Consanguinity

“ Collateral consanguinity is the connection which exists between persons who are descended from common ancestors, but not from each other. Marriage relationships exist by custom.
Not to enter too specially into the subject, it may be stated generally that in every system of consanguinity, where marriage between single pairs exists, there must be a lineal and several collateral lines, the latter diverging from the former. Each person is the centre of a group of kindred, the Ego from whom the degree of relationship of each person is reckoned, and to whom the relationship returns. ”

“ The causes of degeneracy are so varied, complicated, and obscure that even if consanguinity is a cause, there can be but few cases in which it is not complicated by other factors. But for the same reason that it is so difficult to prove any connection between consanguinity and degeneracy, it is equally difficult to disprove such a connection. It is very probable that from the mere operation of the law of heredity, there must be a comparatively large percentage of degenerates among the offspring of related parents, for defects which tend to be bred out by crossing are accentuated by inbreeding. ”

“ By consanguinity is meant continued sexual union between near relatives. It is easy to understand that the conjugation of two germs derived from brothers and sisters or from a father and his daughter approaches parthenogenesis from the point of view of the mixing of hereditary energies. We shall see later on that nearly all peoples have a certain repugnance to consanguineous marriages. Among animals, natural selection eliminates too consanguineous products. ”

“ The best writers of the present day no longer recognize consanguinity as a cause per se, of idiocy. The heredity of neuroses, however, is so strongly established that few would dispute the proposition that where the morbidity is inherited through both parents it appears more frequently and in a more marked degree than where one parent is entirely free from taint. This is what occurs when a consanguineous marriage takes place between descendants of a neurotic family. ”

“ We must, however, say something about consanguineous marriages, a subject which has given rise to much warm controversy during the past few years. Some physicians, and among them Broca and Bertillon, hold that races which are least mixed, which are purest, are better fitted than crossed races to withstand the causes of degeneracy. According to them, the evil consequences charged on consanguinity are the result of very different agencies, especially the hereditary affections of the ascendants. ”

“ To define consanguinity in its social meaning, the collective ideas held by a given society on the facts of procreation must be considered. Consanguinity, therefore, is the set of relations involved by the collective ideas under which the facts of procreation are viewed in a given society. And it must be borne in mind that these ideas express not only the purely theoretical views of the social mind on the facts of procreation; they also involve different emotional elements, and especially the social importance given to these facts by society. ”

“ Consanguinity "prohibits all marriages in the direct ascending or descending line in infinitum, and in the collateral line to the fourth degree or fourth generation." Affinity "establishes a bond of relationship between each of the married parties and the blood relations of the other, and forbids marriage between them to the fourth degree. ”

“ Accordingly it is clear from what has been said that consanguinity is by natural law an impediment to marriage in regard to certain persons, by Divine law in respect of some, and by human law in respect of others. ”

“ The study of physiology has made one decided step in advance towards acknowledging the reality of union of bloods in marriage. It says now that, only when offspring commences, consanguinity, which is a union of two bloods, occurs.
Man and wife are only one flesh, then, by offspring, we may say. ”

“ At all events, the oldest form of society which meets us in the past through deduction from systems of consanguinity is this family. It would be in the nature of a compact on the part of several males for the joint subsistence of the group, and for the defense of their common wives against the violence of society. In the second place, the consanguine family is stamped with the marks of this supposed antecedent state. It recognized promiscuity within defined limits, and those not the narrowest, and it points through its organism to a worse condition against which it interposed a shield. ”

“ Kinship is sociological, consanguinity physiological; in thus stating the case we are concerned only with broad principles. In practice the idea of consanguinity is modified in two ways and a sociological element is introduced, which has gone far to obscure the difference between these two systems of laying the foundations of human society. In the first place, custom determines the limits within which consanguinity is supposed to exist ”

“ Consanguinity.—It has been strongly asserted that consanguineous marriage is a prolific source of nervous instability. There is considerable diversity of opinion on this subject; the general outcome of the investigations of many careful inquirers appears to be that the offspring of healthy cousins of a healthy stock is not more liable to nervous disease than that of unrelated parents, but that evil consequences follow where there is a strong tendency in the family to degeneration, not only in the direction of the original diathesis, but also towards instability of the nervous system. ”

“ Further, the natural law is the same for all. Now among the uncivilized nations no person is debarred from marriage by reason of consanguinity. Therefore, as regards the law of nature, consanguinity is no impediment to marriage. ”

“ It cannot perhaps, in fair justice, be said that the tie of consanguinity, in the man of the woods, is stronger, than in civilized life. But it is in accordance with all observation to say, that it is very strong, that its impulses beat with marked force, and are more free from the intertwined ligaments of interest, which often weakens the tie of relationship in refined and affluent society. ”

“ He reports that of the offspring of marriages between first cousins and nearer relatives, 23 per cent "died young;" of the offspring of more remote consanguineous marriages, 16 per cent; and of non-related marriages 16 per cent. There is, therefore, a strong indication of lowered vitality as a result of consanguineous marriage.
A determination of even the approximate percentage of degenerate offspring resulting from marriages of consanguinity by direct inquiry is exceedingly difficult. The average human mind is so constituted as to exaggerate unconsciously the unusual in its experience. ”

