PAPER 83
THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION
83:0.1 THIS is the recital of the early beginnings
of the institution of marriage. It has progressed steadily from the loose and
promiscuous matings of the herd through many variations and adaptations, even
to the appearance of those marriage standards which eventually culminated in
the realization of pair matings, the union of one man and one woman to
establish a home of the highest social order.
83:0.2 Marriage has been many times in jeopardy, and
the marriage mores have drawn heavily on both property and religion for
support; but the real influence which forever safeguards marriage and the
resultant family is the simple and innate biologic fact that men and women
positively will not live without each other, be they the most primitive
savages or the most cultured mortals.
83:0.3 It is because of the sex urge that selfish
man is lured into making something better than an animal out of himself. The
self-regarding and self-gratifying sex relationship entails the certain
consequences of self-denial and insures the assumption of altruistic duties
and numerous race-benefiting home responsibilities. Herein has sex been the
unrecognized and unsuspected civilizer of the savage; for this same sex
impulse automatically and unerringly compels man to think and
eventually leads him to love.
1. MARRIAGE AS A SOCIETAL INSTITUTION
83:1.1 Marriage is society's mechanism designed to
regulate and control those many human relations which arise out of the
physical fact of bisexuality. As such an institution, marriage functions in
two directions:
1. In the regulation of personal sex relations.
2. In the regulation of descent, inheritance,
succession, and social order, this being its older and original function.
83:1.2 The family, which grows out of marriage, is
itself a stabilizer of the marriage institution together with the property
mores. Other potent factors in marriage stability are pride, vanity, chivalry,
duty, and religious convictions. But while marriages may be approved or
disapproved on high, they are hardly made in heaven. The human family is a
distinctly human institution, an evolutionary development. Marriage is an
institution of society, not a department of the church. True, religion should
mightily influence it but should not undertake exclusively to control and
regulate it.
83:1.3 Primitive marriage was primarily industrial;
and even in modern times it is often a social or business affair. Through the
influence of the mixture of the Andite stock and as a result of the mores of
advancing civilization, marriage is slowly becoming mutual, romantic,
parental, poetical, affectionate, ethical, and even idealistic. Selection and
so-called romantic love, however, were at a minimum in primitive mating.
During early times husband and wife were not much together; they did not even
eat together very often. But among the ancients, personal affection was not
strongly linked to sex attraction; they became fond of one another largely
because of living and working together.
2. COURTSHIP AND BETROTHAL
83:2.1 Primitive marriages were always planned by
the parents of the boy and girl. The transition stage between this custom and
the times of free choosing was occupied by the marriage broker or professional
matchmaker. These matchmakers were at first the barbers; later, the priests.
Marriage was originally a group affair; then a family matter; only recently
has it become an individual adventure.
83:2.2 Coercion, not attraction, was the approach to
primitive marriage. In early times woman had no sex aloofness, only sex
inferiority as inculcated by the mores. As raiding preceded trading, so
marriage by capture preceded marriage by contract. Some women would connive at
capture in order to escape the domination of the older men of their tribe;
they preferred to fall into the hands of men of their own age from another
tribe. This pseudo elopement was the transition stage between capture by force
and subsequent courtship by charming.
83:2.3 An early type of wedding ceremony was the
mimic flight, a sort of elopement rehearsal which was once a common practice.
Later, mock capture became a part of the regular wedding ceremony. A modern
girl's pretensions to resist "capture," to be reticent toward marriage, are
all relics of olden customs. The carrying of the bride over the threshold is
reminiscent of a number of ancient practices, among others, of the days of
wife stealing.
83:2.4 Woman was long denied full freedom of
self-disposal in marriage, but the more intelligent women have always been
able to circumvent this restriction by the clever exercise of their wits. Man
has usually taken the lead in courtship, but not always. Woman sometimes
formally, as well as covertly, initiates marriage. And as civilization has
progressed, women have had an increasing part in all phases of courtship and
marriage.
