CHAPTER XV
PROHIBITION OF MARRIAGE BETWEEN KINDRED
(_Concluded_)
It has been asserted that, if there be really an innate horror of incest, it ought to show itself intuitively when persons are ignorant of any relationship. But ancient writers state that, in Rome, incestuous unions often resulted from the exposure of infants who were reared by slave-dealers. Not long ago Selim Pasha unwittingly married his sister, who, like himself, had been a Circassian slave. The story told in the ‘Heptameron’ of a double incest was probably true, and became widely spread; and so on. Man has thus no horror of marriage with even the nearest kindred if he is unaware of their consanguinity; consequently, Mr. Huth concludes, there is no innate feeling against incest.[1903]
Of course I agree with Mr. Huth in thinking that there is no innate aversion to marriage with _near relations_. What I maintain is, that there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as such persons are in most cases related, this feeling displays itself chiefly as a horror of intercourse between near kin.
The existence of an innate aversion of this kind has been taken by various writers as a psychological fact proved by common experience;[1904] and it seems impossible otherwise to explain the feeling which makes the relationships between parents and children, and brothers and sisters, so free from all sexual excitement. But the chief evidence is afforded by an abundance of ethnographical facts which prove that it is not, in the first place, by the degrees of consanguinity, but by the close living together that prohibitory laws against intermarriage are determined.
Egede asserts that, among the Greenlanders, it would be reckoned uncouth and blamable, if a lad and a girl who had served and been educated in one family, desired to be married to one another;[1905] and, according to Dr. Nansen, it is preferred that the contracting parties should belong to different settlements.[1906] Colonel Macpherson states that, among the Kandhs, marriage cannot take place even with strangers who have been long adopted into, or domesticated with, a tribe.[1907] And Mr. Cousins writes to me that the Cis-Natalian Kafirs dislike marriage between persons who live very closely together, whether related or not. In the Northern New Hebrides, a girl betrothed in childhood is sometimes taken to her future father-in-law’s house and brought up there. Dr. Codrington says that “the boy often thinks she is his sister, and is much ashamed when he comes to know the relation in which he stands.”[1908]
Many peoples have a rule of exogamy that does not depend on kinship at all. Piedrahita relates of the Panches of Bogota that the men and women of one town did not intermarry, as they held themselves to be brothers and sisters, and the impediment of kinship was sacred to them; but such was their ignorance that, if a sister were born in a different town from her brother, he was not prevented from marrying her.[1909] The Yaméos, on the river Amazons, will not suffer an intermarriage between members of the same community, “as being friends in blood, though no real affinity between them can be proved.”[1910] The Uaupés, according to Mr. Wallace, “do not often marry with relations, or even neighbours, preferring those from a distance, or even from other tribes.”[1911] The Australian tribe, as Mr. Howitt points out, is organized in two ways. On the one hand, it is divided socially into phratries and clans; and, on the other hand, it is divided geographically into hordes. The two organizations are co-existent, but the divisions of the one do not correspond with those of the other. For while all the people who belong to any given local group are found in one locality alone, those who belong to any given social group are to be found distributed among many, if not among all, of the local groups. Now, in many tribes, local proximity by birth is quite an insuperable obstacle to marriage, a man being absolutely forbidden to marry, or have sexual intercourse with, a woman of the same horde or sub-horde. “However eligible she may be in other respects,” says Mr. Howitt, “the fact that both parties belong to the same locality is held by certain tribes, the Kurnai, for example, to make them ‘too near each other.’” It is chiefly in tribes where the clan-system has been weakened, or has become almost extinct, that the local organization has assumed such overwhelming preponderance, but even in some of the tribes which have a vigorous clan-system, local restraints upon marriage are strictly enforced.[1912] In Sumatra, according to Mr. Forbes, the country was originally divided into native districts called “margas,” each marga, as a rule, having its several villages. Each of these village communities is a collection of families, either related or not to each other by the ties of blood;[1913] and we know that, at least among certain tribes, marriage between members of the same village or village cluster, and in some districts even between those of the same marga, is prohibited.[1914] The Kotars of the Neilgherries,[1915] Galela,[1916] Fijians,[1917] Zulus,[1918] Wakamba,[1919] and Kamchadales[1920] avoid, as a rule, marriage with members of the same village. So also do the Nogai, who consider it most honest for a man to marry a woman whom he has never seen before.[1921] In various of the smaller islands belonging to the Indian Archipelago, according to Riedel, women prefer marriage with strangers.[1922] The Assamese have a national festival named the “Baisakh Bihu,” which is as gay as a carnival, the women, and especially the maidens, enjoying unusual liberty as long as it lasts. “For many days before the actual festival,” says Colonel Dalton, “the young people in the villages may be seen moving about in groups gaily dressed or forming circles, in the midst of which the prettiest girls dance with their long hair loose on their shoulders.” But on these occasions the girls “do not like to dance before the men of their own village.”[1923] Professor Kovalevsky observes that, in some parts of Russia, the bride is always taken from another village than the bridegroom’s; and, even in provinces in which no similar custom is known to exist, “the bridegroom is constantly spoken of as a foreigner (‘choujoy,’ ‘choujaninin’), and his friends and attendants are represented as coming with him from a distant country, in order to take away the future spouse.”[1924] Sir Richard Burton says, “As a general rule Somali women prefer _amourettes_ with strangers, following the well-known Arab proverb, ‘The new comer filleth the eye.’”[1925]
We have seen how variously defined the prohibited degrees are in the laws of nations. Facts show that the extent to which relatives are not allowed to intermarry is nearly connected with their close living together. Generally speaking, the prohibited degrees are extended much farther among savage and barbarous peoples than in civilized societies. As a rule, the former, if they have not remained in the most primitive social condition of man, live, not in separate families, but in large households or communities, all the members of which dwell in very close contact with each other.
