321. Illustrations from ethnography. The Papuans on Geelvink Bay, New Guinea, say that "children are a burden. We become tired of them. They destroy us." The women practice abortion to such an extent that the rate of increase of the population is very small and in some places there is a lack of women.[905] Throughout Dutch New Guinea the women will not rear more than two or three children each.[906] In fact, it is said of the whole island that the people love their children but fear that the food supply will be insufficient, or they seek ease and shirk the trouble of rearing children.[907] In German Melanesia the custom is current. Although many Europeans live with native women, few crossbreeds are to be seen.[908] Codrington[909] gives as reasons: "If a woman did not want the trouble of bringing up a child, desired to appear young, was afraid her husband might think the birth before its time, or wished to spite her husband." Ling Roth[910] quotes Low that the Dyaks never resort to wilful miscarriage, but this statement must be restricted to some of them. Perelaer[911] says that even married women do it and employ harmful means. The Atchinese practice abortion both before marriage and in marriage. It is a matter of course.[912] The women of Central Celebes will not bear children, and use abortion to avoid it, lest the perineum be torn,—"a thing which they consider the greatest shame for a woman."[913] If an unmarried woman of the Djakun, on the peninsula of Malacca, used abortion, she lost all standing in the tribe. Women despised her; no man would marry her, and she might be degraded by a punishment inflicted by her parents. Married women practiced it sometimes to avoid the strain of bearing children, but, if detected, they might be beaten by the husbands, even to death. In the neighboring tribe of the Orang Laut no means of abortion was known. "Such an abomination was not regarded as possible."[914] These tribes on Malacca are very low in grade of civilization. They are aborigines who have been displaced and depressed. The people of Nukuoro are all of good physique, large, and well formed. They have a food supply in excess of their wants and are well nourished. The population has decreased in recent years, by reason of the killing of children before or after birth.[915] On the New Britain islands the women dislike to become mothers soon after marriage. Generally it is from two to four years before a child is born.[916] On the New Hebrides the women employ abortion for egoistic reasons, and miscarriage is often produced by climbing trees and carrying heavy loads.[917] The inhabitants of the New Hebrides are diminishing in number, especially on the coasts, because they flee inland before the whites. Ten years ago there were at Port Sandwich, on Mallicolo, six hundred souls. To-day there are only half so many. In the last years there have been five births and thirty deaths. Abortion is very common. If a malformed child is born, it and the mother are killed. The nations raid each other to get slaves or cannibal food.[918] These citations seem to represent the general usage throughout the Pacific islands.

322. Oviedo said of the women "of the main land" of South America, when first discovered, that they practiced abortion in order not to spoil their bodies by child bearing.[919] The Kadiveo of Paraguay are perishing largely through abortion by the women, who will not bear more than one child each.[920] They are a subdivision of the Guykurus, who were reported sixty or seventy years ago to be decreasing in number from this cause. The women, "until they are thirty, procure abortion, to free themselves from the privations of pregnancy and the trouble of bringing up children."[921] Martius[922] gave as additional reasons, that the tribe lived largely on horseback, and the women did not want to be hindered by greater difficulties in this life, nor did they want to be left behind by their husbands. The Indians of the plains of North America were driven to similar limitations. "It has long been the custom that a woman should not have a second child until her first is ten years old."[923] Infants interfere very seriously with their mode of life.

Neither abortion nor infanticide is customary in the Horn of Africa unless it be in time of famine.[924] In South Africa abortion is a common custom.[925] Abortion and infanticide are so nearly universal in savage life, either as egoistic policy or group policy, that exceptions to the practice of these vices are noteworthy phenomena.

323. Abortion renounced. In ancient India abortion came to be ranked with the murder of a Brahmin as the greatest crimes.[926] Plato's idea of right was that men over fifty-five, and women over forty, ought not to procreate citizens. By either abortion or infanticide all offspring of such persons should be removed.[927] Aristotle also thought that imperfect children should be put to death, and that the numbers should be limited. If parents exceeded the prescribed number, abortion should be employed.[928] These two philosophers evidently constructed their ideals on the mores already established amongst the Greeks, and their ethical doctrines are only expressions of approval of the mores in which they lived. The Jews, on the other hand, regarded abortion and infanticide as heathen abominations. Both are forbidden in the "Two Ways," sec. 2. In the laws of the German nations the mother was treated as entitled to decide whether she would bear a child. Abortion produced on her by another was a crime, but not when she produced it on herself. Only in the law of the West Goths was abortion by the mother made criminal, because it was the view that the state was injured.[929] In modern Hungary, at a marriage, the desire to have no children is expressed by a number of ancient and futile usages to prevent child bearing for years, or altogether. Abortion is practiced throughout Hungary by women of all the nationalities. Women rejoice to be barren, and it is not thought creditable to have an infant within two or three years of marriage.[930] Nevertheless the birth rate is very high (thirty-nine per thousand).

324. Illustrations of infanticide. The Australians practiced infanticide almost universally. A woman could not carry two children. Therefore, if she had one who could not yet march, and bore another, the latter was killed. One or both twins were killed. The native men killed half-white children.[931] Australian life was full of privations on account of limited supplies of food and water. The same conditions made wandering a necessity. If a woman had two infants, she could not accompany her husband.[932] One reporter says that the fate of a child "depended much on the condition the country was in at the time (drought, etc.), and the prospect of the mother's rearing it satisfactorily."[933] Sickly and imperfect children were killed because they would require very great care. The first one was also killed because they thought it immature and not worth preserving.[934] Very generally it was eaten that the mother might recover the strength which she had given to it.[935] If there was an older child, he ate of it, in the belief that he might gain strength. Very rarely were more than four children of one woman allowed to grow up.[936] Curr[937] says that before the whites came women bore, on an average, six children each, and that, as a rule, they reared two boys and a girl, the maximum being ten. All authorities agree that if children were spared at birth they were treated with great affection. On the Andaman Islands infanticide was unknown.[938] It was not common on New Zealand. Boys were wanted as warriors, girls as breeders.[939] A missionary reports a case in New Guinea where the parents of a sickly, peevish child, probably teething, calmly decided to kill it.[940] In British New Guinea there is more or less infanticide, the father strangling the infant at birth to avoid care and trouble. Daughters are preserved by preference because of the bride price which the father will get for them.[941] On Nukuoro the civil ruler decides long before a birth whether the child is to be allowed to live or not. If the decision is adverse, it is smothered at birth.[942] On the Banks Islands girls are preferred, because the people have the mother family, and because of the marriageable value of girls.[943] On the Murray Islands in Torres Straits all children beyond a prescribed number are put to death, "lest the food supply should become insufficient." "If the children were all of one sex, some were destroyed from shame, it being held proper to have an equal number of boys and girls."[944] On some islands of the Solomon group infanticide is not practiced, except in cases of illegitimate births. On others the coast people kill their own children and buy grown-up children from the bush people of the interior, that being an easier way to get them.[945] There is no infanticide on Samoa. The unmarried employ abortion.[946] Throughout Polynesia infanticide was prevalent for social selection, all of mixed blood or caste being put to death. Only two boys in a family were allowed to live, but any number of girls.[947] In Tahiti they killed girls, who were of no use for war, service of the god, fishing, or navigation.[948] The Malagassans on Madagascar kill all children who are born on unlucky days.[949]

325. The women of the Pima (Arizona) practice infanticide, because, if their husbands die, they will be poor and will have to provide by their own exertions for such children as they have.[950] All Hyperboreans practice infanticide on account of the difficulty of the food supply.[951]

326. The Bondei of West Africa strangle an infant at birth if any of the numerous portents and omens for which they watch are unfavorable. An infant is also killed if its upper teeth come first.[952] Until very recently it was customary in parts of Ahanta for the tenth child born of the same mother to be buried alive.[953] In Kabre (Togo) there is a large population and little food. The people often sell their own children, or kidnap others, which they sell in order to provide for their own.[954] The Vadshagga put to death illegitimate children and those whose upper incisors come first. The latter, if allowed to live, would be parricides.[955] On the Zanzibar coast weak and deformed children are exposed. The Catholic mission saved many, but the natives then exposed more to get rid of them.[956] The Hottentots expose female twins.[957] The Kabyls put to death all children who are illegitimate, incestuous, or adulterine. If the mother should spare the infant she would insure her own death.[958] There is said to be no infanticide in Cambodia.[959] "Widows among the Moghiahs [a criminal tribe of central India] are allowed to remarry. The murder of female infants has, therefore, never prevailed amongst them."[960] The Chinese on Formosa practice female infanticide, "in cases of a succession of girls in a family." "The aborigines, both civilized and savage, looked with horror upon the Chinese for their inhumanity in this respect." They brought the custom from China, where in the overpopulated southeastern provinces it is current custom.[961] The Khonds of India are a poor, isolated hill tribe, who put female infants to death because they regard marriage in the same tribe as incest.[962] All tribes in their status who refuse to practice endogamy have a peculiar problem to deal with. Wilkins[963] says that six sevenths of the population of India have for ages practiced female infanticide. Buddhism is declared to be inhuman and antisocial. It palliates everything which is done to limit population—polygamy and infanticide in China, concubinage in Japan, and prostitution in both. It started and developed in countries which had for generations suffered from overpopulation, with its regular consequences of famine, pestilence, and war.[964]

