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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 83
THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION
83:0.1
THIS is the recital of the early beginnings of the
institution of marriage. It has progressed steadily from
the loose and promiscuous matings of the herd through
many variations and adaptations, even to the appearance
of those marriage standards which eventually culminated
in the realization of pair matings, the union of one man
and one woman to establish a home of the highest social
order.
83:0.2
Marriage has been many times in jeopardy, and the
marriage mores have drawn heavily on both property and
religion for support; but the real influence which
forever safeguards marriage and the resultant family is
the simple and innate biologic fact that men and women
positively will not live without each other, be they the
most primitive savages or the most cultured mortals.
83:0.3
It is because of the sex urge that selfish man is lured
into making something better than an animal out of
himself. The self-regarding and self-gratifying sex
relationship entails the certain consequences of
self-denial and insures the assumption of altruistic
duties and numerous race-benefiting home
responsibilities. Herein has sex been the unrecognized
and unsuspected civilizer of the savage; for this same
sex impulse automatically and unerringly
compels man to
think and eventually
leads him to
love.
1. MARRIAGE AS A SOCIETAL INSTITUTION
83:1.1
Marriage is society's mechanism designed to regulate and
control those many human relations which arise out of
the physical fact of bisexuality. As such an
institution, marriage functions in two directions:
1. In the regulation of personal sex relations.
2. In the regulation of descent, inheritance,
succession, and social order, this being its older and
original function.
83:1.2
The family, which grows out of marriage, is itself a
stabilizer of the marriage institution together with the
property mores. Other potent factors in marriage
stability are pride, vanity, chivalry, duty, and
religious convictions. But while marriages may be
approved or disapproved on high, they are hardly made in
heaven. The human family is a distinctly human
institution, an evolutionary development. Marriage is an
institution of society, not a department of the church.
True, religion should mightily influence it but should
not undertake exclusively to control and regulate it.
83:1.3
Primitive marriage was primarily industrial; and even in
modern times it is often a social or business affair.
Through the influence of the mixture of the Andite stock
and as a result of the mores of advancing civilization,
marriage is slowly becoming mutual, romantic, parental,
poetical, affectionate, ethical, and even idealistic.
Selection and so-called romantic love, however, were at
a minimum in primitive mating. During early times
husband and wife were not much together; they did not
even eat together very often. But among the ancients,
personal affection was not strongly linked to sex
attraction; they became fond of one another largely
because of living and working together.
2. COURTSHIP AND BETROTHAL
83:2.1
Primitive marriages were always planned by the parents
of the boy and girl. The transition stage between this
custom and the times of free choosing was occupied by
the marriage broker or professional matchmaker. These
matchmakers were at first the barbers; later, the
priests. Marriage was originally a group affair; then a
family matter; only recently has it become an individual
adventure.
83:2.2
Coercion, not attraction, was the approach to primitive
marriage. In early times woman had no sex aloofness,
only sex inferiority as inculcated by the mores. As
raiding preceded trading, so marriage by capture
preceded marriage by contract. Some women would connive
at capture in order to escape the domination of the
older men of their tribe; they preferred to fall into
the hands of men of their own age from another tribe.
This pseudo elopement was the transition stage between
capture by force and subsequent courtship by charming.
83:2.3
An early type of wedding ceremony was the mimic flight,
a sort of elopement rehearsal which was once a common
practice. Later, mock capture became a part of the
regular wedding ceremony. A modern girl's pretensions to
resist "capture," to be reticent toward marriage, are
all relics of olden customs. The carrying of the bride
over the threshold is reminiscent of a number of ancient
practices, among others, of the days of wife stealing.
83:2.4
Woman was long denied full freedom of self-disposal in
marriage, but the more intelligent women have always
been able to circumvent this restriction by the clever
exercise of their wits. Man has usually taken the lead
in courtship, but not always. Woman sometimes formally,
as well as covertly, initiates marriage. And as
civilization has progressed, women have had an
increasing part in all phases of courtship and marriage.
