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a growing opinion that, where it is not, it ought to be so. Again, when both husband and wife desire to separate, it seems to many enlightened minds that the State has no right to prevent them from dissolving the marriage contract, provided the children are properly cared for; and that for the children, also, it is better to have the supervision of one parent only than of two who cannot agree.

CHAPTER XLI

CELIBACY

92

AMONG Savage and barbarous races of men nearly every individual endeavours to marry as soon as he, or she, reaches the age of puberty.' Marriage seems to them indispensable, and a person who abstains from it is looked upon as an unnatural being and is disdained. Among the Santals a man who remains single "is at once despised by both sexes, and is classed next to a thief, or a witch: they term the unhappy wretch No man.' Among the Kafirs a bachelor has no voice in the kraal. In the Tupi tribes of Brazil no man was suffered to partake in the drinking-feast while he remained single.* The natives of Futuna in the Western Pacific maintained that it was necessary to be married in order to hold a part in the happy future life, and that the celibates, both men and women, had to submit to a chastisement of their own before entering the fale-mate, or "home of the dead. "5 According to Fijian beliefs, he who died wifeless was stopped by the god Nangganangga on the road to Paradise, and smashed to atoms."

Among peoples of archaic culture celibacy is likewise a great exception and marriage regarded as a duty. In ancient

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Peru marriage was compulsory at a certain age. Among the Aztecs no young man lived single till his twenty-second year, unless he intended to become a priest, and for girls the customary marrying-age was from eleven to eighteen. In Tlascala, we are told, the unmarried state was so despised that a grown-up man who would not marry had his hair cut off for shame.2

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"Almost all Chinese," says Dr. Gray, " robust or infirm, well-formed or deformed, are called upon by their parents to marry as soon as they have attained the age of puberty. Were a grown-up son or daughter to die unmarried, the parents would regard it as most deplorable." Hence a young man of marriageable age, whom consumption or any other lingering disease had marked for its own, would be compelled by his parents or guardians to marry at once. So indispensable is marriage considered by the Chinese, that even the dead are married, the spirits of all males who die in infancy or in boyhood being in due time married to the spirits of females who have been cut off at a like early age. There is a maxim by Mencius, reechoed by the whole nation, that it is a heavy sin to have no sons, as this would doom father, mother, and the whole ancestry in the Nether-world to a pitiable existence without descendants enough to serve them properly, to worship at the ancestral tombs, to take care of the ancestral tablets, and duly to perform all rites and ceremonies. connected with the departed dead. For a man whose wife has reached her fortieth year without bringing him a son, it is an imperative duty to take a concubine. Corea "the male human being who is unmarried is never called a man,' whatever his age, but goes by the name of 'yatow,' a name given by the Chinese to unmarriageable young girls; and the 'man' of thirteen or fourteen has a

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1 Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 306 sq.

2 Klemm, Allgemeine Cultur-Geschichte der Menschheit, v. 46 sq. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 251 sq.

3 Gray, China, i. 186.
4 Ibid. i. 216 sq.

In

Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, i. 64, n. IO. de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 617. Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 58.

perfect right to strike, abuse, order about the 'yatow' of thirty, who dares not as much as open his lips to complain."

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Among the Semites, also, we meet with the idea that a dead man who has no children will miss something in Sheol through not receiving that kind of worship which ancestors in early times appear to have received. The Hebrews looked upon marriage as a religious duty. According to the Shulchan Aruch, he who abstains from marrying is guilty of bloodshed, diminishes the image of God, and causes the divine presence to withdraw from Israel; hence a single man past twenty may be compelled by the court to take a wife. Muhammedanism likewise regards marriage as a duty for men and women; to neglect it without a sufficient excuse subjects a reproach." "When a servant [of God] marries," said the Prophet, verily he perfects half his religion.'

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The so-called Aryan nations in ancient times, as M. Fustel de Coulanges and others have pointed out, regarded celibacy as an impiety and a misfortune: "an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because he himself would receive no worship after his death." man's happiness in the next world depended upon his having a continuous line of male descendants, whose duty it would be to make the periodical offerings for the repose of his soul. According to the 'Laws of Manu,' marriage is the twelfth Sanskāra, and as such a religious duty incumbent upon all. Among the Hindus of the present day a

1 Ross, History of Corea, p. 313. 2 Cheyne, Harlot,' in Cheyne and Black, Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1964. 3 Mayer, Rechte der Israeliten, pp. 286, 353. Lichtschein, Ehe nach mosaisch-talmudischer Auffassung, p. 5 sqq. Klugmann, Die Frau im Talmud, p. 39 sq.

Schulchan Aruch, iv. ('Eben haezer') i. 1, 3. See also Yebamoth, fol. 63 b sq., quoted by Margolis, 'Celibacy,' in Jewish Encyclopedia, iii. 636.

VOL. II

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man who is not married is generally considered to be almost a useless member of the community, and is indeed looked upon as beyond the pale of nature; and the spirits of young men who have died without becoming fathers are believed to wander about in a restless miserable manner, like people burdened with an enormous debt which they are quite unable to discharge. Similar views are expressed in Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda said to Zoroaster:-" The man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man. The greatest misfortune which could

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befall an ancient Persian was to be childless. To him who has no child the bridge of Paradise shall be barred; the first question the angels there will ask him is, whether he has left in this world a substitute for himself, and if the answer be "No" they will pass by and he will stay at the head of the bridge, full of grief. The primitive meaning of this is plain the man without a son cannot enter Paradise because there is nobody to pay him the family worship.5 Ashi Vanguhi, a feminine impersonification of piety, and the source of all the good and riches that are connected with piety, rejects the offerings of barren people-old men, courtesans, and children. It is said in the Yasts, "This is the worst deed that men and tyrants do, namely, when they deprive maids that have been barren for a long time of marrying and bringing forth children."7 And in the eyes of all good Parsis of the present day, as in the time. of king Darius and the contemporaries of Herodotus, the two greatest merits of a citizen are the begetting and rearing of a numerous family, and the fruitful tilling of the soil.8

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