CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE BY PURCHASE AND BY SERVITUDE.
I. The Power of Parents.—The hypothesis of a primitive matriarchate—Maternal filiation and the condition of the woman—Parental right of property in children—Conjugal sales of little girls in Africa, Polynesia, America, and India.
II. Marriage by Servitude.—Labour and exchange value—Marriage by servitude with the Redskins, in Central America, in India, with the Hebrews—Influence of marriage by servitude on the condition of the woman.
III. Marriage by Purchase.—With the Hottentots and the Kaffirs in Middle Africa, in Polynesia, in America, with the Mongols in China, with the aborigines of India, with the Berbers, the Hindoos in Malasia, and in Greco-Roman antiquity—Dowry marriage—Moral signification of marriage by purchase.
Marriage by capture, that is to say, the custom of rape, necessarily supposes a profound disdain for the ravished woman, and the antipathies or sympathies she may feel. It is indeed the truth that, as far back as we can carry our historical and ethnographical investigations, we find, with very rare exceptions, the subjection of woman is the rule in all human societies, and that the more backward the civilisation the harder was the subjection. Some sociologists have pretended that maternal filiation implied for the woman a sort of golden age—a reign of Amazons—during which the woman, as centre of the family, must have been honoured as its chief. All we know of ethnography gives the lie to this hypothesis. In the present day the matriarchate does not anywhere exist, but maternal kinship does, and we do not find that it involves a milder condition for the woman. This system of filiation necessarily indicates a gross state of society, in which paternity is still uncertain. Now, as a rule, the subjection of woman is in inverse ratio to the development of man. In primitive societies, where might is the only right, the woman, on account of her relative weakness, is always treated with extreme brutality. It would be difficult, without losing all human quality whatever, to be less intelligent than the Australian, and equally difficult to imagine a more cruel servitude than that of the Australian woman, always beaten, often wounded, sometimes killed and eaten, according to the convenience of her owner. The Fijians, much more intelligent than the Australians, amused themselves with beating their mother, and with binding their wives to trees in order to whip them.[267] A Fijian named Loti, simply to make himself notorious, devoured his wife, after having cooked her on a fire that he had forced her to light herself.[268] No kind of ferocious caprice was condemned by the morality of the country. But such manners are as far as possible from being consistent with the idea of a matriarchal society, in which a place of honour is accorded to the wife.
In primitive societies the condition of children is, if possible, still more subordinate than that of woman. Infanticide at the moment of birth is not even a venial fault. And later, the parents exercise the undisputed right of life and death over their progeny; and when slavery is instituted, the children become a veritable article of merchandise. In short, the rights of a father of a family are unlimited.
From this primitive right of property accorded to the parents over their children has resulted quite naturally all over the world the right of marrying them without consulting them at all. Moreover, as it had long been the custom to sell them, marriage was naturally considered as a commercial bargain, and by degrees marriage by purchase even took the place of marriage by capture, but after having long co-existed with it. Capture and purchase had each their advantages and disadvantages. Capture cost nothing, and it procured wives and concubines over whom the husband had every possible right; but, in practice, it was not exempt from danger, and once accomplished, it exposed him still to revenge and retaliation. Men became resigned, therefore, to the purchase of the wife, as soon as they could dispose of some exchange-values; and as nothing, absolutely nothing, was any obstacle to the caprice or avidity of the parents, the most unreasonable marriages were often negotiated, and notably the marriages of children.
This custom of selling children, especially girls, for a future conjugal association is very common all over the world.