The communism in the family life of the exogamous Indians of North America has been exhaustively illustrated by Mr. Morgan in his work on ‘Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.’ “The household of the Mandans,” he says, “consisting of from twenty to forty persons, the households of the Columbian tribes of about the same number, the Soshonee household of seven families, the households of the Sauks, of the Iroquois, and of the Creeks, each composed of several families, are fair types of the households of the Northern Indians at the epoch of their discovery. The fact is also established that these tribes constructed, as a rule, large joint tenement houses, each of which was occupied by a large household composed of several families, among whom provisions were in common, and who practised communism in living in the household.”[1926] Among the Iroquois, each household was made up on the principle of kinship through females, so that the married women, usually sisters, own or collateral, being of the same gens or clan, together with their children made a family circle, within which, as we have seen, intermarriage was entirely prohibited.[1927] The Senel in California live sometimes from twenty to thirty together in the same immense dome-shaped or oblong lodge of willow-poles, including all who are blood relations.[1928] According to Egede, the Greenlanders, who prohibit marriage between cousins, continue after marriage to live in their parents’ house together with other kindred; and what they get they all enjoy in common.[1929] The Chippewas, who consider cousins german in the same light as brothers and sisters, but do not recognize relationship beyond this degree, are divided into small bands consisting of but few families each.[1930] Among the exogamous Uaupés, the houses are the abode of numerous families, and sometimes of a whole horde.[1931] Among the Yahgans, who regard marriage between first and second cousins as incestuous, “occasionally as many as five families are to be found living in a wigwam, but generally two families.”[1932]
The Australian aborigines live mostly in small hordes, often consisting of from thirty to fifty men, women, and children. Such a horde, according to Mr. Brough Smyth, “is in fact but an enlargement of a family circle, and none within it can intermarry.”[1933] Among the Efatese, in whose clan-system the prohibition of incest is a fundamental law, each clan is regarded as one family. “A child of _a_,” says Mr. Macdonald, “calls her own mother mother, and all her mother’s tribe (clan) sisters mother; and calls by the name of father not only her own father but all his tribe (clan) brothers; and they all call the child their child.”[1934] The Malays, according to Professor Wilken, live, as a rule, in large houses containing a great number of differently related persons.[1935] “In Nanusa,” Dr. Hickson remarks, “I understood that marriage was not permitted between members of the same household. The enormous households of the Nanusa archipelago are probably the remnants of a much more complete system of intra-tribal clanships, which has become almost obliterated in the more highly developed races of Sangir and Siauw.”[1936] Among the Nairs, a household, the members of which are strictly prohibited from sexual relation with each other, includes, as a rule, many allied men, women, and children, who not only live together in large common houses, but possess everything in common.[1937] Among the Kafirs, the dimensions of a kraal are determined by the number of a man’s family and dependants, the family consisting of the father together with his children, including married sons.[1938]
The South Slavonians live in house-communities, each consisting of a body of from fifteen to sixty members or even more, who are blood-relations to the second or third degree, of course only on the male side.[1939] These related families associate in a common dwelling or group of dwellings, governed by a common chief. “At the present moment,” Sir Henry Maine remarks, “the common residence of so many persons of both sexes in the same household may be said to be only possible through their belief that any union of kinsmen and kinswomen would be incestuous. The South Slavonian table of prohibited degrees is extremely wide.”[1940] Again, Professor Kohler points out the connection between the extensive prohibitions of the Hindus and their large households.[1941] In Wales there existed, as a national institution, a joint-family called “trev,” consisting of four generations. Marriage, says Mr. Lewis, was to be “outside the trev, or kindred who lived together within one enclosure.”[1942]
Montesquieu, indeed, observed long ago that marriage between cousins was prohibited by peoples among whom brothers and their children used to live in the same house. “Chez ces peuples,” he says, “le mariage entre cousins germains doit être regardé comme contraire à la nature; chez les autres, non.” According to him, this prohibition has the same origin as the aversion to sexual relations between brothers and sisters, _i.e._, “les pères et les mères ayent voulu conserver les mœurs de leurs enfans et leurs maisons pures.”[1943] Holding a similar opinion, Dr. Bertillon maintains that, properly speaking, it was not consanguinity, but the purity of home, that the ancient legislators were thinking of when they forbade close intermarriage.[1944] It is scarcely necessary to say how far I am from thinking that these prohibitions are, in the first place, due to the providence of parents or legislators.
On the other hand, where the families live more separately such extensive prohibitions to close intermarrying do not generally exist. Among the Isánna Indians of Brazil, who prefer marriage with relations, cousins with cousins, uncles with nieces, and nephews with aunts, each family has a separate house.[1945] The endogamous Maoris, who frequently marry near relations, have their villages generally scattered over a large plot of ground, the personal rights of possession being held most sacred.[1946] “There is no national bond of union amongst them,” says Mr. Yate; “each one is jealous of the authority and power of his neighbour; the hand of each individual is against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”[1947] Among the Todas, who live in strict endogamy, families reside in permanent villages having each a certain tract of grazing ground around it, and containing from two to three huts. Most of these huts consist of only one room or cabin, and each room holds one entire subdivision of a family.[1948] The Bushmans, among whom no degree of consanguinity prevents a matrimonial connection, except between brothers and sisters, parents and children,[1949] live a solitary life in small family huts, not high enough to admit even of a Bushman standing upright within it.[1950] As regards the Wanyoro, whose table of prohibited degrees is unusually small, Emin Pasha states, “Brother, sister, brother-in-law, and son-in-law, are the recognized grades of relationship. I have never noticed any intimate connection between more distant relations.”[1951]
The Sinhalese, who frequently marry their cousins on the paternal side, have from time immemorial lived either in very small villages, consisting of a few houses, or in detached habitations, separated from each other. Each dwelling is a little establishment in itself, and each little village, so far as its wants are concerned, may be considered independent. “They seldom visit each other, except it be to beg or borrow something. Even near relations manifest no affection to each other in their visits, but sit with the gravity of strangers.”[1952]
It is easy to explain, says Ewald, why, among the Hebrews, marriage between brothers and sisters in the widest sense was forbidden, while that between cousins was permitted:—“The latter did not form one united household, and the more each house stood strictly by itself in the ancient fashion, the wider seemed the separation between cousins.”[1953] Tacitus states that the ancient Germans, whose prohibitions against incest seem to have included only the nearest relations, lived in scattered families at some distance from each other.[1954] And a comparison between the forbidden degrees of the Greeks and Romans clearly shows where we have to seek the real cause of the prohibitions. Among the former, even very close relationship was no hindrance to intermarriage, whereas, among the latter, it was not allowed between rather distantly related persons. This difference, as Rossbach justly points out, was due to the fact that the family feeling of the Greeks was much weaker than that of the Romans, among whom, in early times, a son used to remain in his father’s house even after marriage, so that cousins on the father’s side were brought up as brothers and sisters. Later on, the several families separated from the common household, and the prohibited degrees were considerably retrenched.[1955]
