Monody

“ Marriage, like the family itself, is variable, and an indefinite number of forms may be found among various peoples. We shall notice, however, only the three leading forms,—polyandry, polygyny, and monogamy,—and attempt to show the natural conditions which favor each. It is evident that if we assume that the primitive form of the family was that of a simple pairing monogamy, the burden is laid upon us to show how such different types as polyandry and polygyny arose. ”

“ We come, then, to the end of our exposition. It seems to me that it has been shown that the different forms of marriage are in the last instance determined by the respective modes of production. Hence the origin of monogamy, the most recent form of marriage, is not to be found in the innate desire of the man and the woman to be united [307] for the whole of their lives, a desire which the law is supposed to sanction. Quite on the contrary men are not all monogamous, and still less monogamous during the whole of their life ”

“ Of course the feminine monocle is not adapted to all costumes, but there is about it a rakishness, a coquetry particularly suited to a riding-habit. The suggestion is quite at the service of any harassed novelist. It may be quite as much a help to sight as spectacles, but, O, the difference! A woman buries her youth behind spectacles, but she can coquet to the very end behind a monocle.
A charming creature used to pass my window every day on horseback. I had a distant vision of a rounded figure in the perfection of a habit, a silk hat at just the right angle and a monocle. ”

“ Having thus rendered himself attractive to womankind, he turns his attention to the girl whom he particularly desires to win. He begins by filling her soul with a sense of desolation and loneliness. In the beautiful language of the formula, her path becomes blue and she is veiled in loneliness. He then asserts, and reiterates, that he is of the one only clan which was allotted for her when the seven clans were established. ”

“ Another interest has come into his life, rivalling his soldier interest, and the secret hope buried deep in our Mountain. I see it in his eyes. I hear it in the timbre of his voice. It means Woman. But what woman? Is Monny right? Is he falling seriously in love for the first time in his strenuous life with Biddy, whom he picked out for admiration the moment he set eyes on her? Or is it Monny herself? I must be a dog in the manger, because I don't like the idea of its being either.
He is asleep on the other side of the tent as I write. Desert dogs do not disturb him. ”

“ Early monogamy takes its rise beyond the border-line separating man from the lower animals. But, considering the aberrations from the type, development has been in a circle. [466] At the dawn of human history individual marriage prevails, though the union is not always lasting. In later stages of advancement, under the influence of property, social organization, social distinctions, and the motives to which they gave rise, various forms of polyandry and polygyny make their appearance, though monogamy as the type is never superseded. ”

“ In this way it may be intelligibly said, without any reference to utilitarian considerations, that monogamy is a higher state than polygamy. The utilitarian arguments in its defence are also extremely powerful, and may be summed up in three sentences. Nature, by making the number of males and females nearly equal, indicates it as natural. In no other form of marriage can the government of the family, which is one of the chief ends of marriage, be so happily sustained, [pg 279] and in no other does woman assume the position of the equal of man. ”

“ Let the first point, then, be scored to Sir Henry Maine: let it be granted that if man was created perfect, he lived in the monogamous family before the Fall: and that, if he was evolved as an animal, the unchecked animal instincts would make for monogamy or patriarchal polygamy in the strictly primitive family. ”

“ For example, monogamy. The orthodox explanation of monogamy is that it is a manifestation of the desire to have and to hold property—that the husband defends his solitary right to his wife, even at the cost of his own freedom, because she is the pearl among his chattels. But Dr. Parsons argues, and with a good deal of plausibility, that the real moving force, both in the husband and the wife, may be merely the force of habit, the antipathy to experiment and innovation. ”

“ But elevated to supreme rule over the whole sphere of life, this "maiden passion for a maid" is the bountiful dispenser of "all that makes a man." In this "single love," as Ruskin has it, "is the sanctification of all man's strength, and the continuance of all his purposes." The true test of monogamy is the monocracy over the whole heart of the one all-endearing, even as the true mark of monotheism is the monolatry, with the whole soul, of the One All-sufficient. ”

“ This last-named type of union, and the family life resulting from it, had many practical advantages, such as the production of closer bonds between the several members of the family, and consequently the practice between them of more efficient co-operation. Accordingly, no sooner did monogamous groups appear than they exhibited a tendency to survive in the social struggle for existence; and monogamy affords, with the affections that have grown up under its shelter, the type {36} of marriage and family that prevails amongst the most advanced races of to-day. ”

“ Thus the basic cause of polygyny is not economic, but psychological; and given certain moral and economic conditions of society, these polygynous tendencies assert themselves. Monogamy, on the other hand, has in no sense been determined by economic conditions but is fundamentally determined by the biological fact of the numerical equality of the sexes. This is doubtless the main reason why monogamy has been the prevalent form of the family everywhere. ”

“ As to the history of the forms of human marriage, two inferences regarding monogamy and polygyny may be made with absolute certainty; monogamy, always the predominant form of marriage, has been more prevalent at the lowest stages of civilisation than at somewhat higher stages ”

“ Undoubtedly the most common variation from normal monogamy has in all stages of human culture been polygyny or the sexual union of one man with more than one woman. It has sometimes been socially and legally recognized, and sometimes unrecognized, but in either case it has not failed to occur. Polyandry, or the union of a woman with more than one man, has been comparatively rare and for intelligible reasons: men have most usually been in a better position, economically and legally, to organize a household with themselves as the centre ”