83:2.5
Increasing love, romance, and personal selection in
premarital courtship are an Andite contribution to the
world races. The relations between the sexes are
evolving favorably; many advancing peoples are gradually
substituting somewhat idealized concepts of sex
attraction for those older motives of utility and
ownership. Sex impulse and feelings of affection are
beginning to displace cold calculation in the choosing
of life partners.
83:2.6
The betrothal was originally equivalent to marriage; and
among early peoples sex relations were conventional
during the engagement. In recent times, religion has
established a sex taboo on the period between betrothal
and marriage.
3. PURCHASE AND DOWRY
83:3.1
The ancients mistrusted love and promises; they thought
that abiding unions must be guaranteed by some tangible
security, property. For this reason, the purchase price
of a wife was regarded as a forfeit or deposit which the
husband was doomed to lose in case of divorce or
desertion. Once the purchase price of a bride had been
paid, many tribes permitted the husband's brand to be
burned upon her. Africans still buy their wives. A love
wife, or a white man's wife, they compare to a cat
because she costs nothing.
83:3.2
The bride shows were occasions for dressing up and
decorating daughters for public exhibition with the idea
of their bringing higher prices as wives. But they were
not sold as animals -- among the later tribes such a
wife was not transferable. Neither was her purchase
always just a cold-blooded money transaction; service
was equivalent to cash in the purchase of a wife. If an
otherwise desirable man could not pay for his wife, he
could be adopted as a son by the girl's father and then
could marry. And if a poor man sought a wife and could
not meet the price demanded by a grasping father, the
elders would often bring pressure to bear upon the
father which would result in a modification of his
demands, or else there might be an elopement.
83:3.3
As civilization progressed, fathers did not like to
appear to sell their daughters, and so, while continuing
to accept the bride purchase price, they initiated the
custom of giving the pair valuable presents which about
equaled the purchase money. And upon the later
discontinuance of payment for the bride, these presents
became the bride's dowry.
83:3.4
The idea of a dowry was to convey the impression of the
bride's independence, to suggest far removal from the
times of slave wives and property companions. A man
could not divorce a dowered wife without paying back the
dowry in full. Among some tribes a mutual deposit was
made with the parents of both bride and groom to be
forfeited in case either deserted the other, in reality
a marriage bond. During the period of transition from
purchase to dowry, if the wife were purchased, the
children belonged to the father; if not, they belonged
to the wife's family.
4. THE WEDDING CEREMONY
83:4.1
The wedding ceremony grew out of the fact that marriage
was originally a community affair, not just the
culmination of a decision of two individuals. Mating was
of group concern as well as a personal function.
83:4.2
Magic, ritual, and ceremony surrounded the entire life
of the ancients, and marriage was no exception. As
civilization advanced, as marriage became more seriously
regarded, the wedding ceremony became increasingly
pretentious. Early marriage was a factor in property
interests, even as it is today, and therefore required a
legal ceremony, while the social status of subsequent
children demanded the widest possible publicity.
Primitive man had no records; therefore must the
marriage ceremony be witnessed by many persons.
83:4.3
At first the wedding ceremony was more on the order of a
betrothal and consisted only in public notification of
intention of living together; later it consisted in
formal eating together. Among some tribes the parents
simply took their daughter to the husband; in other
cases the only ceremony was the formal exchange of
presents, after which the bride's father would present
her to the groom. Among many Levantine peoples it was
the custom to dispense with all formality, marriage
being consummated by sex relations. The red man was the
first to develop the more elaborate celebration of
weddings.
83:4.4
Childlessness was greatly dreaded, and since barrenness
was attributed to spirit machinations, efforts to insure
fecundity also led to the association of marriage with
certain magical or religious ceremonials. And in this
effort to insure a happy and fertile marriage, many
charms were employed; even the astrologers were
consulted to ascertain the birth stars of the
contracting parties. At one time the human sacrifice was
a regular feature of all weddings among well-to-do
people.
83:4.5
Lucky days were sought out, Thursday being most
favorably regarded, and weddings celebrated at the full
of the moon were thought to be exceptionally fortunate.
