their subjugation the path to fortune."1 The Jain regards pleasure in itself as sinful :-"What is discontent, and what is pleasure? One should live subject to neither. Giving up all gaiety, circumspect, restrained, one should lead a religious life." According to Buddhism, there are two causes of the misery with which life is inseparably bound up-lust and ignorance; and so there are two cures the suppression of lust and desire and the removal. of ignorance. It is said in the Dhammapada, "There is no satisfying lusts, even by a shower of gold pieces; he who knows that lusts have a short taste and cause pain, he is wise." Penances, as they were practised among the ascetics of India, were discarded by Buddha as vexatious, unworthy, unprofitable. "Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify mortal who has not overcome desires." 5 Where all contact with the earthly ceases, there, and there only, are deliverance and freedom.

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The idea that man ought to liberate himself from the bondage of earthly desires is the conclusion of a contemplative mind reflecting upon the short duration and emptiness of all bodily pleasures and the allurements by which they lead men into misery and sin. And separation from the material world is the ideal of the religious enthusiast whose highest aspiration is union with God conceived as an immaterial being, as pure spirit.

Hitopadesa, quoted by MonierWilliams, Indian Wisdom, p. 538. 2 Hopkins, op. cit. p. 291. 3 Oldenberg, op. cit. p.

212 sq.

Monier-Williams, Buddhism, p. 99. • Dhammapada, 186 sq.

5 lbid. 141. See also Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 301 sq.

CHAPTER XL

MARRIAGE

MAN's sexual nature gives rise to various modes of conduct on which moral judgments are passed. We shall first consider such relations between the sexes as are comprised under the heading Marriage.

In a previous work I have endeavoured to show that in all probability there has been no stage in the social history of mankind where marriage has not existed, human marriage apparently being an inheritance from some ape-like progenitor. I then defined marriage as a more or less durable connection between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. This is marriage in the natural history sense of the term. As a social institution, on the other hand, it has a somewhat different meaning: it is a union regulated by custom or law. Society lays down rules relating to the selection of partners, to the mode of contracting marriage, to its form, and to its duration. These rules are essentially expressions of moral feelings.

There is, first, a circle of persons within which marriage is prohibited. It seems that the horror of incest is wellnigh universal in the human race, and that the few cases in

1 Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, ch. iii. sqq.

The best definition of marriage as a social institution which I have met with is the following one given by Dr. Friedrichs (Einzeluntersuchungen zur vergleichenden Rechtswissenschaft,' in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. x. 255):—

"Eine von der Rechtsordnung anerkannte und privilegirte Vereinigung geschlechtsdifferenter Personen, entweder zur Führung eines gemeinsamen Hausstandes und zum Geschlechtsverkehr, oder zum ausschliesslichen Geschlechtsverkehr."

which this feeling is said to be absent can only be regarded as abnormalities. But the degrees of kinship within which marriage is forbidden are by no means the same everywhere. It is most, and almost universally, abominated between parents and children. It is also held in general abhorrence between brothers and sisters who are children of the same mother as well as of the same father. Most of the exceptions to this rule refer to royal persons, for whom it is considered improper to contract marriage with individuals of less exalted birth; but among a few peoples incestuous unions are practised on a larger scale on account of extreme isolation or as a result of vitiated instincts.1 It seems, however, that habitual marriages between brothers and sisters have been imputed to certain peoples without sufficient reason. This is obviously true of the Veddahs of Ceylon, who have long been supposed to regard the marriage of a man with his younger sister as the proper marriage. "Such incest," says Mr. Nevill, "never was allowed, and never could be, while the Vaedda customs

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2

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1 Westermarck, op. cit. ch. xiv. sq. 2 This is apparently the case with various peoples mentioned by Dr. Frazer (Pausanias's Description of Greece, ii. 84 sq.) as being addicted to incestuous unions. Mr. Turner's short statement (Samoa, p. 341) that among the New Caledonians no laws of consanguinity were observed in their marriages, and that even the nearest relatives united, radically differs from M. de Rochas' description of the same people. "Les Néo-Calédoniens," he says (Nouvelle Calédonie, p. 232), ne se marient pas entre proches parents du côté paternel; mais du côté maternel, ils se marient à tous les degrés de cousinage." Brothers and sisters, after they have reached years of maturity, are no longer permitted to entertain any social intercourse with each other; they are prohibited from keeping each other company even in the presence of a third person; and if they casually meet they must instantly go out of the way or, if that is impossible, the sister must throw herself on the ground with her face downwards. "Cet éloignement," M. de Rochas adds (ibid. p. 239), "qui

