalties of violation. The notion of harm in inbreeding has spread all over the earth. It has come down to ourselves. In the form in which it was held by savage people it was mistaken to such a degree that they might, in spite of it, practice close inbreeding. Our study of the mores teaches us that there must have been, antecedent to this state of the mores in regard to this matter, a long development of interests, folkways, rites, and superstitions.[1663] It is believed, not without reason, that the horde life would tend to run into grooves in which the prescribed wife would be a close relative, in the final case a sister. Experience of this might produce the rules of prohibition. The captured wife was also a trophy, and the play of this fact on vanity would always tend to disintegrate the system of endogamy. There are many reasons why endogamy seems more primitive than exogamy, and it required force of interest, superstition, or vanity to carry a society over from the former to the latter. A calamity might come to reenforce the interest,[1664] but can hardly be postulated to explain a custom so widespread. All the ultimate causes of the law of incest, therefore, lie beyond our investigation. They are open only to conjecture and speculation. The case is very important, however, to show the operation of the mores on facts erroneously assumed, and their power to work out their effects, as an independent societal operation, without regard to error in the material to which they are applied.

513. Incest taboo strongest in the strongest groups. We shall see, in the cases to be presented, that incest has a wider definition and a stricter compulsion in great tribes, and in prosperity or wealth, than in small groups and poverty. The definiteness of this taboo, and the strictness with which it is enforced, seem to be correlative with the energy of the tribal discipline in general and the vigor of the collective life of the group. Wives can be got abroad, either by capture or contract, only by those who command respect for their power or who use power. On the other hand, endogamy is both cause and effect of weakness and proceeds with decline. Some cases will be given below in which incestuous marriages occur where the parties are unable to obtain any other wives. Neglect of the incest taboo is rather a symptom than a cause of group decline.

514. Incest in ethnography. Martius says of the tribes on the upper Amazon, in general, that incest in all grades is frequent amongst them. In the more southern regions the taboo is stricter and better observed. Amongst the former it is shameful for a man to marry his sister or his brother's daughter. The usages are the more strict the larger the tribe is. In small isolated groups it frequently happens that a man lives with his sister. He heard of two tribes, the Coerunas and the Uainumus, who observed little rule on the subject. They were dying out.[1665] "Not seldom an Indian is father and brother of his son."[1666] Effertz writes that, amongst the Indians of the Sierra Madre, Mexico, incest between father and daughter "is of daily occurrence," although incest between brother and sister is entirely unknown. The former unions are due to economic interest. The Indian tills small bits of land scattered in the hills. He cannot exist without a woman to grind corn for him. When he goes to a distant patch of land he takes his daughter with him. He has but one blanket and the nights are cold. If he has no daughter he must take another woman, but then he must share his crop with her.[1667]

515. The tribes of South Australia are "forbidden to have intercourse with mothers, sisters, and first or second cousins. This religious law is strictly carried out and adhered to under penalty of death." The most opprobrious epithet for an opponent in a quarrel is one which means a person who has sex intercourse with kin nearer than second cousins.[1668] Some Dyaks are indifferent to the conduct of their wives, and both sexes practice sex vice, but they insist on drowning any one who violates the taboo of incest.[1669] Other Dyaks (the Ot Danom) have no notion of incest. The former are on the coast, the latter inland. Hence it seems probable that the notion of incest came to the Dyaks from outside.[1670] The Khonds practice female infanticide, from a feeling that marriage in the same tribe is incest.[1671] Cucis are allowed to marry without regard to relationship of blood, except mother and son.[1672] The Veddahs think marriage with an older sister abominable, but marriage with a younger sister is prescribed as the best. Sometimes a father marries his daughter; in other subdivisions a first cousin (daughter of the father's sister or mother's brother) is the prescribed wife.[1673] Mantegazza reports that father and daughter, mother and son, are not rarely united amongst the Anamites and that Cambodian brothers and sisters marry.[1674] Amongst the Kalongs on Java sons live with mothers, and luck and prosperity are thought to be connected with such unions. Not long ago, on Minahasa in the Tonsawang district, the closest blood relatives united in marriage; also on Timorlaut. The Balinese had a usage that twins of different sex, in the highest castes, were united in marriage. They could have no notion of incest at all.[1675] The Bataks have a tradition that marriage between a man and his father's sister's daughter was formerly allowed, but that calamities occurred which forced a change of custom.[1676]

