CHAPTER XI.
PRIMITIVE MONOGAMY.
I. The Monogamy of Inferior Races.—The causes of monogamy—The gynecocratic theory of Bachofen—Inferior monogamic races—Races which are polygamic, although superior—Co-existence of monogamy and polygamy.
II. Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America.—Monogamy of the common people in Mexico and Peru—Civil marriage in Peru.
III. Monogamy in Ancient Egypt.—Gynecocracy in Egypt—Its raison d’être.
IV. Monogamy of the Touaregs and Abyssinians.—Gynecocracy among the Touaregs—Fragility of Marriage in Abyssinia.
V. Monogamy among the Mongols of Asia.—Monogamy in reality in Thibet—Modified monogamy among the Tartars—Marriage in China—Matrimonial legislation in China—Conjugal docility of the Chinese women—Japanese marriage.
VI. Monogamy and Civilisation.
I. The Monogamy of Inferior Races.
After having successively studied the inferior forms of sexual and conjugal unions, it now remains for us to investigate the most elevated of them—the one that all, or nearly all, the great civilised societies have ended by adopting, at least in appearance, in their legal systems—monogamy.
Of the great causes which have led to the adoption of monogamic marriage, the first is the sexual equilibrium of births as soon as it was no longer disturbed by the casualties of savage life. Without doubt, in a society composed sensibly of equal numbers of men and women, the more powerful and rich may monopolise several women by the right of the strongest, but in doing so they wrong the community, and public opinion becomes hostile to the practice. It is thus that with the Dyaks the chiefs lose their authority and see their influence diminish when they indulge in polygamy, although no law forbids it.[499]
Another cause quite as powerful which contributed greatly to lead to legal monogamy was the institution of individual and hereditary property. L. Morgan does not hesitate to refer monogamic marriage to this sole origin. Indeed, in all societies more or less civilised, the desire for heritable property has quickly assumed a capital importance; the more or less equitable regulation of questions of interest, and the anxiety to safeguard these interests, form the solid basis of all written codes. Now, nearly everywhere the heritage is transmitted according to filiation, sometimes maternal, sometimes paternal; but it is only in the monogamic régime that the parentage of children is the same for all in the paternal as well as the maternal line.[500]
Over and above this, moral motives have reinforced the great influences resulting from the laws of natality and the all-powerful questions of interest. In theory or ideal, the life-long union of two beings, giving and devoting themselves to each other, engaging to share good and evil fortune, is surely very noble; but, as we shall see, the realisation of monogamic marriage has everywhere been most gross, and it is difficult to refer it to elevated aspirations. Unless we are intoxicated with sentimentalism, we cannot believe, with Bachofen,[501] that women, naturally more noble and more sensitive than their gross companions, grew tired of primitive hetaïrism, and, obeying powerful religious aspirations, enthroned monogamic marriage by force, becoming by the same stroke heads of the family, and inaugurating gynecocracy. These Amazonian fables are very energetically contradicted by history and ethnography.