In New Caledonia the children are betrothed by the parents almost from the moment of birth.[269] In Africa, among the black races, and notably the Hottentots, whose women age fast, the prudent men retain, years in advance, the little girls destined to succeed their actual wives.[270] In Ashantee little girls of ten and twelve thus sold are already legally considered the wives of the acquirer, although they have not yet left their mothers, and any familiarity taken with them by another man is punished by a fine paid to the future owner.[271]
In Polynesia, also, the fathers, mothers, and relatives arranged the conjugal unions of the children years before these unions were actually possible.[272]
With the Moxos and the Chiquitos of South America premature marriages were such a settled order of things that there were no celibates above the age of fourteen for the men and twelve for the women. The Jesuit missionaries in America had completely adopted this native custom, and they often married young girls of ten to boys of twelve years. Naturally these child marriages entailed sometimes equally precocious widowhood. D’Orbigny states that he has seen among these tribes a widower of twelve and a widow of ten years.[273]
In the time of Marco Polo the Tartars of Asia celebrated marriages that were more singular still—the marriages of deceased children. The families drew up the contract as if their children had been living, solemnly celebrated a symbolic wedding, then burned not less solemnly the fictitious contract, which would be, they thought, the means of holding it good in the other world for the vanished young couple. Thenceforward an alliance existed between the contracting families as if the marriage had been real.[274]
Among the Reddies of India a young woman from sixteen to twenty years old is frequently married to a little boy of five or six. The wife then goes to live either with the father, or with an uncle, or a maternal cousin of her future husband. The children resulting from these extra-conjugal unions are attributed to the boy, who is reputed to be the legal husband. When once this boy has reached manhood his legitimate wife is old, and then he in his turn unites himself to the wife of another boy, for whom he also raises up pseudo-legitimate children.[275]
Child-marriages, at least of little girls, are still very common in India amongst the Brahmins, and it is not unusual to see sexagenarian Brahmins marry little girls of six or seven years, for whom they pay money.[276]
On this point, as on most others, our European ancestors have not been more delicate than the savage or barbarous races of other countries. Thus Plutarch tells us that in ancient Italy the girls were often married before the age of twelve years, but that they did not become wives before that age.[277]
At the present day the Russian peasants still frequently act like the Reddies of India, and it is not rare to see, under the Mir system, young boys of eight or ten years married to women of twenty-five or thirty. Very often, in this case, the chief of the family becomes the effective husband of the woman while the legal husband is growing up.[278]
From all these facts we may evidently conclude that in societies of little or no cultivation the children are left absolutely to the discretion of the parents. The latter, having every possible right over their progeny, consider them as a property, and think it no crime to sell their daughters, pubescent or not, as soon as they constitute a negotiable value. This sale of daughters is even the most widely spread form of primitive marriage, or of what it is convenient to call so. In societies of some degree of civilisation, where exchange-values exist, as domestic animals, stores of provisions, or slaves, the sale of a daughter is argued and debated like any other transaction, and the merchandise is delivered for the price agreed on. In a more primitive state of civilisation, when man subsists chiefly by the chase, or fishing from day to day, and is not always rich enough to buy a wife, the exchange-values considered equivalent of the required daughter are often replaced by a certain amount of labour or services rendered to the parents, and hence results a special form of marriage—marriage by servitude.
This mode of marriage was not uncommon with the Indians of North America. Sometimes the future husband engaged to serve the parents of the girl for a fixed period of time. He hunted for them, hollowed out or constructed canoes, or where agriculture was practised he cultivated the land.[279] Sometimes the husband was not entirely enslaved; he had only to give to his wife’s parents a part of the produce of the chase, and he was not exempt from this tribute till a daughter was born to him, who became, by way of indemnity, the property of the maternal uncle of his wife.[280]
Often during the time of his voluntary servitude the husband remained in the family of his wife, and he actually took the position there of a sort of slave.[281]
In the more civilised societies of Central America the custom of marriage by servitude was nevertheless preserved. Among the Kenaï, the future husband went every morning for a whole year to the house of the parents of his betrothed to prepare the food, carry the water, or heat the bath-chamber; then, when his year of service was over, he took away the daughter.[282] In Yucatan the son-in-law was obliged to serve his father-in-law for two or three years. This manner of acting even became a general custom which it was considered immoral not to follow.[283] With the Mayas, the bridegroom was required to build himself a house opposite that of his future father-in-law, and he lived there five or six years, giving his labour during all that period.[284]
Although more common in America than elsewhere, the custom of marriage by servitude is not confined to that continent. The Limboos and the Kirantis of Bengal often buy their wives by giving a certain term of labour to the father, in whose house they remain until the payment is finished.[285] We know also that marriage by servitude is not peculiar to savages of inferior races, since the Bible informs us that Jacob only espoused Leah and Rachel at the price of fourteen years’ service. Without dilating further on marriage by servitude, I shall remark by the way that it had for its result the placing of the husband in a subordinate position towards the woman, or at least towards the family of the woman, in which he had so long been treated as a servant. A certain independence was gained by the wife who had been acquired in this manner. Thus, with the Kenaï, of whom I was speaking just now, the woman had the right to return to her father if she was not well treated by her husband.[286] Marriage by servitude had therefore, in fact, a moral side; it lessened the subjection, always hard and sometimes cruel, to which woman is liable in nearly all savage or barbarous societies.