516. The people of Teita, in East Africa, who are very dirty and low, marry mothers and sisters because they cannot afford to buy wives. They have been in touch with whites for fifty years.[1677] The chiefs of the Niam Niam take their daughters to wife.[1678] The Sakalava, on Madagascar, allow brother and sister to marry, but before such a marriage the bride is sprinkled with consecrated water and prayers are recited for her happiness and fecundity, as if there were fears that the union was not pleasing to the higher powers, and as if there was especial fear that there might be no offspring. Such marriages are contracted by chiefs who cannot find other brides of due rank.[1679]

517. The Ossetes think a marriage with a mother's sister right, but marriage with a father's sister is severely punished. They have the strictest father family. Marriage with a father's relative to the remotest cousinship is forbidden, but consanguinity through the mother they do not notice at all.[1680] The Ostiaks also have strict father family, and allow marriage with any relative on the female side, but with none on the male side. It is an especially fortunate marriage to take two sisters together.[1681]

518. Amongst the Tinneh, men sometimes marry their mothers, sisters, or daughters, but this is not approved by public opinion.[1682] As the Yakuts had no word for uterine brother and sister but only for tribal brother and sister, the statements about the taboo lack precision, but they care nothing for incest, and it occurs. They laugh at the Russian horror of it. They formerly had endogamy, and it is stated that brothers and sisters married. Now they have exogamy between subdivisions of the nation, but a girl's brothers never let her depart as a virgin, lest she take away their luck.[1683] A Hudson Bay Eskimo took his mother to wife, but public opinion forced him to discard her.[1684] Marriages of brothers and sisters appear to have been allowed formerly amongst the Mordvin, in central Russia. A case is mentioned of a girl who was sent from home for a time, and on her return given to her brother as his wife.[1685] Langsdorff[1686] reported of the Aleuts on the island of Kodiak, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that parents and children, brothers and sisters, cohabited there.

519. Incest in civilized states. The ancient kings of Teneriffe, if they could not find mates of equal rank, married their sisters to prevent the admixture of plebeian blood.[1687] In the Egyptian mythology Isis and Osiris were sister and brother as well as wife and husband. The kings of ancient Egypt married their sisters and daughters. The doctrine of royal essence was very exaggerated, and was applied with quantitative exactitude. A princess could not be allowed to transmit any of it away from the possessor of the throne. There is said to be evidence that Ramses II married two of his own daughters and that Psammetik I married his daughter. Artaxerxes married two of his daughters.[1688] The Ptolemies adopted this practice. The family married in and in for generations, especially brothers and sisters, although sometimes of the half-blood. "Indicating the Ptolemies by numbers according to the order of their succession, II married his niece and afterwards his sister; IV his sister; VI and VII were brothers and they consecutively married the same sister; VII also subsequently married his niece; VIII married two of his own sisters consecutively; XII and XIII were brothers and consecutively married their sister, the famous Cleopatra." "The line of descent was untouched by these intermarriages, except in the two cases of III and VIII." The close intermarriages were sterile. The line was continued by others.[1689] The Peruvian Incas, but not other Peruvians, married their sisters.[1690] In the Vedic mythology the first man and king of the dead, Yama, had his sister, Yami, to wife. In a hymn these two are represented as discussing the propriety of marriage between brother and sister. This shows the revolt of later mores against what once was not tabooed.[1691] The scholars think that Herodotus (III, 31), by his story of the question whether Cambyses could marry his sister, shows that such marriages were not allowed amongst the ancient Persians. They are mentioned as a usage of the magi. In the Avesta they are prescribed as holy and meritorious. They are enjoined by religion. They were practiced by the Sassanids,[1692] although in the Dinkart version of the law they are apologized for and to some extent disavowed.[1693] After the time of Cambyses such marriages occurred, especially in the royal family. They now occur amongst the Persians.[1694]

520. In the Chaldean religion the gods and goddesses were fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, and mothers, as well as husbands and wives, to each other. The notions of "son of god" and "mother of god" were very current. Marduk is son of Ea and intercessor for men with him.[1695] In the laws of Hammurabi, if a man consorts with his mother after the death of his father, both are to be burned. Incest with a daughter is punished only by banishment. This light punishment may be only a concession to public opinion, since the culprits injured no interest but their own.[1696]

