Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/207

 nobler than the other matrimonial forms. Nothing can be more beautiful than the union of two intelligent and refined beings freely associating their lives after ripe reflection "for better, for worse," as the marriage service of England has it. But the reality is often very different from this poetic ideal. Even amongst the most highly civilised peoples, this spontaneous, disinterested, devoted union, based on moral and intellectual sympathies, is very rare; it does not exist in civilisations still partly barbarous, whose monogamy easily accommodates itself to the subjection of women, however extreme. We shall see that it is so, in studying this matrimonial type amongst the Hebrews at first, and afterwards amongst the Aryan races, that is to say, amongst the human types which are reputed par excellence Superior. II. Hebrew Marriage.

The Hebrews seem to have been alone among the Semites in adopting monogamy, at least in general practice. Moreover, the Bible tells us that concubinage was not forbidden to God's chosen people. In speaking of the daughter sold by her father to a rich man, the book of Exodus used language sufficiently explicit on this point—"If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power. And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. But if he take to him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish." The book of Genesis indeed tells us that "a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh;" but this famous verse seems to indicate the violenceof the love rather than monogamic and indissoluble marriage.

Doubtless the subjection of the Jewish woman was not extreme, as it is in Kabyle; it was, however, very great. Her consent to marriage was necessary, it is true, when she had reached majority, but she was all the same sold to her husband. We must note, nevertheless, that she had