Marriage by purchase is much more widely spread than marriage by servitude or service. All over the world, in all races and in all times, wherever history can inform us, we find well-authenticated examples permitting us to affirm that during the middle age of civilisation the right of parents over children, and especially over daughters, included in all countries the power to sell them. I purpose to consult on this subject all the great races of mankind, and confirmatory facts will not be wanting; I shall, indeed, have to limit myself in giving them.
Among the Hottentots and the Kaffirs, the exchange value of the country being cattle, the daughters are paid for in cows or oxen, and the price of the merchandise varies according to the fluctuations of demand and supply. Among the Great Namaquois Levaillant saw a conjugal affair concluded very cheaply, for a single cow;[287] but this price may be increased tenfold.[288] With the Corannas, the man makes his request leading an ox to the door of the girl. If he is allowed to kill the animal, it means that his demand is granted. In the contrary case, the suitor is sent away and sometimes stoned.[289] Hottentot girls are sometimes sold in their own tribe, and sometimes in a neighbouring one. At the time of Burchell’s travels there was a lively traffic in girls between the Bachapin Hottentots and the Kora Hottentots.[290]
According to Livingstone, among the Makalolo Kaffirs the price paid to the father had also for its object the redemption of the right of ownership which he would otherwise have in the children of his daughter.
In Central Africa, in Senegambia, in the valley of the Niger, with the Mandingoes, the Peuls, etc., marriages are reduced to the sale of the girl by those having the right.[291] With the Timannis, says Laing, the pretendant first brings a jar of palm wine, or a little rum, to the parents. If his demand is favourably received the presents are accepted, and the giver is invited to return, which he does, bringing a second jar of wine, some kolas, some measures of stuff, and some chaplets. All is then definitely concluded, and they announce to the girl that she is married.[292]
With the Moors of Senegambia conjugal sales are effected in nearly the same manner; however, the girl has a right to refuse, but on condition of renouncing marriage for ever, on pain of becoming the slave of her first suitor in the case of an attempt to marry her to another.[293] This right of refusal, limited as it is, already constitutes a notable degree of progress which does not always exist in much more civilised countries. We must place by the side of this some other customs in force here and there in this region of Central Africa, confining ourselves to the Sahara and to where the population is strongly mixed with Berber blood. It is to be remembered that in nearly all Berber countries the subjection of women is or has been a little less severe.
At Sackatoo the daughter is generally consulted by her parents as a matter of form only, for she never refuses. In the same district the young people first obtain a mutual consent, and then that of their parents. Among rich people the husband settles on his future wife a dowry consisting of female slaves, sculptured calabashes filled with millet, dourra, and rice, of cloth, bracelets, toilet articles, of stones for grinding the grain, mortars for pounding it, etc. All these presents are borne in great pomp, on the heads of female slaves, to the husband’s house when the wife enters it for the first time.
At Kouranko the young girls are often sold by their parents as dearly as possible to rich old men. They are forced to submit, but, once widows, they resume their liberty and recoup themselves by choosing at will a young husband, on whom they lavish their care and attentions.[294] Now we shall find that in many civilisations relatively advanced, widowhood even does not gratify the woman with a liberty of which she is never thought worthy.
At Wowow and at Boussa the emancipation of woman is markedly greater. It is no longer the father, it is the grandmother who gives or refuses her grand-daughter, and if the grandmother is dead, the girl is free to act as she likes.[295] This fact, if correct, is infinitely more curious than all the others, and it ought to rejoice the sociologists full of faith, who admit in a distant antiquity the existence of a matriarchal régime assigning to woman the chief place in the family. But let us continue our inquiry.