521. In the Old Testament Abraham married his half-sister by the same father. In 2 Sam. xiii. 13 it is shown that such a marriage was allowable in David's time, but Ezek. xxii. 11 refers to such a marriage as an abomination. Nahor's wife was his niece by his brother. Jacob married two sisters at the same time, both his cousins. Esau married his cousin. Judah took to wife his son's widow, but disapproval of that is expressed. Amram, the father of Moses, married his paternal aunt. These unions were all in contravention of the Levitical law. There are statements of the law which differ: Levit. xviii and xx; Deut. xxi. 20; xxvii. 20-23. In Ezek. xxii. 10 and 11 incest is charged as a special sin of the Jews. In the post-exilic and rabbinical periods the law varied from the old law. In general it was extended to include under the taboo more distant relatives.[1697]

Marriages between brothers and sisters were allowed in Phoenicia, but were contracted probably only when the woman had inherited something in which her brother had no share.[1698]

522. In Homer Zeus and Hera are brother and sister. Union of mother and son is regarded as shocking, but not that of brother and sister.[1699] Arete was niece and wife of Alcinous, and was especially respected.[1700] In the case of OEdipus the union of mother and son, by error, was terribly punished.[1701] In the tragedy of Andromache marriages between mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, are mentioned as characteristic of barbarians. Dionysius of Syracuse, having lost his wife, married Doris and Aristomache on the same day. With Doris he had three children and with Aristomache four. His son by Doris, Dionysius, married Sophrosyne, his daughter by Aristomache. Dion, the brother of Aristomache, married a daughter of Aristomache.[1702] Whether these marriages were extraordinary in Sicily we do not know. They may not represent the current mores as to marriage, but only the shamelessness possible to a Sicilian tyrant. At Athens the only limitations were on the ascending and descending relationships, but it appears that in later times marriages between brother and sister were disapproved.[1703]

523. The term "incest" was applied at Rome to the case of a man present at the purification of women, on the feast of the Bona Dea, May 1.[1704] The sense of the word is, then, nearly equal to "profane." The emperor Claudius married his niece Agrippina and made such marriages lawful. Gaius[1705] restricted this precedent to its exact form, marriage of a brother's daughter, not sister's daughter, and further restricted it, if the brother's daughter was in any forbidden degree of affinity.

524. In the Ynglinga saga Niord takes his sister to wife, because the law of Van-land allowed it, although that of the Ases did not.[1706] Other cases in the Edda go to show that the taboo on such marriages was not in the ancient mores of Scandinavia.[1707] In the German poems of the twelfth century it belongs to the description of the heathen kings that they are fierce and suspicious towards all who woo their daughters, and that they sometimes intend to marry their own daughters after the death of their queens.[1708]

525. Those Arabs of Arabia Felix who practiced fraternal polyandry also formed unions with their mothers.[1709] Robertson Smith thinks that this means their fathers' wives.[1710] The Arabs were convinced of the evil of marriage between cousins.[1711]

526. A mediaeval traveler reports of the Mongols that they paid no heed to affinity in marriage. They took two sisters at once or in succession. The only limitation was that they must not marry mothers, daughters, or sisters by the same mother.[1712] In Burma and Siam, at least until very recent times, in the royal families of the different subdivisions brothers and sisters married.[1713]

527. In Russia, in the seventeenth century, men in the government service who were often sent out on duty and had no homes, and whose incomes were small, were reproached by an ecclesiastic with the fact that they lived in vice with their mothers, sisters, and daughters.[1714] Marriages between persons related by blood are frequent in Corsica and are considered the most auspicious marriages.[1715]

528. The Kabyles stone to death those who voluntarily commit incest and the children born of incestuous unions. The taboo, in their usage, includes parents and children-in-law, brothers and sisters-in-law, and foster brothers and sisters.[1716]

529. In 1459 there died at Arras a canon, eighty years old, who had committed incest with his daughters and with a granddaughter whom he had had by one of them.[1717]