“ The prejudice against consanguineous unions may, however, depend on the accumulation of certain pathological defects.
Westermark admits that it is difficult to show clearly that consanguineous marriages are prejudicial in man. The consanguinity which causes evil effects in animals concerns long-continued unions between parents and children or brothers and sisters. But this never occurs in man. Animals and plants may be perpetuated for many years in the closest consanguinity without degeneration resulting. ”

“ They should know in what state of health they are living, they must be informed of the great danger of matrimonial union with a person of the same tendencies, and especially when consanguinity exists between them. ”

“ Taking the table of degrees within which marriage is prohibited on account of consanguinity, the rule has been thus extended to affinity, so that wherever relationship to a man himself would be a bar to marriage, relationship to his deceased wife will be the same bar, and vice versa on the husband’s decease. ”

“ Yet the Old Law permitted other degrees of consanguinity, in fact to a certain extent it commanded them; to wit that each man should take a wife from his kindred, in order to avoid confusion of inheritances: because at that time the Divine worship was handed down as the inheritance of the race. ”

“ But certain it is, that the word cannot awake, in men's minds, any idea of descent, in the usual sense of the word. For a man cannot seriously regard his second cousin as his mother, even virtual. The vocabulary of relationships must therefore express something other than relations of consanguinity, properly so-called.... Relationship and consanguinity are very different things ... relationship being essentially constituted by certain legal and moral obligations, which society imposes on certain individuals. ”

“ Then, shall we say that man, who is fallible,. knows better than God, who is infallible and the Author of nature? No.
It is, I repeat, one step on the way towards God's truth for man to say that consanguinity is established through offspring. ”

“ In regard to the degree of consanguinity, it seems very probable that in the French, German, Italian, and English statistics and estimates few if any marriages beyond the degree of first cousins are returned as consanguineous, so in order to compare the Norwegian figures with the others they should probably be reduced by one half. ”

“ Along with arising civilization, sexual intercourse is proscribed between brothers and sisters, and the proscription gradually extends to the remotest collateral relatives on the mother's side. A new group of consanguinity arises, the gens, which, in its first form, is made up of a series of consanguine and more remote sisters, together with their children and their consanguine and more remote brothers on their mother's side. The gens has a common female ancestor, from whom the female successors descend in generations. ”

“ All that can be said is that in the kinship organisations known to us female descent seems to have prevailed in the vast majority of cases and probably existed in the residual class of indeterminable examples.
With patria potestas it is, of course, different. There can be little doubt that it might and probably did develop in the absence [16] of kinship organisations and in a state of society where consanguinity is no real bond after the children have reached puberty. ”

“ The degrees of collateral consanguinity were differently reckoned in the civil and in the canon law. “The civil law reckons the number of descents between the persons on both sides from the common ancestor. The canon law counts the number of descents between the common ancestor and the two persons on one side only,” and always on the side of the person who is more distant from the common ancestor. English law follows the canon law in beginning at the common ancestor and reckoning downwards. ”

“ Man, who has certainly begun his existence in the same way as the animals, has early attained, not to ideas of precise filiation, but to a vague idea of consanguinity [Pg 284] between all the members of his horde. In these little primitive groups, no distinction has at first been made between real and fictitious kinship. All the men of the same clan have been brothers, all the women have been sisters, and by the help of an inveterate habit of exogamy, a gross morality has been formed, which condemned social incest. ”

“ The living illustrations of woman’s wrongs, inflicted on her in the holy of holies of her home, by those who had promised to ‘love, cherish and protect’ her, do now fill the earth. To the influences bearing on the unborn babe, in consequence of the disregard, by the husband, of the conditions and wishes of the wife in reference to maternity, and the intercourse that leads to it, must we go to learn the causes of much of the wrong and suffering of this world. ”

“ Double heredity may account for all the observed ill effects of consanguineous marriage, including the high youthful death-rate, the higher percentage of idiocy, deafness and blindness, and probably also the scrofulous and other degenerate tendencies ”

“ If a family is characterized by the large proportion of persons who enjoy good health and live to old age with unimpaired faculties, then a consanguineous marriage in such a family would probably be beneficial, by increasing and intensifying these desirable characteristics in the offspring. ”

“ For certain, what may seem marvellous to say, through incontinence contain themselves: as if a woman were to contain herself from her husband, because she hath sworn this to an adulterer. Certain through injustice, as if spouse yield not to spouse the due of sexual intercourse, because he or she is already able to overcome such appetite of the body. ”

“ Every physician who has considered the subject will aver that my statement is true, and will acknowledge, moreover, that of the unfruitful marriages where children are yet desired, the barrenness of the woman is often owing to a brace of causes that are frequently easily removed by treatment; in the one instance there being some form of organic displacement or physical obstruction on the wife’s part, in the other temporary or persistent impotence on that of the husband, generally owing to previous careless or unphysiological ways of life. ”

“ In some cases a couple might live in concubinage by consent of their parents, and in the event of a child being born, either a marriage was celebrated or the woman returned to the house of her parents with the infant, which was regarded as belonging to her family. ”