The Urantia Book
PAPER 83
THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION
Presented by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.
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.