530. Where the line is drawn, and why. The instances show that the notion of incest is by no means universal or uniform, or attended by the same intensity of repugnance. It is not by any means traceable to a constant cause. Plutarch[1718] discussed the question why marriages between relatives were forbidden by the traditional mores of his time. He conjectured various explanations. Fear of physical degeneration is not one of them. We must infer that such consequences had not then been noticed or affirmed. We have found cases in which no taboo existed and cases in which close intermarriages are especially approved. An operation of syncretism, when different usages and ideas have been brought together by conquest and state combinations, must be allowed for. In some cases a great interest was thought to be at stake; in other cases no importance was attached to the matter. The mores developed under the notions which got control by accident or superstition. There was no rational ground for the taboo, and none even blindly connected with truth of fact, until the opinion gained a footing that close intermarriage was unfavorable to the number or vigor of the offspring. Unless that opinion is accepted as correct there is no reason for the taboo now.[1719] Incest is, for us, a thing so repugnant that we consider the feeling "natural." We may test the feeling by our feeling as to the marriage of first cousins. First cousins are very commonly married in England. Such marriages are under no civil or ecclesiastical prohibition, and although many persons disapprove of them on grounds of expediency, and parents might refuse to consent to them, they do not come under the abomination of incest. In many states of the United States marriages of first cousins are illegal. In Kansas they are put under heavy penalties. We hear no preaching against close in-marriage. The matter is not discussed. The limitations are set in the current mores and are accepted without dispute. Evidently the only question is where the line should be drawn. If it was proposed to forbid the marriage of first cousins some discussion might be aroused. If it was decided wise to forbid such marriages, it would take long for such a sentiment of repugnance to be developed in regard to them as we now feel in regard to the marriage of sisters, or even of aunts and nieces. In history the movement must have been in the other direction. The repugnance arose first and then became a ground for the rules.

531. Human self-selection by taboo and other-worldliness. Laws against incest and all caste rules which arbitrarily limit the number of persons whom a given individual may marry may be regarded as blind attempts of mankind to practice some kind of self-selection. Sex selection inside the human race is the highest requirement which life now addresses to man as an intelligent being, and the very highest result which our sciences could produce would be to give us trustworthy guidance in a policy of sex selection. It is not possible for some persons to dispose of the life determination of others, as breeders control the union of beasts. What is needed is that individuals, in making their own decisions for their own self-realization, shall understand the whole range of interests which are involved, and shall do what it is expedient or necessary to do to satisfy them all. In times past men and women have thus limited themselves by rules about incest, group and class marriage, rank or caste, religion, wealth, and other considerations. In every society there are traits which are approved and others which are disapproved in each sex. In marrying, people are influenced by these appreciations and they select for or against them. Thus marriage is controlled by a complicated selection according to a number of standards which prevail at the time and place. At present the popular view seems to be that all standards are false, and that the limitations ought to be trampled on as representing abandoned ideals. It is thought that the whole matter ought to be left to the control of an unintelligent impulse, which is capable of any caprice, but whose authority is imperative. Perverse as the old restrictions often were, they had in them a notion of self-selection such as is needed now, if only the criteria and standards which are correct can be ascertained. The old restrictions contained a notion of breeding up, a notion which is by no means false, if we can get a rational idea of what is "up." No marriage ought now to be contracted without full application of all we know about heredity and selection. If, in any society, marriages were thus contracted, the effect would be most favorable on posterity, and on the power in action and the perpetuity of the group, for the net result would be that those who are least fit to propagate the race would be the ones who would be left unmarried or would marry each other. In the latter case their posterity would soon disappear, and the evil factors would be eliminated. A father now refuses his daughter to a drunkard, a criminal, a pauper, a bankrupt, an inefficient man, one who has no income, etc. Some men refuse their daughters to irreligious men, or to men who are not of their own sect or subsect. Some allow inherited wealth, or talent, or high character, etc., to outweigh disadvantages. In short, we already have selection. It always has existed. The law of incest was an instinctive effort in the same direction. The problem is the same now as it always has been,—to refine and correct the standards and to determine their relative importance.

