|
The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 82
THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
82:0.1
MARRIAGE -- mating -- grows out of bisexuality. Marriage
is man's reactional adjustment to such bisexuality,
while the family life is the sum total resulting from
all such evolutionary and adaptative adjustments.
Marriage is enduring; it is not inherent in biologic
evolution, but it is the basis of all social evolution
and is therefore certain of continued existence in some
form. Marriage has given mankind the home, and the home
is the crowning glory of the whole long and arduous
evolutionary struggle.
82:0.2
While religious, social, and educational institutions
are all essential to the survival of cultural
civilization, the
family is the master civilizer. A child learns most
of the essentials of life from his family and the
neighbors.
82:0.3
The humans of olden times did not possess a very rich
social civilization, but such as they had they
faithfully and effectively passed on to the next
generation. And you should recognize that most of these
civilizations of the past continued to evolve with a
bare minimum of other institutional influences because
the home was effectively functioning. Today the human
races possess a rich social and cultural heritage, and
it should be wisely and effectively passed on to
succeeding generations. The family as an educational
institution must be maintained.
1. THE MATING INSTINCT
82:1.1
Notwithstanding the personality gulf between men and
women, the sex urge is sufficient to insure their coming
together for the reproduction of the species. This
instinct operated effectively long before humans
experienced much of what was later called love,
devotion, and marital loyalty. Mating is an innate
propensity, and marriage is its evolutionary social
repercussion.
82:1.2
Sex interest and desire were not dominating passions in
primitive peoples; they simply took them for granted.
The entire reproductive experience was free from
imaginative embellishment. The all-absorbing sex passion
of the more highly civilized peoples is chiefly due to
race mixtures, especially where the evolutionary nature
has been stimulated by the associative imagination and
beauty appreciation of the Nodites and Adamites. But
this Andite inheritance was absorbed by the evolutionary
races in such limited amounts as to fail to provide
sufficient self-control for the animal passions thus
quickened and aroused by the endowment of keener sex
consciousness and stronger mating urges. Of the
evolutionary races, the red man had the highest sex
code.
82:1.3
The regulation of sex in relation to marriage indicates:
82:1.4
1. The relative progress of civilization. Civilization
has increasingly demanded that sex be gratified in
useful channels and in accordance with the mores.
82:1.5
2. The amount of Andite stock in any people. Among such
groups sex has become expressive of both the highest and
the lowest in both the physical and emotional natures.
82:1.6
The Sangik races had normal animal passion, but they
displayed little imagination or appreciation of the
beauty and physical attractiveness of the opposite sex.
What is called sex appeal is virtually absent even in
present-day primitive races; these unmixed peoples have
a definite mating instinct but insufficient sex
attraction to create serious problems requiring social
control.
82:1.7
The mating instinct is one of the dominant physical
driving forces of human beings; it is the one emotion
which, in the guise of individual gratification,
effectively tricks selfish man into putting race welfare
and perpetuation high above individual ease and personal
freedom from responsibility.
82:1.8
As an institution, marriage, from its early beginnings
down to modern times, pictures the social evolution of
the biologic propensity for self-perpetuation. The
perpetuation of the evolving human species is made
certain by the presence of this racial mating impulse,
an urge which is loosely called sex attraction. This
great biologic urge becomes the impulse hub for all
sorts of associated instincts, emotions, and usages --
physical, intellectual, moral, and social.
82:1.9
With the savage, the food supply was the impelling
motivation, but when civilization insures plentiful
food, the sex urge many times becomes a dominant impulse
and therefore ever stands in need of social regulation.
In animals, instinctive periodicity checks the mating
propensity, but since man is so largely a
self-controlled being, sex desire is not altogether
periodic; therefore does it become necessary for society
to impose self-control upon the individual.
82:1.10
No human emotion or impulse, when unbridled and
overindulged, can produce so much harm and sorrow as
this powerful sex urge. Intelligent submission of this
impulse to the regulations of society is the supreme
test of the actuality of any civilization. Self-control,
more and more self-control, is the ever-increasing
demand of advancing mankind. Secrecy, insincerity, and
hypocrisy may obscure sex problems, but they do not
provide solutions, nor do they advance ethics.
2. THE RESTRICTIVE TABOOS
82:2.1
The story of the evolution of marriage is simply the
history of sex control through the pressure of social,
religious, and civil restrictions. Nature hardly
recognizes individuals; it takes no cognizance of
so-called morals; it is only and exclusively interested
in the reproduction of the species. Nature compellingly
insists on reproduction but indifferently leaves the
consequential problems to be solved by society, thus
creating an ever-present and major problem for
evolutionary mankind. This social conflict consists in
the unending war between basic instincts and evolving
ethics.
