The Urantia Book
PAPER 82
THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
Presented by the Chief of Seraphim
stationed on Urantia
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.