532. Restrictions by biological facts as yet too uncertain. As yet, undoubtedly, the great reason why people are reluctant to construct a policy of marriage and population on biological doctrines is that those doctrines are too uncertain. The reluctance is well justified. Hasty action, based on shifting views of fact and law, would simply add new confusion and trouble to that produced by the customs and legislative enactments which we have inherited from the past and which were based on transcendental doctrines. So long as we do not know whether acquired modifications are inheritable or not, we are not prepared to elaborate a policy of marriage which can be dogmatically taught or civilly enforced. This much, however, is certain,—the interests of society are more at stake in these things than in anything else. All other projects of reform and amelioration are trivial compared with the interests which lie in the propagation of the species, if those can be so treated as to breed out predispositions to evils of body and mind, and to breed in vigor of mind and body. It even seems sometimes as if the primitive people were working along better lines of effort in this matter than we are, when we allow marriage to be controlled by "love" or property; when our organs of public instruction taboo all which pertains to reproduction as improper; and when public authority, ready enough to interfere with personal liberty everywhere else, feels bound to act as if there was no societal interest at stake in the begetting of the next generation.

533. It is self-evident that there ought to be no restriction on marriage except such as is necessary to protect some interest of the parties, their children, or the society. The necessity must also be real and not traditional or superstitious. The evils of inbreeding are so probable as to justify strong prejudice against consanguine marriages. If primitive men set up the taboo on incest without knowing this, they acted more wisely than they knew. We who have inherited the taboo now have knowledge which gives a rational and expedient reason for it. The mores, therefore, still have a field of useful action to strengthen and reaffirm the taboo. There is also a practical question still unsettled,—whether the marriage of first cousins should be included in the taboo.

[1658] Parkinson, Ethnog. d. Nordwestl. Salomo Ins., 6.

[1659] Snyder, Geog. of Marriage.

[1660] Anc. Soc., 424.

[1661] Marriage, 317.

[1662] Ibid., 319, 334, 352.

[1663] Durkheim in L'Annee Sociologique, I, 59-65.

[1664] Starcke, Prim. Fam., 230.

[1665] Ethnog. Brasil., 115.

[1666] Ibid., 334 note.

[1667] Umschau, VIII, 496.

[1668] JAI, XXIV, 169.

[1669] Perelaer, Dyaks, 59.

[1670] Wilken, Volkenkunde, 267.

[1671] Hopkins, Relig. of India, 531.

[1672] Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 276.

[1673] N. S. Ethnol. Soc., London, II, 311; Sarasin, Veddahs, 466.

[1674] Gli Amori degli Uomini, 272.

[1675] Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde, XXXV, 151.

[1676] Ibid., XLI, 203.

[1677] JAI, XXI, 361.

[1678] Junker, Afrika, III, 291.

[1679] Sibree, Great Afr. Island, 252.

[1680] von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, II, 27.

[1681] Pallas, Voyages (French), IV, 69.

[1682] Smithson. Rep., 1866, 310.

[1683] Sieroshevski, Yakuty (russ.), I, 560.

[1684] Bur. Eth., XI, 180.

[1685] Abercromby, Finns, I, 182.

[1686] Voyages and Travels, 358.

[1687] N. S. Amer. Anthrop., II, 478.

[1688] Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 50.

[1689] Galton, Hered. Genius, 151.

[1690] Prescott, Peru, I, 117.

[1691] Hopkins, Relig. of India, 131; Zimmer, Altind. Leben, 333.

[1692] Darmstetter, Zend-Avesta, Introd., xlv.

[1693] Justi, Persien, 225.

[1694] Geiger, Ost-Iran. Kultur, 245-247.

[1695] Tiele, Gesch. der Relig. im Alterthum, I, 174.

[1696] Mueller, Hammurabi, 129.

[1697] Jewish Encyc., s.v. "Incest," VI, 571.

[1698] Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 237.

[1699] Il., IV, 58; XIV, 296; XI, 223; Od., X, 7; cf. VIII, 267; XI, 271; VIII, 306; VII, 65.

[1700] Od., XII, 338; XIII, 57.

[1701] Keller, Homer. Soc., 205, 232.

[1702] Burckhardt, Griech. Kulturgesch., I, 197.

[1703] Becker-Hermann, Charikles, III, 288.

[1704] Rossbach, Roem. Ehe, 266.

[1705] Instit., I, 62.

[1706] Laing, Sagas of the Norse Kings, I, 273.

[1707] Weinhold, D. F., I, 235.