83:2.5 Increasing love, romance, and personal
selection in premarital courtship are an Andite contribution to the world
races. The relations between the sexes are evolving favorably; many advancing
peoples are gradually substituting somewhat idealized concepts of sex
attraction for those older motives of utility and ownership. Sex impulse and
feelings of affection are beginning to displace cold calculation in the
choosing of life partners.
83:2.6 The betrothal was originally equivalent to
marriage; and among early peoples sex relations were conventional during the
engagement. In recent times, religion has established a sex taboo on the
period between betrothal and marriage.
3. PURCHASE AND DOWRY
83:3.1 The ancients mistrusted love and promises;
they thought that abiding unions must be guaranteed by some tangible security,
property. For this reason, the purchase price of a wife was regarded as a
forfeit or deposit which the husband was doomed to lose in case of divorce or
desertion. Once the purchase price of a bride had been paid, many tribes
permitted the husband's brand to be burned upon her. Africans still buy their
wives. A love wife, or a white man's wife, they compare to a cat because she
costs nothing.
83:3.2 The bride shows were occasions for dressing
up and decorating daughters for public exhibition with the idea of their
bringing higher prices as wives. But they were not sold as animals -- among
the later tribes such a wife was not transferable. Neither was her purchase
always just a cold-blooded money transaction; service was equivalent to cash
in the purchase of a wife. If an otherwise desirable man could not pay for his
wife, he could be adopted as a son by the girl's father and then could marry.
And if a poor man sought a wife and could not meet the price demanded by a
grasping father, the elders would often bring pressure to bear upon the father
which would result in a modification of his demands, or else there might be an
elopement.
83:3.3 As civilization progressed, fathers did not
like to appear to sell their daughters, and so, while continuing to accept the
bride purchase price, they initiated the custom of giving the pair valuable
presents which about equaled the purchase money. And upon the later
discontinuance of payment for the bride, these presents became the bride's
dowry.
83:3.4 The idea of a dowry was to convey the
impression of the bride's independence, to suggest far removal from the times
of slave wives and property companions. A man could not divorce a dowered wife
without paying back the dowry in full. Among some tribes a mutual deposit was
made with the parents of both bride and groom to be forfeited in case either
deserted the other, in reality a marriage bond. During the period of
transition from purchase to dowry, if the wife were purchased, the children
belonged to the father; if not, they belonged to the wife's family.
4. THE WEDDING CEREMONY
83:4.1 The wedding ceremony grew out of the fact
that marriage was originally a community affair, not just the culmination of a
decision of two individuals. Mating was of group concern as well as a personal
function.
83:4.2 Magic, ritual, and ceremony surrounded the
entire life of the ancients, and marriage was no exception. As civilization
advanced, as marriage became more seriously regarded, the wedding ceremony
became increasingly pretentious. Early marriage was a factor in property
interests, even as it is today, and therefore required a legal ceremony, while
the social status of subsequent children demanded the widest possible
publicity. Primitive man had no records; therefore must the marriage ceremony
be witnessed by many persons.
83:4.3 At first the wedding ceremony was more on the
order of a betrothal and consisted only in public notification of intention of
living together; later it consisted in formal eating together. Among some
tribes the parents simply took their daughter to the husband; in other cases
the only ceremony was the formal exchange of presents, after which the bride's
father would present her to the groom. Among many Levantine peoples it was the
custom to dispense with all formality, marriage being consummated by sex
relations. The red man was the first to develop the more elaborate celebration
of weddings.
83:4.4 Childlessness was greatly dreaded, and since
barrenness was attributed to spirit machinations, efforts to insure fecundity
also led to the association of marriage with certain magical or religious
ceremonials. And in this effort to insure a happy and fertile marriage, many
charms were employed; even the astrologers were consulted to ascertain the
birth stars of the contracting parties. At one time the human sacrifice was a
regular feature of all weddings among well-to-do people.
