LIMITATIONS OF MARRIAGE.
Prohibitions of various prohibitions and limitations of marriage have exercised a marked effect on the condition and history of nations. There is probably little scientific ground for any of these restrictions. They seem all to have arisen either from superstitious fears or from political and social considerations. Absolute prohibition of the sexual relation has been the rule of some communities obligatory on all members. Necessarily, either this had to be modified, or the community depended solely on new recruits for its continuance. Several religious associations in the United States have been commenced on this plan. Many creeds enjoin complete or partial abstinence on their ministers of both sexes. The "medicine-men" of the Manhattan Indians were so rigid that not only did they refrain from all contact with women, but they would not partake of a dish prepared by one of that sex. The " Virgins of the Fire " in Yucatan, and those of the Hearth, or the Vestals, of ancient Rome, were condemned to perfect chastity on pain of death. The Buddhist priesthood, numbering hundreds of thousands in Central Asia and Thibet, are under vows of continence; and it need scarcely be added that the nuns and priests of the Roman Catholic Church are sub jected to equally absolute restrictions in this respect.
Restrictions through among savage tribes the objection to marrying near of kin is curiously prevalent. It obtains in an exagge rated degree among civilized nations, and it has received the strongest support from both religious and political authorities. In A.D. 741, Pope Zacharias informed King Pepin of France that marriage was forbidden by the Church wherever any relationship, no matter how remote, could be traced. Although this has not been maintained in its stringency in modern countries, the civil law prohibits marriages between certain degrees of relationship, and sometimes, as in England, where the marriage with a deceased wife's sister is illegal, with connections which are not consanguine.
The origin of such prejudices is difficult to explain. They could not have arisen from the observed ill effects of consanguine unions, for even with the facilities of modern investigations physicians are far from united in the opinion that such marriages exert any ill effect; and if they do, it is from exaggerating an inherited tendency to disease, to counteract which the prohibition should be not of marriage of kin, but of marriage between persons with such tendencies. Moreover, there are many well-known instances, both of families and tribes, where close interbreeding has devel oped a very high standard of physical perfection. It is sufficient to men tion the Polynesians of the small islands of the South Sea forced by their insular position to marry near relatives for many generations; yet all writers agree in assigning to them a marked pre-eminence in physical con formation, rivalling indeed the finest statues of antiquity.
The conclusion reached by Mr. Huth in his work on marriage is to the effect that, "as far as a deduction may be trusted from the general customs of men, no marriage is prohibited by nature unless the parties are of an age unsuited to each other." The suggestion is made by Darwin
that the objection to such unions arises from the sexual indifference with which young persons who have been brought up in the same house regard each other, and the instinctive desire of novelty which prompts the youth to seek a companion elsewhere than in his own home-circle. This feeling, without• much rational foundation, became increased by descent, and finally took the form of the pronounced aversion so generally current at present to marriages called incestuous.
Irrational Examples of Jiarriagc.—That it has little rational founda tion is evident from the fact that the degrees of affinity are calculated entirely differently in different nations, as in the English case above referred to, and in Germany, where it is quite customary for the uncle to marry the niece, which in most parts of the United States would be illegal. Moreover, the prejudice against close intermarriages has been by no means universal. In ancient Persia it was esteemed not merely proper, but meritorious, for a man to marry his sister or his widowed mother. The Ptolemies of Egypt and the Incas of Peru were wedded to their sisters for reasons of state, and there are numerous similar examples.
Where the system of clan-relationship prevails the prohibition based on relationship often extends to every member of the clan, even where the individuals may be members only by adoption, and therefore no kin whatever. In China there are some villages of about five thousand souls who are all considered akin, and no unions between their members are permitted. The clans of many American and Australian tribes are equally exclusive. Quite in contrast to this, the Druses of Mount Lebanon are said always to marry cousins, and have observed this rule since about mzo A.D. ; and yet they are celebrated as a vigorous people and the males as brave warriors. There is, therefore, no evidence that the restriction of marriage on the mere ground of kinship arose from observations of its deleterious effects, but rather out of superstitious reasons or the love of variety.
In highly-civilized communities there are always a large number of unmarried persons of both sexes who are impelled to the single life by social considerations. They are the " old maids " and " old bachelors" who have not had an opportunity to marry to their liking, and hence have refrained from the act altogether. This class is entirely unknown in savage life, and almost so in the lower strata of civilized society ; as, for instance, among the colored population of the United States. It increases with wealth and luxury and the competition in social life. Juvenal noted it as one of the signs of decay in ancient Rome, and it is a potent element in bringing about the extinction of prominent families.