In Polynesia marriage by purchase was habitual. In New Zealand the man bought the girl, and offered presents to her parents.[296]
Generally in Polynesia the suitor offered pigs, stuffs, etc. If his demand was granted, the bargain was quickly concluded; the girl was there and then delivered to the husband; a Polynesian bed was arranged in the house of the bride’s father, and the newly-married couple passed the night there. The next day a feast was celebrated, to which friends were invited, and which consisted of several pigs.[297]
At Tahiti temporary marriages were also concluded, and in this case the presents of pigs, stuffs, pigeons, etc., varied in amount according to the length of the union.[298]
But, in spite of the sale, the Polynesian father always retained over his daughter the prior right of ownership, and when the presents seemed to him to be insufficient, he took back the merchandise to let or sell it to a more generous lover. If a child was born, the husband was free to kill the infant, which was done by applying a piece of wet stuff to the mouth and nose, or to let it live, but in the latter case he generally kept the wife for the whole of her life. If the union was sterile, or the children put to death, the man had always the right to abandon the woman when and how it seemed good to him.[299] She was a slave that he had bought, and that he could get rid of at will.[300]
On the great American continent, from north to south the custom of the sale of the daughter is common to a great number of peoples. With the Redskins female merchandise is generally paid for in horses and blankets. When the daughter had been sold to a white man and then abandoned, as frequently happened, the parents resumed possession of her, and sold her a second time.
In Columbia what was most prized was the aptitude of the woman for labour, and her qualities as a beast of burden were worth to her parents a greater or less number of horses.[301]
Among the Redskins of northern California the girls were bought and sold like any other articles, and there was no thought of consulting them in the matter. The price was paid to the father, and the girl was led off simply as if it were a horse-sale. Poor suitors naturally had to give way to rich ones, and hence all the opulent old men obtained all the beautiful young women.[302] There was no nuptial ceremony. However, with the Modocs, the conclusion of the business is marked by a feast, but the newly-married couple take no part in it.
The Redskin parents do not always entirely abandon their married daughter, and if she is too ill-treated by her owner, they have the right to take her back, and then of course to sell her to some one else.[303] Socialist customs sometimes co-exist with these gross conjugal ones. The nuptial abode is often prepared by the tribe, or, as in Columbia, the friends join in paying to the father the price of the daughter.[304] The Californian suitors sometimes obtain a wife on credit; but then the man is called “half-married,” and is forced to live as a slave with the parents of the girl until he has concluded the payment, for there is no essential difference between marriage by servitude and marriage by purchase. In America, as elsewhere, morality is simply the expression of habits and needs, and thus the purchase of the wife has ended by becoming an honourable thing; and among the Californian Redskins the children of a wife who has cost nothing to her husband are looked down on.[305]
The Papayos of New Mexico are not content with selling their daughters by private contract; they put them up to auction.[306] As for the inhabitants of those curious Neo-Mexican phalansteries called pueblos, as they are much more advanced than the greater part of their American congeners, their matrimonial customs are less gross; and the suitor, when accepted by the parents, tries to charm his bride by daily serenades lasting for hours—a rare thing in savage countries.[307]
With the half-civilised tribes of Guatemala and Nicaragua conjugal unions were also determined according to the presents made to the parents, and in Guatemala the young people were both kept in ignorance of the affair until the last moment.[308] In Nicaragua, however, there existed a curious exception in certain towns, where at a particular festival the young girls had the right to choose their husbands freely from among the young men present.[309]
With the Moxos and the Guaranis the price paid to the parents is still the decisive reason of the marriage.[310] However, the Guaranis also exact from the husband proofs of virile qualities in the chase and in war.[311] The struggle for existence is still severe, and in order to keep one or more wives a man must be able not only to feed but to defend them.
The Mongols of Asia buy their wives exactly like the Mongoloids of America, of whom I have just spoken.
Among the nomad Mongols, the Tartars of northern Asia, the parents arrange the marriages with absolute authority, and without consulting the parties more especially interested. The bargain is sharply debated between the parents, and the price to be paid by the husband or his family is very precisely settled; the future couple are not even informed of it, their sentiments, their desires, or dislikes, are not considered in the least. The price of the girl is paid in cattle, sheep, oxen, or horses; in pieces of stuff, in brandy, in butter, in flour, etc. Everything being agreed on, the contract of sale is drawn up before witnesses, but the girl is only delivered to the purchaser after the ceremony of marriage, which, as we have previously seen, takes the form of capture.[312]
The Turcomans have customs very similar to those of the Tartars. With them the price of the girl is chiefly reckoned in camels, and it generally takes five to pay for a girl; but as in their eyes the woman is not an object of luxury, as she not only has to manage the housekeeping but to manufacture articles which have an exchange value, and which are profitable to the family, experienced women and widows, provided they are passable, are much more sought for in the conjugal market than young girls. It is no longer five camels, but fifty, or even a hundred, that must be paid for a widow still in good condition.[313] If the suitor cannot immediately get together the price of the woman he covets, he has recourse to marriage by capture, and takes refuge with his bride in a neighbouring camp.