Nearly in every age, and nearly in every place, woman, by reason of her native weakness, has been subordinate to her companion, often oppressed by him, and her subjection is the more severe as the civilisation is the more primitive. It is a great error to believe that in all times and places monogamic union is the sign and necessary seal of an advanced civilisation. A number of primitive tribes are monogamous; certain monkeys are so too. Among the inferior monogamous races I will mention the Veddahs[502] of the woods of Ceylon, so low in intelligence that they have not even names for the numbers; the Bochimans of South Africa,[503] scarcely more developed; the Kurnais of Australia, among whom monogamy, though not obligatory, is general.[504] Certain aborigines of India,[505] less primitive, no doubt, than these very humble specimens of our species, but still very savage, are also monogamous. These are: the Nagas, who are contented to make their one wife work very hard; the Kisans, who limit themselves to a single wife, and have not even any concubines;[506] the Padans, who set a good example to more than one superior race, for not only do they blame polygamy and only practise it exceptionally, but they do not buy their wives, and leave to their young people the liberty of marrying as they please.[507]
The form of marriage is therefore not necessarily connected with the degree of general civilisation. The contrary is well proved, since very civilised peoples have adopted polygamy, sometimes openly, and very often in a masked form. Man is willingly polygamous by instinct, but he is often forced to bend to the necessities of social existence. Therefore, in the same country, and in the same race, we may meet with tribes and ethnic groups very analogous in everything else, but practising very dissimilar conjugal forms. It is not rare, for example, to see monogamy and polygamy elbowing each other. Thus the Redskins are willingly polygamous, and yet the Pimas, the Cocomaricopas, and a number of tribes on the banks of the Gilo, of Colorado and of New Mexico, only marry one wife, whilst with the Navajos, the Comanches, etc., a man has as many wives as he can buy.[508]
With the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec there is no polygamy; it is forbidden.[509] On the contrary, with all the Indians of Columbia polygamy is general; but the Otomacs, who are reckoned among the most savage, are monogamous.[510] Necessity makes the law; and although it may be the legal form of marriage adopted by the superior races, monogamy does not imply in itself an advanced civilisation. Besides, the numerous facts that I have previously quoted abundantly prove that polygamy and monogamy can coexist in the same society—the former for the sole use of the ruling classes, the latter for the common people.
II. Monogamy in the Ancient States of Central America.
It was thus in Mexico,[511] where, among the wives of the great men, one alone was called lawful; her children inherited the paternal title and wealth, to the exclusion of the others.[512] In Peru, as in Mexico, the law, with the bold partiality which there is no attempt to disguise in barbarous societies, permitted polygamy to the Inca and to the enormous family of the Incas, while exacting a strict monogamy from the poor. State communism, imposed on the country, regulated the sexual unions somewhat as our rural proprietors regulate the coupling of their domestic animals. Peruvian marriage was a civil act, very comparable to enforced military service in modern Europe. Every year in the kingdom of Cuzco it was the practice to assemble together in the squares of the towns and villages all the individuals of marriageable age, from twenty-four to twenty-six years for the men, and from eighteen to twenty for the women. At Cuzco the Inca himself married the persons of his own family, and always in a public square, by putting in each other the hands of the different couples. In their respective boundaries the chiefs of districts, resembling our mayors, fulfilled the same function for the persons of their own rank or of an inferior rank. We are indeed told that the consent of parents was necessary, but it was not a question of the consent of the interested parties.[513] Besides, it was strictly forbidden to marry outside the civil group of which the individuals formed a part. In this case marriages must often have been contracted between relatives more or less near. As to incest, there was little severity, since the Inca was legally bound to marry one of his sisters, with the reservation that she might not be his uterine sister,[514] and the same rule was at last extended to the nobles of the empire.
In sanctioning the civil marriage of the country, the public functionary, the Curaca, administered to the couple the oath of conjugal fidelity, which, according to P. Pizzarre, was generally kept; perhaps because, as we shall see later, the Peruvian law was not tender to adulterers.
There does not appear to have been the least nuptial ceremony in Peru. In Mexico, on the contrary, marriage was celebrated with much show, and it was religious. The bride was conducted in great pomp to the house of the bridegroom, who came with his family to meet her. The two processions mutually perfumed each other with boxes of burning incense. After this the future spouses sat down on the same mat, and a priest married them by tying the robe of the bride to the mantle of the bridegroom. The precaution had previously been taken to consult the diviners and augurs. Nuptial festivals followed, in which the newly-married couple took no part. They lasted four days, and the marriage was not to be consummated until their termination.
III. Monogamy in Ancient Egypt.
In the ancient empires of central America the position of the wife was very subordinate;—this is an ordinary fact in barbarous countries. But in this respect, a singular exception seems to have existed in ancient Egypt, which nevertheless offers so many analogies to ancient Peru. This anomaly must be described with some details, because the believers in a prehistoric gynecocracy complacently rely on it to support their theory.
The general assertions of the writers of antiquity on this point have been confirmed by the demotic deeds recently deciphered. I shall briefly quote both.