82:2.2
Among the early races there was little or no regulation
of the relations of the sexes. Because of this sex
license, no prostitution existed. Today, the Pygmies and
other backward groups have no marriage institution; a
study of these peoples reveals the simple mating customs
followed by primitive races. But all ancient peoples
should always be studied and judged in the light of the
moral standards of the mores of their own times.
82:2.3
Free love, however, has never been in good standing
above the scale of rank savagery. The moment societal
groups began to form, marriage codes and marital
restrictions began to develop. Mating has thus
progressed through a multitude of transitions from a
state of almost complete sex license to the
twentieth-century standards of relatively complete sex
restriction.
82:2.4
In the earliest stages of tribal development the mores
and restrictive taboos were very crude, but they did
keep the sexes apart -- this favored quiet, order, and
industry -- and the long evolution of marriage and the
home had begun. The sex customs of dress, adornment, and
religious practices had their origin in these early
taboos which defined the range of sex liberties and thus
eventually created concepts of vice, crime, and sin. But
it was long the practice to suspend all sex regulations
on high festival days, especially May Day.
82:2.5
Women have always been subject to more restrictive
taboos than men. The early mores granted the same degree
of sex liberty to unmarried women as to men, but it has
always been required of wives that they be faithful to
their husbands. Primitive marriage did not much curtail
man's sex liberties, but it did render further sex
license taboo to the wife. Married women have always
borne some mark which set them apart as a class by
themselves, such as hairdress, clothing, veil,
seclusion, ornamentation, and rings.
3. EARLY MARRIAGE MORES
82:3.1
Marriage is the institutional response of the social
organism to the ever-present biologic tension of man's
unremitting urge to reproduction -- self-propagation.
Mating is universally natural, and as society evolved
from the simple to the complex, there was a
corresponding evolution of the mating mores, the genesis
of the marital institution. Wherever social evolution
has progressed to the stage at which mores are
generated, marriage will be found as an evolving
institution.
82:3.2
There always have been and always will be two distinct
realms of marriage: the mores, the laws regulating the
external aspects of mating, and the otherwise secret and
personal relations of men and women. Always has the
individual been rebellious against the sex regulations
imposed by society; and this is the reason for this
agelong sex problem: Self-maintenance is individual but
is carried on by the group; self-perpetuation is social
but is secured by individual impulse.
82:3.3
The mores, when respected, have ample power to restrain
and control the sex urge, as has been shown among all
races. Marriage standards have always been a true
indicator of the current power of the mores and the
functional integrity of the civil government. But the
early sex and mating mores were a mass of inconsistent
and crude regulations. Parents, children, relatives, and
society all had conflicting interests in the marriage
regulations. But in spite of all this, those races which
exalted and practiced marriage naturally evolved to
higher levels and survived in increased numbers.
82:3.4
In primitive times marriage was the price of social
standing; the possession of a wife was a badge of
distinction. The savage looked upon his wedding day as
marking his entrance upon responsibility and manhood. In
one age, marriage has been looked upon as a social duty;
in another, as a religious obligation; and in still
another, as a political requirement to provide citizens
for the state.
82:3.5
Many early tribes required feats of stealing as a
qualification for marriage; later peoples substituted
for such raiding forays, athletic contests and
competitive games. The winners in these contests were
awarded the first prize -- choice of the season's
brides. Among the head-hunters a youth might not marry
until he possessed at least one head, although such
skulls were sometimes purchasable. As the buying of
wives declined, they were won by riddle contests, a
practice that still survives among many groups of the
black man.
82:3.6
With advancing civilization, certain tribes put the
severe marriage tests of male endurance in the hands of
the women; they thus were able to favor the men of their
choice. These marriage tests embraced skill in hunting,
fighting, and ability to provide for a family. The groom
was long required to enter the bride's family for at
least one year, there to live and labor and prove that
he was worthy of the wife he sought.
82:3.7
The qualifications of a wife were the ability to perform
hard work and to bear children. She was required to
execute a certain piece of agricultural work within a
given time. And if she had borne a child before
marriage, she was all the more valuable; her fertility
was thus assured.