It was the custom of many Near Eastern peoples to throw
grain upon the newlyweds; this was a magical rite which
was supposed to insure fecundity. Certain Oriental
peoples used rice for this purpose.
83:4.6
Fire and water were always considered the best means of
resisting ghosts and evil spirits; hence altar fires and
lighted candles, as well as the baptismal sprinkling of
holy water, were usually in evidence at weddings. For a
long time it was customary to set a false wedding day
and then suddenly postpone the event so as to put the
ghosts and spirits off the track.
83:4.7
The teasing of newlyweds and the pranks played upon
honeymooners are all relics of those far-distant days
when it was thought best to appear miserable and ill at
ease in the sight of the spirits so as to avoid arousing
their envy. The wearing of the bridal veil is a relic of
the times when it was considered necessary to disguise
the bride so that ghosts might not recognize her and
also to hide her beauty from the gaze of the otherwise
jealous and envious spirits. The bride's feet must never
touch the ground just prior to the ceremony. Even in the
twentieth century it is still the custom under the
Christian mores to stretch carpets from the carriage
landing to the church altar.
83:4.8
One of the most ancient forms of the wedding ceremony
was to have a priest bless the wedding bed to insure the
fertility of the union; this was done long before any
formal wedding ritual was established. During this
period in the evolution of the marriage mores the
wedding guests were expected to file through the
bedchamber at night, thus constituting legal witness to
the consummation of marriage.
83:4.9
The luck element, that in spite of all premarital tests
certain marriages turned out bad, led primitive man to
seek insurance protection against marriage failure; led
him to go in quest of priests and magic. And this
movement culminated directly in modern church weddings.
But for a long time marriage was generally recognized as
consisting in the decisions of the contracting parents
-- later of the pair -- while for the last five hundred
years church and state have assumed jurisdiction and now
presume to make pronouncements of marriage.
5. PLURAL MARRIAGES
83:5.1
In the early history of marriage the unmarried women
belonged to the men of the tribe. Later on, a woman had
only one husband at a time. This practice of
one-man-at-a-time
was the first step away from the promiscuity of the
herd. While a woman was allowed but one man, her husband
could sever such temporary relationships at will. But
these loosely regulated associations were the first step
toward living pairwise in distinction to living
herdwise. In this stage of marriage development children
usually belonged to the mother.
83:5.2
The next step in mating evolution was the
group marriage.
This communal phase of marriage had to intervene in the
unfolding of family life because the marriage mores were
not yet strong enough to make pair associations
permanent. The brother and sister marriages belonged to
this group; five brothers of one family would marry five
sisters of another. All over the world the looser forms
of communal marriage gradually evolved into various
types of group marriage. And these group associations
were largely regulated by the totem mores. Family life
slowly and surely developed because sex and marriage
regulation favored the survival of the tribe itself by
insuring the survival of larger numbers of children.
83:5.3
Group marriages gradually gave way before the emerging
practices of polygamy -- polygyny and polyandry -- among
the more advanced tribes. But polyandry was never
general, being usually limited to queens and rich women;
furthermore, it was customarily a family affair, one
wife for several brothers. Caste and economic
restrictions sometimes made it necessary for several men
to content themselves with one wife. Even then, the
woman would marry only one, the others being loosely
tolerated as "uncles" of the joint progeny.
83:5.4
The Jewish custom requiring that a man consort with his
deceased brother's widow for the purpose of "raising up
seed for his brother," was the custom of more than half
the ancient world. This was a relic of the time when
marriage was a family affair rather than an individual
association.
83:5.5
The institution of polygyny recognized, at various
times, four sorts of wives:
1. The ceremonial or legal wives.
2. Wives of affection and permission.
3. Concubines, contractual wives.
4. Slave wives.
83:5.6
True polygyny, where all the wives are of equal status
and all the children equal, has been very rare. Usually,
even with plural marriages, the home was dominated by
the head wife, the status companion. She alone had the
ritual wedding ceremony, and only the children of such a
purchased or dowered spouse could inherit unless by
special arrangement with the status wife.