The reader may perhaps be disposed to reproach me for selecting only such instances as are in favour of my theory; but statistical data will show that such an imputation would be groundless. In speaking of the “classificatory system of relationship,” I pointed out that this system springs, to a great extent, from the close living together of considerable numbers of kinsfolk. Now it is most interesting to note that Dr. Tylor, by his method of adhesions, has found the two institutions, exogamy and classificatory relationship, to be in fact two sides of one institution. “In reckoning,” he says, “from the present schedules the number of peoples who use relationship names more or less corresponding to the classificatory systems here considered, they are found to be fifty-three, and the estimated number of these which might coincide accidentally with exogamy, were there no close connection between them, would be about twelve. But in fact the number of peoples who have both exogamy and classification is thirty-three, this strong coincidence being the measure of the close casual connection subsisting between the two institutions. The adherence is even stronger as to cross-cousin marriage (_i.e._, that the children of two brothers may not marry, nor the children of two sisters, though the child of the brother may marry the child of the sister), of which twenty-one cases appear in the schedules, no less than fifteen of the peoples practising it being also known as exogamous.”[1956] Among the Reddies, a father’s elder brother and a mother’s elder sister are called, respectively, “great-father” and “great mother,” and a father’s younger brother and a mother’s younger sister, respectively, “lesser-father” and “lesser mother”; whereas the father’s sisters and the mother’s brothers are denoted by quite different terms. Mr. Kearns remarks that they consider the difference as well as the distance of relationship between these two groups of relations to be so great that they think it unlawful and incestuous to marry the daughter of a father’s brother or of a mother’s sister, she being equal to a sister, whilst it is perfectly legal to marry the daughter of a father’s sister or of a mother’s brother.[1957]
We have seen that the prohibitions against incest are very often more or less one-sided, applying more extensively either to the relations on the father’s side or to those on the mother’s, according as descent is reckoned through men or women. We have also seen that the line of descent is intimately connected with local relationships; and we may now fairly infer that the same local relationships exercise a considerable influence on the table of prohibited degrees. Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, says Marsden, a marriage must not take place between relations within the third degree; “but there are exceptions for the descendants of females who, passing into other families, become as strangers.”[1958] A Chinese woman, on marriage, alienates herself from her own family to be incorporated into that of her husband; hence, as Mr. Medhurst observes, children of brothers and sisters may marry at pleasure, while those of brothers cannot be united on pain of death.[1959]
In a large number of cases, prohibitions of intermarriage are only indirectly influenced by the close living together. Aversion to the intermarriage of persons who live in intimate connection with each other has provoked prohibitions of the intermarriage of relations; and, as kinship is traced by means of a system of names, the name comes to be considered identical with relationship. This system, as Dr. Tylor remarks,[1960] is necessarily one-sided. Though it will keep up the record of descent either on the male or female side, it cannot do both at once. The other line, not having been kept up by such means of record, even where it is recognized as a line of relationship, is more or less neglected, and is soon forgotten; hence the prohibited degrees often extend very far on the one side, but not on the other. We have seen many instances of a common surname being a bar to intermarriage. This is especially the case with peoples among whom the clannish feeling is highly developed. Thus even the commonest Chinese are often able to trace their descent through lines of ancestry more remote than any that England’s most ancient families can claim.[1961] And, among the Ossetes, a man is bound to take blood-revenge for a cousin a hundred times removed who bears his name, whereas relationship on the mother’s side is not recognized.[1962]
Generally speaking, the feeling that two persons are intimately connected in some way or other may, through an association of ideas, give rise to the notion that marriage or intercourse between them is incestuous. Hence the prohibitions of marriage between relations by alliance and by adoption. Hence, too, the prohibitions on the ground of what is called “spiritual relationship.” The Emperor Justinian passed a law forbidding any man to marry a woman for whom he had stood as godfather in baptism, the tie of the godfather and godchild being so analogous to that of the father and child as to make such a marriage appear improper.[1963] In the Roman Church sponsorship creates a bar to the marriage even of co-sponsors, and the restriction can be removed only by a dispensation.[1964] In Eastern Europe, the groomsman at a wedding comes under a set of rules which forbids intermarriage with the family of the bride to exactly the same extent as if he were naturally the brother of the bridegroom.[1965] A similar _cognatio spiritualis_, according to the old law-books of India, occurs between a pupil and his “guru,” that is, the teacher who instructs him in the Veda. The pupil lived in his guru’s house for several years, and regarded him almost as a father.[1966] Hence adultery with a guru’s wife was considered a mortal sin.[1967]
But how, then, are we to explain the exceptions, apparent or real, to the rule that close living together inspires an aversion to intermarriage? How are we to explain the fact that, besides tribes that are exogamous, there are others that are endogamous, and that, besides peoples with very extensive laws against intermarriage, there are others among whom unions take place between very near relations, such as brothers and sisters, and even parents and children.
In the next chapter we shall examine the psychological principle which underlies the endogamous marriage. For the present it is sufficient to say that endogamy never, except in cases of extreme isolation, seems to occur among peoples living in very small communities with close connections between their members. Concerning the Australians, Mr. Curr expressly states that those tribes which are endogamous are, as a rule, stronger in numbers than those in which exogamous marriage obtains.[1968]
The marriage of brother and sister means, as we have seen, in most cases, marriage between a half-brother and a half-sister, having the same father but different mothers. Such marriages are not necessarily contrary to the principle here laid down. Polygyny breaks up the one family into as many sub-families as there are wives who have children, and it is not possible for the father of these sub-families to be a member of each of them in the same sense as the father is a member of the monogamous family. Nor are the children of the different mothers brought into such close contact as the children of one mother, every wife with her own family forming a little separate group, and generally living in a separate hut.[1969] On the contrary, hatred and rivalry are of no rare occurrence among the members of the various sub-families. In the Pelew Islands, according to Herr Kubary, it very seldom happens that the several wives of the same man even see each other.[1970] After speaking of the marriage of half-brother and half-sister allowed among the ancient Arabs, Professor Robertson Smith remarks, “Whatever is the origin of bars to marriage, they certainly are early associated with the feeling that it is indecent for housemates to intermarry.”[1971]
Most of the recorded instances of intermarriage of brother and sister refer to royal families, to the exclusion of others; and there is no difficulty in accounting for incestuous unions of this sort. Among lower races, as well as in Europe, it is considered improper for royal persons to contract marriage with persons of less exalted birth. But whilst European princes may go to some friendly Court for their consorts, a similar course is not open to African or Asiatic potentates.
Incestuous unions may also take place on account of necessity, as among the Wa-taïta, or on account of extreme isolation, as among the Karens of the Tenasserim Provinces,[1972] several of the small tribes of Brazil, and especially the Veddahs of Ceylon. Among the wild Veddahs, the different families are separated from each other by great distances, and it is only accidentally or occasionally that any others besides the members of one family are brought together.[1973] The reason for the practice of marrying a sister, says Professor Virchow, “was probably the same everywhere, in the royal families as with the naked Veddahs, the lack of suitable women or of women altogether.”[1974]
Certain instances of incestuous connection are evidently the results of vitiated instincts, the origin of which we are not able to trace. It is a remarkable fact that several of the peoples among whom incestuous intercourse is said to be practised are, at the same time, expressly stated to indulge in bestiality or other unnatural vices.[1975] This shows that their sexual feelings are altogether in a perverted state.
Much stress has been laid by anthropologists on the few instances of peoples who habitually or occasionally contract unions which we should consider criminal. They have been taken for surviving types of the primitive condition of man, proving that “sentiments such as those which among ourselves restrain the sexual instincts are not innate.”[1976] But it is obvious that they prove nothing of the kind. Students of early history have often paid too much regard to exceptions, and too little to rules, overlooking the fact that there is no rule which has no exceptions.