82:3.8
The fact that ancient peoples regarded it as a disgrace,
or even a sin, not to be married, explains the origin of
child marriages; since one must be married, the earlier
the better. It was also a general belief that unmarried
persons could not enter spiritland, and this was a
further incentive to child marriages even at birth and
sometimes before birth, contingent upon sex. The
ancients believed that even the dead must be married.
The original matchmakers were employed to negotiate
marriages for deceased individuals. One parent would
arrange for these intermediaries to effect the marriage
of a dead son with a dead daughter of another family.
82:3.9
Among later peoples, puberty was the common age of
marriage, but this has advanced in direct proportion to
the progress of civilization. Early in social evolution
peculiar and celibate orders of both men and women
arose; they were started and maintained by individuals
more or less lacking normal sex urge.
82:3.10
Many tribes allowed members of the ruling group to have
sex relations with the bride just before she was to be
given to her husband. Each of these men would give the
girl a present, and this was the origin of the custom of
giving wedding presents. Among some groups it was
expected that a young woman would earn her dowry, which
consisted of the presents received in reward for her sex
service in the bride's exhibition hall.
82:3.11
Some tribes married the young men to the widows and
older women and then, when they were subsequently left
widowers, would allow them to marry the young girls,
thus insuring, as they expressed it, that both parents
would not be fools, as they conceived would be the case
if two youths were allowed to mate. Other tribes limited
mating to similar age groups. It was the limitation of
marriage to certain age groups that first gave origin to
ideas of incest. (In India there are even now no age
restrictions on marriage.)
82:3.12
Under certain mores widowhood was greatly to be feared,
widows being either killed or allowed to commit suicide
on their husbands' graves, for they were supposed to go
over into spiritland with their spouses. The surviving
widow was almost invariably blamed for her husband's
death. Some tribes burned them alive. If a widow
continued to live, her life was one of continuous
mourning and unbearable social restriction since
remarriage was generally disapproved.
82:3.13
In olden days many practices now regarded as immoral
were encouraged. Primitive wives not infrequently took
great pride in their husbands' affairs with other women.
Chastity in girls was a great hindrance to marriage; the
bearing of a child before marriage greatly increased a
girl's desirability as a wife since the man was sure of
having a fertile companion.
82:3.14
Many primitive tribes sanctioned trial marriage until
the woman became pregnant, when the regular marriage
ceremony would be performed; among other groups the
wedding was not celebrated until the first child was
born. If a wife was barren, she had to be redeemed by
her parents, and the marriage was annulled. The mores
demanded that every pair have children.
82:3.15
These primitive trial marriages were entirely free from
all semblance of license; they were simply sincere tests
of fecundity. The contracting individuals married
permanently just as soon as fertility was established.
When modern couples marry with the thought of convenient
divorce in the background of their minds if they are not
wholly pleased with their married life, they are in
reality entering upon a form of trial marriage and one
that is far beneath the status of the honest adventures
of their less civilized ancestors.
4. MARRIAGE UNDER THE PROPERTY MORES
82:4.1
Marriage has always been closely linked with both
property and religion. Property has been the stabilizer
of marriage; religion, the moralizer.
82:4.2
Primitive marriage was an investment, an economic
speculation; it was more a matter of business than an
affair of flirtation. The ancients married for the
advantage and welfare of the group; wherefore their
marriages were planned and arranged by the group, their
parents and elders. And that the property mores were
effective in stabilizing the marriage institution is
borne out by the fact that marriage was more permanent
among the early tribes than it is among many modern
peoples.
82:4.3
As civilization advanced and private property gained
further recognition in the mores, stealing became the
great crime. Adultery was recognized as a form of
stealing, an infringement of the husband's property
rights; it is not therefore specifically mentioned in
the earlier codes and mores. Woman started out as the
property of her father, who transferred his title to her
husband, and all legalized sex relations grew out of
these pre-existent property rights. The Old Testament
deals with women as a form of property; the Koran
teaches their inferiority. Man had the right to lend his
wife to a friend or guest, and this custom still obtains
among certain peoples.
82:4.4
Modern sex jealousy is not innate; it is a product of
the evolving mores. Primitive man was not jealous of his
wife; he was just guarding his property. The reason for
holding the wife to stricter sex account than the
husband was because her marital infidelity involved
descent and inheritance. Very early in the march of
civilization the illegitimate child fell into disrepute.
At first only the woman was punished for adultery; later
on, the mores also decreed the chastisement of her
partner, and for long ages the offended husband or the
protector father had the full right to kill the male
trespasser. Modern peoples retain these mores, which
allow so-called crimes of honor under the unwritten law.