83:4.5 Lucky days were sought out, Thursday being
most favorably regarded, and weddings celebrated at the full of the moon were
thought to be exceptionally fortunate. It was the custom of many Near Eastern
peoples to throw grain upon the newlyweds; this was a magical rite which was
supposed to insure fecundity. Certain Oriental peoples used rice for this
purpose.
83:4.6 Fire and water were always considered the
best means of resisting ghosts and evil spirits; hence altar fires and lighted
candles, as well as the baptismal sprinkling of holy water, were usually in
evidence at weddings. For a long time it was customary to set a false wedding
day and then suddenly postpone the event so as to put the ghosts and spirits
off the track.
83:4.7 The teasing of newlyweds and the pranks
played upon honeymooners are all relics of those far-distant days when it was
thought best to appear miserable and ill at ease in the sight of the spirits
so as to avoid arousing their envy. The wearing of the bridal veil is a relic
of the times when it was considered necessary to disguise the bride so that
ghosts might not recognize her and also to hide her beauty from the gaze of
the otherwise jealous and envious spirits. The bride's feet must never touch
the ground just prior to the ceremony. Even in the twentieth century it is
still the custom under the Christian mores to stretch carpets from the
carriage landing to the church altar.
83:4.8 One of the most ancient forms of the wedding
ceremony was to have a priest bless the wedding bed to insure the fertility of
the union; this was done long before any formal wedding ritual was
established. During this period in the evolution of the marriage mores the
wedding guests were expected to file through the bedchamber at night, thus
constituting legal witness to the consummation of marriage.
83:4.9 The luck element, that in spite of all
premarital tests certain marriages turned out bad, led primitive man to seek
insurance protection against marriage failure; led him to go in quest of
priests and magic. And this movement culminated directly in modern church
weddings. But for a long time marriage was generally recognized as consisting
in the decisions of the contracting parents -- later of the pair -- while for
the last five hundred years church and state have assumed jurisdiction and now
presume to make pronouncements of marriage.
5. PLURAL MARRIAGES
83:5.1 In the early history of marriage the
unmarried women belonged to the men of the tribe. Later on, a woman had only
one husband at a time. This practice of one-man-at-a-time was the first
step away from the promiscuity of the herd. While a woman was allowed but one
man, her husband could sever such temporary relationships at will. But these
loosely regulated associations were the first step toward living pairwise in
distinction to living herdwise. In this stage of marriage development children
usually belonged to the mother.
83:5.2 The next step in mating evolution was the
group marriage. This communal phase of marriage had to intervene in the
unfolding of family life because the marriage mores were not yet strong enough
to make pair associations permanent. The brother and sister marriages belonged
to this group; five brothers of one family would marry five sisters of
another. All over the world the looser forms of communal marriage gradually
evolved into various types of group marriage. And these group associations
were largely regulated by the totem mores. Family life slowly and surely
developed because sex and marriage regulation favored the survival of the
tribe itself by insuring the survival of larger numbers of
children.
83:5.3 Group marriages gradually gave way before the
emerging practices of polygamy -- polygyny and polyandry -- among the more
advanced tribes. But polyandry was never general, being usually limited to
queens and rich women; furthermore, it was customarily a family affair, one
wife for several brothers. Caste and economic restrictions sometimes made it
necessary for several men to content themselves with one wife. Even then, the
woman would marry only one, the others being loosely tolerated as "uncles" of
the joint progeny.
83:5.4 The Jewish custom requiring that a man
consort with his deceased brother's widow for the purpose of "raising up seed
for his brother," was the custom of more than half the ancient world. This was
a relic of the time when marriage was a family affair rather than an
individual association.
83:5.5 The institution of polygyny recognized, at
various times, four sorts of wives:
1. The ceremonial or legal wives.
2. Wives of affection and permission.
3. Concubines, contractual wives.
4. Slave wives.
83:5.6 True polygyny, where all the wives are of
equal status and all the children equal, has been very rare. Usually, even
with plural marriages, the home was dominated by the head wife, the status
companion. She alone had the ritual wedding ceremony, and only the children of
such a purchased or dowered spouse could inherit unless by special arrangement
with the status wife.