It may be objected that no feeling of incest exists among the lower animals.[1977] According to Mr. Huth, incest “is constantly practised by animals, and habitually by those which are polygamous.”[1978] But, as we have previously seen, among species that live in families, the young, without exception, leave the family as soon as they are able to shift for themselves; and Mr. Huth has adduced not the slightest evidence for his statement that “polygamy among animals means the closest incest.”[1979]
The hypothesis here advocated can, I think, account for all the facts given in the last chapter. It explains how the horror of incest may be independent of experience as well as of education; why the horror of incest refers not only to relations by blood, but very frequently to persons not at all so related; why the prohibitions of consanguineous marriages vary so considerably with regard to the prohibited degrees, applying, however, almost universally to persons who live in the closest contact with each other; and why these prohibitions are so commonly extended much farther on the one side, the paternal or the maternal, than on the other. The question now arises:—How has this instinctive aversion to marriage between persons living closely together originated?
* * * * *
We have seen that a certain degree of similarity as regards the reproductive system of two individuals is required to make their union fertile and the progeny resulting from this union fully capable of propagation. It might, then, be supposed that the highest degree of similarity must be the most beneficial; but in all probability this is not the case. It seems to be necessary not only that the sexual elements which unite shall be somewhat like, but that they shall be in some way different. The similarity must not be _too_ great.
Mr. Darwin, by his careful studies on the effects of cross- and self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom, contributed more largely than any one else to the discovery of this law. He watched, from germination to maturity, more than a thousand individual plants, produced by crossing and self-fertilization, belonging to fifty-seven species, fifty-two genera, and thirty large families, and including natives of the most various countries.[1980] The result established by this research was, that cross-fertilization is generally beneficial, and self-fertilization injurious; which is shown by the difference in height, weight, constitutional vigour, and fertility of the offspring from crossed and self-fertilized flowers, and in the number of seeds produced by the parent-plants.[1981] Hence, whenever plants which are the offspring of self-fertilization are opposed in the struggle for existence to the offspring of cross-fertilization, the latter have the advantage. And this follows, according to Mr. Darwin, from individuals of two distinct kinds having been subjected during previous generations to different conditions, or to their having varied from some unknown cause in a manner commonly called spontaneous, because of that innate tendency to vary and to advance in organization which exists in all beings; so that in either case their sexual elements have been in some degree differentiated.[1982]
As for the animal kingdom, Mr. Darwin remarks that almost all who have bred many kinds of animals, and have written on the subject, have expressed the strongest conviction on the evil effects of close interbreeding.[1983] “Indeed,” says Sir J. Sebright, “I have no doubt but that, by this practice being continued, animals would, in course of time, degenerate to such a degree as to become incapable of breeding at all.... I have tried many experiments by breeding in-and-in upon dogs, fowls, and pigeons; the dogs became, from strong spaniels, weak and diminutive lap-dogs, the fowls became long in the legs, small in the body, and bad breeders.”[1984] Mr. Huth, on the other hand, denies that breeding in-and-in, however close, has proved to be in itself hurtful, and quotes the evidence of numerous breeders whose choicest stocks have always been so bred. But in these cases, as Mr. Wallace remarks, “there has been rigid selection by which the weak or the infertile have been eliminated, and with such selection there is no doubt that the ill effects of close interbreeding can be prevented for a long time; but this by no means proves that no ill effects are produced.”[1985] The consensus of opinion on this point among eminent breeders is indeed overwhelming, and cannot be reasoned away. According to Crampe’s experiment with the brown rat (_Mus decumanus_), thirty-nine animals out of 153 born by related parents, _i.e._, 25·5 per cent., died soon after birth, whereas of 299 animals of parents not related this was the case with twenty-eight only, _i.e._, 8·4 per cent. The animals of incestuous broods were much smaller and lighter than others, and their fecundity was diminished.[1986] Mr. Huth himself observed, when breeding rabbits in-and-in, that “after the fourth generation there was a diminution of fecundity analogous to the disgust that the stomach would feel at the same diet long continued,” though he found no evil effect in any other way. On the contrary, the in-and-in bred offspring were somewhat heavier than the non-related parent animals.[1987] Professor Preyer has made a similar observation with regard to guinea-pigs: breeding in-and-in produced a considerable loss of fertility, but was accompanied with an increase of weight.[1988] This seems to indicate that the effects of close interbreeding are not always the same.
There are certainly breeders who prefer connecting together the animals nearest allied in blood to one another. But, as Dr. Mitchell observes, “when breeding in-and-in has been practised with so-called good results, the issue is nothing but the development of a saleable defect, which, from the animal’s point of view, must be regarded as wholly unnatural and artificial, and not calculated to promote its well-being or natural usefulness.”[1989]
Many writers suppose that all the evils from close interbreeding depend upon the combination and consequent increase of morbid tendencies common to both parents, the state of whose health decides whether union would be favourable or not to the offspring. “If the parents are perfectly healthy,” says M. Pouchet, “and exempt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children _at least_ as healthy as themselves.... But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire disappearance.”[1990] The same opinion is held by Sir John Sebright. But being, as an experienced breeder, well aware of the injurious results which almost always follow from interbreeding animals too closely, he adds that, according to his belief, there never did exist an animal without some defect, in constitution, in form, or in some other essential quality, or that at least a tendency to the same imperfection generally prevails in the same family.[1991]
Mr. Darwin, however, has shown it to be highly probable that, though the injury has often partly resulted from the combination of morbid tendencies, the general cause is different. Considering the number of self-fertilized plants that were tried, he thinks it is nothing less than absurd to suppose that in all these cases the mother-plants, though not appearing in any way diseased, were weak or unhealthy in so peculiar a manner that their self-fertilized seedlings, many hundreds in number, were rendered inferior in height, weight, constitutional vigour, and fertility to their crossed offspring.[1992] Moreover, self-fertilization and close interbreeding induce sterility, and this indicates something quite different from the augmentation of morbid tendencies common to both parents.[1993] Hence it seems to be almost beyond doubt that, just as the sterility of distinct species when first crossed, and of their hybrid offspring, depends on their sexual elements having been differentiated in too great a degree, the evils of close interbreeding, or self-fertilization in plants, result chiefly from their sexual elements not having been sufficiently differentiated. But we do not know why a certain amount of differentiation is necessary or favourable for the fertilization or union of two organisms, any more than for the chemical affinity or union of two substances.[1994] It must, however, be observed that no case of complete sterility is met with in self-fertilized seedlings, as is so common with hybrids,[1995] and that interbreeding even of the nearest relations may sometimes, under very favourable circumstances, be continued through several generations without any evil results making their appearance.