[1708] Lichtenberger, Nibelungen, 334

[1709] Strabo, XVI, 4, 25, or 783.

[1710] Jo. Philol., IX, 86.

[1711] Wellhausen, Ehe bei den Arabern, 441.

[1712] Rubruck, Eastern Parts, 77.

[1713] Yule, Court of Ava, 86.

[1714] Kostomarow, Dom. Life and Customs of Great Russia (russ.), 154.

[1715] Gubernatis, Usi Nuziali, 273.

[1716] Hanoteau et Letourneux, Les Kabyles, III, 206.

[1717] Lea, Inquis., III, 639.

[1718] Quaest. Rom., 108.

[1719] Starcke, Prim. Fam., 211.



CHAPTER XIII

KINSHIP, BLOOD REVENGE, PRIMITIVE JUSTICE, PEACE UNIONS

Kinship.—Forms of kinship.—Family education.—Kinds of kinship.—How family mores are formed.—Family and marriage.— Goblinism and kinship; blood revenge.—Procreation; forms of the family.—Notions about procreation and share in it.—Blood revenge and the in-group—Institutional ties replace the blood tie.—Peace in the in-group.—Parties to blood revenge.—Blood revenge in ethnography.—Blood revenge in Israel.—Peace units and peace pacts.—The instability of great peace unions.—The Arabs.—The development of the philosophy of blood revenge.— Alleviations of blood revenge.—The king's peace.—The origin of criminal law.

534. Kinship. Kinship is a fact which, in the forms of heredity and race, is second to none in importance to the interests of men. It is a fact which was concealed by ignorance from primitive men. It is yet veiled in much mystery from us. Nevertheless the notion of kinship was one of the very first notions formed by primitive men as a bond of association, and they based folkways upon their ideas about it. They deduced the chief inferences and handed the whole down to succeeding generations. Therefore the assumed knowledge of the facts of kinship was used as the basis of a whole series of societal conventions. The first construction was the family, which was a complete institution. Of course marriage was a relationship which was controlled and adjusted by the family ideas. From the folkways as to kinship all the simplest conceptions of societal rights and duties were derived, societal institutions were constructed, and societal organization has grown up.

535. Forms of kinship. That a certain child was born of a certain woman, after having been for some time in physical connection with her body, is an historical and physical fact. That another child was born of the same mother is another fact, of the same order. It may be believed that these facts produce permanent life relations between the mother and children, and between the children, or it may be believed that the facts have no importance for duties, interests, or sympathies. The relations, if recognized, may be defined and construed in many different ways and degrees. They could also be carried further by including more generations, or wider collateral branches, until kinship would include a sib, or family in the widest sense,—those related within some limit of descent and cousinship on a system decided on (mother family, father family, etc.) and traditional. Kinship is purely matter of fact and history, and therefore rational. There is no "natural affection." There is habit and familiarity, and the example and exhortations of parents may inculcate notions of duty. Sentiments and sympathies will then be produced out of familiarity in life, or out of use and wont. The construction and limits of kinship in any society are products of the folkways, or—inasmuch as the system is built up with notions of welfare and rights and duties—of the mores. In fact, since the folkways in regard to this matter begin at a very primitive stage of human life, run up to the highest civilization, and are interwoven with the most tender sympathies and ethical convictions at all stages, kinship is one of the most important products of the folkways and mores. It is, in fact, the most important societal concept which the primitive man thought out, and it would be such even if we were now compelled to reject it as erroneous.

536. Family education. No doubt the folkways about kinship are produced in connection with views about interests, and in connection with faiths about procreation, and impressions produced by experience. The mother and children live in constant contact and intimacy. The family grows into an institution which takes its nature from the traditional and habitual behavior of its members to each other in daily life. Use and wont have here a great field for their constructive operation. Each family (mother and children) is independent and makes its own world, in which nearly all its interests are enfolded. There are constantly recurring occasions for acts of a reciprocal character, and such acts especially build up institutions. The family is also an arena in which sympathies are cultivated, which does not mean that they are always nourished and developed. Habits are formed and discipline is enforced. Rules are accepted from custom and enforced by authority and force. Rights and duties are enforced as facts long before they are apprehended as concepts.