327. Revolt against infanticide. The ancient Egyptians revolted, in their mores, against infanticide and put an end to it.[965] Strabo[966] thought it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared. The Greeks regarded infanticide as the necessary and simply proper way to deal with a problem which could not be avoided. Dissent was not wanting. At Thebes infanticide was forbidden.[967] Sutherland[968] points out the effect of infanticide to bring the Greek and Latin races to an end. They neglected their own females and begot offspring with foreign and slave women, thus breeding out their own race blood. The Romans do not appear to have had any population policy until the time of the empire, when the social corruption and egoism so restricted reproduction that the policy was directed to the encouragement of marriage and parenthood. Therefore infanticide was disapproved by the jurists and moralists. Ovid, Seneca, Plutarch, Favorinus, and Juvenal speak of abortion as general and notorious, but as criminal.[969] Tacitus praised the Germans because, as he erroneously asserted,[970] they did not allow infanticide, and he knew that the Jews prohibited it.[971] In the cases of Greece and Rome we have clear instances to prove the opposite tendencies of the mores, with their attendant philosophies and ethical principles, on the conjuncture of the conditions and interests. At Rome children were exposed either on account of poverty, which was the ancient cause, or on account of luxury, egoism, and vice. "Pagan and Christian authorities are united in speaking of infanticide as a crying vice of the empire."[972] These protests show that the custom was not fully protected by the mores. Pliny thought it necessary.[973] Seneca refers to the killing of defective children as a wise and unquestioned custom which he can use for illustration.[974] For the masses, until the late days of the empire, infanticide was, at the worst, a venial crime. "What was demanded on this subject was not any clearer moral teaching, but rather a stronger enforcement of the condemnation long since passed upon infanticide, and an increased protection for exposed infants.... The church labored to deepen the sense of the enormity of the crime."[975] Evidently infanticide was a tradition with serious approval from one state of things to another in which it was harmful and not needed in any view. In 331 A.D. Constantine gave title to those who rescued exposed children against the parents of the children.[976] This was in favor of the children, since it increased the chances that they would be rescued, if we must assume that it was their interest that their lives should be spared, even if they were reared by men who speculated on their future value as slaves or prostitutes. As a corollary of the legislation against infanticide, institutions to care for foundlings came into existence. Such institutions rank as charitable and humanitarian. Their history is such as to make infanticide seem kind. In 374 infanticide was made a crime punishable by death. Justinian provided that foundlings should be free.[977] Infanticide continued to be customary. The church worked against it by the introduction of the mystic religious element. The infants died unbaptized. As the religion took a more and more ritualistic character this fact affected the minds of the masses more than the suffering or death of the infants ever had. In a cold estimate of facts it was also questionable whether the infants suffered any great harm, and the popular estimate of the crime of extinguishing a life before any interests had clustered around it was very lenient. "The criminality of abortion was immeasurably aggravated when it was believed to involve not only the extinction of a transient life, but also the damnation of an immortal soul."[978] The religious interest was thus brought to reenforce the love of children in the struggle against the old custom. The canon law also construed it as murder. Through the Middle Ages the sale of children was not common, but the custom of exposure continued.[979] The primitive usages of the Teutons included exposure of infants. The father by taking the child up from the ground ordained that it should live. It was then bathed and named. Rulers exposed infants lest dependent persons should be multiplied. Evil dreams also caused exposure. When the Icelanders accepted Christianity a minority stipulated that they should still be allowed to eat horseflesh and to practice exposure of infants.[980] In old German law infanticide was treated as the murder of a relative. The guilty mother was buried alive in a sack, the law prescribing, with the ingenious fiendishness of the age, that a dog, a cat, a rooster, and a viper should also be placed in the sack.[981] In ancient Arabia the father might kill newborn daughters by burying them alive. The motive of the old custom was anxiety about provision for the child and shame at the disgrace of having become the father of a daughter.[982] In the Koran it is forbidden to kill children for fear of starvation. In modern countries infanticide has been common or rare according to the penalties, in law or the mores, upon husbandless mothers. In the sixteenth century, in Spain, illegitimate births were very common. Infanticide was very uncommon, but abandonment (foundlings) took its place. The foundlings became vagabonds and rogues.[983]

328. Ethics of abortion and infanticide. Abortion and infanticide are at war with the attachment of parents to children, which is a sentiment common, but not universal, amongst animals while the offspring are dependent. It might seem that these customs have been abolished by speculative ethics. In fact, they have not been abolished. They have been modified and have been superseded by milder methods of accomplishing the same purpose. It is evidently a question at what point parental affection begins to attach to the child. We think that we have gained much over savage people in our notion of murder, but it appears that primitive men did not dare to take anything out of nature without giving an equivalent for it, and that they did not dare to kill anything without first sacrificing it to a god, or afterwards conciliating the spirit of the animal or of its species. If it is murder to prevent a life from coming into existence, it would be a question of casuistry at what point such a crime would ensue. It might be murder to remain unmarried.

329. Christian mores as to abortion and infanticide. The tradition against abortion and infanticide came down into our mores from the Jews. It never got strength in the mores of Christianity until each of those acts was regarded as a high religious crime because the child died unbaptized. The soul was held to belong to it from the moment of conception. In reality nothing has put an end to infanticide but the advance in the arts (increased economic power), by virtue of which parents can provide for children. Neomalthusianism is still practiced and holds the check by which the population is adjusted to the economic power. There is shame in it. No one dare avow it or openly defend it. A "two-child system" is currently referred to in French and German literature as an established family policy, and restriction is certainly a fact in the mores of all civilized people. It is certain that the masses of those people think it right and not wrong. They do not accept guidance from any speculative ethics, but from expediency. Their devotion to their children is greater than a similar virtue ever has been at any previous time, and they prove their willingness to make the utmost sacrifices for them. In fact, very many of them are unwilling to have more children because it would limit what they can do for those they have. In short, the customs and their motives have changed very little since the days of savagery.

330. Mores of respect or contempt for the aged. In the introductory paragraph to this chapter it was observed that there are two sets of mores as to the aged: (a) in one set of mores the teaching and usages inculcate conventional respect for the aged, who are therefore arbitrarily preserved for their wisdom and counsel, perhaps also sometimes out of affection and sympathy; (b) in the other set of mores the aged are regarded as societal burdens, which waste the strength of the society, already inadequate for its tasks. Therefore they are forced to die, either by their own hands or those of their relatives. It is very far from being true that the first of these policies is practiced by people higher up in civilization than those who practice the second. The people in lower civilization profit more by the wisdom and counsel of the aged than those in higher civilization, and are educated by this experience to respect and value the aged. "The introduction of the father-right won more respect for the aged man."[984] In some cases we can see the two codes in strife. Amongst the ancient Teutons the father could expose or sell his children under age, and the adult son could kill his aged parents.[985] There was no fixed duty of child to parent or of parent to child.

331. Ethnographical illustrations of respect to the aged. "The people of Madagascar pay high honor to age and to parents. The respect to age is even exaggerated." The Hovas always pay formal respect to greater age. If two slaves are carrying a load together, the younger of them will try to carry it all.[986] In West Africa, "all the younger members of society are early trained to show the utmost deference to age. They must never come into the presence of aged persons or pass by their dwellings without taking off their hats and assuming a crouching gait. When seated in their presence it must always be at a 'respectful distance,'—a distance proportioned to the difference in their ages and position in society. If they come near enough to hand an aged man a lighted pipe or a glass of water, the bearer must always fall upon one knee."[987] "Great among the Oromo is the veneration for the old. Failure in respect to age is considered an injury to the customs of the country. The aged always sit in the post of honor, have a voice in public councils, in discussions, and controversies which arise amongst citizens. The young and the women are taught to serve them on all occasions."[988] The Hereros respect the old. Property belongs to an old man even after his son assumes the care of it. Milk pails and joints of meat are brought to him to be blessed.[989] The old are well treated in Australia. Certain foods are reserved for them.[990] Amongst the Lhoosai, on the Chittagong hills of southeastern India, "parents are reverenced and old age honored. When past work the father and mother are cared for by the children."[991] The Nicobarese treat the old kindly and let them live as long as they can.[992] The Andamanese also show great respect to the old and treat them with care and consideration.[993] The tribes in central Australia have no such custom "as doing away with aged or infirm people; on the contrary, such are treated with especial kindness, receiving a share of the food which they are unable to procure for themselves."[994] The Jekris, in the Niger Protectorate, "have great respect for their fathers, chiefs, and old age generally. Public opinion is very strong on these points."[995] The Indians on the northwest coast of North America "have great respect for the aged, whose advice in most matters has great weight."[996] "Great is the respect for the aged" amongst the Chavantes, a Ges tribe of Brazil.[997] Cranz[998] says that the Greenland Eskimo take care of their old parents. "The Ossetines [of the Caucasus] have the greatest love and respect for their parents, for old age in general, and for their ancestors. The authority of the head of the family, the grandfather, father, stepfather, uncle, or older brother is unconditionally recognized. The younger men will never sit down in the presence of elders, will not speak loudly, and will never contradict them."[999] "A young Kalmuck never dares show himself before his father or mother when he is not sober. He does not sit down in the presence of old people, drawing his legs under him, which would be a gross familiarity, but he squats on his knees, supporting himself with his heels in the ground. He never shows himself before old people without his girdle. To be without a girdle is extreme neglige."[1000] Maine[1001] says: "A New Zealand chief, when asked as to the welfare of a fellow-tribesman, replied, 'He gave us so much good advice that we put him mercifully to death.'" This gives a good idea of the two views which barbarous men take of the aged. At first they are considered useless and burdensome, and fare accordingly; later a sense of their wisdom raises them to a place of high honor. It is evident that the statement here made, of the relation in time of the two ways of treating the old, is not correct. The cases above cited are nearly all those of savages and barbarians. The people of higher civilization will be found amongst those of the other mores to be cited below (see sec. 335).

332. "The position of the Roman father assured him respect and obedience as long as he lived. His unlimited power of making a will kept his fate in his own hands."[1002] The power in his family which the law gave him was very great, but his sons never paid him affectionate respect. "It is remarkable that we do not hear so often of barbarous treatment of old women as of old men. Could love for mothers have been an effective sentiment? Under mother right the relation of child to parent was far stronger, and the relation to the maternal uncle was secondary and derivative with respect to that to the mother."[1003]

333. Killing the old. The custom of killing the old, especially one's parents, is very antipathetic to us. The cases will show that, for nomadic people, the custom is necessary. The old drop out by the way and die from exhaustion. To kill them is only equivalent, and perhaps kinder. If an enemy is pursuing, the necessity is more acute.[1004] All this enters into the life conditions so primarily that the custom is a part of the life policy; it is so understood and acquiesced in. The old sometimes request it from life weariness, or from devotion to the welfare of the group.

