Marriage and Morals/Chapter III

As soon as the physiological fact of paternity is recognized, a quite new element enters into paternal feeling, an element which has led almost everywhere to the creation of patriarchal societies. As soon as a father recognizes that the child is, as the Bible says, his “seed,” his sentiment towards the child is reinforced by two factors, the love of power and the desire to survive death. The achievements of a man’s descendants are in a sense his achievements, and their life is a continuation of his life. Ambition no longer finds its termination at the grave, but can be indefinitely extended through the careers of descendants. Consider, for example, the satisfaction of Abraham when he is informed that his seed shall possess the land of Canaan. In a matrilineal society family ambition would have to be confined to women, and as women do not do the fighting, such family ambition as they may have has less effect than that of men. One must suppose, ​therefore, that the discovery of fatherhood would make human society more competitive, more energetic, more dynamic and hustling than it had been in the matrilineal stage. Apart from this effect, which is to some extent hypothetical, there was a new and all-important reason for insisting upon the virtue of wives. The purely instinctive element in jealousy is not nearly so strong as most moderns imagine. The extreme strength of jealousy in patriarchal societies is due to the fear of falsification of descent. This may be seen in the fact that a man who is tired of his wife and passionately devoted to his mistress will nevertheless be more jealous where his wife is concerned than when he finds a rival to the affections of his mistress. A legitimate child is a continuation of a man’s ego, and his affection for the child is a form of egoism. If, on the other hand, the child is not legitimate, the putative father is tricked into lavishing care upon a child with whom he has no biological connection. Hence the discovery of fatherhood led to the subjection of women as the only means of securing their virtue—a subjection first physical and then mental, which reached its height in the Victorian age. Owing to the subjection of women ​there has in most civilized communities been no genuine companionship between husbands and wives; their relation has been one of condescension on the one side and duty on the other. All the man’s serious thoughts and purposes he has kept to himself, since robust thought might lead his wife to betray him. In most civilized communities women have been denied almost all experience of the world and of affairs. They have been kept artificially stupid and therefore uninteresting. From Plato’s dialogues one derives an impression that he and his friends regarded men as the only proper objects of serious love. This is not to be wondered at when one considers that all the matters in which they were interested were completely closed to respectable Athenian women. Exactly the same state of affairs prevailed in China until recently, and in Persia in the great days of Persian poetry, and in many other ages and places. Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children. And not only love, but the whole contribution that women can make to civilization, has been stunted for the same reason.

The economic system naturally changed at ​the same time that the method of reckoning descent was transformed. In a matrilineal society a man inherits from his maternal uncle; in a patrilineal society he inherits from his father. The relation of father and son in a patrilineal society is a closer one than any relation between males which exists in a matrilineal society, for, as we have seen, the functions which we naturally attribute to the father are divided in a matrilineal society between the father and the maternal uncle, affection and care coming from the father, while power and property come from the maternal uncle. It is clear, therefore, that the patriarchal family is a more closely knit affair than the family of a more primitive type.

It would seem that it is only with the introduction of the patriarchal system that men came to desire virginity in their brides. Where the matrilineal system exists young women sow their wild oats as freely as young men, but this could not be tolerated when it became of great importance to persuade women that all intercourse outside marriage is wicked.

Fathers, having discovered the fact of their existence, proceeded everywhere to exploit it to the uttermost. The history of civilization is ​mainly a record of the gradual decay of paternal power, which reached its maximum, in most civilized countries, just before the beginning of historical records. Ancestor worship, which has lasted to our own day in China and Japan, appears to have been a universal characteristic of early civilization. A father had absolute power over his children, extending in many cases, as in Rome, to life and death. Daughters throughout civilization, and sons in a great many countries, could not marry without their father’s consent, and it was usual for the father to decide whom they should marry. A woman had in no period in her life any independent existence, being subject first to her father and then to her husband. At the same time an old woman could exercise almost despotic power within the household; her sons and their wives all lived under the same roof with her, and her daughters-in-law were completely subject to her. Down to the present day in China it is not unknown for young married women to be driven to suicide by the persecution of their mothers-in-law, and what can still be seen in China is only what was universal throughout the civilized parts of Europe and Asia until very recent times, When Christ said ​that He was come to set the son against the father and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law, He was thinking of just such households as one still finds in the Far East. The power which the father acquired in the first instance by his superior strength was reinforced by religion, which may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government. Ancestor worship, or something analogous, prevailed very widely. The religious ideas of Christianity, as we have already seen, are impregnated with the majesty of fatherhood. The monarchic and aristocratic organization of society and the system of inheritance were based everywhere upon paternal power. In early days economic motives upheld this system. One sees in Genesis how men desired a numerous progeny, and how advantageous it was to them when they had it. Multiplication of sons was as advantageous as multiplication of flocks and herds. That was why in those days Yahveh ordered men to increase and multiply.

But as civilization advanced the economic circumstances changed, so that the religious precepts which had at one time been exhortations to self-interest began to grow irksome. ​After Rome became prosperous, the aristocracy no longer had large families. Throughout the later centuries of Roman greatness the old patrician stocks were continually dying out in spite of the exhortations of moralists, which were as ineffective then as they are now. Divorce became easy and common; women in the upper classes achieved a position almost equal to that of men and the patria potestas grew less and less. This development was in many ways very much like that of our own day, but it was confined to the upper classes, and shocked those who were not rich enough to profit by it. The civilization of antiquity, in contrast to our own, suffered through being confined to a very small percentage of the population. It was this that made it precarious while it lasted, and caused it ultimately to succumb to a great uprush of superstition from below. Christianity and the barbarian invasion destroyed the Greco-Roman system of ideas. While the patriarchal system remained, and was even at first strengthened as compared at any rate to the system of aristocratic Rome, it had nevertheless to accommodate itself to a new element, namely the Christian view of sex and the individualism derived from the Chris​tian doctrine of the soul and salvation. No Christian community can be so frankly biological as the civilizations of antiquity and of the Far East. Moreover, the individualism of Christian theology gradually affected the polity of Christian countries, while the promise of personal immortality diminished the interest which men took in the survival of their progeny, which had formerly seemed to them the nearest approach to immortality which was possible. Modern society, although it is still patrilineal and although the family still survives, attaches infinitely less importance to paternity than ancient societies did. And the strength of the family is enormously less than it used to be. Men’s hopes and ambitions nowadays are utterly different from those of the patriarchs in Genesis. They wish to achieve greatness rather through their position in the State than through the possession of a numerous progeny. This change is one of the reasons why traditional morals and theology have less force than they used to have. Nevertheless the change itself is in fact a part of Christian theology. To see how this has come about, the way in which religion has affected men’s views of marriage and the family must next be examined.