83:5.7
The status wife was not necessarily the love wife; in
early times she usually was not. The love wife, or
sweetheart, did not appear until the races were
considerably advanced, more particularly after the
blending of the evolutionary tribes with the Nodites and
Adamites.
83:5.8
The taboo wife -- one wife of legal status -- created
the concubine mores. Under these mores a man might have
only one wife, but he could maintain sex relations with
any number of concubines. Concubinage was the
steppingstone to monogamy, the first move away from
frank polygyny. The concubines of the Jews, Romans, and
Chinese were very frequently the handmaidens of the
wife. Later on, as among the Jews, the legal wife was
looked upon as the mother of all children born to the
husband.
83:5.9
The olden taboos on sex relations with a pregnant or
nursing wife tended greatly to foster polygyny.
Primitive women aged very early because of frequent
childbearing coupled with hard work. (Such overburdened
wives only managed to exist by virtue of the fact that
they were put in isolation one week out of each month
when they were not heavy with child.) Such a wife often
grew tired of bearing children and would request her
husband to take a second and younger wife, one able to
help with both childbearing and the domestic work. The
new wives were therefore usually hailed with delight by
the older spouses; there existed nothing on the order of
sex jealousy.
83:5.10
The number of wives was only limited by the ability of
the man to provide for them. Wealthy and able men wanted
large numbers of children, and since the infant
mortality was very high, it required an assembly of
wives to recruit a large family. Many of these plural
wives were mere laborers, slave wives.
83:5.11
Human customs evolve, but very slowly. The purpose of a
harem was to build up a strong and numerous body of
blood kin for the support of the throne. A certain chief
was once convinced that he should not have a harem, that
he should be contented with one wife; so he promptly
dismissed his harem. The dissatisfied wives went to
their homes, and their offended relatives swept down on
the chief in wrath and did away with him then and there.
6. TRUE MONOGAMY -- PAIR MARRIAGE
83:6.1
Monogamy is monopoly; it is good for those who attain
this desirable state, but it tends to work a biologic
hardship on those who are not so fortunate. But quite
regardless of the effect on the individual, monogamy is
decidedly best for the children.
83:6.2
The earliest monogamy was due to force of circumstances,
poverty. Monogamy is cultural and societal, artificial
and unnatural, that is, unnatural to evolutionary man.
It was wholly natural to the purer Nodites and Adamites
and has been of great cultural value to all advanced
races.
83:6.3
The Chaldean tribes recognized the right of a wife to
impose a premarital pledge upon her spouse not to take a
second wife or concubine; both the Greeks and the Romans
favored monogamous marriage. Ancestor worship has always
fostered monogamy, as has the Christian error of
regarding marriage as a sacrament. Even the elevation of
the standard of living has consistently militated
against plural wives. By the time of Michael's advent on
Urantia practically all of the civilized world had
attained the level of theoretical monogamy. But this
passive monogamy did not mean that mankind had become
habituated to the practice of real pair marriage.
83:6.4
While pursuing the monogamic goal of the ideal pair
marriage, which is, after all, something of a
monopolistic sex association, society must not overlook
the unenviable situation of those unfortunate men and
women who fail to find a place in this new and improved
social order, even when having done their best to
co-operate with, and enter into, its requirements.
Failure to gain mates in the social arena of competition
may be due to insurmountable difficulties or
multitudinous restrictions which the current mores have
imposed. Truly, monogamy is ideal for those who are in,
but it must inevitably work great hardship on those who
are left out in the cold of solitary existence.
83:6.5
Always have the unfortunate few had to suffer that the
majority might advance under the developing mores of
evolving civilization; but always should the favored
majority look with kindness and consideration on their
less fortunate fellows who must pay the price of failure
to attain membership in the ranks of those ideal sex
partnerships which afford the satisfaction of all
biologic urges under the sanction of the highest mores
of advancing social evolution.