334. Killing the old in ethnography. The "Gallinomero sometimes have two or three cords of wood neatly stacked in ricks about the wigwam. Even then, with the heartless cruelty of the race, they will dispatch an old man to the distant forest with an ax, whence he returns with his white head painfully bowed under a back-load of knaggy limbs, and his bare bronzed bowlegs moving on with that catlike softness and evenness of the Indian, but so slowly that he scarcely seems to get on at all."[1005] An old squaw, who had been abandoned by her children because she was blind, was found wandering in the mountains of California.[1006] "Filial piety cannot be said to be a distinguishing quality of the Wailakki, or any Indians. No matter how high may be their station, the aged and decrepit are counted a burden. The old man, hero of a hundred battles, when his skill with the bow and arrow is gone, is ignominiously compelled to accompany his sons into the forest, and bear home on his shoulders the game they have killed."[1007] Catlin describes his leave-taking of an old Ponca chief who was being deserted by the tribe with a little food and water, a trifling fire, and a few sticks. The tribe were driven on by hunger. The old chief said: "My children, our nation is poor, and it is necessary that you should all go to the country where you can get meat. My eyes are dimmed and my strength is no more.... I am a burden to my children. I cannot go. Keep your hearts stout and think not of me. I am no longer good for anything."[1008] This is the fullest statement we can quote, attributed to one of the abandoned old men, of the view of the proceeding which could make him acquiesce in it. The victims do not always take this view of the matter. This custom was common to all the tribes which roamed the prairies. Every one who lived to decrepitude knew that he must expect it. A more recent authority says that Poncas and Omahas never left the aged and infirm on the prairie. They were left at home, with adequate supplies, until the hunting party returned.[1009] That shows that they had a settled home and their cornfields are mentioned in the context. The old watched the cornfields, so that they were of some use. By the law of the Incas the old, who were unfit for other work, drove birds from the fields, and they were kept at public cost, like the disabled.[1010] The Hudson's Bay Eskimo strangle the old who are dependent on others for their food, or leave them to perish when the camp is moved. They move in order to get rid of burdensome old people without executing them.[1011] The central Eskimo kill the old because all who die by violence go to the happy land; others have not such a happy future.[1012] Nansen[1013] says that "when people get so old that they cannot take care of themselves, especially women, they are often treated with little consideration" by the Eskimo. Many tribes in Brazil killed the old because they were a burden and because they could no longer enjoy war, hunting, and feasting. The Tupis sometimes killed a sick man and ate the corpse, if the shaman said that he could not get well.[1014] The Tobas, a Guykuru tribe in Paraguay, bury the old alive. The old, from pain and decrepitude, often beg for death. Women execute the homicide.[1015] An old woman of the Murray River people, Australia, broke her hip. She was left to die, "as the tribe did not want to be bothered with her." The helpless and infirm are customarily so treated.[1016] In West Victoria the old are strangled by a relative deputed for the purpose and the body is burned. One reason given is that, in cases of attack by an enemy, the old would be captured and tortured to death. The victims often beg for delay, but always in vain.[1017] The Melanesians buried alive the sick and old. "It is certain that, when this was done, there was generally a kindness intended." Even when the younger hastened the end, for selfish reasons, the sick and aged acquiesced. They often begged to be put out of their misery.[1018] On the Easter Islands the aged were treated with little respect. The sick were not kindly treated, unless they were near relatives.[1019] The Solomon Islanders are described as "a community where no respect whatever is shown by youth to age."[1020] Holub[1021] mentions a great cliff from which some South African tribes cast the old when tired of caring for them. Hottentots used to put decrepit old people on pack oxen and take them out into the desert, where they were left in a little hut prepared for the purpose with a little food. They now show great heartlessness towards helpless old people.[1022] Bushmen abandon the aged with a little food and water.[1023] In the Niger Protectorate the old and useless are killed. The bodies are smoked and pulverized and the powder is made into little balls with water and corn. The balls are dried and kept to be used as food.[1024] The Somali exploit the old in work to the last point, and then cast them out to die of hunger.[1025] The people of the Arctic regions generally put the aged to death on account of the hard life conditions. The aged of the Chuckches demand, as a right, to be put to death.[1026] Life is so hard and food so scarce that they are indifferent to death, and the acquiescence of the victim is described as complete and willing.[1027] A case is also described[1028] of an old man of that tribe who was put to death at his own request by relatives, who thought that they performed a sacred obligation. The Yakuts formerly had a similar custom, the old man begging his children to dispatch him. They thrust him into a hole in the forest, where they left him with vessels, tools, and a little food. Sometimes a man and his wife were buried together. There was no such thing as respect for the aged or for aged relatives amongst the Yakuts. Younger men plundered, scolded, and abused the elder.[1029]

335. "The custom of putting a violent end to the aged and infirm survived from the primeval period into historic times not infrequently amongst the Indo-European peoples. It can be authenticated in Vedic antiquity, amongst the Iranians (Bactrians and Caspian peoples), and amongst the ancient Germans, Slavs, and Prussians."[1030] The Bactrians cast the old and sick to the dogs.[1031] The Massagetae made a sacrifice of cattle and of an old man, and ate the whole. This was a happy end. Those who died of disease were buried and were thought less fortunate.[1032] "As far as I know no mention is made among the Aryans of the putting to death of old people in general (we first meet with it in the migratory period), nor of the putting to death of parents by their children; but their casting out is mentioned."[1033] The Greeks treated the old with neglect and disrespect.[1034] Gomme[1035] quotes a fifteenth-century MS. of a Parsifal episode in which the hero congratulates himself that he is not like the men of Wales, "where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed." He also cites mention of the "holy mawle which (they fancy) hung behind the church door, which, when the father was seventy, the son might fetch to knock his father on the head as effete and of no more use."[1036] Once in Iceland, in time of famine, it was decided by solemn resolution that all the old and unproductive should be killed. That determination was part of a system of legislation by which, in that country, the society was protected against superfluous and dependent members.[1037]

336. Special exigencies of the civilized. Civilized men in certain cases find themselves face to face with the primitive circumstances, and experience the primeval necessity, which overrides the sentiments of civilization, whatever may be the strength of the latter. Colonel Fremont, in 1849, in a letter to his wife, tells how in crossing the plains he and his comrades left the weak and dying members of their party, one by one, to die in the snow, after lighting a little fire for him.[1038] Many other such cases are known from oral narratives. The question is not one of more or less humanity. It is a question of the struggle for existence when at the limit of one of its conditions. Our civilization ordinarily veils from us the fact that we are rivals and enemies to each other in the competition of life. It is in such cases as the one just mentioned, or in shipwrecks, that this fact becomes the commanding one. The only alternative to the abandonment of one is the loss of all. Abortion, infanticide, and the killing of the old began at times when the competition of life was so direct and pitiless that it left no room for kindly sentiment. The latter is a product of civilization. It could be cultivated only by men for whom the struggle for existence was so easy, and the competition of life so moderate, that the severity was all taken out of them. Then there was a surplus and the conditions of life were easy. The alternative was not murder or suicide. Such a state of ease was reached by migration or by advance in the arts,—in short, by greater command of man over nature. The fundamental elements in the case were altered.

337. How the mores were changed. Abortion, infanticide, and killing the old are primary folkways which respond to hard facts of life in the most direct and primitive manner. They are not blamed when they become ruling customs which everybody observes. They rise into mores more easily than other primitive usages because the superficial reasons for believing that they are conducive to welfare appear so simple and obvious. When a settled life took the place of a wandering life some immediate reasons for these customs were removed. When peace took the place of war with neighboring tribes other causes were set aside. The cases would then become less frequent, especially the cases of infanticide and killing the old. Then, if cases which seemed to call for reemployment of old customs arose, they could be satisfied only against some repugnance. Men who were not hard pressed by the burden of life might then refrain from infanticide or killing the old. They yielded to the repugnance rather than to the dislike of hardship. Later, when greater power in the struggle for existence was won the infants and the old were spared, and the old customs were forgotten. Then they came to be regarded with horror, and the mores protected the infants and the old. The stories of the French peasantry which come to us nowadays show that the son is often fully ready in mind and will to kill his old father if the mores and the law did not restrain him.

[901] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 229.

[902] Ancient India may be an exception.

[903] Ethnog. of India, I, 95.

[904] Exod. xxi. 7.

[905] Rosenberg, Geelvinkbaai, 91.

[906] Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 390.

[907] Ibid., 165.

[908] Pfeil, Aus der Suedsee, 31.

[909] Melanesians, 229.

[910] Sarawak, I, 101.

[911] Dajaks, 37.

[912] Snouck-Hurgronje, De Atjehers, I, 73.

[913] Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde, XXXV, 79.

[914] Ztsft. f. Ethnol., XXVIII, 186.

[915] Kubary, Nukuoro, 9, 12, 14.

[916] JAI, XVIII, 291.

[917] Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1892, 704.

[918] Globus, LXXXVIII, 164, after Joly.

[919] Three First English Books about America, 237.

[920] Globus, LXXXI, 4.

[921] Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, II, 77.

[922] Ethnog. Brasil., 231.

[923] Grinnell, Cheyenne Woman Customs, 15; N.S. Amer. Anthrop.; IV, 13.

[924] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N. O. Afr., I, 172.

[925] Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued-Afr., 96.

[926] Zimmer, Altind. Leben, 333.

[927] Republic, V, 9.

