In reality marriage is the most important legal contract in every human society, the one which refers to the continuity of the race; it implies a most delicate and difficult adjustment of a passionate and emotional relationship with domestic and economic co-operation; it involves the cohabitation of male and female, perennially attracted and yet in many ways for ever incompatible ; it focuses in a difficult personal relationship of two people the interest of wider groups : of their progeny, of their parents, of their kindred, and in fact of the whole community.
The validity of the marriage bond derives its sanctions from all these sources. This expresses one of the most important truths concerning marriage. The complexity of motives for which it is entered, the utility of the partners to each other, their common interest in the children's welfare, last, not least, the interest which the kindred and the community have in the proper upbringing of the offspring—these are the real foundations of marriage and the source of its legally binding character.
All this finds an expression in the modes of contracting marriage. These always contain the element of public approval; the collab oration of the families and the kindred of each partner; some material pledges and securities; some ritual and religious sanc tions; last, not least, the consent of the parties concerned.
In the old manuals and statements concerning marriage an important place is usually taken by the classical list of the various "modes of concluding" it : marriage by capture, by purchase and by service, by infant betrothal, elopement, exchange, mutual con sent, and so on (cf. even such an excellent and recent account as the article on "Marriage," by Rivers, in Hastings' Enc. of Reli gion and Ethics).
This classification is unsatisfactory. It exaggerates as a rule one aspect out of all proportion, and attributes to this one aspect an overwhelming influence upon the whole institution which it never possesses. "Marriage by purchase" we have already dis
missed as a crude misnomer, while "service" is but a detail in the economics of certain marriages. "Marriage by capture," which has played such a prominent part in speculation and controversy from McLennan onward, never could have been a real institu tion : though a man may occasionally wed a woman captured by force in a war, such an occurrence is always an exception ; it never was a rule, still less a "stage in human evolution." Tribal endo gamy (see below, 22) is the universal rule of mankind. Ceremonial fights and ritual capture occur at wedding ceremonies over a wide area (see Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, ii., Crawley, ii., 76-100; Briffault, 230-25o). They are capable of interpretation in terms of actual psychology and of existing social conditions (Westermarck, Crawley, Briffault, Havelock Ellis). To regard them as survivals of "marriage by capture" is erroneous, and on this point there is now an almost universal agreement. Capture and violence, as well as purchase from other tribes, or on the slave-market, lead to concubinage, and at times supply prostitutes, but only very rarely legal wives.
Like the contract itself, so also the modes of concluding it contain a great variety of binding and of determining factors. But a real and relevant distinction can still be made between those marriages which are contracted primarily by rules of tradition; those which are arranged for by the families or the kindred of the consorts ; and those which arise from free and spontaneous choice of the mates. In no type of marriage is any of these three elements —tradition, arrangement by families or their consent, and free choice—completely absent. But one or other may be conspicu ously predominant.
The most usual type of traditionally prescribed union is cross cousin marriage (see COUSIN MARRIAGE), with a wide distribution, practised very extensively all over Oceania, Australia and S. India, and sporadically in Africa, N. America and Asia. The marriage of parallel cousins is less frequent, and found notably among Semitic peoples (cf. Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, vol. ii., pp. 145 sqq.; B. Z. Seligman, "Studies in Semitic Kinship," Bull. School Oriental Studies, 1923-24). Even less common are mar riages prescribed between other classes of relatives, e.g., between a man and his brother's daughter (N. Australia, some parts of Melanesia), or his sister's daughter (S. India), or his father's sister (certain parts of Melanesia, Dene of N. America). An other type of prescribed marriage is by inheritance, of which the levirate and sororate (q.v.) are the most notable.