Let us listen first to Herodotus on the subject of Egyptian women: “They have established laws and customs opposite, for the most part, to those of the rest of mankind. With them the women go to market and traffic; the men stay at home and weave.... The men carry burdens on the head, the women on the shoulders.... The boys are never forced to maintain their parents unless they wish to do so; the girls are obliged to, even if they do not wish it.”[1] From this last rule it is already logical to infer that the women possessed and inherited property, which is not ordinary in primitive monarchies. Herodotus adds that “no woman performs sacerdotal duties towards a divinity of either sex; the priests of all the divinities are men.”[515] In a country so profoundly religious this interdict clearly proves that in public opinion, at least, the woman was held to be an inferior being. Besides, polygamy was permitted in Egypt, which suffices of itself to exclude the idea of feminine domination in the family. However, Herodotus relates that many Egyptians, especially “those that dwelt on the marshes,” have, like the Greeks, adopted monogamy.[516]
Diodorus goes further than Herodotus. He affirms that in the Egyptian family it is the man who is subjected to the woman: “Contrary to the received usage of other nations, the laws permit the Egyptians to marry their sisters, after the example of Osiris and Isis. The latter, in fact, having cohabited with her brother Osiris, swore, after his death, never to suffer the approach of any man, pursued the murderer, governed according to the laws, and loaded men with benefits. All this explains why the queen receives more power and respect than the king, and why, among private individuals, the woman rules over the man, and that it is stipulated between married couples, by the terms of the dowry-contract, that the man shall obey the woman.”[517]
The assertion of Diodorus seems at first sight inadmissible; nevertheless, the demotic deeds, in a measure, confirm it. If the family subjection of the man was not general in Egypt, at least it existed in a number of cases. In reality, the Egyptian law did not deal with marriages, and the interested parties contracted them at their will. Now, in virtue of the law of matriarchal inheritance, the woman was often richer than the man. She could therefore dictate how the marriage contract should be drawn up. The conjugal union was manifestly before every thing a commercial agreement, since the word husband does not appear in the documents until after the reign of Philopator.[518] The Egyptian woman generally married under the régime of the separate possession of property; she did not change her condition, and preserved the right of making contracts without authorisation; she remained absolute mistress of her dowry. The contract also specified the sums that the husband was to pay to his wife, either as nuptial gift, or as annual pension, or as compensation in case of divorce.[519]
Sometimes even, by acts subsequent to marriage, the Egyptian wife could succeed in completely dispossessing her husband, and therefore the latter was careful to stipulate, as a precaution, that his wife should take care of him during his life, and pay the expenses of his burial and tomb.[520]
To sum up, it appears, indeed, that in ancient Egypt no marital power existed, at least in the families of private individuals.
This state of things lasted till the time of Philopator, who, in the fourth year of his reign, established the pre-eminence of the husband in the family by deciding that thenceforth all the transfers of property made by the wife should be authorised by the husband.[521]
These facts, certainly very curious, have seemed decisive to a number of sociologists who, with Bachofen, like to believe that in prehistoric times there has existed a gynecocratic period—an age of gold, when women reigned as mistresses, and of which the mythic Amazons were a survival. The very incomplete accounts that we possess of the condition and rôle of woman in Egypt do not seem to me to warrant the importance that is attached to them.
In barbarous, as in civilised societies, there are three great means of influence—religion, military power, and money. In ancient Egypt, Diodorus tells us, woman was judged unworthy of the priesthood, and therefore inferior from a religious point of view. She did not possess any warlike power. Neither monuments, nor writings, nor traditions make any mention of female warriors, analogous either to the Amazons of fable or those of the king of Dahomey. There remains the influence of money, doubtless an enormous influence in all societies where it can accumulate in the hands of certain individuals to the detriment of others. Now, everything proves that if in ancient Egypt women have more or less enjoyed great independence, and have even abused it so as to subject their husbands, they obtained it simply by the power of money.
Evidently the organisation of property and the laws of succession in Egypt permitted women to be rich or to become so, and in consequence to domineer over husbands less favoured in this respect. We shall see that in ancient Greece and Rome the same causes produced the same effects. Is it even necessary to go to ancient times to seek examples of feminine emancipation, even very insolent emancipation, based only on the dowry or fortune? We also have an abundance of plutocratic Amazons. But these facts are not incompatible with the legal subjection of women. If they seem to have been very common in ancient Egypt, it is because legislation did not meddle with marriage; and it must also be remembered that the demotic documents only mention, as is natural, the contracts of the upper or middle classes, the propertied classes, which, of course, are a minority.
