PAPER 82
THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
82:0.1 MARRIAGE -- mating -- grows out of
bisexuality. Marriage is man's reactional adjustment to such bisexuality,
while the family life is the sum total resulting from all such evolutionary
and adaptative adjustments. Marriage is enduring; it is not inherent in
biologic evolution, but it is the basis of all social evolution and is
therefore certain of continued existence in some form. Marriage has given
mankind the home, and the home is the crowning glory of the whole long and
arduous evolutionary struggle.
82:0.2 While religious, social, and educational
institutions are all essential to the survival of cultural civilization,
the family is the master civilizer. A child learns most of the
essentials of life from his family and the neighbors.
82:0.3 The humans of olden times did not possess a
very rich social civilization, but such as they had they faithfully and
effectively passed on to the next generation. And you should recognize that
most of these civilizations of the past continued to evolve with a bare
minimum of other institutional influences because the home was effectively
functioning. Today the human races possess a rich social and cultural
heritage, and it should be wisely and effectively passed on to succeeding
generations. The family as an educational institution must be maintained.
1. THE MATING INSTINCT
82:1.1 Notwithstanding the personality gulf between
men and women, the sex urge is sufficient to insure their coming together for
the reproduction of the species. This instinct operated effectively long
before humans experienced much of what was later called love, devotion, and
marital loyalty. Mating is an innate propensity, and marriage is its
evolutionary social repercussion.
82:1.2 Sex interest and desire were not dominating
passions in primitive peoples; they simply took them for granted. The entire
reproductive experience was free from imaginative embellishment. The
all-absorbing sex passion of the more highly civilized peoples is chiefly due
to race mixtures, especially where the evolutionary nature has been stimulated
by the associative imagination and beauty appreciation of the Nodites and
Adamites. But this Andite inheritance was absorbed by the evolutionary races
in such limited amounts as to fail to provide sufficient self-control for the
animal passions thus quickened and aroused by the endowment of keener sex
consciousness and stronger mating urges. Of the evolutionary races, the red
man had the highest sex code.
82:1.3 The regulation of sex in relation to marriage
indicates:
82:1.4 1. The relative progress of civilization.
Civilization has increasingly demanded that sex be gratified in useful
channels and in accordance with the mores.
82:1.5 2. The amount of Andite stock in any people.
Among such groups sex has become expressive of both the highest and the lowest
in both the physical and emotional natures.
82:1.6 The Sangik races had normal animal passion,
but they displayed little imagination or appreciation of the beauty and
physical attractiveness of the opposite sex. What is called sex appeal is
virtually absent even in present-day primitive races; these unmixed peoples
have a definite mating instinct but insufficient sex attraction to create
serious problems requiring social control.
82:1.7 The mating instinct is one of the dominant
physical driving forces of human beings; it is the one emotion which, in the
guise of individual gratification, effectively tricks selfish man into putting
race welfare and perpetuation high above individual ease and personal freedom
from responsibility.
82:1.8 As an institution, marriage, from its early
beginnings down to modern times, pictures the social evolution of the biologic
propensity for self-perpetuation. The perpetuation of the evolving human
species is made certain by the presence of this racial mating impulse, an urge
which is loosely called sex attraction. This great biologic urge becomes the
impulse hub for all sorts of associated instincts, emotions, and usages --
physical, intellectual, moral, and social.
82:1.9 With the savage, the food supply was the
impelling motivation, but when civilization insures plentiful food, the sex
urge many times becomes a dominant impulse and therefore ever stands in need
of social regulation. In animals, instinctive periodicity checks the mating
propensity, but since man is so largely a self-controlled being, sex desire is
not altogether periodic; therefore does it become necessary for society to
impose self-control upon the individual.
82:1.10 No human emotion or impulse, when unbridled
and overindulged, can produce so much harm and sorrow as this powerful sex
urge. Intelligent submission of this impulse to the regulations of society is
the supreme test of the actuality of any civilization. Self-control, more and
more self-control, is the ever-increasing demand of advancing mankind.
Secrecy, insincerity, and hypocrisy may obscure sex problems, but they do not
provide solutions, nor do they advance ethics.
2. THE RESTRICTIVE TABOOS
82:2.1 The story of the evolution of marriage is
simply the history of sex control through the pressure of social, religious,
and civil restrictions. Nature hardly recognizes individuals; it takes no
cognizance of so-called morals; it is only and exclusively interested in the
reproduction of the species. Nature compellingly insists on reproduction but
indifferently leaves the consequential problems to be solved by society, thus
creating an ever-present and major problem for evolutionary mankind. This
social conflict consists in the unending war between basic instincts and
evolving ethics.