82:4.5
Since the chastity taboo had its origin as a phase of
the property mores, it applied at first to married women
but not to unmarried girls. In later years, chastity was
more demanded by the father than by the suitor; a virgin
was a commercial asset to the father -- she brought a
higher price. As chastity came more into demand, it was
the practice to pay the father a bride fee in
recognition of the service of properly rearing a chaste
bride for the husband-to-be. When once started, this
idea of female chastity took such hold on the races that
it became the practice literally to cage up girls,
actually to imprison them for years, in order to assure
their virginity. And so the more recent standards and
virginity tests automatically gave origin to the
professional prostitute classes; they were the rejected
brides, those women who were found by the grooms'
mothers not to be virgins.
5. ENDOGAMY AND EXOGAMY
82:5.1
Very early the savage observed that race mixture
improved the quality of the offspring. It was not that
inbreeding was always bad, but that outbreeding was
always comparatively better; therefore the mores tended
to crystallize in restriction of sex relations among
near relatives. It was recognized that outbreeding
greatly increased the selective opportunity for
evolutionary variation and advancement. The outbred
individuals were more versatile and had greater ability
to survive in a hostile world; the inbreeders, together
with their mores, gradually disappeared. This was all a
slow development; the savage did not consciously reason
about such problems. But the later and advancing peoples
did, and they also made the observation that general
weakness sometimes resulted from excessive inbreeding.
82:5.2
While the inbreeding of good stock sometimes resulted in
the upbuilding of strong tribes, the spectacular cases
of the bad results of the inbreeding of hereditary
defectives more forcibly impressed the mind of man, with
the result that the advancing mores increasingly
formulated taboos against all marriages among near
relatives.
82:5.3
Religion has long been an effective barrier against
outmarriage; many religious teachings have proscribed
marriage outside the faith. Woman has usually favored
the practice of in-marriage; man, outmarriage. Property
has always influenced marriage, and sometimes, in an
effort to conserve property within a clan, mores have
arisen compelling women to choose husbands within their
fathers' tribes. Rulings of this sort led to a great
multiplication of cousin marriages. In-mating was also
practiced in an effort to preserve craft secrets;
skilled workmen sought to keep the knowledge of their
craft within the family.
82:5.4
Superior groups, when isolated, always reverted to
consanguineous mating. The Nodites for over one hundred
and fifty thousand years were one of the great
in-marriage groups. The later-day in-marriage mores were
tremendously influenced by the traditions of the violet
race, in which, at first, matings were, perforce,
between brother and sister. And brother and sister
marriages were common in early Egypt, Syria,
Mesopotamia, and throughout the lands once occupied by
the Andites. The Egyptians long practiced brother and
sister marriages in an effort to keep the royal blood
pure, a custom which persisted even longer in Persia.
Among the Mesopotamians, before the days of Abraham,
cousin marriages were obligatory; cousins had prior
marriage rights to cousins. Abraham himself married his
half sister, but such unions were not allowed under the
later mores of the Jews.
82:5.5
The first move away from brother and sister marriages
came about under the plural-wife mores because the
sister-wife would arrogantly dominate the other wife or
wives. Some tribal mores forbade marriage to a dead
brother's widow but required the living brother to beget
children for his departed brother. There is no biologic
instinct against any degree of in-marriage; such
restrictions are wholly a matter of taboo.
82:5.6
Outmarriage finally dominated because it was favored by
the man; to get a wife from the outside insured greater
freedom from in-laws. Familiarity breeds contempt; so,
as the element of individual choice began to dominate
mating, it became the custom to choose partners from
outside the tribe.
82:5.7
Many tribes finally forbade marriages within the clan;
others limited mating to certain castes. The taboo
against marriage with a woman of one's own totem gave
impetus to the custom of stealing women from neighboring
tribes. Later on, marriages were regulated more in
accordance with territorial residence than with kinship.
There were many steps in the evolution of in-marriage
into the modern practice of outmarriage. Even after the
taboo rested upon in-marriages for the common people,
chiefs and kings were permitted to marry those of close
kin in order to keep the royal blood concentrated and
pure. The mores have usually permitted sovereign rulers
certain licenses in sex matters.
82:5.8
The presence of the later Andite peoples had much to do
with increasing the desire of the Sangik races to mate
outside their own tribes. But it was not possible for
out-mating to become prevalent until neighboring groups
had learned to live together in relative peace.