So little was gynecocracy inscribed in the laws and customs of Egypt that a simple royal decree depriving women of the disposition of their property sufficed to cast them into the subordinate rank which they have occupied until the present time in all human societies, but which, perhaps, they will not always occupy.
Nevertheless, it is a noteworthy fact that in a society so rigid as the Egyptian, a minority of women should have been able to obtain legally a great amount of independence; it constitutes a remarkable exception, and may, perhaps, be referred to the influence of the Berber races, which, according to Egyptian traditions themselves, played an important part in the foundation of primitive Egypt.
IV. The Monogamy of the Touaregs and Abyssinians.
We have already seen that our contemporary Kabyles, although of Berber origin, make the yoke of their wives very hard; but it may be admitted that, in this respect, they have been influenced by numerous conquerors. A certain emancipation of women seems to be a characteristic trait of Berber societies. Even at the present time, among the Touaregs of the Sahara, who have preserved their independence and the purity of their race better than the Kabyles, the rich woman enjoys a social position analogous to that of the ladies of ancient Egypt.
In spite of the Mussulman law, the Targui woman practically imposes monogamy on the man. She would immediately seek a divorce if her husband attempted to give her a rival.
Amongst the Touaregs filiation is still maternal, and confers the rank. “The child follows the blood of the mother;” the son of a slave or serf father and a noble woman is noble. “It is the womb which dyes the child,” they say in their primitive language.[522] “Absolute mistress of her fortune, her actions, and her children, who belong to her and bear her name, the Targui lady goes where she will and exercises a real authority.”[523] She seldom marries before the age of twenty, and she marries as she pleases, the fathers only intervening to prevent mésalliances. She eats with her husband, to whom, however, she owes obedience, and who can kill her in case of adultery.—(Duveyrier, 339-340.)
The Targui women know how to read and write in greater numbers than the men. It is well known, besides, that rudimentary instruction in reading and writing is widely spread among the Mahometan population of North Africa.
It is to the Targui ladies, says Duveyrier, that is due the preservation of the ancient Lybian and ancient Berber writing.[524]
Leaving domestic work to their slaves, the Targui ladies occupy themselves with reading, writing, music, and embroidery;[525] they live as intelligent aristocrats.
“The ladies of the tribe of the Ifoghas are renowned,” says again Duveyrier, “for their savoir-vivre and their musical talent; they know how to ride mehari better than all their rivals. Secure in their cages, they can ride races with the most intrepid cavaliers, if one may give this name to riders on dromedaries; in order, also, to keep themselves in practice in this kind of riding, they meet to take short trips together, going wherever they like without the escort of any man.”[526] Targui gallantry has preserved for the women of the tribe of Imanan, who are descended from the ancient sultans, the title of royal women (timanôkalîn) on account of their beauty and their superiority in the art of music.
They often give concerts, to which the men come from long distances decked out like male ostriches. In these concerts the women sing while accompanying themselves on the tambourine and a sort of violin or rebâza. They are much sought after in marriage, because of the title of cherif which they confer on their children.”[527]
The Targui lady often sings in the evenings, improvising and accompanying herself on the rebâza. If she is married, says Duveyrier, she is honoured all the more in proportion to the number of her masculine friends, but she must not show preference to any one of them. The lady may embroider on the cloak, or write on the shield of her chevalier, verses in his praise and wishes for his good fortune. Her friend may, without being censured, cut the name of the lady on the rocks or chant her virtues. “Friends of different sexes,” say the Touaregs, “are for the eyes and the heart, and not for the bed only, as among the Arabs.”[528]
Such customs as these indicate delicate instincts which are absolutely foreign to the Arabs and to the Kabyles. They strongly remind us of the times of our southern troubadours, and of the cours d’amour, which were the quintessence of chivalry. But it is important to notice that with the Touaregs, as with the Provençals and the Acquitainers of the twelfth century, who may well have had Berber ancestors, these diversions and gallantries were for aristocrats and princes, and in no way prevented the general slavery of women. These customs are curious; they show a degree of moral nobility, and are worthy of note, but at the same time we must guard against according them a general value which they do not possess. It is important, also, to remark that the independence of the Berber lady, who is saved the trouble of grinding the corn, of cooking, etc., rests on the magic power of money. “By means of accumulation,” says Duveyrier, “the greatest part of the fortune is in the hands of women”—(p. 339). In short, it is only by an extraordinary power of illusion that we can recognise in the relatively favourable situation of the Berber lady a case of Amazonian gynecocracy.