82:2.2 Among the early races there was little or no
regulation of the relations of the sexes. Because of this sex license, no
prostitution existed. Today, the Pygmies and other backward groups have no
marriage institution; a study of these peoples reveals the simple mating
customs followed by primitive races. But all ancient peoples should always be
studied and judged in the light of the moral standards of the mores of their
own times.
82:2.3 Free love, however, has never been in good
standing above the scale of rank savagery. The moment societal groups began to
form, marriage codes and marital restrictions began to develop. Mating has
thus progressed through a multitude of transitions from a state of almost
complete sex license to the twentieth-century standards of relatively complete
sex restriction.
82:2.4 In the earliest stages of tribal development
the mores and restrictive taboos were very crude, but they did keep the sexes
apart -- this favored quiet, order, and industry -- and the long evolution of
marriage and the home had begun. The sex customs of dress, adornment, and
religious practices had their origin in these early taboos which defined the
range of sex liberties and thus eventually created concepts of vice, crime,
and sin. But it was long the practice to suspend all sex regulations on high
festival days, especially May Day.
82:2.5 Women have always been subject to more
restrictive taboos than men. The early mores granted the same degree of sex
liberty to unmarried women as to men, but it has always been required of wives
that they be faithful to their husbands. Primitive marriage did not much
curtail man's sex liberties, but it did render further sex license taboo to
the wife. Married women have always borne some mark which set them apart as a
class by themselves, such as hairdress, clothing, veil, seclusion,
ornamentation, and rings.
3. EARLY MARRIAGE MORES
82:3.1 Marriage is the institutional response of the
social organism to the ever-present biologic tension of man's unremitting urge
to reproduction -- self-propagation. Mating is universally natural, and as
society evolved from the simple to the complex, there was a corresponding
evolution of the mating mores, the genesis of the marital institution.
Wherever social evolution has progressed to the stage at which mores are
generated, marriage will be found as an evolving institution.
82:3.2 There always have been and always will be two
distinct realms of marriage: the mores, the laws regulating the external
aspects of mating, and the otherwise secret and personal relations of men and
women. Always has the individual been rebellious against the sex regulations
imposed by society; and this is the reason for this agelong sex problem:
Self-maintenance is individual but is carried on by the group;
self-perpetuation is social but is secured by individual impulse.
82:3.3 The mores, when respected, have ample power
to restrain and control the sex urge, as has been shown among all races.
Marriage standards have always been a true indicator of the current power of
the mores and the functional integrity of the civil government. But the early
sex and mating mores were a mass of inconsistent and crude regulations.
Parents, children, relatives, and society all had conflicting interests in the
marriage regulations. But in spite of all this, those races which exalted and
practiced marriage naturally evolved to higher levels and survived in
increased numbers.
82:3.4 In primitive times marriage was the price of
social standing; the possession of a wife was a badge of distinction. The
savage looked upon his wedding day as marking his entrance upon responsibility
and manhood. In one age, marriage has been looked upon as a social duty; in
another, as a religious obligation; and in still another, as a political
requirement to provide citizens for the state.
82:3.5 Many early tribes required feats of stealing
as a qualification for marriage; later peoples substituted for such raiding
forays, athletic contests and competitive games. The winners in these contests
were awarded the first prize -- choice of the season's brides. Among the
head-hunters a youth might not marry until he possessed at least one head,
although such skulls were sometimes purchasable. As the buying of wives
declined, they were won by riddle contests, a practice that still survives
among many groups of the black man.
82:3.6 With advancing civilization, certain tribes
put the severe marriage tests of male endurance in the hands of the women;
they thus were able to favor the men of their choice. These marriage tests
embraced skill in hunting, fighting, and ability to provide for a family. The
groom was long required to enter the bride's family for at least one year,
there to live and labor and prove that he was worthy of the wife he
sought.
82:3.7 The qualifications of a wife were the ability
to perform hard work and to bear children. She was required to execute a
certain piece of agricultural work within a given time. And if she had borne a
child before marriage, she was all the more valuable; her fertility was thus
assured.