[928] Politics, VII, 16.

[929] Rudeck, Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit in Deutschland, 181.

[930] Temesvary, Volksbraeuche und Aberglauben in der Gebuertshilfe in Ungarn, 12-14.

[931] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 59.

[932] Eyre, Cent. Aust., II, 324; Spencer and Gillen, Cent. Aust., 51, 264.

[933] JAI, XIII, 137.

[934] Smyth, Victoria, I, 52.

[935] Novara-Reise, I, 32.

[936] Dawson, West Victoria, 39.

[937] Austr. Race, I, 70.

[938] JAI, XII, 329.

[939] Ibid., XIX, 99.

[940] Abel, New Guinea, 43.

[941] Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 292.

[942] Kubary, Nukuoro, 35.

[943] Codrington, Melanesians, 229.

[944] JAI, XXVIII, 11.

[945] JAI, XVII, 93.

[946] Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1892, 621.

[947] Waitz, Anthrop., V, 139.

[948] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 126.

[949] Waitz, Anthrop., II, 441.

[950] Smithson. Rep., 1871, 407; quoted, Bur. Eth., I, 99.

[951] Ratzel, II, 769; Bur. Eth., XVIII, 289.

[952] PSM, L, 100.

[953] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 234.

[954] Globus, LXXXIII, 314.

[955] Volkens, Kilimandscharo, 252.

[956] Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 38.

[957] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, I, 104.

[958] Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, III, 220.

[959] PSM, XLIV, 779.

[960] JASB, I, 283.

[961] Pickering, Formosa, 61.

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

[963] Mod. Hinduism, 431.

[964] Humbert, Japan, 311.

[965] Lippert, I, 205.

[966] Geog., VIII, 24.

[967] Aelian, Var. Hist., II, 7.

[968] Moral Instinct, I, 134, 136.

[969] Cf. Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 20.

[970] Weinhold, D. F., I, 91.

[971] Germania, 19; Hist., V, 5.

[972] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 27.

[973] Nat. Hist., IV, 29.

[974] De Ira, I, 15.

[975] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 29.

[976] Cod. Theod., V, 7.

[977] Blair, Slavery amongst the Romans, 44.

[978] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 23.

[979] Polyptique de Irminon, I, 287.

[980] Weinhold, D. F., I, 93, 96; II, 93.

[981] Rudeck, Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit, 182.

[982] Wellhausen, Ehe bei den Arabern, 458.

[983] Chandler, Romances of Roguery in Spain, 30.

[984] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 240.

[985] Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalt. 461, 487.

[986] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 511.

[987] Nassau, Fetishism in West Afr., 159.

[988] Vannutelli e Citerni, L'Omo, 448.

[989] Ratzel, Hist. of Mankind, II, 468.

[990] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 22.

[991] Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 256.

[992] JAI, XVIII, 384.

[993] Ibid., XII, 93.

[994] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, Cent. Austr., 51.

[995] JAI, XXVIII, 109.

[996] U.S. Nat. Mus., 1888, 240.

[997] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 274.

[998] Hist. von Groenland, 197.

[999] von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, II, 35.

[1000] Russian Ethnog. (Russ.), II, 445.

[1001] Early Law and Custom, 23.

[1002] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 241.

[1003] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 325.

[1004] Powers, Calif. Indians, 319.

[1005] Ibid., 176; Bancroft, Native Races, I, 390.

[1006] Ibid., 112.

[1007] Ibid., 118.

[1008] Smithson. Rep., 1885, Part II, 429.

[1009] Bur. Eth., III, 274.

[1010] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 126, n.

[1011] Bur. Eth., XI, 178, 186.

[1012] Ibid., VI, 615.

[1013] Eskimo, 178.

[1014] Martius, Ethnog. Bras., 126.

[1015] Globus, LXXXI, 108.

[1016] Eyre, Cent. Australia, I, 321.

[1017] Dawson, West Victoria, 62.

[1018] Codrington, Melanesians, 347.

[1019] Geiseler, Oster-inseln, 31.

[1020] Woodford, Head-hunters, 25.

[1021] Sieben Jahre in S. Afr., I, 409.

[1022] Kolben, Hist. Good Hope, I, 324; Fritsch, Eingeb. S. Afr., 334.

[1023] Globus, XVIII, 122.

[1024] Kingsley, West Afr. Studies, 566.

[1025] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., I, 205.

[1026] N.S. Amer. Anthrop., III, 106.

[1027] De Windt in N.Y. Times, May 10, 1897.

[1028] Russ. Ethnog. (russ.), II, 578.

[1029] Sieroshevski, Yakuty (russ.), 511, 621.

[1030] Schrader, Prehist. Antiq. of the Aryans, 379; Zimmer, Altind. Leben, 327.

[1031] Strabo, XI, 517; Spiegel, Eran. Alterthumskunde, III, 682.

[1032] Herodotus, I, 216.

[1033] Ihering, Evol. of the Aryan, 33.

[1034] Mahaffy, Soc. Life in Greece, 229.

[1035] Ethnol. in Folklore, 136.

[1036] In the national museum at Stockholm is a large collection of flat clubs from all the churches in Sweden, the use of which is described with discretion. That the clubs were kept in the churches denotes that the act was put under religious sanction.

[1037] Weinhold, D.F., II, 92.

[1038] Thayer, Marvels of the New West, 231.



CHAPTER VIII

CANNIBALISM

Cannibalism.—Origin in food supply.—Cannibalism not abominable.—In-group cannibalism.—Population policy.— Judicial cannibalism.—Judicial cannibalism in ethnography.— Out-group cannibalism.—Cannibalism to cure disease.— Reversions to cannibalism.—Cannibalism in famine.—Cannibalism and ghost fear.—Cannibalism in sorcery and human sacrifice.— Cult and cannibalism.—Superstitions about cannibalism.—Food taboos in ethnography.—Expiation for taking life.—Philosophy of cannibalism.

338. Cannibalism. Cannibalism is one of the primordial mores. It dates from the earliest known existence of man on earth. It may reasonably be believed to be a custom which all peoples have practiced.[1039] Only on the pastoral stage has it ceased, where the flesh of beasts was common and abundant.[1040] It is indeed noticeable that the pygmies of Africa and the Kubus of Sumatra, two of the lowest outcast races, do not practice cannibalism,[1041] although their superior neighbors do. Our intense abomination for cannibalism is a food taboo (secs. 353-354), and is perhaps the strongest taboo which we have inherited.

339. Origin in food supply. It is the best opinion that cannibalism originated in the defects of the food supply, more specifically in the lack of meat food. The often repeated objection that New Zealanders and others have practiced cannibalism when they had an abundant supply of meat food is not to the point. The passion for meat food, especially among people who have to live on heavy starch food, is very strong. Hence they eat worms, insects, and offal. It is also asserted that the appetite for human flesh, when eating it has become habitual, becomes a passion. When salt is not to be had the passion for meat reaches its highest intensity. "When tribes [of Australians] assembled to eat the fruit of the bunya-bunya they were not permitted to kill any game [in the district where the trees grow], and at length the craving for flesh was so intense that they were impelled to kill one of their number, in order that their appetites might be satisfied."[1042] It follows that when this custom has become traditional the present food supply may have little effect on it. There are cases at the present time in which the practice of using human flesh for food is customary on a large and systematic scale. On the island of New Britain human flesh is sold in shops as butcher's meat is sold amongst us.[1043] In at least some of the Solomon Islands human victims (preferably women) are fattened for a feast, like pigs.[1044] Lloyd[1045] describes the cannibalism of the Bangwa as an everyday affair, although they eat chiefly enemies, and rarely a woman. The women share the feast, sitting by themselves. He says that it is, no doubt, "a depraved appetite." They are not at all ashamed of it. Physically the men are very fine. "The cannibalism of the Monbutto is unsurpassed by any nation in the world."[1046] Amongst them human flesh is sold as if it were a staple article of food. They are "a noble race." They have national pride, intellectual power, and good judgment. They are orderly, friendly, and have a stable national life.[1047] Ward[1048] describes the cannibalism on the great bend of the Congo as due to a relish for the kind of food. "Originating, apparently, from stress of adverse circumstances, it has become an acquired taste, the indulgence of which has created a peculiar form of mental disorder, with lack of feeling, love of fighting, cruelty, and general human degeneracy, as prominent attributes." An organized traffic in human beings for food exists on the upper waters of the Congo. It is thought that the pygmy tribe of the Wambutti are not cannibals because they are too "low," and because they do not file the lower incisors. The latter custom goes with cannibalism in the Congo region, and is also characteristic of the more gifted, beautiful, and alert tribes.[1049] None of the coast tribes of West Africa eat human flesh, but the interior tribes eat any corpse regardless of the cause of death. Families hesitate to eat their own dead, but they sell or exchange them for the dead of other families.[1050] In the whole Congo region the custom exists, especially amongst the warlike tribes, who eat not only war captives but slaves.[1051]

It is noteworthy that a fork[1052] was invented in Polynesia for this kind of food, long before the fork was used for any other.

340. Cannibalism not abominable. Spix and Martius[1053] asked a chief of the Miranhas why his people practiced cannibalism. The chief showed that it was entirely a new fact to him that some people thought it an abominable custom. "You whites," said he, "will not eat crocodiles or apes, although they taste well. If you did not have so many pigs and crabs you would eat crocodiles and apes, for hunger hurts. It is all a matter of habit. When I have killed an enemy it is better to eat him than to let him go to waste. Big game is rare because it does not lay eggs like turtles. The bad thing is not being eaten, but death, if I am slain, whether our tribal enemy eats me or not. I know of no game which tastes better than men. You whites are really too dainty."