83:5.7 The status wife was not necessarily the love
wife; in early times she usually was not. The love wife, or sweetheart, did
not appear until the races were considerably advanced, more particularly after
the blending of the evolutionary tribes with the Nodites and
Adamites.
83:5.8 The taboo wife -- one wife of legal status --
created the concubine mores. Under these mores a man might have only one wife,
but he could maintain sex relations with any number of concubines. Concubinage
was the steppingstone to monogamy, the first move away from frank polygyny.
The concubines of the Jews, Romans, and Chinese were very frequently the
handmaidens of the wife. Later on, as among the Jews, the legal wife was
looked upon as the mother of all children born to the husband.
83:5.9 The olden taboos on sex relations with a
pregnant or nursing wife tended greatly to foster polygyny. Primitive women
aged very early because of frequent childbearing coupled with hard work. (Such
overburdened wives only managed to exist by virtue of the fact that they were
put in isolation one week out of each month when they were not heavy with
child.) Such a wife often grew tired of bearing children and would request her
husband to take a second and younger wife, one able to help with both
childbearing and the domestic work. The new wives were therefore usually
hailed with delight by the older spouses; there existed nothing on the order
of sex jealousy.
83:5.10 The number of wives was only limited by the
ability of the man to provide for them. Wealthy and able men wanted large
numbers of children, and since the infant mortality was very high, it required
an assembly of wives to recruit a large family. Many of these plural wives
were mere laborers, slave wives.
83:5.11 Human customs evolve, but very slowly. The
purpose of a harem was to build up a strong and numerous body of blood kin for
the support of the throne. A certain chief was once convinced that he should
not have a harem, that he should be contented with one wife; so he promptly
dismissed his harem. The dissatisfied wives went to their homes, and their
offended relatives swept down on the chief in wrath and did away with him then
and there.
6. TRUE MONOGAMY -- PAIR MARRIAGE
83:6.1 Monogamy is monopoly; it is good for those
who attain this desirable state, but it tends to work a biologic hardship on
those who are not so fortunate. But quite regardless of the effect on the
individual, monogamy is decidedly best for the children.
83:6.2 The earliest monogamy was due to force of
circumstances, poverty. Monogamy is cultural and societal, artificial and
unnatural, that is, unnatural to evolutionary man. It was wholly natural to
the purer Nodites and Adamites and has been of great cultural value to all
advanced races.
83:6.3 The Chaldean tribes recognized the right of a
wife to impose a premarital pledge upon her spouse not to take a second wife
or concubine; both the Greeks and the Romans favored monogamous marriage.
Ancestor worship has always fostered monogamy, as has the Christian error of
regarding marriage as a sacrament. Even the elevation of the standard of
living has consistently militated against plural wives. By the time of
Michael's advent on Urantia practically all of the civilized world had
attained the level of theoretical monogamy. But this passive monogamy did not
mean that mankind had become habituated to the practice of real pair marriage.
83:6.4 While pursuing the monogamic goal of the
ideal pair marriage, which is, after all, something of a monopolistic sex
association, society must not overlook the unenviable situation of those
unfortunate men and women who fail to find a place in this new and improved
social order, even when having done their best to co-operate with, and enter
into, its requirements. Failure to gain mates in the social arena of
competition may be due to insurmountable difficulties or multitudinous
restrictions which the current mores have imposed. Truly, monogamy is ideal
for those who are in, but it must inevitably work great hardship on those who
are left out in the cold of solitary existence.
83:6.5 Always have the unfortunate few had to suffer
that the majority might advance under the developing mores of evolving
civilization; but always should the favored majority look with kindness and
consideration on their less fortunate fellows who must pay the price of
failure to attain membership in the ranks of those ideal sex partnerships
which afford the satisfaction of all biologic urges under the sanction of the
highest mores of advancing social evolution.