It is impossible to believe that a law which holds good for the rest of the animal kingdom, as well as for plants, does not apply to man also. But it is difficult to adduce direct evidence for the evil effects of consanguineous marriages. We cannot expect very conspicuous results from other alliances than those between the nearest relations—between brothers and sisters, parents and children. And the injurious results even of such unions would not necessarily appear at once. Sir J. Sebright remarks that there may be families of domestic animals which go through several generations without sustaining much injury from having been bred in-and-in,[1996] and the offspring of self-fertilized plants do not always show any loss of vigour in the first generations. Man cannot, in this respect, be subjected to experiments like those tried in the case of other animals, and habitual intermarriage of the very nearest relations is, as we have seen, exceedingly rare. Mr. Adam argues that there is no proof of the physical deterioration of those divisions of mankind amongst whom incestuous unions are known more or less to have prevailed—as the Egyptians and Persians.[1997] But among these nations marriage certainly did not always take place between closely related persons; and breeders of domestic animals inform us that the mixing-in even of a drop of unrelated blood is sufficient almost to neutralize the injurious effects of long continued close interbreeding. Again, Mr. Huth asserts that, though the Ptolemies habitually married their sisters, nieces, and cousins, they were neither sterile nor particularly short-lived.[1998] Mr. Galton, on the contrary, sees in Ptolemaic experience a proof that close intermarriage is followed by sterility.[1999] In ten marriages between brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, or between first-cousins, the average number of children was not quite two, and three of the unions were entirely sterile.[2000]
The Veddahs of Ceylon are probably the most in-and-in bred people that ever existed. Among them, the practice of a man marrying his younger sister did not occur only occasionally; according to Mr. Bailey, it was _the_ proper marriage. Among the Bintenne Veddahs, it may be said to have been, for perhaps two generations or so, extinct, whilst among those of Nilgala, it is at most only disappearing. Mr. Bailey believes that this practice is quite sufficient to account for the short stature as well as the weak and vacant expression of this people. He did not find many traces of insanity, idiocy, and epilepsy—maladies which such marriages, according to a common belief, might be supposed to produce. “But in other respects,” he says, “the injurious effects of this custom would seem to be plainly discernible. The race is rapidly becoming extinct; large families are all but unknown, and longevity is very rare. I have been at some pains to obtain reliable data to elucidate these points. Out of seventy-two Veddahs in Nilgala, fifty were adults, and twenty-two children. In one small sept, or family, there were nine adults and one child; in another, one child and eight adults; and so on. In Bintenne, out of three hundred and eight Veddahs, a hundred and seventy-five were adults and a hundred and thirty-three children. Here the disproportion is not so marked; but in one of the smaller tribes, more isolated than the rest, there were twenty adults, and but four children. The paucity of children, I think, must be ascribed to the degeneracy produced by such close intermarriages, for I have never heard a suspicion of infanticide existing among them. Out of fifty adults in Nilgala, only one appeared to have numbered seventy years, and but eight to have exceeded fifty. In Bintenne, of a hundred and seventy-five adults, two only seemed to have reached their seventieth, and but fourteen to have exceeded their fiftieth year. Such statistics seem to show the practical results of such connections. The Nilgala Veddahs, who still maintain an almost total isolation from other people, are rapidly disappearing. The Veddahs of Bintenne, who have abandoned the pernicious custom which I have described, and still intermarry among themselves, are becoming extinct, though more gradually.”[2001]
With the exception of this case, the closest kind of intermarriage which we have opportunities of studying is that between first cousins. Unfortunately, the observations hitherto made on the subject are far from decisive. Several writers, as M. Périer, Dr. Voisin, and Mr. Huth, believe that there are no injurious results at all from those marriages, unless the parents are afflicted with the same hereditary morbid tendencies,[2002] whilst others, as M. Devay and M. Boudin, express the most alarming opinions as to the bad effects of consanguineous marriages. Such alliances are supposed to bring evils of many different kinds upon a population, as sterility, idiocy, epilepsy, insanity, deaf-muteism, congenital malformations in the offspring, cretinism, albinoism,[2003] &c. But how little the statements of the various writers agree with each other appears, for instance, from the fact that M. Boudin found the proportion of deaf-mutes born in consanguineous marriages, in the Imperial Institution of Deaf-Mutes at Paris, to be 28·35 per cent., whereas, according to Dr. Mitchell, it amounts to 5·17 per cent. in Scotch and English institutions.[2004]
As it is impossible to dwell here upon the investigations of the several writers, of which Mr. Huth has given so complete an account, I shall confine myself to a statement of the general results attained by those investigators who have founded their inquiries on a more trustworthy statistical basis.
Adopting a method different from that of his predecessors, Professor G. H. Darwin has endeavoured first to discover the proportion of consanguineous marriages in the whole population, and then to find out whether the offspring of those marriages exhibit a greater percentage of individuals, defective in one way or another, than the offspring of non-consanguineous marriages. His investigations tend decidedly to invalidate the exaggerated conclusions of many previous writers, but he thinks that “there are nevertheless grounds for asserting that various maladies take an easy hold of the offspring of consanguineous marriages.”[2005] He did not find evidence that the marriage of first cousins had any effect in the production of infertility, deaf-muteism, insanity, or idiocy, but he observed a slightly lowered vitality amongst the offspring of first cousins, and a somewhat higher death-rate than amongst the families of non-consanguineous marriages.[2006] Moreover, the numbers of boating men belonging to the twenty boats at Oxford and thirty at Cambridge, in the first and second division, and those of selected athletes from some schools in England, justified, to some extent, the belief “that offspring of first cousins are deficient physically, whilst at the same time they negative the views of alarmist writers on the subject.”[2007] It is curious that, in spite of such unambiguous statements, Mr. Darwin’s paper has generally been quoted as an evidence of the perfect harmlessness of first cousin marriages.
M. Stieda has found that, in the departments of France, the number of bodily or mentally infirm people increases almost constantly in proportion to the number of consanguineous marriages, as will be seen from the following table:—
Number of Number of consanguineous Number of Group. departments. marriages in infirm people in each thousand each thousand marriages. inhabitants.