341. In-group cannibalism. Cannibalism was so primordial in the mores that it has two forms, one for the in-group, the other for the out-group. It had a theory of affection in the former case and of enmity in the latter. In the in-group it was so far from being an act of hostility, or veiled impropriety, that it was applied to the closest kin. Mothers ate their babies, if the latter died, in order to get back the strength which they had lost in bearing them. Herodotus says that the Massagetae sacrificed the old of their tribe, boiling the flesh of the men with that of cattle and eating the whole. Those who died of disease before attaining old age were buried, but that they thought a less happy fate. He says that the Padeans, men in the far east of India, put a sick man of their tribe to death and ate him, lest his flesh should be wasted by disease. The women did the same by a sick woman. If any reach old age without falling victims to this custom, they too are then killed and eaten. He mentions also the Issidones, in southeastern Russia, who cut up their dead fathers, mingle the flesh with that of sacrificed animals, and make a feast of the whole. The skull is cleaned, gilded, and kept as an emblem, to which they make annual sacrifices. They are accounted a righteous people. Amongst them women are esteemed equal with men.[1054] Strabo[1055] says that the Irish thought it praiseworthy to eat their deceased parents. The Birhors of Hazaribag, Hindostan, formerly ate their parents, but "they repudiate the suggestion that they ate any but their own relations" [i.e. each one ate his own relatives and no others?][1056]. Reclus[1057] says that in that tribe "the parents beg that their corpses may find a refuge in the stomachs of their children rather than be left on the road or in the forest." The Tibetans, in ancient times, ate their parents, "out of piety, in order to give them no other sepulcher than their own bowels." This custom ceased before 1250 A.D., but the cups made of the skulls of relatives were used as memorials. Tartars and some "bad Christians" killed their fathers when old, burned the corpses, and mingled the ashes with their daily food.[1058] In the gulf country of Australia only near relatives partake of the dead, unless the corpse is that of an enemy. A very small bit only is eaten by each. In the case of an enemy the purpose is to win his strength. In the case of a relative the motive is that the survivors may not, by lamentations, become a nuisance in the camp.[1059] The Dieyerie have the father family. The father may not eat his own child, but the mother and female relatives must do so, in order to have the dead in their liver, the seat of feeling.[1060] The Tuare of Brazil (2 S. 67 W.) burn their dead. They preserve the ashes in reeds and mix them with their daily meals.[1061] The Jumanas, on the head waters of the Amazon, regard the bones as the seat of the soul. They burn the bones of their dead, grind them to powder, mix the powder with intoxicating liquor, and drink it, "that the dead may live again in them."[1062] All branches of the Tupis are cannibals. They brought the custom from the interior.[1063] The Kobena drink in their cachiri the powdered bones of their dead relatives.[1064] The Chavantes, on the Uruguay, eat their dead children to get back the souls. Especially young mothers do this, as they are thought to have given a part of their own souls to their children too soon.[1065] In West Victoria "the bodies of relatives who have lost their lives by violence are alone partaken of." Each eats only a bit, and it is eaten "with no desire to gratify or appease the appetite, but only as a symbol of respect and regret for the dead."[1066] In Australian cannibalism the eating of relatives has behind it the idea of saving the strength which would be lost, or of acquiring the dexterity or wisdom, etc., of the dead. Enemies are eaten to win their strength, dexterity, etc. Only a bit is eaten. There are no great feasts. The fat and soft parts are eaten because they are the residence of the soul. In eating enemies there appears to be ritual significance.[1067] It may be the ritual purpose to get rid of the soul of the slain man for fear that it might seek revenge for his death.

342. Some inhabitants of West Australia explained cannibalism (they ate every tenth child born) as "necessary to keep the tribe from increasing beyond the carrying capacity of the territory."[1068] Infanticide is a part of population policy. Cannibalism may be added to it either for food supply or goblinism. When children were sacrificed in Mexico their hearts were cooked and eaten, for sorcery.[1069]

343. Judicial cannibalism. Another use of cannibalism in the in-group is to annihilate one who has broken an important taboo. The notion is frequently met with, amongst nature peoples, that a ghost can be got rid of by utterly annihilating the corpse, e.g. by fire. Judicial cannibalism destroys it, and the members of the group by this act participate in a ritual, or sacramental ceremony, by which a criminal is completely annihilated. Perhaps there may also be the idea of collective responsibility for his annihilation. To take the life of a tribe comrade was for a long time an act which needed high motive and authority and required expiation. The ritual of execution was like the ritual of sacrifice. In the Hebrew law some culprits were to be stoned by the whole congregation. Every one must take a share in the great act. The blood guilt, if there was any, must be incurred by all.[1070] Primitive taboos are put on acts which offend the ghosts and may, therefore, bring woe on the whole group. Any one who breaks a taboo commits a sin and a crime, and excites the wrath of the superior powers. Therefore he draws on himself the fear and horror of his comrades. They must extrude him by banishment or death. They want to dissociate themselves from him. They sacrifice him to the powers which he has offended. When his comrades eat his corpse they perform a duty. They annihilate him and his soul completely.

344. Judicial cannibalism in ethnography. "A man found in the harem of Muato-jamvos was cut in pieces and given, raw and warm, to the people to be eaten."[1071] The Bataks employ judicial cannibalism as a regulated system. They have no other cannibalism. Adulterers, persons guilty of incest, men who have had sex intercourse with the widow of a younger brother, traitors, spies, and war captives taken with arms in their hands are killed and eaten. The last-mentioned are cut in pieces alive and eaten bit by bit in order to annihilate them in the most shameful manner.[1072] The Tibetans and Chinese formerly ate all who were executed by civil authority. An Arab traveler of the ninth century mentions a Chinese governor who rebelled, and who was killed and eaten. Modern cases of cannibalism are reported from China. Pith balls stained with the blood of decapitated criminals are used as medicine for consumption. Cases are also mentioned of Tartar rulers who ordered the flesh of traitors to be mixed with the rulers' own food and that of their barons. Tartar women begged for the possession of a culprit, boiled him alive, cut the corpse into mince-meat, and distributed it to the whole army to be eaten.[1073]

345. Out-group cannibalism. Against members of an out-group, e.g. amongst the Maori, cannibalism "was due to a desire for revenge; cooking and eating being the greatest of insults."[1074] On Tanna (New Hebrides) to eat an enemy was the greatest indignity to him, worse than giving up his corpse to dogs or swine, or mutilating it. It was believed that strength was obtained by eating a corpse.[1075] A negro chief in Yabunda, French Congo, told Brunache[1076] that "it was a very fine thing to enjoy the flesh of a man whom one hates and whom one has killed in a battle or a duel." Martius attributes the cannibalism of the Miranhas to the enjoyment of a "rare, dainty meal, which will satisfy their rude vanity, in some cases also, blood revenge and superstition."[1077] Cannibalism is one in the chain of causes which keeps this people more savage than their neighbors, most of whom have now abandoned it. "It is one of the most beastly of all the beastlike traits in the moral physiognomy of man." It is asserted that cannibalism has been recently introduced in some places, e.g. Florida (Solomon Islands). It is also said that on those islands the coast people give it up [they have fish], but those inland retain it. The notion probably prevails amongst all that population that, by this kind of food, mana is obtained, mana being the name for all power, talent, and capacity by which success is won.[1078] The Melanesians took advantage of a crime, or alleged crime, to offer the culprit to a spirit, and so get fighting mana for the warriors.[1079] The Chames of Cochin China think that the gall of slain enemies, mixed with brandy, is an excellent means to produce war courage and skill.[1080] The Chinese believe that the liver is the seat of life and courage. The gall is the manifestation of the soul. Soldiers drink the gall of slain enemies to increase their own vigor and courage.[1081] The mountain tribes of Natal make a paste from powder formed from parts of the body, which the priests administer to the youth.[1082] Some South African tribes make a broth of the same kind of powder, which must be swallowed only in the prescribed manner. It "must be lapped up with the hand and thrown into the mouth ... to give the soldiers courage, perseverance, fortitude, strategy, patience, and wisdom."[1083]

346. Cannibalism to cure disease. Notions that the parts of the human body will cure different diseases are only variants of the notion of getting courage and skill by eating the same. Cases are recorded in which a man gave parts of his body to be eaten by the sick out of love and devotion.[1084]

347. Reversions to cannibalism. When savage and brutal emotions are stirred, in higher civilization, by war and quarrels, the cannibalistic disposition is developed again. Achilles told Hector that he wished he could eat him. Hekuba expressed a wish that she could devour the liver of Achilles.[1085] In 1564 the Turks executed Vishnevitzky, a brave Polish soldier who had made them much trouble. They ate his heart.[1086] Dozy[1087] mentions a case at Elvira, in 890, in which women cast themselves on the corpse of a chief who had caused the death of their relatives, cut it in pieces, and ate it. The same author relates[1088] that Hind, the mother of Moavia, made for herself a necklace and bracelets of the noses and ears of Moslems killed at Ohod, and also that she cut open the corpse of an uncle of Mohammed, tore out the liver, and ate a piece of it. It is related of an Irish chief, of the twelfth century, that when his soldiers brought to him the head of a man whom he hated "he tore the nostrils and lips with his teeth, in a most savage and inhuman manner."[1089]

348. In famine. Reversion to cannibalism under a total lack of other food ought not to be noted. We have some historical cases, however, in which during famine people became so familiarized with cannibalism that their horror of it was overcome. Abdallatif[1090] mentions a great famine in Egypt in the year 1200, due to a failure of the inundation of the Nile. Resort was had to cannibalism to escape death. At first the civil authorities burned alive those who were detected, being moved by astonishment and horror. Later, those sentiments were not aroused. "Men were seen to make ordinary meals of human flesh, to use it as a dainty, and to lay up provision of it.... The usage, having been introduced, spread to all the provinces. Then it ceased to cause surprise.... People talked of it as an ordinary and indifferent thing. This indifference was due to habit and familiarity." This case shows that the horror of cannibalism is due to tradition in the mores. Diodorus says that the ancient Egyptians, during a famine, ate each other rather than any animal which they considered sacred.[1091]

349. Cannibalism and ghost fear. Human sacrifice and cannibalism are not necessarily conjoined. Often it seems as if they once were so, but have been separated.[1092] Whatever men want ghosts want. If the former are cannibals, the latter will be the same. Often the notion is that the gods eat the souls. In this view, the men eat the flesh of sacrificed beasts and sacrifice the blood, in which is the life or soul, to the gods. This the Jews did. They also burned the kidneys, the fat of the kidneys, and the liver, which they thought to be the seat of life. These they might not eat.[1093] When men change, the gods do not. Hence the rites of human sacrifice and cannibalism continue in religion long after they disappear from the mores, in spite of loathing. Loathing is a part of the sacrifice.[1094] The self-control and self-subjugation enter into the sacrament. All who participate, in religion, in an act which gravely affects the imagination as horrible and revolting enter into a communion with each other. Every one who desires to participate in the good to be obtained must share in the act. As we have seen above, all must participate that none may be in a position to reproach the rest. Under this view, the cannibal food is reduced to a crumb, or to a drop of blood, which may be mixed with other food. Still later, the cannibal food is only represented, e.g. by cakes in the human form, etc. In the Middle Ages the popular imagination saw a human body in the host, and conjured up operations on the host which were attributed to sorcerers and Jews, which would only be applicable to a human body. Then the New Testament language about the body and blood of Christ took on a realistic sense which was cannibalistic.