537. Kinds of kinship. The sib, or large family, including all those who are known to be related at all, is a group of very varying importance in different societies. In some societies the common bond is strong and produces important social consequences. In other cases no heed is paid to relationship beyond first and second cousins. Although the Yakuts keep up the rod, or great family, for some purposes, we are told that often "nothing unites the members of the rod but a vague tradition of common descent."[1720] Whether individuals can break the ties of kin, by voluntary act, is answered differently in different societies. The Salic Franks allowed a man to do it by breaking his staff (which was his personal symbol) in a ceremonial act.[1721] If kinship depends on connection of the body of the child with that of the mother, his nourishment by her milk is another ground of kinship. The Arabs recognize this tie of a child to its foster mother. Later the child is nourished by food shared with commensals. Hence the tie of commensality forms a basis of social union like kinship.[1722]

538. How mores are formed. The family groups which are in local neighborhood have, in general, the same folkways as an inheritance, but variations occur from varieties of character and circumstances. The variations are life experiments, in fact, and they lead to selection. In the community as a whole the mores of family life are selected, approved, and established, and then handed down by tradition. It may be believed that there is a common interest of the entire larger group in the education and treatment of children, and that all the adults recognize that interest more or less completely. The big group, therefore, molds notions of consanguinity, and the sanctions of tribal authority and public opinion coerce all to observe the modes of family life which the ruling authority thinks most expedient for the group interests.

539. Family and marriage. The family institution must have preceded marriage. In fact, marriage appears, in ethnography and history, as the way of founding a family and as molded by the family mores existing in the society.

540. Goblinism and kinship. Blood revenge. Integration of kin relations was produced by goblinism. This furnished an interest which impelled to development of the kin idea. If a man was murdered, his ghost would seek revenge, just as a man while alive would have sought revenge for a smaller injury. The ghost was dangerous to two persons or classes of persons, the murderer and those near the corpse. The latter would be, almost always, his kinsmen. It behooved the latter, therefore, if they wanted to appease the ghost and save themselves, to find the murderer and to punish him. Hence the custom of blood revenge. It was not due to kin notions, but to goblinistic notions. Kin only defined those who came under the obligation. In this way kin became a tie of mutual offense, defense, and assistance, and kin groups were formed into societies,—we-groups or in-groups,—inside of which there was comradeship, peace, law, and order, while the relation to all out-groups was one of suspicion, hostility, plunder, and subjugation if possible. The primary notion of kin was embodied in formulae about blood,—which were only figures of speech,—which have come down to us, so that propositions about blood are used now to express our notions of kinship, heredity, etc. In fact, according to modern embryology, not a drop of blood passes from either parent to the offspring. Superstitions about blood (seat of the soul or life, etc.) helped to develop the notion of kin. The primitive idea is that the ghost of a murdered man can be appeased only by blood. The blood of Abel cried unto God from the ground. Some peoples go out to kill anything, in order that blood may be shed and so the ghost may be satisfied.

541. Procreation. Forms of the family. The notion of kin was so elastic that various conceptions of procreation have been grafted upon it, and various ways of organizing the family, or of reckoning kinship, have been connected with it. Mores grow upon the notions of kinship. They dictate modes of behavior and ideas of right and duty, and train all members of the society in the same. The relation of father and child is known to few persons, perhaps only to two. Kinship through the father, therefore, seems to uncivilized people far less important than kinship through the mother. When the father relationship is regarded as the real tie and is made the norm of kin groups, great changes are produced in the mores of the mother family.