In Abyssinia, which also is not a gynecocratic country, the women enjoy very great liberty; their conduct is very dissolute, and their marriage very easily broken. Bruce, who first made known to us these curious customs, likens them to those of ancient Egypt. “In Abyssinia,” he says, “the women live as if they were common to every one. They pretend, however, to belong, by principle, to one man only when they marry, but they do not act up to it.”[529] Divorce is so easy in Abyssinia that Bruce says he has seen a woman surrounded by seven former husbands.[530] The most distinguished Abyssinian ladies have cicisbei, after the Italian fashion of old times. At their feasts, according to Bruce again, the lovers yield themselves publicly to each other. Their neighbours at table simply take care to hide them very imperfectly by improvising with their cloaks a waving partition.[531] The young women of the province of Samen, says Bruce, came alone to trade with the travellers. “They were hard in their bargains, with the exception of one only, in which they seemed very reasonable and very generous. They agreed to give rather than sell their favours, alleging that long solicitations on one side and refusals on the other wasted time that might be more agreeably employed.”[532] It is clear from this that the monogamic régime of the Abyssinians is more apparent than real, that it is much modified by the extreme cicisbeism, by the use of concubines, of which I have already spoken, and lastly by the abuse of divorce, turning it into a successive polygamy.
V. Monogamy among the Mongols of Asia.
Among the Asiatic Mongols monogamy is also not very strict. In Thibetan Himalaya polyandry seems to predominate. It is not rare, either, in Thibet proper, where, on the other hand, polygamy is not forbidden, for there is no rigid legislation in regard to marriage. Besides, in these countries, as in many others, girls enjoy complete liberty before marriage, and they use it without suffering at all in reputation.[533]
It is singular that in Lamaïc Thibet, in full theocracy, in a country where the prayers and the practices of religion enter into nearly all the actions of civil life, marriage escapes all ecclesiastical interference. In fact, the priests have nothing to do with it, and all the matrimonial ceremony, which is purely laïc, consists in a simple mutual engagement entered into by the interested parties before witnesses.[534]
This laïc anarchy of marriage in Thibet must no doubt be attributed to Lamaïc bigotry itself. The Lamas avoid women, holding marriage in contempt, and all the great functionaries, as well as many Thibetans of the other classes, are of the same opinion.[535] Religion does not concern herself with it; she disdains it, as in Egypt, which seems to show that a sufficient degree of religious madness hinders theocratic legislators from thinking of civil institutions.
