Much more common than wife capture, but at a much later stage. of cultural development, was wife purchase. This stage comes in par ticularly in early barbarism with the develop ment of slavery and the idea of property in persons; and among most peoples it has sur vived until higher civilization has been devel oped. It was particularly instrumental in devel oping polygyny and the patriarchal form of the family. Many survivals of wife purchase exist among even relatively highly civilized peoples.
Child result of wife capture and wife purchase among some peoples was the practice which we know as °child mar riage,)) that is, the uniting in formal marriage of children under 15 years of age, usually the marriage of a girl under 15 with a much older man. As a custom, child marriage is not un known among warlike savage and barbarous tribes. It developed, especially in India, how ever, under the influence of the caste system and the custom of wife purchase. More than one-half of the total female population of British India are married before 15 years of age, sometimes while they are mere infants. In the western provinces of India the girl re mains at home with her parents until sexual maturity is reached; but in Bengal, girls com mence their married life at the age of nine years. The British government has made in effectual attempts to check child marriage, but the practice continues, as it is supported by the higher as well as by the lower Hindu castes.
Exogamy and Endogamy.—Among cally all peoples, custom forbids the marriage of very near kin. A limited number of tribes among savage and barbarous peoples do not forbid the marriage of brothers and sisters, but all view with social disapproval sexual rela tions between parents and children. Indeed, the larger number of uncivilized peoples not only condemn sexual relations between blood relatives, but forbid marriages between mem bers of the same clan, or totem group. As clans may be matronymic or patronymic, this restriction prevents marriage between maternal or paternal relatives as the case may be, even to the most remote degrees of kinship, but makes it possible for a man to marry a near relative in a clan to which he does not belong, on the ground that no kinship tie exists between them. This custom forbidding marriage within the clan is known as gexogamy.* It is nearly al ways correlated with *endogamy,* as respects the tribe.* Thus in the clan or totemic stage of social organization, in which most of the North American Indians were at the time of their discovery, a man must take a wife outside of his clan or totem-kin group, but must marry within his tribe or related tribes.
The causes of such customs of exogamy and endogamy have been much debated. McLennan held that exogamy was the outgrowth of the custom of female infanticide, but there is little or no evidence in support of such a theory. Westermarck's explanation is that exogamy arises from the extension to the whole clan of the natural instinct of aversion to incest. It may be pointed out, however, that exogamy and endogamy are not customs peculiar to uncivil ized peoples. Similar rules are found regard
ing forbidden degrees of relationship among civilized peoples. While there is possibly a natural aversion to incest, there is even more pronouncedly instinctive attraction be tween persons of the opposite sex who are rela tively strange and unfamiliar. This leads natu rally among all peoples to marrying outside of the close social group; and among the uncivil ized all members of a clan are regarded prac tically the same as very near relatives. The main difference in the practice of exogamy among the uncivilized and among the civilized is that in the clan stage of social organization it is not blood relationship in our sense which counts, but the type of social organization itself.
Marriage Among the European Peoples. — Among the early Aryan peoples of Europe marriage was universally regarded, so far as we can discover, as a religious bond, since their family life was based upon ancestor worship. This early Aryan view of marriage gave way in later Rome to the view that marriage was a private contract, to be made and dissolved by the parties at their pleasure. The early Chris tian Church combatted this view of the mar riage relation and sought to restore the view that marriage was a religious bond, which it finally did by making marriage one of the sacra ments of the Church. It was forced, however, to still recognize that consent or contract was the essential means of entering the marriage relation. °Consent marriages* continued to be recognized, therefore, though they could not be broken except through the authority of the Church. The Protestant reformers put forth the idea that marriage was a civil relation, rather than a religious bond or sacrament, to be created by the state and broken by the state. In reaction to this view the Roman Catholic Council of Trent in 1563 declared that a valid marriage could only be created by the Church and only annulled by the Church. This still remains the Roman Catholic view of marriage. The later Roman view that marriage.is a pri vate contract, to be created and broken by in dividuals as any other contract, has shown a tendency to revive in modem nations among many elements of their population. The present problem of the family, therefore, centres about the question of divorce and the toleration of other forms of marriage than that of permanent monogamy. (See article on FAMILY, Hrsroax or). The last three theories mentioned are evidently held alongside of one another by dif ferent elements in the populations of modern nations. Which of these competing theories of marriage will become established in the moral standards of the future it is too early yet to say.
Westermarc k, E., of Human Marriage' (London 1901) ; Howard G. E, of Matrimonial Institutions; (3 vols., Chicago 1904) ,• Goodsell, W., 'The Family as a Social and Educational Institution) (New York 1915) ; Frazer, J. G., and Exogamy) (4 vols., London 1910) ; Mc Lennan, J. F (in (Studies in Ancient History,' London 1886).