83:6.6
Monogamy always has been, now is, and forever will be
the idealistic goal of human sex evolution. This ideal
of true pair marriage entails self-denial, and therefore
does it so often fail just because one or both of the
contracting parties are deficient in that acme of all
human virtues, rugged self-control.
83:6.7
Monogamy is the yardstick which measures the advance of
social civilization as distinguished from purely
biologic evolution. Monogamy is not necessarily biologic
or natural, but it is indispensable to the immediate
maintenance and further development of social
civilization. It contributes to a delicacy of sentiment,
a refinement of moral character, and a spiritual growth
which are utterly impossible in polygamy. A woman never
can become an ideal mother when she is all the while
compelled to engage in rivalry for her husband's
affections.
83:6.8
Pair marriage favors and fosters that intimate
understanding and effective co-operation which is best
for parental happiness, child welfare, and social
efficiency. Marriage, which began in crude coercion, is
gradually evolving into a magnificent institution of
self-culture, self-control, self-expression, and
self-perpetuation.
7. THE DISSOLUTION OF WEDLOCK
83:7.1
In the early evolution of the marital mores, marriage
was a loose union which could be terminated at will, and
the children always followed the mother; the
mother-child bond is instinctive and has functioned
regardless of the developmental stage of the mores.
83:7.2
Among primitive peoples only about one half the
marriages proved satisfactory. The most frequent cause
for separation was barrenness, which was always blamed
on the wife; and childless wives were believed to become
snakes in the spirit world. Under the more primitive
mores, divorce was had at the option of the man alone,
and these standards have persisted to the twentieth
century among some peoples.
83:7.3
As the mores evolved, certain tribes developed two forms
of marriage: the ordinary, which permitted divorce, and
the priest marriage, which did not allow for separation.
The inauguration of wife purchase and wife dowry, by
introducing a property penalty for marriage failure, did
much to lessen separation. And, indeed, many modern
unions are stabilized by this ancient property factor.
83:7.4
The social pressure of community standing and property
privileges has always been potent in the maintenance of
the marriage taboos and mores. Down through the ages
marriage has made steady progress and stands on advanced
ground in the modern world, notwithstanding that it is
threateningly assailed by widespread dissatisfaction
among those peoples where individual choice -- a new
liberty -- figures most largely. While these upheavals
of adjustment appear among the more progressive races as
a result of suddenly accelerated social evolution, among
the less advanced peoples marriage continues to thrive
and slowly improve under the guidance of the older
mores.
83:7.5
The new and sudden substitution of the more ideal but
extremely individualistic love motive in marriage for
the older and long-established property motive, has
unavoidably caused the marriage institution to become
temporarily unstable. Man's marriage motives have always
far transcended actual marriage morals, and in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Occidental ideal
of marriage has suddenly far outrun the self-centered
and but partially controlled sex impulses of the races.
The presence of large numbers of unmarried persons in
any society indicates the temporary breakdown or the
transition of the mores.
83:7.6
The real test of marriage, all down through the ages,
has been that continuous intimacy which is inescapable
in all family life. Two pampered and spoiled youths,
educated to expect every indulgence and full
gratification of vanity and ego, can hardly hope to make
a great success of marriage and home building -- a
life-long partnership of self-effacement, compromise,
devotion, and unselfish dedication to child culture.
83:7.7
The high degree of imagination and fantastic romance
entering into courtship is largely responsible for the
increasing divorce tendencies among modern Occidental
peoples, all of which is further complicated by woman's
greater personal freedom and increased economic liberty.
Easy divorce, when the result of lack of self-control or
failure of normal personality adjustment, only leads
directly back to those crude societal stages from which
man has emerged so recently and as the result of so much
personal anguish and racial suffering.
83:7.8
But just so long as society fails to properly educate
children and youths, so long as the social order fails
to provide adequate premarital training, and so long as
unwise and immature youthful idealism is to be the
arbiter of the entrance upon marriage, just so long will
divorce remain prevalent. And in so far as the social
group falls short of providing marriage preparation for
youths, to that extent must divorce function as the
social safety valve which prevents still worse
situations during the ages of the rapid growth of the
evolving mores.