I. 10 5·4 2·3 II. 10 8·3 2·8 III. 14 9·95 3 IV. 10 11·2 2·4 V. 13 12·5 2·8 VI. 8 13·8 3 VII. 14 15·8 3·5 VIII. 10 19·2 3·25 —————————————————————————————————-———————————-———————————-—————-— I.—IV. 44 9·2 2·65 V.—VIII. 45 14·8 3·1[2008]
The Danish physician, Dr. Mygge, published in 1879 a book on ‘Marriage between Blood-Relations,’ which unfortunately has received much less attention than it deserves.[2009] Thanks to the trustworthiness of the method, the number of cases considered, and the author’s impartiality, it is probably the most important statistical contribution hitherto issued on this subject. Dr. Mygge found, from the information he received from various parts of Denmark, that in that country, or at least in the parishes of it which came under his observation, there occur, among the children of related persons, comparatively more idiots, lunatics, epileptics, and deaf-mutes than among others. He considers it probable, too, though not proved, that such children die in a higher ratio and are more liable to certain diseases. But, on the other hand, he did not notice any perceptible difference in fertility between consanguineous and crossed marriages.[2010]
In these inquiries, Dr. Mygge followed the method applied by the Norwegian physician Ludvig Dahl twenty years earlier. Through careful investigation of 246 marriages, eighty-five of which were between first cousins and four between still nearer relations, this inquirer was led to the conclusions that consanguineous marriages are somewhat less fertile than crossed marriages; that they produce comparatively many more still-born and sickly children; and that insanity, idiocy, deaf-dumbness, and epilepsy occur about eleven times as often among the offspring of relations, as among the offspring of unrelated parents. But he admitted that the numbers compared were too small to make his conclusions decisive.[2011]
These results are of course to a great extent conjectural. But it is noteworthy that, of all the writers who have discussed the subject, the majority, and certainly not the least able of them, have expressed their belief in marriages between first cousins being more or less unfavourable to the offspring.[2012] And no evidence which can stand the test of scientific investigation has hitherto been adduced against this view.
Some writers have, indeed, cited instances of communities where consanguineous marriages have occurred constantly without any evil effects having appeared. Thus the Pitcairn Island, uninhabited till the year 1790, was at that time peopled by nine white men, and six men and twelve women of Tahiti. In 1800 the population consisted of one man, five women, and nineteen children; and the descendants of these persons are stated by later travellers to be strong and healthy without any traces of degeneration. Omitting whatever else may be said against this case as evidence for the harmlessness of consanguineous marriages, I need only call attention to the facts that, since the colonization of this island, a few strangers have joined the little colony; that it was once removed to Norfolk Island, and that, of those who returned, one was a Norfolk Islander who had married a Pitcairn girl; that the island has frequently been visited by ships with their crews;[2013] and that, as Beechey expressly states, the same restrictions with regard to intermarriage of relations exist here as in England.[2014]
There are several isolated communities—in Java, Peru, Great Britain, France, Scandinavia, &c.—which intermarry solely among themselves without any evil effects being discernible. An often-quoted case is the community of Batz (3,300 persons), situated near Croisic on a peninsula. The inhabitants of this community have been in the habit of closely intermarrying among themselves from time immemorial. Nevertheless, they are almost all very well in health without any hereditary affection. But Dr. Voisin observes, “Les conditions climatériques de la commune de Batz, son voisinage de la mer, l’hygiène et les habitudes de ses habitants, semblent s’accorder pour empêcher la dégénérescence de l’espèce et paraissent expliquer l’innocuité des mariages entre consanguins qui s’y pratiquent depuis plusieurs siècles.”[2015] In other isolated communities the population is not so numerous, and the sanitary conditions are not perhaps so favourable: but in any case we may say that this local endogamy is generally something quite different from marriage with near relations. Dr. Mitchell found that, in almost all the isolated communities along the coasts of Scotland, which had been given as instances of close interbreeding, such marriages were comparatively rare. According to Dr. Mygge, the like is true of the population of Lyø and Strynø in Denmark.[2016] And Dr. Andrew Wood states, of the fisher-folk of Newhaven, that, though they keep themselves much segregated, they are very careful regarding intermarriage, and look upon the union of relatives as an infringement of the laws of morality.[2017]
Moreover, even if it could be proved that, in particular cases, close intermarrying, though continued for a long time, has been followed by no bad consequences, this would be no evidence that consanguineous marriages are as a rule innocuous. In some parishes of Denmark Dr. Mygge found no evil effects of such marriages, whilst in others they were very conspicuous.[2018] And from the investigations of Mr. Darwin it appears that, notwithstanding the injury which most plants suffer from self-fertilization, a few have almost certainly been propagated in a state of nature for thousands of generations without having been once intercrossed. It is impossible to understand, he says, why some individuals even of the _same species_ are sterile, whilst others are quite fertile, with their own pollen.[2019]
There is evidence that the bad consequences of self-fertilization and close interbreeding may almost fail to appear under favourable conditions of life. In-and-in bred plants, when allowed enough space and good soil, frequently show little or no deterioration: whereas, when placed in competition with another plant, they often perish or are much stunted.[2020] Crampe’s experiments with brown rats proved that the breeding in-and-in was much less injurious, if the offspring of the related parents were well fed and taken care of, than if it was otherwise.[2021] And this is in striking accordance with Dr. Mitchell’s observations as to consanguineous marriages in Scotland. The results there appear to be least grave, and are frequently almost _nil_, if the parents and children live in tolerable comfort, without anxiety or much thought for the morrow, and easily earning enough to procure good food and clothing—in short, when they work, but do not struggle for existence. On the other hand, when they are “poor, pinched for food, scrimp of clothing, badly housed, and exposed to misery; when they have to toil and struggle for the bare necessaries of life—never having enough for to-day and being always fearful of to-morrow,”—the evil may become very marked.[2022]
If this is the case, we must expect to find that consanguineous marriages are much more injurious in savage regions, where the struggle for existence is often very severe, than they have proved to be in civilized society, especially as it is among the well-off classes that such marriages occur most frequently.[2023] In England, according to Mr. G. H. Darwin, cousin-marriages among the aristocracy are probably 4½ per cent.; among the middle and upper middle class, or among the landed gentry, 3½ per cent.; but in London, comprising all classes, they are probably only 1½ per cent.[2024] He thinks that the slightness of the evils which he found to result from first-cousin marriages perhaps depends upon the fact that a large majority of Englishmen live under what are on the whole very favourable circumstances.[2025] We must also, however, remember that there has been a great mixture of races in Europe, and that this necessarily makes marriage of kinsfolk less injurious, so far as the evil results of such unions depend upon too great a likeness between the sexual elements.
The conclusion that closely related marriages produce more destructive effects among savage than civilized peoples, derives perhaps, some additional probability from certain ethnological facts. These facts may, at least, serve to show that such marriages, and the experience of isolated communities, are not everywhere in favour of Mr. Huth’s conclusions. Several statements on the subject have, indeed, scarcely any value as direct evidence for the harmfulness of consanguineous marriages, but to two or three considerable weight must be attached.
