The verses which follow inform us that, with the Hebrews, the levirate was rather a moral than a legal obligation; the brother-in-law could even refuse it; but in refusing, he incurred the public contempt, and had to submit to a degrading ceremony: “And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto me; then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if he stand, and say, I like not to take her; then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and she shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that doth not build up his brother’s house. And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.”[871] In India the principal object of the levirate, applied to the widowed _fiancée_, was to furnish the deceased man with a fictitious son, who could perform for him the sacrifices to the manes, a duty of the highest importance in the religion of Brahma. For the Hebrews, a much more practical people than the Hindoos, the levirate had only an earthly object--that of keeping up the name or family of the deceased, and all that belonged to it. It may be compared with the obligation imposed at Athens on the nearest relative in the masculine line to marry the heiress, or to supplement at need the impotence of the husband. The old practice of the levirate still exists in Abyssinia with this curious detail, that it is applied during the lifetime of the husband if he has been the victim of an accident, frequent in the Abyssinian wars, of emasculation. The mutilated husband, being thus struck with what might be called “virile death,” his brother succeeds him in his marital rights and duties.[872] Some sociologists, too much given to theorise, have tried to prove that the levirate was a remnant of polyandry. Certainly the levirate is practised under a polyandric _régime_, but polyandry has never been more than an exceptional mode of marriage, and there is hardly any trace of it among the New Caledonians, the Redskins, the Mongols, the Afghans, the Hindoos, the Hebrews, the Abyssinians, etc., who, all of them, practise different varieties of levirate. The much more natural reasons that I have given above appear to me quite sufficient and more probable. IV. _Conclusions._