82:3.8 The fact that ancient peoples regarded it as
a disgrace, or even a sin, not to be married, explains the origin of child
marriages; since one must be married, the earlier the better. It was also a
general belief that unmarried persons could not enter spiritland, and this was
a further incentive to child marriages even at birth and sometimes before
birth, contingent upon sex. The ancients believed that even the dead must be
married. The original matchmakers were employed to negotiate marriages for
deceased individuals. One parent would arrange for these intermediaries to
effect the marriage of a dead son with a dead daughter of another
family.
82:3.9 Among later peoples, puberty was the common
age of marriage, but this has advanced in direct proportion to the progress of
civilization. Early in social evolution peculiar and celibate orders of both
men and women arose; they were started and maintained by individuals more or
less lacking normal sex urge.
82:3.10 Many tribes allowed members of the ruling
group to have sex relations with the bride just before she was to be given to
her husband. Each of these men would give the girl a present, and this was the
origin of the custom of giving wedding presents. Among some groups it was
expected that a young woman would earn her dowry, which consisted of the
presents received in reward for her sex service in the bride's exhibition
hall.
82:3.11 Some tribes married the young men to the
widows and older women and then, when they were subsequently left widowers,
would allow them to marry the young girls, thus insuring, as they expressed
it, that both parents would not be fools, as they conceived would be the case
if two youths were allowed to mate. Other tribes limited mating to similar age
groups. It was the limitation of marriage to certain age groups that first
gave origin to ideas of incest. (In India there are even now no age
restrictions on marriage.)
82:3.12 Under certain mores widowhood was greatly to
be feared, widows being either killed or allowed to commit suicide on their
husbands' graves, for they were supposed to go over into spiritland with their
spouses. The surviving widow was almost invariably blamed for her husband's
death. Some tribes burned them alive. If a widow continued to live, her life
was one of continuous mourning and unbearable social restriction since
remarriage was generally disapproved.
82:3.13 In olden days many practices now regarded as
immoral were encouraged. Primitive wives not infrequently took great pride in
their husbands' affairs with other women. Chastity in girls was a great
hindrance to marriage; the bearing of a child before marriage greatly
increased a girl's desirability as a wife since the man was sure of having a
fertile companion.
82:3.14 Many primitive tribes sanctioned trial
marriage until the woman became pregnant, when the regular marriage ceremony
would be performed; among other groups the wedding was not celebrated until
the first child was born. If a wife was barren, she had to be redeemed by her
parents, and the marriage was annulled. The mores demanded that every pair
have children.
82:3.15 These primitive trial marriages were
entirely free from all semblance of license; they were simply sincere tests of
fecundity. The contracting individuals married permanently just as soon as
fertility was established. When modern couples marry with the thought of
convenient divorce in the background of their minds if they are not wholly
pleased with their married life, they are in reality entering upon a form of
trial marriage and one that is far beneath the status of the honest adventures
of their less civilized ancestors.
4. MARRIAGE UNDER THE PROPERTY MORES
82:4.1 Marriage has always been closely linked with
both property and religion. Property has been the stabilizer of marriage;
religion, the moralizer.
82:4.2 Primitive marriage was an investment, an
economic speculation; it was more a matter of business than an affair of
flirtation. The ancients married for the advantage and welfare of the group;
wherefore their marriages were planned and arranged by the group, their
parents and elders. And that the property mores were effective in stabilizing
the marriage institution is borne out by the fact that marriage was more
permanent among the early tribes than it is among many modern
peoples.
82:4.3 As civilization advanced and private property
gained further recognition in the mores, stealing became the great crime.
Adultery was recognized as a form of stealing, an infringement of the
husband's property rights; it is not therefore specifically mentioned in the
earlier codes and mores. Woman started out as the property of her father, who
transferred his title to her husband, and all legalized sex relations grew out
of these pre-existent property rights. The Old Testament deals with women as a
form of property; the Koran teaches their inferiority. Man had the right to
lend his wife to a friend or guest, and this custom still obtains among
certain peoples.
82:4.4 Modern sex jealousy is not innate; it is a
product of the evolving mores. Primitive man was not jealous of his wife; he
was just guarding his property. The reason for holding the wife to stricter
sex account than the husband was because her marital infidelity involved
descent and inheritance. Very early in the march of civilization the
illegitimate child fell into disrepute. At first only the woman was punished
for adultery; later on, the mores also decreed the chastisement of her
partner, and for long ages the offended husband or the protector father had
the full right to kill the male trespasser. Modern peoples retain these mores,
which allow so-called crimes of honor under the unwritten law.