According to v. Martius, who is a great authority on Brazilian ethnography, it is a well-established fact, observed everywhere, that the smaller and more isolated of the Indian communities, scarcely any members of which marry members of other communities, are much more liable to every kind of deterioration than the larger groups.[2026] “It is probable,” Mr. Bates, another most capable judge, remarks with reference to the savage tribes on the Upper Amazons, “that the strange inflexibility of the Indian organization, both bodily and mental, is owing to the isolation in which each small tribe has lived, and to the narrow round of life and thought, and close intermarriages for countless generations, which are the necessary results. Their fecundity is of a low degree, for it is very rare to find an Indian family having so many as four children, and we have seen how great is their liability to sickness and death on removal from place to place.”[2027] Touching the Isánna Indians, Mr. Wallace asserts that they are said not to be nearly so numerous, nor to increase so rapidly, as the Uaupés; which may perhaps be owing to their marrying with relations, while the latter prefer strangers.[2028] And v. Tschudi supposes that the low fecundity of the Botocudos is caused by their endogamous habits; for when their women marry out of their own horde, especially with whites or negroes, they are generally very fertile.[2029]
The Calidonian Indians of the Isthmus of Darien, according to Mr. Gisborne, are bound never to cross the breed with foreigners; hence intermarriage is very constant, and, as he remarks, the race degenerates.[2030] The Pueblos in New Mexico, too, are said to deteriorate because of their constant intermarriage in the same village.[2031] As regards the Hottentots, Barrow remarks, “The impolitic custom of hording together in families, and of not marrying out of their own kraals, has no doubt tended to enervate this race of men, and reduced them to their present degenerated condition, which is that of a languid, listless phlegmatic people, in whom the prolific powers of nature seem to be almost exhausted.” Few of the women have more than two or three children, and many of them are barren. But this is not the case when a Hottentot woman is connected with a white man. “The fruit of such an alliance,” says Barrow, “is not only in general numerous, but they are beings of a very different nature from the Hottentot.”[2032]
In too early marriages, the licentious habits of both sexes, and the intermarriage of near relatives, the Rev. J. Sibree finds the causes of the infertility of the women of Madagascar.[2033] Among the Garos, the chiefs have, in comparison with the lower classes, degenerated physically, and Colonel Dalton is inclined to think that this degeneration is a result of close interbreeding.[2034] The Lundu Sea Dyaks, according to Sir Spenser St. John, have decreased greatly in numbers—from a thousand families to ten. “They complain bitterly,” he says, “that they have no families, that their women are not fertile; indeed, there were but three or four children in the whole place. The men were fine-looking and the women well-favoured and healthy—remarkably clean and free from disease. We could only account for their decreasing numbers by their constant intermarriages.”[2035] Mr. Foreman thinks that the low intellect and mental debility perceptible in many families among the domesticated natives of the Philippines are due to consanguineous marriages.[2036] Mr. Bachelor connects the rapid decrease of the Ainos with their endogamous habits.[2037] And Mr. Meade remarks, with regard to the Maoris, that one of the principal causes of the diminishing population is said to be their intermarriages, which cause barrenness among the women.[2038]
Of no little interest to us are the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills. Mr. Marshall remarks that, among them, relationship is intimate far beyond that witnessed in any country approaching civilization—“intimate to such a degree, that the whole tribe, where not parents and children, brothers and sisters, are all first cousins, descended from lines of first cousins prolonged for centuries.”[2039] As regards the general appearance of the people, a large proportion of both sexes and of all ages are doubtless in excellent health, and their fecundity, according to Dr. Shortt, is by no means of a low degree.[2040] Nevertheless, the Todas are dying out. In infancy the mortality is so great that, as a rule, there is in each family only a small number of children.[2041] “It is rarely that there are more than two or three children,” says the missionary Metz, “and it is not at all an uncommon thing to find only a single child, while many families have none at all.” The numbers of the Todas have, consequently, for years past been gradually declining, and probably the time is not far distant when they will have passed away.[2042] Of course, we do not know whether this depends upon their close intermarriages, but there is, at any rate, some reason to suspect that this is the case. That the intermarrying has not produced more evil effects on the population, may possibly be owing to the wealth for which the Neilgherry Hills are remarkable, and to their climate, which, for mildly invigorating properties and equable seasonal changes throughout the year, is perhaps unrivalled anywhere within the tropics.[2043]
Another very much in-and-in bred people are the Persians. Among them, husband and wife are generally of the same family, and very often cousins. Yet Dr. Polak who has lived in Persia for nine years, partly as a teacher in the medical school of Teheran, partly as physician to the Shah, and during this residence has had excellent opportunities of acquainting himself with the conditions of the people, has not observed that the diseases which are supposed to result from consanguineous marriages prevail more frequently there than elsewhere. Nor has he found that the Persian women are generally less fertile than others. Yet the families are exceedingly small, as the mortality among children is enormous. Of six, perhaps two as a rule survive, but very often none at all, most of them dying in their second year. Dr. Polak believes, indeed, that, on an average, scarcely more than one living child comes to each woman. A princess in Teheran was looked upon quite as a wonder because she had eight children alive, and the European physician was asked if he ever before, in his own country, had seen a similar case.[2044]
More important than any of these statements is the following testimony concerning the Karens of Burma, for which I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Bunker, who has been a resident among that people during more than twenty years. He says that, in some of their villages, exogamy prevails, in others endogamy, but marriages between parents and children, brothers and sisters, are prohibited everywhere, and even first cousins very seldom marry, though there is no law against such connections. There is a striking difference with regard to stature, health, strength and fecundity, between the inhabitants of the exogamous and those of the endogamous villages, the latter being much inferior in all these respects. Dr. Bunker has no doubt that this inferiority is owing to the intermarriage of kinsfolk, and he asserts that even the natives themselves ascribe it to this cause, though they obstinately keep up the old custom, regarding marriages out of their own village as highly unbecoming. In cases in which missionaries have been able to persuade young men to choose wives from another village, Dr. Bunker assures me that the good effects of a cross appeared at once.[2045]
There are some other peoples who ascribe evil results to close intermarriage. Mr. Cousins informs me that the Cis-Natalian Kafirs believe “that their offspring would be of a more sickly nature if such were allowed”; and Mr. Eyles writes that the Zulus, on the border of Pondoland, regard sterility and deformity as consequences of consanguineous unions. The Australian Dieyerie, according to Mr. Gason, have a tradition that, after the creation, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and others of the closest kin intermarried promiscuously, until the bad effects of these marriages became manifest. A council of the chiefs was then assembled to consider in what way the evil might be averted, and the result of their deliberations was a petition to the Muramura, or Good Spirit. In answer to this he ordered that the tribe should be divided into branches, and distinguished one from the other by different names, after objects animate and inanimate, such as dogs, mice, emu, rain, and so forth, and that the members of any such branch should be forbidden to marry other members of the same branch.[2046] Again, touching the Kenai, in the north-western part of North America, Richardson states, “It was the custom that the men of one stock should choose their wives from another, and the offspring belonged to the race of the mother. This custom has fallen into disuse, and marriages in the same tribe occur; but the old people say that mortality among the Kenai has arisen from the neglect of the ancient usage.”[2047]