350. Cannibalism, sorcery, and human sacrifice. Among the West African tribes sacrificial and ceremonial cannibalism in fetich affairs is almost universal.[1095] Serpa Pinto[1096] mentions a frequent feast of the chiefs of the Bihe, for which a man and four women of specified occupations are required. The corpses are both washed and boiled with the flesh of an ox. Everything at the feast must be marked with human blood. Cannibalism, in connection with religious festivals and human sacrifice, was extravagantly developed in Mexico, Central America, and British Columbia. The rites show that the human sacrifice was sacramental and vicarious. In one case the prayer of the person who owned the sacrifice is given. It is a prayer for success and prosperity. Flesh was also bitten from the arm of a living person and eaten. A religious idea was cultivated into a mania and the taste for human flesh was developed.[1097] Here also we find the usage that shamans ate the flesh of corpses, in connection with fasting and solitude, as means of professional stimulation.[1098] Preuss emphasizes the large element of sorcery in the eating of parts of a human sacrifice, as practiced in Mexico.[1099] The combination of sorcery, religious ritual, and cannibalism deserves very careful attention. The rites of the festival were cases of dramatic sorcery. At the annual festival of the god of war an image of the god was made of grain, seeds, and vegetables, kneaded with the blood of boys sacrificed for the purpose. This image was broken into crumbs and eaten by males only, "after the manner of our communion."[1100] The Peruvians ate sacrificial cakes kneaded with the blood of human victims, "as a mark of alliance with the Inca."[1101] In Guatemala organs of a slain war captive were given to an old prophetess to be eaten. She was then asked to pray to the idol which she served to give them many captives.[1102] Human sacrifices and sacramental cannibalism exist amongst the Bella-coola Indians in northwestern British America. Children of the poor are bought from their parents to be made sacrifices. The blood is drunk and the flesh is eaten raw. The souls of the sacrificed go to live in the sun and become birds. When the English government tried to stop these sacrifices the priests dug up corpses and ate them. Several were thus poisoned.[1103]

351. Cult and cannibalism. The cases which have been cited show how cult kept up cannibalism, if no beast was substituted. Also, a great number of uses of blood and superstitions about blood appear to be survivals of cannibalism or deductions from it. The same may be said of holiday cakes of special shapes, made by peasants, which have long lost all known sense. In one part of France the last of the harvest which is brought in is made into a loaf in human shape, supposed to represent the spirit of corn or of fertility. It is broken up and distributed amongst all the villagers, who eat it.[1104]

A Mongolian lama reported of a tribe, the Lhopa of Sikkim or Bhutan, that they kill and eat the bride's mother at a wedding, if they can catch no wild man.[1105]

352. A burglar in West Prussia, in 1865, killed a maid-servant and cut flesh from her body out of which to make a candle for use in later acts of theft. He was caught while committing another burglary. He confessed that he ate a part of the corpse of his first-mentioned victim "in order to appease his conscience."[1106]

353. Food taboos. It is most probable that dislike to eat the human body was a product of custom, and grew in the mores after other foods became available in abundance. Unusual foods now cost us an effort. Frogs' legs, for instance, repel most people at first. We eat what we learned from our parents to eat, and other foods are adopted by "acquired taste." Light is thrown on the degree to which all food preferences and taboos are a part of the mores by a comparison of some cases of food taboos. Porphyrius, a Christian of Tyre, who lived in the second half of the second century of the Christian era, says that a Phoenician or an Egyptian would sooner eat man's flesh than cow's flesh.[1107] A Jew would not eat swine's flesh. A Zoroastrian could not conceive it possible that any one could eat dog's flesh. We do not eat dog's flesh, probably for the same reason that we do not eat cat's or horse's, because the flesh is tough or insipid and we can get better, but some North American Indians thought dog's flesh the very best food. The Banziris, in the French Congo, reserved dog's flesh for men, and they surround meals of it with a solemn ritual. A man must not touch his wife with his finger for a day after such a feast.[1108] The inhabitants of Ponape will eat no eels, which "they hold in the greatest horror." The word used by them for eel means "the dreadful one."[1109] Dyaks eat snakes, but reject eels.[1110] Some Melanesians will not eat eels because they think that there are ghosts in them.[1111] South African Bantus abominate fish.[1112] Some Canary Islanders ate no fish.[1113] Tasmanians would rather starve than eat fish.[1114] The Somali will eat no fish, considering it disgraceful to do so.[1115] They also reject game and birds.[1116] These people who reject eels and fish renounce a food supply which is abundant in their habitat.

354. Food taboos in ethnography. Some Micronesians eat no fowl.[1117] Wild Veddahs reject fowl.[1118] Tuaregs eat no fish, birds, or eggs.[1119] In eastern Africa many tribes loathe eggs and fowl as food. They are as much disgusted to see a white man eat eggs as a white man is to see savages eat offal.[1120] Some Australians will not eat pork.[1121] Nagas and their neighbors think roast dog a great delicacy. They will eat anything, even an elephant which has been three days buried, but they abominate milk, and find the smell of tinned lobster too strong.[1122] Negroes in the French Congo "have a perfect horror of the idea of drinking milk."[1123]

355. Expiation for taking life. The most primitive notion we can find as to taking life is that it is wrong to kill any living thing except as a sacrifice to some superior power. This dread of destroying life, as if it was the assumption of a divine prerogative to do so, gives a background for all the usages with regard to sacrifice and food. "In old Israel all slaughter was sacrifice, and a man could never eat beef or mutton except as a religious act." Amongst the Arabs, "even in modern times, when a sheep or camel is slain in honor of a guest, the good old custom is that the host keeps open house for all his neighbors."[1124] In modern Hindostan food which is ordinarily tabooed may be eaten if it has been killed in offering to a god. Therefore an image of the god is set up in the butcher's shop. All the animals are slaughtered nominally as an offering to it. This raises the taboo, and the meat is bought and eaten without scruple.[1125] Thus it is that the taboo on cannibalism may be raised by religion, or that cannibalism may be made a duty by religion. Amongst the ancient Semites some animals were under a food taboo for a reason which has two aspects at the same time: they were both offensive (ritually unclean) and sacred. What is holy and what is loathsome are in like manner set aside. The Jews said that the Holy Scriptures rendered him who handled them unclean. Holy and unclean have a common element opposed to profane. In the case of both there is devotion or consecration to a higher power. If it is a good power, the thing is holy; if a bad power, it is unclean. He who touches either falls under a taboo, and needs purification.[1126] The tabooed things could only be eaten sacrificially and sacramentally, i.e. as disgusting and unusual they had greater sacrificial force.[1127] This idea is to be traced in all ascetic usages, and in many mediaeval developments of religious usages which introduced repulsive elements, to heighten the self-discipline of conformity. In the Caroline Islands turtles are sacred to the gods and are eaten only in illness or as sacrifices.[1128]

356. Philosophy of cannibalism. If cannibalism began in the interest of the food supply, especially of meat, the wide ramifications of its relations are easily understood. While men were unable to cope with the great beasts cannibalism was a leading feature of social life, around which a great cluster of interests centered. Ideas were cultivated by it, and it became regulative and directive as to what ought to be done. The sentiments of kinship made it seem right and true that the nearest relatives should be eaten. Further deductions followed, of which the cases given are illustrations. As to enemies, the contrary sentiments found place in connection with it. It combined directly with ghost fear. The sacramental notion seems born of it. When the chase was sufficiently developed to give better food the taboo on human flesh seemed no more irrational than the other food taboos above mentioned. Swans and peacocks were regarded as great dainties in the Middle Ages. We no longer eat them. Snakes are said to be good eating, but most of us would find it hard to eat them. Yet why should they be more loathsome than frogs or eels? Shipwrecked people, or besieged and famine-stricken people, have overcome the loathing for human flesh rather than die. Others have died because they could not overcome it, and have thus rendered the strongest testimony to the power of the mores. In general, the cases show that if men are hungry enough, or angry enough, they may return to cannibalism now. Our horror of cannibalism is due to a long and broad tradition, broken only by hearsay of some far-distant and extremely savage people who now practice it. Probably the popular opinion about it is that it is wicked. It is not forbidden by the rules of any religion, because it had been thrown out of the mores before any "religion" was founded.

[1039] See Andree, Anthropophagie; Steinmetz, Endokannibalism, Mitt. Anthrop. Ges. in Wien, XXVI; Schaffhausen in Archiv fuer Anthrop., IV, 245. Steinmetz gives in tabular form known cases of cannibalism with the motives for it, p. 25.