83:6.6 Monogamy always has been, now is, and forever
will be the idealistic goal of human sex evolution. This ideal of true pair
marriage entails self-denial, and therefore does it so often fail just because
one or both of the contracting parties are deficient in that acme of all human
virtues, rugged self-control.
83:6.7 Monogamy is the yardstick which measures the
advance of social civilization as distinguished from purely biologic
evolution. Monogamy is not necessarily biologic or natural, but it is
indispensable to the immediate maintenance and further development of social
civilization. It contributes to a delicacy of sentiment, a refinement of moral
character, and a spiritual growth which are utterly impossible in polygamy. A
woman never can become an ideal mother when she is all the while compelled to
engage in rivalry for her husband's affections.
83:6.8 Pair marriage favors and fosters that
intimate understanding and effective co-operation which is best for parental
happiness, child welfare, and social efficiency. Marriage, which began in
crude coercion, is gradually evolving into a magnificent institution of
self-culture, self-control, self-expression, and self-perpetuation.
7. THE DISSOLUTION OF WEDLOCK
83:7.1 In the early evolution of the marital mores,
marriage was a loose union which could be terminated at will, and the children
always followed the mother; the mother-child bond is instinctive and has
functioned regardless of the developmental stage of the mores.
83:7.2 Among primitive peoples only about one half
the marriages proved satisfactory. The most frequent cause for separation was
barrenness, which was always blamed on the wife; and childless wives were
believed to become snakes in the spirit world. Under the more primitive mores,
divorce was had at the option of the man alone, and these standards have
persisted to the twentieth century among some peoples.
83:7.3 As the mores evolved, certain tribes
developed two forms of marriage: the ordinary, which permitted divorce, and
the priest marriage, which did not allow for separation. The inauguration of
wife purchase and wife dowry, by introducing a property penalty for marriage
failure, did much to lessen separation. And, indeed, many modern unions are
stabilized by this ancient property factor.
83:7.4 The social pressure of community standing and
property privileges has always been potent in the maintenance of the marriage
taboos and mores. Down through the ages marriage has made steady progress and
stands on advanced ground in the modern world, notwithstanding that it is
threateningly assailed by widespread dissatisfaction among those peoples where
individual choice -- a new liberty -- figures most largely. While these
upheavals of adjustment appear among the more progressive races as a result of
suddenly accelerated social evolution, among the less advanced peoples
marriage continues to thrive and slowly improve under the guidance of the
older mores.
83:7.5 The new and sudden substitution of the more
ideal but extremely individualistic love motive in marriage for the older and
long-established property motive, has unavoidably caused the marriage
institution to become temporarily unstable. Man's marriage motives have always
far transcended actual marriage morals, and in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries the Occidental ideal of marriage has suddenly far outrun the
self-centered and but partially controlled sex impulses of the races. The
presence of large numbers of unmarried persons in any society indicates the
temporary breakdown or the transition of the mores.
83:7.6 The real test of marriage, all down through
the ages, has been that continuous intimacy which is inescapable in all family
life. Two pampered and spoiled youths, educated to expect every indulgence and
full gratification of vanity and ego, can hardly hope to make a great success
of marriage and home building -- a life-long partnership of self-effacement,
compromise, devotion, and unselfish dedication to child culture.
83:7.7 The high degree of imagination and fantastic
romance entering into courtship is largely responsible for the increasing
divorce tendencies among modern Occidental peoples, all of which is further
complicated by woman's greater personal freedom and increased economic
liberty. Easy divorce, when the result of lack of self-control or failure of
normal personality adjustment, only leads directly back to those crude
societal stages from which man has emerged so recently and as the result of so
much personal anguish and racial suffering.
83:7.8 But just so long as society fails to properly
educate children and youths, so long as the social order fails to provide
adequate premarital training, and so long as unwise and immature youthful
idealism is to be the arbiter of the entrance upon marriage, just so long will
divorce remain prevalent. And in so far as the social group falls short of
providing marriage preparation for youths, to that extent must divorce
function as the social safety valve which prevents still worse situations
during the ages of the rapid growth of the evolving mores.