82:4.5 Since the chastity taboo had its origin as a
phase of the property mores, it applied at first to married women but not to
unmarried girls. In later years, chastity was more demanded by the father than
by the suitor; a virgin was a commercial asset to the father -- she brought a
higher price. As chastity came more into demand, it was the practice to pay
the father a bride fee in recognition of the service of properly rearing a
chaste bride for the husband-to-be. When once started, this idea of female
chastity took such hold on the races that it became the practice literally to
cage up girls, actually to imprison them for years, in order to assure their
virginity. And so the more recent standards and virginity tests automatically
gave origin to the professional prostitute classes; they were the rejected
brides, those women who were found by the grooms' mothers not to be virgins.
5. ENDOGAMY AND EXOGAMY
82:5.1 Very early the savage observed that race
mixture improved the quality of the offspring. It was not that inbreeding was
always bad, but that outbreeding was always comparatively better; therefore
the mores tended to crystallize in restriction of sex relations among near
relatives. It was recognized that outbreeding greatly increased the selective
opportunity for evolutionary variation and advancement. The outbred
individuals were more versatile and had greater ability to survive in a
hostile world; the inbreeders, together with their mores, gradually
disappeared. This was all a slow development; the savage did not consciously
reason about such problems. But the later and advancing peoples did, and they
also made the observation that general weakness sometimes resulted from
excessive inbreeding.
82:5.2 While the inbreeding of good stock sometimes
resulted in the upbuilding of strong tribes, the spectacular cases of the bad
results of the inbreeding of hereditary defectives more forcibly impressed the
mind of man, with the result that the advancing mores increasingly formulated
taboos against all marriages among near relatives.
82:5.3 Religion has long been an effective barrier
against outmarriage; many religious teachings have proscribed marriage outside
the faith. Woman has usually favored the practice of in-marriage; man,
outmarriage. Property has always influenced marriage, and sometimes, in an
effort to conserve property within a clan, mores have arisen compelling women
to choose husbands within their fathers' tribes. Rulings of this sort led to a
great multiplication of cousin marriages. In-mating was also practiced in an
effort to preserve craft secrets; skilled workmen sought to keep the knowledge
of their craft within the family.
82:5.4 Superior groups, when isolated, always
reverted to consanguineous mating. The Nodites for over one hundred and fifty
thousand years were one of the great in-marriage groups. The later-day
in-marriage mores were tremendously influenced by the traditions of the violet
race, in which, at first, matings were, perforce, between brother and sister.
And brother and sister marriages were common in early Egypt, Syria,
Mesopotamia, and throughout the lands once occupied by the Andites. The
Egyptians long practiced brother and sister marriages in an effort to keep the
royal blood pure, a custom which persisted even longer in Persia. Among the
Mesopotamians, before the days of Abraham, cousin marriages were obligatory;
cousins had prior marriage rights to cousins. Abraham himself married his half
sister, but such unions were not allowed under the later mores of the
Jews.
82:5.5 The first move away from brother and sister
marriages came about under the plural-wife mores because the sister-wife would
arrogantly dominate the other wife or wives. Some tribal mores forbade
marriage to a dead brother's widow but required the living brother to beget
children for his departed brother. There is no biologic instinct against any
degree of in-marriage; such restrictions are wholly a matter of
taboo.
82:5.6 Outmarriage finally dominated because it was
favored by the man; to get a wife from the outside insured greater freedom
from in-laws. Familiarity breeds contempt; so, as the element of individual
choice began to dominate mating, it became the custom to choose partners from
outside the tribe.
82:5.7 Many tribes finally forbade marriages within
the clan; others limited mating to certain castes. The taboo against marriage
with a woman of one's own totem gave impetus to the custom of stealing women
from neighboring tribes. Later on, marriages were regulated more in accordance
with territorial residence than with kinship. There were many steps in the
evolution of in-marriage into the modern practice of outmarriage. Even after
the taboo rested upon in-marriages for the common people, chiefs and kings
were permitted to marry those of close kin in order to keep the royal blood
concentrated and pure. The mores have usually permitted sovereign rulers
certain licenses in sex matters.
82:5.8 The presence of the later Andite peoples had
much to do with increasing the desire of the Sangik races to mate outside
their own tribes. But it was not possible for out-mating to become prevalent
until neighboring groups had learned to live together in relative
peace.