542. Notions about procreation and share in it. It is difficult to see how savage men could have got any idea of procreation. The ethnographical evidence is that they have no idea, or only a most vague and incorrect idea, of the functions of the parents. The Australians think that an ancient spirit enters into a baby at birth, enlivens it, and is its fate. This notion interferes with ideas of sexual conception. So we are told that the Dieyerie women do not admit that a child has only one father, and say that they do not know whether the husband or the pirauru is the father.[1723] The highest tribes in Australia say that "the daughter emanates from her father solely, being only nurtured by her mother."[1724] The father, however, is always known or assumed. How else could the father move up one grade in tribal position when the boy is initiated?[1725] Amongst several tribes of central Australia it is believed that "the child is not the direct result of intercourse, that it may come without this, which merely, as it were, prepares the mother for the reception and birth of an already formed spirit child who inhabits one of the local totem centers."[1726] Melanesian women feel severely the strain of child rearing. They seem to have less love for the children than the fathers have. They often kill the babes. If an unmarried girl becomes pregnant, she says that some man who hates her got the help of spirits, who caused her situation.[1727] The Indians in British Columbia think that a woman conceives by eating, and this belief is introduced into their folk tales.[1728] The rules about the food of women are often connected with notions about sex relations and procreation. The Seri of California thought that fire is bestial, not physical, and is produced similarly to sexual reproduction.[1729] In ancient Greece "the inferiority of women to men was strongly asserted, and it was illustrated and defended by a very curious physiological notion that the generative power belonged exclusively to men, women having only a very subordinate part in the production of their children."[1730] This notion is expressed in the Eumenides, where it is said to lessen the crime of Orestes. His mother did not generate him. She received and nursed the germ. In Islam this same opinion prevails. It is a father family doctrine, exactly opposite to that of the mother family, where the function of the mother was thought far more important.[1731] It is a good example of the way in which the philosophy follows the view taken in the mores of the leading interest.

543. Blood revenge and the in-group. Blood revenge is out of place in the in-group. It would mean self-extermination of the group. It would serve the interests of the enemies in the out-groups. Hence the double interest of harmony and cooperation in the in-group and war strength against the out-groups forces the invention of devices by which to supersede blood revenge in the in-group. Chiefs and priests administered group interests, especially war and other collisions with neighbors, and they imposed restraints, arbitration, or compensation in internal quarrels. Cities of refuge and sanctuaries secured investigation and deliberation to prove guilt and determine compensations. The chiefs and priests thus modified or set aside kin law by inchoate civil forms. Then criminal law and penalty took the place of retaliation. Between groups blood revenge was only a detail of the normal relations of hostility and violence. Out-groups, however, sometimes made agreements with each other to limit blood revenge and vendetta. White men have had trouble with red men and black men because their customs as to relationship were not on the same level. The whites in New York and Pennsylvania colonies could not understand why the Indians were indifferent to their demands for the surrender of an Indian who, in time of peace, had killed a white man. According to Indian ideas the bloodshedding did not concern the civil body (tribe), but the kin group (clan).[1732] A wife was not included in blood revenge. Her relation to her husband was not one of "blood." It was institutional. Therefore it was not so strong as the tie of sister to brother by the same mother.

544. Institutional ties replace the blood tie. In the history of civilization several institutional ties have become stronger than the blood tie, but the primitive man, who has not yet accepted any tie as equal to the blood tie, always resists this change. Kinship was lost by separation, and fire superseded it as a bond of association. Fire being kept and lent became a unifying force, because, in effect, all united in a common effort to get and keep it.[1733] Common religion (sacrifices) also became a bond of union. The common sacrifices at Upsala held the scattered Swedes in unity, and served also as a peace bond, although not a sufficient one.[1734] It is said also of the Brahuis, in Baluchistan, that the two bonds which unite the confederacy are common land and common good and ill, "which is another name for common blood feud."[1735] Changes in the numbers in the group, or in life conditions, make some other element more important than kin. Then that element becomes the societal bond. Then the folkways, ideas, and sentiments change to adapt themselves to the new center of interest. Throughout the Occident the institutional tie of man and wife is rated higher than any tie of kinship.

545. Peace in the in-group. Government, law, order, peace, and institutions were developed in the in-group. So far as sympathy was developed at all, it was in the in-group, between comrades. The custom of blood revenge was a protection to all who were in a group of kinsmen. It knit them all together and served their common interest against all outsiders. Therefore it was a societalizing custom and institution. Inside the kin-group adjudication, administration of justice by precedents and customs, composition for wrongs by payments or penalties, amercements by authority for breach of orders or violations of petty taboo, and exile took the place of retaliation. In the in-group it was the murderer who had to fear the ghost of the murdered. Religious rites absolved the murderer from the ghosts or gods and delivered him from the furies, who demanded revenge. The Hebrew law provided cities of refuge for those who were guilty of accidental homicide.[1736] The manslayer could go home at the death of the high priest.[1737] In 2 Sam. iii and iv are cases of blood revenge and of efforts to suppress it. The homicide in chapter iv is not a case of blood revenge but of partisan murder.