"Marriage," says Goethe, "is the beginning and end of all culture." Too often the end of all culture, the cynic may say. It may safely be affirmed that marriage is the chief cause and product of civilisation. Like other institutions, it has passed through various stages of growth among all nations, the Jews included. It has been said "Motherhood is a matter of observation, fatherhood a matter of opinion." Certain it is that in early society kinship was reckoned through mothers only. Of this we have some evidence in the Bible. Abraham, the father of the faithful, married Sarah, "the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother" (Gen. xx. 12). His brother Nahor took the daughter of his other brother, Haran, to wife (Gen. ix. 27-29). Such marriages could not have occurred except when relationship through males was not sufficiently acknowledged for a bar to marriage to have been raised upon it. Jacob had two sisters to wife at once. Amram, the father of Moses, married his own aunt (Exodus ii. 1 and 1 Chron. vii. 3). Even in the time of pious King David marriage with half-sisters was not considered improper, for when Ammon wished to force his sister Tamar, she said unto him, "Speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee" (2 Samuel xiii. 13). Brothers by the same mother are specially distinguished (Deut. xiii. 6, Judges viii. 19). The child, moreover, in early times, was thought rather to belong to the mother than the father. Thus we find that Ishmael was turned adrift with Hagar, and Hannah, one of the wives of Elkanah the Levite, had the right of presenting or devoting her son Samuel to Jahveh.