82:5.9 Outmarriage itself was a peace promoter;
marriages between the tribes lessened hostilities. Outmarriage led to tribal
co-ordination and to military alliances; it became dominant because it
provided increased strength; it was a nation builder. Outmarriage was also
greatly favored by increasing trade contacts; adventure and exploration
contributed to the extension of the mating bounds and greatly facilitated the
cross-fertilization of racial cultures.
82:5.10 The otherwise inexplicable inconsistencies
of the racial marriage mores are largely due to this outmarriage custom with
its accompanying wife stealing and buying from foreign tribes, all of which
resulted in a compounding of the separate tribal mores. That these taboos
respecting in-marriage were sociologic, not biologic, is well illustrated by
the taboos on kinship marriages, which embraced many degrees of in-law
relationships, cases representing no blood relation whatsoever.
6. RACIAL MIXTURES
82:6.1 There are no pure races in the world today.
The early and original evolutionary peoples of color have only two
representative races persisting in the world, the yellow man and the black
man; and even these two races are much admixed with the extinct colored
peoples. While the so-called white race is predominantly descended from the
ancient blue man, it is admixed more or less with all other races much as is
the red man of the Americas.
82:6.2 Of the six colored Sangik races, three were
primary and three were secondary. Though the primary races -- blue, red, and
yellow -- were in many respects superior to the three secondary peoples, it
should be remembered that these secondary races had many desirable traits
which would have considerably enhanced the primary peoples if their better
strains could have been absorbed.
82:6.3 Present-day prejudice against "half-castes,"
"hybrids," and "mongrels" arises because modern racial crossbreeding is, for
the greater part, between the grossly inferior strains of the races concerned.
You also get unsatisfactory offspring when the degenerate strains of the same
race intermarry.
82:6.4 If the present-day races of Urantia could be
freed from the curse of their lowest strata of deteriorated, antisocial,
feeble-minded, and outcast specimens, there would be little objection to a
limited race amalgamation. And if such racial mixtures could take place
between the highest types of the several races, still less objection could be
offered.
82:6.5 Hybridization of superior and dissimilar
stocks is the secret of the creation of new and more vigorous strains. And
this is true of plants, animals, and the human species. Hybridization augments
vigor and increases fertility. Race mixtures of the average or superior strata
of various peoples greatly increase creative potential, as is shown in
the present population of the United States of North America. When such
matings take place between the lower or inferior strata, creativity is
diminished, as is shown by the present-day peoples of southern
India.
82:6.6 Race blending greatly contributes to the
sudden appearance of new characteristics, and if such hybridization is the
union of superior strains, then these new characteristics will also be
superior traits.
82:6.7 As long as present-day races are so
overloaded with inferior and degenerate strains, race intermingling on a large
scale would be most detrimental, but most of the objections to such
experiments rest on social and cultural prejudices rather than on biological
considerations. Even among inferior stocks, hybrids often are an improvement
on their ancestors. Hybridization makes for species improvement because of the
role of the dominant genes. Racial intermixture increases the
likelihood of a larger number of the desirable dominants being present
in the hybrid.
82:6.8 For the past hundred years more racial
hybridization has been taking place on Urantia than has occurred in thousands
of years. The danger of gross disharmonies as a result of crossbreeding of
human stocks has been greatly exaggerated. The chief troubles of "half-breeds"
are due to social prejudices.
82:6.9 The Pitcairn experiment of blending the white
and Polynesian races turned out fairly well because the white men and the
Polynesian women were of fairly good racial strains. Interbreeding between the
highest types of the white, red, and yellow races would immediately bring into
existence many new and biologically effective characteristics. These three
peoples belong to the primary Sangik races. Mixtures of the white and black
races are not so desirable in their immediate results, neither are such
mulatto offspring so objectionable as social and racial prejudice would seek
to make them appear. Physically, such white-black hybrids are excellent
specimens of humanity, notwithstanding their slight inferiority in some other
respects.
82:6.10 When a primary Sangik race amalgamates with
a secondary Sangik race, the latter is considerably improved at the expense of
the former. And on a small scale -- extending over long periods of time --
there can be little serious objection to such a sacrificial contribution by
the primary races to the betterment of the secondary groups. Biologically
considered, the secondary Sangiks were in some respects superior to the
primary races.
82:6.11 After all, the real jeopardy of the human
species is to be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the inferior and
degenerate strains of the various civilized peoples rather than in any
supposed danger of their racial interbreeding.
82:6.12 Presented
by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.