83:7.9 The ancients seem to have regarded marriage
just about as seriously as some present-day people do. And it does not appear
that many of the hasty and unsuccessful marriages of modern times are much of
an improvement over the ancient practices of qualifying young men and women
for mating. The great inconsistency of modern society is to exalt love and to
idealize marriage while disapproving of the fullest examination of both.
8. THE IDEALIZATION OF MARRIAGE
83:8.1 Marriage which culminates in the home is
indeed man's most exalted institution, but it is essentially human; it should
never have been called a sacrament. The Sethite priests made marriage a
religious ritual; but for thousands of years after Eden, mating continued as a
purely social and civil institution.
83:8.2 The likening of human associations to divine
associations is most unfortunate. The union of husband and wife in the
marriage-home relationship is a material function of the mortals of the
evolutionary worlds. True, indeed, much spiritual progress may accrue
consequent upon the sincere human efforts of husband and wife to progress, but
this does not mean that marriage is necessarily sacred. Spiritual progress is
attendant upon sincere application to other avenues of human
endeavor.
83:8.3 Neither can marriage be truly compared to the
relation of the Adjuster to man nor to the fraternity of Christ Michael and
his human brethren. At scarcely any point are such relationships comparable to
the association of husband and wife. And it is most unfortunate that the human
misconception of these relationships has produced so much confusion as to the
status of marriage.
83:8.4 It is also unfortunate that certain groups of
mortals have conceived of marriage as being consummated by divine action. Such
beliefs lead directly to the concept of the indissolubility of the marital
state regardless of the circumstances or wishes of the contracting parties.
But the very fact of marriage dissolution itself indicates that Deity is not a
conjoining party to such unions. If God has once joined any two things or
persons together, they will remain thus joined until such a time as the divine
will decrees their separation. But, regarding marriage, which is a human
institution, who shall presume to sit in judgment, to say which marriages are
unions that might be approved by the universe supervisors in contrast with
those which are purely human in nature and origin?
83:8.5 Nevertheless, there is an ideal of marriage
on the spheres on high. On the capital of each local system the Material Sons
and Daughters of God do portray the height of the ideals of the union of man
and woman in the bonds of marriage and for the purpose of procreating and
rearing offspring. After all, the ideal mortal marriage is humanly
sacred.
83:8.6 Marriage always has been and still is man's
supreme dream of temporal ideality. Though this beautiful dream is seldom
realized in its entirety, it endures as a glorious ideal, ever luring
progressing mankind on to greater strivings for human happiness. But young men
and women should be taught something of the realities of marriage before they
are plunged into the exacting demands of the interassociations of family life;
youthful idealization should be tempered with some degree of premarital
disillusionment.
83:8.7 The youthful idealization of marriage should
not, however, be discouraged; such dreams are the visualization of the future
goal of family life. This attitude is both stimulating and helpful providing
it does not produce an insensitivity to the realization of the practical and
commonplace requirements of marriage and subsequent family life.
83:8.8 The ideals of marriage have made great
progress in recent times; among some peoples woman enjoys practically equal
rights with her consort. In concept, at least, the family is becoming a loyal
partnership for rearing offspring, accompanied by sexual fidelity. But even
this newer version of marriage need not presume to swing so far to the extreme
as to confer mutual monopoly of all personality and individuality. Marriage is
not just an individualistic ideal; it is the evolving social partnership of a
man and a woman, existing and functioning under the current mores, restricted
by the taboos, and enforced by the laws and regulations of society.
83:8.9 Twentieth-century marriages stand high in
comparison with those of past ages, notwithstanding that the home institution
is now undergoing a serious testing because of the problems so suddenly thrust
upon the social organization by the precipitate augmentation of woman's
liberties, rights so long denied her in the tardy evolution of the mores of
past generations.
83:8.10 Presented
by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.