A settlement is always effected, matters are compounded, and the ravisher engages to pay a certain number of camels and horses, which he generally procures by marauding on the frontiers of Persia. It is a veritable debt of honour for him, and he must pay it with the least possible delay.[314]
These barbarous customs of Mongolia are naturally softened in China, but without any essential change in their main features. There, as well as in Tartary, the young girl is considered as the property of her parents, and her training is so perfect that she has not the slightest desire to be consulted before being married, or rather sold, for ready money.[315] In the Chinese family, daughters count for so little value that they are only called by ordinal numbers—first-born, second-born, etc.—to which is added a surname.[316] The price of the daughter when purchased is paid to the parents in two separate portions—the first on the conclusion of the agreement and the signing of the contract, and the other on the wedding-day.[317] Marriage by capture has naturally gone out of use in the old civilisation of China, but the trace of it still remains in the ceremonial, for the bride is lifted over the threshold of the conjugal dwelling, as was the custom in ancient Rome.
It has appeared so natural to parents all over the world to dispose of their daughters as they chose, that many of the aborigines of India do nearly the same as the Mongols. The daughters are sold by the parents among the Kolhans, the Bendkars, the Limboos, the Kirantis, the Moundas, the Santals, the Oraons, the Muasis, the Birhors, the Hos, the Boyars, the Nagas, the Gonds, etc.[318] The price of the girl varies from three to fourteen rupees, or is reckoned in head of cattle or measures of rice. Sometimes female merchandise is rare and dear, for in some countries female infanticide has long prevailed; it may happen, too, that daughters are condemned to celibacy, as with the Hos,[319] or, as with the Nagas, that marriages are delayed, and that the bridegroom must often submit to marriage by servitude.[320] Sometimes, again, the girls are carried off, as happens among the Kolhans, by the impatient bridegrooms, and, after the rape, arbitrators negotiate a settlement.[321] It should be remarked, by the way, that with the Nagas marriage by servitude has its ordinary effect, that of abasing the husband and raising the wife; and, in fact, among these races, although the wife performs severe labour, she is treated as the equal of her husband.[322]
In some aboriginal tribes of India we even find matriarchal customs. Thus with the Pani-Koechs the husbands leave to their very industrious wives the care of their property. In marrying, a man goes to live with his mother-in-law, and obeys her as well as his wife. Moreover, in this tribe the mothers negotiate the marriages; the fathers have nothing to do with them.[323]
Among the Yerkalas the maternal uncle has the right to claim for his sons the two eldest daughters of his sister, or to renounce them for an indemnity of eight images of idols.[324]
Money, always money! With all peoples and races marriage is often reduced to a pecuniary question. In this respect the Berbers, the Semites, and the Aryans are not distinguished from other human types. With certain Touaregs of the Sahara, says Duveyrier, it is the daughter herself who indemnifies the father, and it is after the old Italian manner, more tusco, that she gains the price of enfranchisement which is necessary for her marriage. “The father, before the marriage of his daughter, exacts from her the reimbursement, levied on her body, of what she has cost her family ... and the girl, dishonoured according to our ideas, but ransomed according to local ideas, is all the more sought after, the greater her success in the commerce of her attractions.”[325]
In contrast to the Touaregs, the Semites, Hebrews, and Arabs, attached and still attach an enormous value to the virginity of the bride; but marriage was not and is not any the less for them a simple sale. The history of Jacob’s marriage has already shown us that marriage by servitude was practised by the ancient Hebrews. In later times the consent of the woman became necessary, which is a great step in advance, but the husband none the less bought his wife in some way or other.[326]
With contemporary Arabs marriage is a simple sale, without any disguise. An Arab jurist gives us the formula of it, which is very clear. It is as follows: “I sell you my daughter for such a sum.” “I accept.” The same author says elsewhere: “The woman sells in marriage a part of her person. In a purchase men buy an article of merchandise; in a marriage they buy the field of procreation.”[327] It would be impossible to speak more plainly. Nevertheless, the consent of the woman is necessary; it is she who is supposed to sell herself, and the price of the bargain constitutes her dowry. It was the same with the Hebrews.
