A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3Howard, George Elliott
History
A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 1 of 3
Howard, George Elliott
Families; Marriage -- History
But the argument for the pre-human origin of the elements of
marriage and the family does not rest merely upon precedents of
sexual habits. It is based rather upon the entire experience of
animals in the hard struggle for existence. That struggle, as
Hellwald suggests, forced upon them primarily the problem of
food-supply, the need of a sort of economic co-operation, more
lasting in its results than the pairing instinct. It is the entire
social, mental, and moral product of animal experience, of living
together, so well described among others by Espinas, Schäffle,
Groos, and Wundt, which man in some measure inherited as a rich
legacy from his humbler predecessor.[290] Accordingly Westermarck
believes that marriage was probably "transmitted to man from some
ape-like ancestor, and that there never was a time when it did
not occur in the human race."[291] With Starcke, and in harmony
with the view of Hellwald already quoted, he holds that marriage
and the family cannot rest upon the sexual impulse alone. This
is too transitory. Among animals it is obvious that "it cannot
be the sexual instinct that keeps male and female together for
months and years," for the "generative power is restricted to a
certain season;" and it seems highly probable that among men a
pairing season prevailed in ancient times. Thus the "wild Indians
of California, belonging to the lowest races on earth," are said
to "have their rutting seasons as regularly as have the deer, the
elk, the antelope, or any other animals."[292] According to Powers,
the California Kabinapek "are extremely sensual. In the spring when
the wild clover is lush and full of blossoms and they are eating
it to a satiety after the famine of winter, they become amorous.
This season, therefore, is a literal Saint Valentine's Day with
them, as with the natural beasts and birds of the forest."[293] The
Tasmanians, the Australian Watch-an-dies, and various other peoples
appear to show evidences of the same habit.[294] Vignoli reaches a
similar conclusion. "The family union in which man originally finds
himself is not an essentially human but likewise an animal fact,
since that mode of common social life is found with the greater
part of animals and always among the higher. It is the necessity
of rearing the young which unites the parents and gives them a
common life for a shorter or longer period; indeed in some species
this marriage of love and care continues throughout their whole
existence. Hence the fact of family sociality is not an exclusive
product of humanity, but of the universal laws of the whole animal
life upon the earth. Let it not be asserted that in man affection
between the sexes and toward their offspring ... is more active,
more intense, and more lasting; for it manifests itself with equal
strength and sometime with equal duration between animals and toward
their young. Thus man loves, cohabits, and lives socially in a
primitive family community only because he is an animal and moreover
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