n'est certes l'effet ni du mépris ni de l'inimitié, me paraît né d'une exagération déraisonnable d'un sentiment naturel, l'horreur de l'inceste." Dr. Frazer says that, according to Mr. Thomson, the marriage of brothers with sisters has been practised among the Masai; but a later and, as it seems, better informed authority tells us that "the Masai do not marry their near relations" and that "incest is unknown among them" (Hinde, The Last of the Masai, p. 76). Again, the statement that among the Obongos, a dwarf race in West Africa, sisters marry with brothers, is only based on information derived from another people, the Ash

ngos, who have a strong antipathy to them (Du Chaillu, Journey to Ashango-Land, p. 320). Liebich's assertion (Die Zigeuner, p. 49) that the Gypsies allow a brother to marry his sister is certainly not true of the Gypsies of Finland, who greatly abhor incest (Thesleff, Zigenarlif i Finland,' in Nya Pressen, 1897, no. 331 B).

3 Bailey, Wild Tribes of the Veddahs of Ceylon,' in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S. ii. 294 sq.

Ingered. Incest is regarded as worse than murder. So positive is this feeling, that the Tamils have based a legend upon the instant murder of his sister by a Vaedda to whom she had made undue advances. The mistake arose from gross ignorance of Vaedda usages. Tre title of a cousin with whom marriage ought to be contracted, that is, mother's brother's daughter, or father's sister's daughter, is naza or nangi. This, in Sinhalese, is applied to a younger sister. Hence if you ask a Vaedda, Do you marry your sisters ?' the Sinhalese interpreter is apt to say, ‘Do you marry your naga ?' The reply is (I have often tested i,,Yes we always did formerly, but now it is not always observed.' You say then, What? marry your own-sisternaga?' and the reply is an angry and insulted denial, the very question appearing a gross insult." The same writer adds:"In no case did a person marry one of the same family, even though the relationship was lost in remote antiquity. Such a marriage is incest. The penalty for incest was death."

As a rule, the prohibited degrees are more numerous among peoples unaffected by modern civilisation than they are in more advanced communities, the prohibitions in a great many cases referring even to all the members of the tribe or clan; and the violation of these rules is regarded as a most heinous crime."

The Algonquins speak of cases where men have been put to death by their nearest kinsfolk for marrying women of their own clan. Among the Asiniboin, a Siouan tribe, a chief can commit murder with impunity if the murdered person be without friends, but if he married within his gens he would be dismissed, on account of the general disgust which such a union would arouse. The Hottentots used to punish alliances between first or second cousins with death.5 A Bantu of the coast region considers similar unions to be "something horrible, something unutterably disgraceful." " The Busoga of the Uganda

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1 Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 178.

2 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 297 sqq. Frazer, Totemism, p. 59.

* Dorsey, 'Siouan Sociology,' in

Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xv. 224.

5 Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 155 sq.

6 Theal, History of the Boers in South Africa, p. 16.

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Protectorate held in great abhorrence anything like incest even amongst domestic animals.1 Among the Kandhs of India "intermarriage between persons of the same tribe, however large or scattered, is considered incestuous and punishable with death." 2 In the Malay Archipelago submersion is a common punishment for incest, but among certain tribes the guilty parties are killed and eaten or buried alive. In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it would be a crime punishable with death for a man or woman to marry a person belonging to his or her mother's clan; and the Mortlock Islanders are said to inflict the same punishment upon anybody who has sexual intercourse with a relative belonging to his own "tribe."7 Nowhere has marriage been bound by more severe laws than among the Australian aborigines. Their tribes are grouped in exogamous subdivisions, the number of which varies; and at least before the occupation of the country by the whites the regular punishment for marriage or sexual intercourse with a person belonging to a forbidden division was death.8

Not less intense is the horror of incest among nations. that have passed beyond savagery and barbarism. and barbarism. Among the Chinese incest with a grand-uncle, a father's first cousin, a brother, or a nephew, is punishable by death, and a man who marries his mother's sister is strangled; nay, punishment is inflicted even on him who marries a person with the same surname as his own, sixty blows being the penalty. So also incest was held in the utmost horror by the so-called Aryan peoples in ancient times.10 In the Institutes of Vishnu' it is said that sexual intercourse with

lock Inseln,' in Mittheil. d. Geogr. Gesellsch. in Hamburg, 1878-9, p. 251.

8 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 299 sq. See, besides the authorities quoted there, Roth, Ethnol. Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 182; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 15.

Medhurst, Marriage, Affinity, and Inheritance in China,' in Trans. Roy. Asiatic Soc. China Branch, iv. 21 sqq. 10 Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 394 sq.