83:7.9
The ancients seem to have regarded marriage just about
as seriously as some present-day people do. And it does
not appear that many of the hasty and unsuccessful
marriages of modern times are much of an improvement
over the ancient practices of qualifying young men and
women for mating. The great inconsistency of modern
society is to exalt love and to idealize marriage while
disapproving of the fullest examination of both.
8. THE IDEALIZATION OF MARRIAGE
83:8.1
Marriage which culminates in the home is indeed man's
most exalted institution, but it is essentially human;
it should never have been called a sacrament. The
Sethite priests made marriage a religious ritual; but
for thousands of years after Eden, mating continued as a
purely social and civil institution.
83:8.2
The likening of human associations to divine
associations is most unfortunate. The union of husband
and wife in the marriage-home relationship is a material
function of the mortals of the evolutionary worlds.
True, indeed, much spiritual progress may accrue
consequent upon the sincere human efforts of husband and
wife to progress, but this does not mean that marriage
is necessarily sacred. Spiritual progress is attendant
upon sincere application to other avenues of human
endeavor.
83:8.3
Neither can marriage be truly compared to the relation
of the Adjuster to man nor to the fraternity of Christ
Michael and his human brethren. At scarcely any point
are such relationships comparable to the association of
husband and wife. And it is most unfortunate that the
human misconception of these relationships has produced
so much confusion as to the status of marriage.
83:8.4
It is also unfortunate that certain groups of mortals
have conceived of marriage as being consummated by
divine action. Such beliefs lead directly to the concept
of the indissolubility of the marital state regardless
of the circumstances or wishes of the contracting
parties. But the very fact of marriage dissolution
itself indicates that Deity is not a conjoining party to
such unions. If God has once joined any two things or
persons together, they will remain thus joined until
such a time as the divine will decrees their separation.
But, regarding marriage, which is a human institution,
who shall presume to sit in judgment, to say which
marriages are unions that might be approved by the
universe supervisors in contrast with those which are
purely human in nature and origin?
83:8.5
Nevertheless, there is an ideal of marriage on the
spheres on high. On the capital of each local system the
Material Sons and Daughters of God do portray the height
of the ideals of the union of man and woman in the bonds
of marriage and for the purpose of procreating and
rearing offspring. After all, the ideal mortal marriage
is humanly
sacred.
83:8.6
Marriage always has been and still is man's supreme
dream of temporal ideality. Though this beautiful dream
is seldom realized in its entirety, it endures as a
glorious ideal, ever luring progressing mankind on to
greater strivings for human happiness. But young men and
women should be taught something of the realities of
marriage before they are plunged into the exacting
demands of the interassociations of family life;
youthful idealization should be tempered with some
degree of premarital disillusionment.
83:8.7
The youthful idealization of marriage should not,
however, be discouraged; such dreams are the
visualization of the future goal of family life. This
attitude is both stimulating and helpful providing it
does not produce an insensitivity to the realization of
the practical and commonplace requirements of marriage
and subsequent family life.
83:8.8
The ideals of marriage have made great progress in
recent times; among some peoples woman enjoys
practically equal rights with her consort. In concept,
at least, the family is becoming a loyal partnership for
rearing offspring, accompanied by sexual fidelity. But
even this newer version of marriage need not presume to
swing so far to the extreme as to confer mutual monopoly
of all personality and individuality. Marriage is not
just an individualistic ideal; it is the evolving social
partnership of a man and a woman, existing and
functioning under the current mores, restricted by the
taboos, and enforced by the laws and regulations of
society.
83:8.9
Twentieth-century marriages stand high in comparison
with those of past ages, notwithstanding that the home
institution is now undergoing a serious testing because
of the problems so suddenly thrust upon the social
organization by the precipitate augmentation of woman's
liberties, rights so long denied her in the tardy
evolution of the mores of past generations.
83:8.10
Presented by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.
*
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