“ Monogamy is not perfect if there is anesthesia on either side. Anesthesia prevents complete union. Only the mates who are completely directed each to other are fully married, and marriage means not partial but complete union. All degrees of fragmentary attachment are defective monogamy and so not monogamy at all, but unconscious polygamy. ”

“ This is true especially of the Semangs and Senoi, whose isolation has remained more complete, and of the Veddahs of nature, as the Sarasin cousins call them in distinction from the surrounding Veddahs of culture. Among these peoples, monogamy—indeed, lifelong monogamy—has remained the prevailing form of marriage. Connected with it is found the original division of labour, which is based on sex. Man provides the animal food by hunting; woman gathers the vegetable food—fruits, tubers, and seeds—and, by the employment of fire, if necessary, renders both it and the game edible. ”

“ It seems to me that, in applying the term monogamy to all forms of the pairing family, from the highest to the lowest, Mr. Spencer is in error. He should, like Mr. Morgan, limit it to that form in which exclusive cohabitation is the law for both man and woman. He should deal with monogamy as an institution. ”

“ The relationship of each person to the central Ego is accurately defined and, except as to those who stand in an identical relationship, is kept distinct from every other by means of a special term or descriptive phrase. It also implies the certainty of the parentage of every individual, which monogamy alone could assure. Moreover, it describes the relationships in the monogamian family as they actually exist. Nothing can be plainer than that this form of marriage made this form of the family, and that the latter created this system of consanguinity. ”

“ Can a man be aware of these appeals, made by every woman, and choose to remain true to the woman he has married? What good would be done to him if the anesthetic to which, by virtue of conventional repression, we are all subject, should be suddenly removed? Would not such a man be irresistibly impelled to make love to any and every woman he saw? Where then would monogamy be? But if monogamy depended on anesthetics of this type it would be on a very insecure basis. ”

“ Monogamy is, therefore, fitted as a form of the family to foster altruism in the highest degree, and, as we have seen, the higher the type of altruism produced by the family life, the higher the type of the social life generally, other things being equal. It is especially to the credit of monogamy that it has created fatherhood in the fullest sense of the term, and therefore taught the male element in human society the value of service and self-sacrifice. ”

“ There is some new scheme in the wind. Harry Bell, who fills my old place in his office, informed me that a partial reconciliation had taken place between father and son. This was by letter, for no personal interview had brought them together. Theophilus was on his way to Moncton, and appointed the old rascal to meet him somewhere on the road. What the object of their meeting may be, time alone can discover. Perhaps, to discover Dinah North's place of concealment, or to ascertain if the old hag be dead. Her secresy on some points of their history is a matter of great moment. ”

“ Monogamy is the most natural expression of an impulse which cannot, as a rule, be so adequately realized in full fruition under conditions involving a less prolonged period of mutual communion and intimacy. Variations, regarded as inevitable oscillations around the norm, are also natural, but union in couples must always be the rule because the numbers of the sexes are always approximately equal, while the needs of the emotional life, even apart from the needs of offspring, demand that such unions based on mutual attraction should be so far as possible permanent. ”

“ I look at the world, or that small portion of it which believes in monogamy. It is only a small portion of the human family who do believe in it, for from nine to ten of the twelve hundred millions that live on the earth believe in and practice polygamy. ”

“ In conclusion it may be said that the feeling on the part of any critic of modern civilization that marriage has been a failure applies only to the facts of the imperfect carrying out of the ideal of monogamy. We may remind such critics that, like Christianity, monogamy (in the sense of hologamy or the total physical and psychical fusion of man and wife) cannot be called a failure, because in the vast majority of persons, it simply has not been given a fair trial. External, conscious, superficial fidelity is not true hologamy any more than lip service is Christianity ”

“ Virile love alone is competent to tear away the impediments that perturb its reactions, and when this is done true monogamy is inevitable, for there is no preventive mechanism obstructing the total fusion of their bodies and souls. That kind of charm any woman naturally exerts over any man, but it has nothing in common with the conventional charm of the cosmetic and costumer’s art.
The monogamic husband, if he reads beneath the surface, feels this charm in all other women as well as in his wife ”

“ There is certainly a real antinomy which is difficult to reconcile between this dual egoism of exclusive and concentrated love and social solidarity or human altruism. The problem is not insoluble, but we must admit that the solution is not easy.
To resume, we first of all observe an evolution from monogamy toward polygamy. The higher apes and the most primitive men are monogamous; among these there are no differences of rank, nor class distinctions, and they live in very small groups. ”

“ But, do we forget the inexorable conditions which compel the human father to expend equivalent muscular or mental force to feed, not himself, but his dependents? Whenever man does not interfere, monogamy seems to be the general order of Nature with all higher organisms. Where the cost of obtaining food is great, the parents sustain commensurate burdens in rearing their young; and, with these claims, I think it will be found that monogamy is the primal condition of reproduction. The warlike duty of defense is also borne chiefly by males, and must often be an immense tax on the energies. ”

“ With the evolution of altruism, the increase of culture, producing sympathy upon which connubial love largely depends, and the gradual recognition of the spiritual equality of the sexes, self-betrothal, like monogamy, again predominates. In short, whether regarded historically or biologically, monogamy and self-betrothal appear simply as two aspects of the same institution; they are connected by a psychic bond, and together they constitute the highest type of marriage and the family. ”