[1040] Lippert, Kulturgesch., II, 275.

[1041] Globus, XXVI, 45; Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 457; JAI, XXVIII, 39.

[1042] Smyth, Victoria, I, xxxviii.

[1043] Aust. Ass. Adv. Sci., 1892, 618.

[1044] JAI, XVII, 99.

[1045] Dwarf-land, 345.

[1046] Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, II, 94.

[1047] Keane, Ethnology, 265.

[1048] JAI, XXIV, 298.

[1049] Globus, LXXXV, 229.

[1050] Nassau, Fetishism in West Africa, 11.

[1051] Globus, LXXII, 120; LXXXVII, 237.

[1052] Specimen in the Dresden Museum.

[1053] Brasilien, 1249.

[1054] Herod., I, 216; III, 99; IV, 26.

[1055] IV, 5, 298.

[1056] JASB, II, 571.

[1057] Prim. Folk, 249.

[1058] Rubruck, Eastern Parts, 81, 151.

[1059] JAI, XXIV, 171.

[1060] JAI, XVII, 186.

[1061] Globus, LXXXIII, 137.

[1062] Martius, Ethnog. Bras., 485.

[1063] Southey, Brazil, I, 233.

[1064] Ztsft. f. Ethnol., XXXVI, 293.

[1065] Andree, Anthropophagie, 50.

[1066] Dawson, West Victoria, 67.

[1067] Smyth, Victoria, I, 245.

[1068] Whitmarsh, The World's Rough Hand, 178.

[1069] Globus, LXXXVI, 112.

[1070] W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 284.

[1071] Oliveira Martins, Racas Humanas, II, 67.

[1072] Wilken, Volkenkunde, 23, 27.

[1073] Marco Polo, I, 266 and Yule's note, 275.

[1074] JAI, XIX, 108.

[1075] Austral. Ass. Adv. Sci., 1892, 649-663.

[1076] Cent. Afr., 108.

[1077] Ethnog. Bras., 538.

[1078] JAI, X, 305.

[1079] Codrington, Melanesians, 134.

[1080] Bijdragen tot. T. L. en V.-kunde, 1895, 342.

[1081] Globus, LXXXI, 96.

[1082] JAI, XX, 116.

[1083] JAI, XXII, 111; cf. Isaiah lxv. 4.

[1084] Intern. Arch. f. Ethnol., IX, Supplem. 37.

[1085] Iliad, XXII, 346; XXIV, 212.

[1086] Evarnitzky, Zaporoge Kossacks (russ.), I, 209.

[1087] Mussulm. d'Espagne, II, 226.

[1088] Ibid., I, 47.

[1089] Gomme, Ethnol. in Folklore, 149.

[1090] Relation de l'Egypte, 360.

[1091] Diodorus, I, 84.

[1092] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 124; Martius, Ethnog. Bras., 129; Globus, LXXV, 260.

[1093] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 379.

[1094] Lippert, Kulturgesch., II, 292.

[1095] Kingsley, Travels in W. Afr., 287.

[1096] Como Eu Atravassei Afr., I, 148.

[1097] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, I, 170 (III, 150); II, 176, 395, 689, 708; III, 413.

[1098] Ibid., III, 152.

[1099] Globus, LXXXVI, 109, 112.

[1100] Bur. Ethnol., IX, 523.

[1101] Ibid., 527.

[1102] Brinton, Nagualism, 34.

[1103] Mitt. Berl. Mus., 1885, 184.

[1104] PSM, XLVIII, 411.

[1105] Rockhill, Mongolia and Thibet, 144.

[1106] PSM, LIV, 217.

[1107] De Abstinentia, II, 11.

[1108] Brunache, Cent. Afr., 69.

[1109] Christian, Caroline Isl., 73.

[1110] Perelaer, Dyaks, 27.

[1111] Codrington, Melanesians, 177.

[1112] Fritsch, Eingeb. Suedafr., 107.

[1113] N. S. Amer. Anthrop., II, 454.

[1114] Ling Roth, Tasmanians, 101.

[1115] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., I, 155.

[1116] Ibid., II, 27.

[1117] Finsch, Ethnol. Erfahr., III, 53.

[1118] N. S. Ethnol. Soc., II, 304.

[1119] Duveyrier, Touaregs du Nord, 401.

[1120] Volkens, Kilimandscharo, 244.

[1121] Smyth, Victoria, I, 237.

[1122] JAI, XI, 63; XXII, 245.

[1123] Kingsley, West Afr. Studies, 451.

[1124] W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 142, 283.

[1125] Wilkins, Mod. Hinduism, 168.

[1126] Bousset, Relig. des Judenthums, 124.

[1127] W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 290; Isaiah lxv. 4; lxvi. 3, 17; swine, dog, and mouse.

[1128] Kubary, Karolinen Archipel, 168.



CHAPTER IX

SEX MORES

Meaning of sex mores.—The sex difference.—Sex difference and evolution.—The sex distinction; family institution; marriage in the mores.—Regulation is conventional, not natural.—Egoistic and altruistic elements.—Primary definition of marriage; taboo and conventionalization.—Family, not marriage, is the institution.—Endogamy and exogamy.—Polygamy and polyandry.— Consistency of the mores under polygamy or polyandry.—Mother family and father family.—Change from mother family to father family.—Capture and purchase become ceremonies.—Feminine honor and virtue; jealousy.—Virginity.—Chastity for men.— Love marriage; conjugal affection; wife.—Heroic conjugal devotion.—Hindoo models and ideals.—Slavonic sex mores.— Russian sex mores.—Tribes of the Caucasus.—Mediaeval sex mores.—The standard of the "good wife"; pair marriage.—"One flesh."—Pair marriage.—Marriage in modern mores.—Pair marriage, its technical definition.—Ethics of pair marriage.— Pair marriage is monopolistic.—The future of marriage.—The normal type of sex union.—Divorce.—Divorce in ethnography.— Rabbis on divorce.—Divorce at Rome.—Pair marriage and divorce.—Divorce in the Middle Ages.—Refusal of remarriage.— Child marriage.—Child marriage in Hindostan.—Child marriage in Europe.—Cloistering women.—Second marriages; widows.— Burning of widows.—Difficulty of reform of suttee in India.— Widows and remarriage in the Christian church.—Remarriage and other-worldliness.—Free marriage.—The Japanese woman.

357. Meaning of sex mores. The sex mores are one of the greatest and most important divisions of the mores. They cover the relations of men and women to each other before marriage and in marriage, with all the rights and duties of married and unmarried respectively to the rest of the society. The mores determine what marriage shall be, who may enter into it, in what way they may enter into it, divorce, and all details of proper conduct in the family relation. In regard to all these matters it is evident that custom governs and prescribes. When positive institutions and laws are made they always take up, ordain, and regulate what the mores have long previously made facts in the social order. In the administration of law also, especially by juries, domestic relations are controlled by the mores. The decisions rendered by judges utter in dogmatic or sententious form the current notions of truth and right about those relations. Our terms "endogamy," "mother family," "polyandry," etc., are only descriptive terms for a summary of the folkways which have been established in different groups and which are capable of classification.

358. The sex difference. The economy and advantage of sex differentiation are primarily physical. "As structural complexity increases, the female generative system becomes more and more complex. All this involves a great expenditure of energy, and we can clearly see how an ovum-producing organism would benefit by being spared the additional effort required for seeking out and impregnating another organism, and how, on the other hand, organisms whose main reproductive feature is simply the production of spermatozoa would be better fitted for the work of search and impregnation if unhampered by a cumbersome female generative system. Hence the advantage of the sexes being separate."[1129] Here we have the reason why the sexes are independent and complementary, but why "equality" can never be predicated of them. Power in the family, in industry, in civil affairs, war, and religion is not the same thing and cannot be. Each sex has more power for one domain, and must have less power for another. Equality is an incongruous predicate. "Under the influence of the law of battle the male has become more courageous, powerful, and pugnacious than the female.... So, too, the male has, in the struggle, often acquired great beauty, success on his part depending largely, in many cases, upon the choice of the females who are supposed to select the most beautiful mates. This is thought to be notably the case with birds."[1130] In some few cases the female seeks the male, as in certain species of birds. Some male fish look after the eggs, and many cock-birds help to build the nest, hatch the eggs, and tend the young.[1131] When the females compete for the males the female is "endowed with all the secondary characters of the polygamous male; she is the more beautiful, the more courageous, the more pugnacious." This seems to show that the secondary characters are due to sex selection.[1132] Men are held to be polygamous by descent and in their "instincts as at present developed." "The instinct for promiscuous intercourse is much stronger among men than women, and unquestionably the husband is much more frequently all in all to the wife than she to him."[1133]

359. Sex difference and evolution. According to the current applications of the evolution philosophy it is argued that "inheritable characters peculiar to one sex show a tendency to be inherited chiefly or solely by that sex in the offspring."[1134] Women are said to be mentally more adaptable.[1135] This is shown in their tact, which is regarded as a product of their desire to adapt themselves to the stronger sex, with whose muscular strength they cannot cope. If a woman should resist her husband she would provoke him, and her life would be endangered. Passive and resigned women would survive. "Here at any rate we may have one of the reasons why women are more passive and resigned than men."[1136] Their tact is attributed to their quicker perception and to their lack of egoism. "The man, being more self-absorbed than the woman, is often less alive than she to what is going on around."[1137] The man has a more stable nervous system than the woman. Combativeness and courage produce that stability; emotional development is antagonistic to it. "In proportion as the emotions are brought under intellectual control, in that proportion, other things being equal, will the nervous system become more stable."[1138] Ages of subjection are also said to have produced in women a sense of dependence. Resignation and endurance are two of women's chief characteristics. "They have been educated in her from the remotest times."[1139] Throughout the animal kingdom males are more variable than females. Man varies through a wider scale than woman. Dwarfs and giants, geniuses and idiots, are more common amongst men than amongst women.[1140] Women use less philosophy; they do not think things out in their relations and analysis as men do. Miss Kingsley said that she "had met many African men who were philosophers, thinking in the terms of fetich, but never a woman so doing."[1141]

On the facts of observation here enumerated nearly all will agree. The traits are certainly handed down by tradition and education. Whether they are evolutionary is far more doubtful. They are thought to be such by virtue of applications of some generalizations of evolutionary philosophy whose correctness, and whose application to this domain, have never been proved.