82:5.9
Outmarriage itself was a peace promoter; marriages
between the tribes lessened hostilities. Outmarriage led
to tribal co-ordination and to military alliances; it
became dominant because it provided increased strength;
it was a nation builder. Outmarriage was also greatly
favored by increasing trade contacts; adventure and
exploration contributed to the extension of the mating
bounds and greatly facilitated the cross-fertilization
of racial cultures.
82:5.10
The otherwise inexplicable inconsistencies of the racial
marriage mores are largely due to this outmarriage
custom with its accompanying wife stealing and buying
from foreign tribes, all of which resulted in a
compounding of the separate tribal mores. That these
taboos respecting in-marriage were sociologic, not
biologic, is well illustrated by the taboos on kinship
marriages, which embraced many degrees of in-law
relationships, cases representing no blood relation
whatsoever.
6. RACIAL MIXTURES
82:6.1
There are no pure races in the world today. The early
and original evolutionary peoples of color have only two
representative races persisting in the world, the yellow
man and the black man; and even these two races are much
admixed with the extinct colored peoples. While the
so-called white race is predominantly descended from the
ancient blue man, it is admixed more or less with all
other races much as is the red man of the Americas.
82:6.2
Of the six colored Sangik races, three were primary and
three were secondary. Though the primary races -- blue,
red, and yellow -- were in many respects superior to the
three secondary peoples, it should be remembered that
these secondary races had many desirable traits which
would have considerably enhanced the primary peoples if
their better strains could have been absorbed.
82:6.3
Present-day prejudice against "half-castes," "hybrids,"
and "mongrels" arises because modern racial
crossbreeding is, for the greater part, between the
grossly inferior strains of the races concerned. You
also get unsatisfactory offspring when the degenerate
strains of the same race intermarry.
82:6.4
If the present-day races of Urantia could be freed from
the curse of their lowest strata of deteriorated,
antisocial, feeble-minded, and outcast specimens, there
would be little objection to a limited race
amalgamation. And if such racial mixtures could take
place between the highest types of the several races,
still less objection could be offered.
82:6.5
Hybridization of superior and dissimilar stocks is the
secret of the creation of new and more vigorous strains.
And this is true of plants, animals, and the human
species. Hybridization augments vigor and increases
fertility. Race mixtures of the average or superior
strata of various peoples greatly increase
creative
potential, as is shown in the present population of the
United States of North America. When such matings take
place between the lower or inferior strata, creativity
is diminished, as is shown by the present-day peoples of
southern India.
82:6.6
Race blending greatly contributes to the sudden
appearance of new characteristics, and if such
hybridization is the union of superior strains, then
these new characteristics will also be
superior
traits.
82:6.7
As long as present-day races are so overloaded with
inferior and degenerate strains, race intermingling on a
large scale would be most detrimental, but most of the
objections to such experiments rest on social and
cultural prejudices rather than on biological
considerations. Even among inferior stocks, hybrids
often are an improvement on their ancestors.
Hybridization makes for species improvement because of
the role of the
dominant genes. Racial intermixture increases the
likelihood of a larger number of the desirable
dominants
being present in the hybrid.
82:6.8
For the past hundred years more racial hybridization has
been taking place on Urantia than has occurred in
thousands of years. The danger of gross disharmonies as
a result of crossbreeding of human stocks has been
greatly exaggerated. The chief troubles of "half-breeds"
are due to social prejudices.
82:6.9
The Pitcairn experiment of blending the white and
Polynesian races turned out fairly well because the
white men and the Polynesian women were of fairly good
racial strains. Interbreeding between the highest types
of the white, red, and yellow races would immediately
bring into existence many new and biologically effective
characteristics. These three peoples belong to the
primary Sangik races. Mixtures of the white and black
races are not so desirable in their immediate results,
neither are such mulatto offspring so objectionable as
social and racial prejudice would seek to make them
appear. Physically, such white-black hybrids are
excellent specimens of humanity, notwithstanding their
slight inferiority in some other respects.
82:6.10
When a primary Sangik race amalgamates with a secondary
Sangik race, the latter is considerably improved at the
expense of the former. And on a small scale -- extending
over long periods of time -- there can be little serious
objection to such a sacrificial contribution by the
primary races to the betterment of the secondary groups.
Biologically considered, the secondary Sangiks were in
some respects superior to the primary races.
82:6.11
After all, the real jeopardy of the human species is to
be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the
inferior and degenerate strains of the various civilized
peoples rather than in any supposed danger of their
racial interbreeding.
82:6.12
Presented by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.
*
|
.jpg)