Whatever may have been their religion, the greater number of the Aryan peoples have also considered marriage as a commercial transaction. The Afghan Mussulmans buy their wives, and these are regarded as a property, so much so that in case of widowhood they cannot re-marry, unless the second husband indemnifies the family of the first.[328]
In Brahmanic India the daughter is also bought from the parents. A curious verse of the Code of Manu tells us how the purchaser was indemnified in the case of substitution of another person: “If, after having shown a suitor a young girl, whose hand is granted to him, another is given him to wife, and secretly brought to him, he becomes the husband of both for the same price; such is the decision of Manu.”[329] Things have not much changed at present. “When they wish to signify that they are going to be married,” says an editor of Lettres édifiantes, in speaking of the Hindoos, “they generally say that they are going to buy a wife.” However, the parents do not appropriate the entire sum paid by the purchaser; a great part of it goes to buy jewels for the bride.[330] The ancient Malays of Sumatra had solved the conjugal problem in three different ways. Sometimes the man bought and led away the woman, according to the universal custom; sometimes the woman bought the man, who then came to live with her family; sometimes the two were married on a footing of equality.[331] We must note in passing that this last matrimonial form is very exceptional.
Throughout Europe, as well in Greco-Latin antiquity as among barbarians, the young girl has formerly been considered as a negotiable property, and marriage as a sale.
The Sagas tell us that the Scandinavian fathers married their daughters without consulting them—after the manner of savages—and received an indemnity from the son-in-law.[332]
With the Germans the daughter could not marry without the authorisation of her father or of her nearest relative, who first received the earnest money from the bridegroom;[333] as for the bride, she received the oscle, or price of the first kiss, and then the morgengabe, which constituted her dowry. In return, the German widow, like the Afghan widow, was the property of the parents of her husband, and could not re-marry without their authorisation.[334]
In primitive Greece the daughter was purchased either by presents to the father or by services rendered to him.[335] The father could marry his daughter as he thought well, and in default of a son could leave her by will, with the heritage of which she formed a part, to a stranger.[336]
At Rome also the daughter was the property of her father, and until the time of Antoninus the father had the right to re-marry her when the husband had been absent three years.[337] Marriage by purchase had certainly been the primitive form of the conjugal contract. In reality the confarreatio, a solemn and religious union in the presence of ten witnesses, was a patrician marriage. The usus, or the consecration of a free union after a year of cohabitation, strongly resembles the Polynesian marriage. But the most common conjugal form, the one which succeeded the usus, and surely preceded the confarreatio, was marriage by purchase, the coemptio.
Coemption ended in time by becoming purely symbolic; the wife was delivered to the husband, who, as a formality, gave her a few pieces of money; but the ceremony is none the less eloquent, and it proves clearly that in principle the woman had been, at Rome as elsewhere, assimilated by the parents to a thing, to a venal property. When at Athens and at Rome an effort was made to give the married woman a less subordinate position, nothing more was done than opposing money to money by inventing the dowry marriage; and hence resulted other inconveniences, on which Latin writers have largely dilated, and which we can easily study to-day from life. But for the present I must not speak of them. It suffices to have proved that all over the earth, in all times and among all races, marriage by purchase has been widely practised.
Now, the custom of marriage by purchase has a very clear and very important signification from a moral and social point of view. It implies a profound contempt for woman, and her complete assimilation to chattels, to cattle, and to things in general. On this point the Roman law leaves no room for ambiguity, since it makes no essential difference between the marital law and the law of property. In regard to the woman, as in regard to goods, possession or use, continued for a year, gave a right of ownership. When applied to things, this possession is called usucapion; applied to the woman, it is called usus.[338] The difference between the terms is slight; between the facts there is none. In reality the wife and the child, especially the female child, have been the first property possessed by man, which has even implanted in the savage mind the taste for possession, and the pretension to use and abuse the things left entirely to his mercy. At Rome this became by the jus quiritium, for the woman the manus of the husband, and for property the jus utendi et abutendi of the proprietor. But this abuse, and this use, nearly always equally an abuse also, have contributed not a little to deprave man and to render him, from the origin of societies until our own day, refractory to ideas of equity and justice, especially in what relates to the condition of woman.