In a Greenland Eskimo tale, the father of Kakamak, finding that all his grandchildren have died before reaching the age of puberty, suggests to his son-in-law, “Perhaps we are too near akin.”[2048] Two Mohammedan travellers of the ninth century tell us that the Hindus never married a relation, because they thought alliances between unrelated persons improved the offspring.[2049] In Hadîth, the collection of Mohammedan traditions, it is said, “Marry among strangers; thus you will not have feeble posterity.” “This view,” says Goldziher, “coincides with the opinion of the ancient Arabs that the children of endogamous marriages are weakly and lean. To this class also belongs the proverb of Al-Meydânî, ‘ ... Marry the distant, marry not the near’ (in relationship).” A poet, praising a hero, says, “He is a hero, not borne by the cousin (of his father), he is not weakly; for the seed of relations brings forth feeble fruit.”[2050]
In opposition to the view that these opinions are the results of experience, it may be urged that any infraction of the customs or laws of ancestors is commonly thought to call down divine vengeance. Father Veniaminof tells us that, among the early Aleuts, incest, which was considered the gravest crime, was believed to be always followed by the birth of monsters with walrus-tusks, beard, and other disfiguration;[2051] and among the Kafirs, according to Mr. Fynn, it is a general belief that the offspring of an incestuous union will be a monster—“a punishment inflicted by the ancestral spirit.”[2052] But whatever may be said of the other cases referred to, no such explanation can possibly hold good for the Arabs. Among them, marriage with a near relation involved no infringement of their marriage regulations. On the contrary, in spite of the opinions in favour of exogamy, the preference for marriage with a cousin was dominant among them, and a man had even a right to the hand of his “bint ‘amm,” the daughter of a paternal uncle.[2053]
Taking all these facts into consideration, I cannot but believe that consanguineous marriages, in some way or other, are more or less detrimental to the species. And here, I think, we may find a quite sufficient explanation of the horror of incest; not because man at an early stage recognized the injurious influence of close intermarriage, but because the law of natural selection must inevitably have operated. Among the ancestors of man, as among other animals, there was no doubt a time when blood-relationship was no bar to sexual intercourse. But variations, here as elsewhere, would naturally present themselves; and those of our ancestors who avoided in-and-in breeding would survive, while the others would gradually decay and ultimately perish. Thus an instinct would be developed which would be powerful enough, as a rule, to prevent injurious unions. Of course it would display itself simply as an aversion on the part of individuals to union with others with whom they lived; but these, as a matter of fact, would be blood-relations, so that the result would be the survival of the fittest.
Whether man inherited the feeling from the predecessors from whom he sprang, or whether it was developed after the evolution of distinctly human qualities, we do not know. It must necessarily have arisen at a stage when family ties became comparatively strong, and children remained with their parents until the age of puberty, or even longer. Exogamy, as a natural extension of this instinct, would arise when single families united in small hordes. It could not but grow up if the idea of union between persons intimately associated with one another was an object of innate repugnance. There is no real reason why we should assume, as so many anthropologists have done,[2054] that primitive men lived in small endogamous communities, practising incest in every degree. The theory does not accord with what is known of the customs of existing savages; and it accounts for no facts which may not be otherwise far more satisfactorily explained.
The objection will perhaps be made that the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth is too complicated a mental phenomenon to be a true instinct, acquired through spontaneous variations intensified by natural selection. But there are instincts just as complicated as this feeling, which, in fact, only implies that disgust is associated with the idea of sexual intercourse between persons who have lived in a long-continued, intimate relationship from a period of life at which the action of desire is naturally out of the question. This association is no matter of course, and certainly cannot be explained by the mere liking for novelty. It has all the characteristics of a real, powerful instinct, and bears evidently a close resemblance to the aversion to sexual intercourse with individuals belonging to another species.
* * * * *
Besides the horror of incest, there is another feeling to which reference may here be made. “L’amour,” says Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, “ ... ne résulte que des contrastes; et plus ils sont grands, plus il a d’énergie. C’est ce que je pourrois prouver par mille traits d’histoire.... L’influence des contrastes en amour est si certaine, qu’en voyant l’amant on peut faire le portrait de l’objet aimé sans l’avoir vu, pourvu qu’on sache seulement qu’il est affecté d’une forte passion.”[2055] Schopenhauer likewise observes that every person requires from the individual of the opposite sex a one-sidedness which is the opposite of his or her own. The most manly man will seek the most womanly woman, and _vice versa_. Weak or little men have a decided inclination for strong or big women, and strong or big women for weak or little men. Blondes prefer dark persons, or brunettes; snub-nosed persons, hook-nosed; persons with excessively slim, long bodies and limbs, those who are stumpy and short; and so on.[2056] A similar view is held by M. Prosper Lucas, Mr. Alexander Walker, Professor Mantegazza, Mr. Grant Allen, and other writers.[2057] “In the love of the sexes,” says Professor Bain, “the charm of disparity goes beyond the standing differences of sex; as in contrasts of complexion, and of stature.”[2058]
Some writers have suggested that love thus excited by differences is favourable to fecundity, those marriages in which it exists being more prolific than others.[2059] Thus Mr. Andrew Knight, a most experienced breeder, remarks, “I am disposed to think that the most powerful human minds will be found offspring of parents of different hereditary constitutions. I prefer a male of a different colour from the breed of the female, where that can be obtained, and I think that I have seen fine children produced in more than one instance, where one family has been dark and the other fair. I am sure that I have witnessed the bad effects of marriages between two individuals very similar to each other in character and colour, and springing from ancestry of similar character. Such have appeared to me to be like marriages between brothers and sisters.”[2060]
These statements, of course, prove nothing, but they may perhaps derive some value from the fact that they are made by so many different observers. The statistical investigation of Professor Alphonse de Candolle, bearing upon the same question, rests on firmer ground. He has found, from facts collected in Switzerland, North Germany, and Belgium, that marriages are most commonly contracted between persons with different colours of the eye, except in the case of brown-eyed women, who are generally considered more attractive than others.[2061] He has noted, further, that the number of children is considerably smaller in families where the parents have the same colour of the eye than where the reverse is the case.[2062] But Professor Wittrock could not, in Sweden, find any such difference in fecundity between the two categories of marriages;[2063] and Mr. Galton observes, “Whatever may be the sexual preferences for similarity or for contrast, I find little indication in the average results obtained from a fairly large number of cases, of any single measurable personal peculiarity, whether it be stature, temper, eye-colour or artistic tastes, influencing marriage selection to a notable degree.”[2064]
If contrasts instinctively seek each other, this may partly account for the readiness with which love awakens love. Every one knows some unhappy lover who has never been able to win the heart of the person he adores; but in most cases, I should say, love is mutual. And this, perhaps, is owing not only to the contagiousness of the passion, but also to the attractive power of contrasts, which acts equally upon both parties. Thus we might explain, to some extent, the extreme variation of tastes, and the fact that, besides the general standard of beauty common to the whole race, there exists a more detailed ideal special to each individual.