360. The sex distinction; family institution; marriage in the mores. The division of the human race into two sexes is the most important of all anthropological facts. The sexes differ so much in structure and function, and consequently in traits of feeling and character, that their interests are antagonistic. At the same time they are, in regard to reproduction, complementary. There is nothing in the sex relation, or in procreation, to bring about any continuing relation between a man and a woman. It is the care and education of children which first calls for such a continuing relation. The continuing relation is not therefore "in nature." It is institutional and conventional. A man and a woman were brought together, probably against their will, by a higher interest in the struggle for existence. The woman with a child needed the union more, and probably she was more unwilling to enter it. It is almost impossible to find a case of a group in which marriage does not exist, and in which the sex relation is one of true promiscuity. We are told that there is no family institution amongst the Bako, dwarfs in Kamerun. They obey animal instincts without restriction.[1142] This means that the origin of the family institution lies in the period before any group formations now open to our study, and promiscuity is an inference as to what preceded what we can find. A woman with a child entered into an arrangement with a man, whether the father or not was immaterial, by which they carried on the struggle for existence together. The arrangement must have afforded advantages to both. It was produced by an agreement. The family institution resulted and became customary by imitation. Marriage was the form of agreement between the man and the woman by which they entered into the family institution. In the most primitive form of life known to us (Australians and Bushmen) the man roams abroad in search of meat food. His wife or wives stay by the fire at a trysting place, care for the children, and collect plant food. Thus the combination comes under the form of antagonistic cooperation. It presents us the germ of the industrial organization. It is a product of the folkways, being the resultant custom which arises, in time, out of the ways of satisfying interests which separate individuals, or pairs, invent and try. It follows that marriage in all its forms is in the mores of the time and place.

361. Regulation is conventional, not natural. The sex passion affects the weal or woe of human beings far more than hunger, vanity, or ghost fear. It has far more complications with other interests than the other great motives. There is no escaping the good and ill, the pleasure and pain, which inhere in it. It has two opposite extremes,—renunciation and license. In neither one of these can peace and satisfaction be found, or escape from the irritation of antagonistic impulses. There is no ground at all for the opinion that "nature" gave men an appetite the satisfaction of which would be peaceful and satisfactory, but that human laws and institutions have put it under constraints which produce agony.[1143] The truth is that license stimulates desire without limit, and ends in impotent agony. Renunciation produces agony of another kind. Somewhere between lies temperance, which seems an easy solution, but there is no definition of temperance which is generally applicable, and, wherever the limit may be set, there, on either side of it, the antagonistic impulses appear again,—one of indulgence, the other of restraint,—producing pitfalls of vice and ruin, and ever renewing the strain and torment of the problem of right and duty. Therefore regulation is imperatively called for by the facts of "nature," and the regulation must come from intelligence and judgment. No determination of what the regulation should be has ever yet been found in law or ethics which does not bear harshly on great numbers, and in all stages of civilization numbers are found who violate the regulations and live outside of them.

362. Egoistic and altruistic elements. Here, then, is the case: the perpetuation of the species requires the cooperation of two complementary sexes. The sex relation is antagonistic to the struggle for existence, and so arouses egoistic sentiments and motives, while it is itself very egoistic. It is sometimes said that the struggle for existence is egoistic and reproduction altruistic, but this view rests upon a very imperfect analysis. It means that a man who has won food may eat it by himself, while reproduction assumes the cooperation of others. So far, well; but the struggle for existence assumes and demands co-operation in the food quest and a sharing of the product in all but a very small class of primitive cases; and the sex passion is purely egoistic, except in a very small class of cases of high refinement, the actuality of which may even be questioned. The altruistic element in reproduction belongs to the mores, and is due to life with children, affection for them, with sacrifice and devotion to them, as results produced by experience. It is clear that a division between the food quest as egoistic and reproduction as altruistic cannot be made the basis of ethical constructions. To get the good and avoid the ill there is required a high play of intelligence, good sense, and of all altruistic virtues. Under such a play of interests and feelings, from which no one is exempt, mass phenomena are produced by the ways of solving the problem which individuals and pairs hit upon. The wide range and contradictoriness of the folkways in regard to family life show how helpless and instinctive the struggle to solve the problem has been. Our own society shows how far we still are from a thorough understanding of the problem and from a satisfactory solution of it. It must be added that the ruling elements in different societies have molded the folkways to suit their own interests, and thus they have disturbed and confused the process of making folkways, and have spoiled the result.

363. Primary definition of marriage; taboos and conventionalization. The definition of marriage consists in stating what, at any time and place, the mores have imposed as regulations on the relations of a man and woman who are cooperatively carrying on the struggle for existence and the reproduction of the species. The regulations are always a conventionalization which sets the terms, modes, and conditions under which a pair may cohabit. It is, therefore, impossible to formulate a definition of marriage which will cover all forms of it throughout the history of civilization. In all lower civilization it is a tie of a woman to a man for the interests of both (or of the man). It follows that the sex relation has been a great arena for the use and perfection of the mores, since personal experience and reflection never ceased, and a great school for the education of the race in the use of intelligence, the development of sympathetic sentiments, and in a sense of the utility of ethical regulations. The sex taboo is the set of inhibitions which control and restrain the intercourse of the sexes with each other in ordinary life. At the present time, in civilized countries, that intercourse is limited by taboo, not by law. The nature and degree of the taboo are in the mores. Spanish, French, English, and American women, in the order named, are under less and less strict limitations in regard to ordinary social intercourse with men. The sex taboo could, therefore, be easily pursued and described through the whole history of civilization and amongst all nations. It seems to be arbitrary, although no doubt it has always been due, in its origin, to correct or incorrect judgments of conditions and interests. It is always conventional. That it has been and is recognized is the sum of its justification. When Augustine met the objection that Jacob had four wives he replied that that was no crime, because it was under the custom (mos) of Jacob's time.[1144] This was a complete answer, but it was an appeal to the supreme authority of the mores.

364. Family, not marriage, is the institution. Although we speak of marriage as an institution, it is only an imperfect one. It has no structure. The family is the institution, and it was antecedent to marriage. Marriage has always been an elastic and variable usage, as it now is. Each pair, or other marital combination, has always chosen its own "ways" of living within the limits set by the mores. In fact the use of language reflects the vagueness of marriage, for we use the word "marriage" for wedding, nuptials, or matrimony (wedlock). Only the last could be an institution. Wedlock has gone through very many phases, and has by no means evolved along lines of harmonious and advancing development. In the earliest forms of the higher civilization, in Chaldea and Egypt, man and wife were, during wedlock, in a relation of rational free cooperation. Out of this two different forms of wedlock have come, the harem system and pair marriage. The historical sequences by which the former has been produced could be traced just as easily as those which have led up to the latter. There is no more necessity in one than in the other. Wedlock is a mode of associated life. It is as variable as circumstances, interests, and character make it within the conditions. No rules or laws can control it. They only affect the condition against which the individuals react. No laws can do more than specify ways of entering into wedlock, and the rights and duties of the parties in wedlock to each other, which the society will enforce. These, however, are but indifferent externals. All the intimate daily play of interests, emotions, character, taste, etc., are beyond the reach of the bystanders, and that play is what makes wedlock what it is for every pair. Nevertheless the relations of the parties are always deeply controlled by the current opinions in the society, the prevalent ethical standards, the approval or condemnation passed by the bystanders on cases between husbands and wives, and by the precepts and traditions of the old. Thus the mores hold control over individual taste and caprice, and individual experience reacts against the control. All the problems of marriage are in the intimate relations. When they affect large numbers they are brought under the solution of the mores. Therefore the history of marriage is to be interpreted by the mores, and its philosophy must be sought in the fact that it is an ever-moving product of the mores.

365. Endogamy and exogamy. Although it seems, at first consideration, that savages could not have perceived the alleged evils of inbreeding, yet a full examination of the facts is convincing that they did do so. In like manner, they were led to try to avert overpopulation by folkways. They acted "instinctively," or automatically, not rationally. Inbreeding preserves a type but weakens the stock. Outbreeding strengthens the stock but loses the type. In our own mores each one is forbidden to marry within a certain circle or outside of another circle. The first is the consanguine group of first cousins and nearer. The latter is the race to which we belong. Royal and noble castes are more strictly limited within the caste. Amongst savage peoples there were two ideas which were in conflict: (1) all the women of a group were regarded as belonging to all the men of that group; (2) a wife conquered abroad was a possession and a trophy. Endogamy and exogamy are forms of the mores in which one of these policies has been adopted to the exclusion of the other. Of that we have an example in civilized society, where royal persons, in order to find fitting mates, marry cousins, or uncles, or nieces, and bring on the family the evils of close inbreeding (Spain); or they take slave women as wives and breed out the blood of their race (Athenians, Arabs). The due adjustment of inbreeding and outbreeding is always a difficult problem of policy for breeders of animals. It is the same for men. The social interests favor inbreeding, by which property is united or saved from dispersion, and close relationship seems to assure acquaintance. At Venice, in the time of glory and luxury, great dowers seemed to threaten to dissipate great family fortunes. It became the custom to contract marriages only between families which could give as much as they got. "This was not the least of the causes of the moral and physical decline of the Venetian aristocracy."[1145]