But in regard to marriage, both civil and religious laws are always subordinate to the necessities resulting from the social condition and the proportion of the sexes. In Thibet, therefore, in spite of the entire liberty allowed to individuals, the marriage of the greatest number is monogamic quite as much as if the law had prescribed it.[536]
In Tartary the nomad Mongols have adopted for their matrimonial type monogamy tempered by the domestic concubinate. I have spoken previously of their “lesser wives,” of their marriage by purchase with the ceremonial of capture. I need not, therefore, repeat all this. I will only note in passing that their girls have also very loose manners, which are not always corrected by marriage.[537] According to one of the most recent explorers of Mongolia, the proportion of the sexes in that country is the inverse of that in Europe. The women are much less numerous than the men. This may probably be the principal reason of the celibacy of the Lamas, and of the real monogamy of the greater number of laymen who do not belong to the aristocracy.[538]
Chinese marriage essentially resembles Mongol marriage, but with a more settled ritual and a more uniform legislation. It is also monogamic, with the palliative of the concubinate, the “lesser wives” of whom I have already spoken.[539] Besides this, the subjection of women in China is extreme. When a Chinaman has only daughters he is said to have no children.[540] The Chinese woman is submissive in all states, as a daughter to her parents, as a wife to her husband, and as a widow to her sons, especially to her eldest son.[541] (Pauthier, Chine Moderne, p. 239). The young Chinese girl has not even an idea that she may be consulted in the choice of a husband.[542] She is bought from her parents, and a part of the sum agreed on is paid when the contract is signed.[543] As in Mongolia, matrimonial arrangements are often settled, not only from the infancy of the future wife and husband, but even before their birth, on the hypothesis of a difference of sex.[544] These agreements are made by the fathers and mothers, or, in default of them, by the grandparents or nearest relatives.[545] Lastly, the women are excluded by law from inheritance,[546] and kept as much as possible in seclusion, so that they scarcely see any one besides their parents.[547] By marrying, the young Chinese girl simply changes masters. “The bride,” says a Chinese author, “ought only to be a shadow and an echo in the house.” The married woman eats neither with her husband nor with her male children; she waits at table in silence, lights the pipes, must be content with the coarsest food, and has not even the right to touch what her son leaves.[548]
China is a country of very ancient civilisation, where the laws and rites have regulated everything, and consequently there exists a whole legislation with regard to marriage.
To begin with, conjugal union is forbidden between persons having the same family name,[549] and I shall have to return to this circumstance.
As in ancient Rome, the law prohibits marriage between slaves and free persons.[550] It absolutely forbids marriage to the priests of Fo, and to those of the tao sect.[551] It orders public functionaries not to contract marriage with actresses, comedians, or musicians.[552] It seems that in ancient times, in China as in Greco-Latin antiquity, the father had the excessive right to unmarry his daughter, for to remedy this abuse the Chinese law pronounces the punishment of a hundred strokes of bamboo on the father-in-law who should send away his son-in-law in order to re-marry his daughter to another.[553] The Chinese widow, no longer belonging to her original family, but to the family of her husband, can be re-married by the latter.[554] Moreover, the contract of betrothal concluded between the parents having a legal value, the family of the betrothed man who dies before the conclusion of the marriage has the right to marry the bereaved fiancée, or false widow,[555] who, by-the-bye, is much honoured when she has the courage to devote herself to a celibate life.[556]
We have seen that Chinese women are excluded from inheritance; they have a right, however, in marrying, to a small dowry, either in money or furniture, but the value of it is optional. It must be at least a chest of drawers or a small trousseau, which the bridegroom is obliged to supply if the parents fail to do so. Moreover, he must also give the nuptial bed.[557] Primitive and even cruel as are the conditions and rules of Chinese marriage, the Chinese women submit to them not only without murmuring, but with a sort of devotion, broken in as they are by a long ancestral education. And besides, for the Chinese in general, it is a strict duty to marry, from a triple point of view—social, political, and religious. Everybody marries in the Celestial Empire, and the number of male celibates over twenty-four years of age is quite insignificant. If a suitable opportunity of marriage does not present itself, the parents, who are sovereign arbiters in this matter, do not hesitate to go to an orphanage to seek a son or daughter-in-law.[558]
In Japan, during the feudal age, the end of which we are now witnessing, marriage was nearly identical with Chinese marriage, and there would be nothing to say about it in particular, if during the last few years the fever of reformation, with which Japan is carried away, had not happily modified marriage, at least in practice, by giving the young girl a voice in the matter,[559] and by awakening in some Japanese consciences doubts on the subject of the prostitution of young girls. At the present moment, everything in Japan is being Europeanised, and the adaptation of our Civil Code to the old Japanese customs is only a question of time.
VI. Monogamy and Civilisation.
The foregoing facts are sufficiently numerous to enable us to deduce certain conclusions from them. These facts, taken as they are from nearly all the non-Aryan races, prove in the first place that the monogamic régime is in no way the appanage of the superior races, for among the lowest of human races some are monogamic. In regard to marriage, we find that primordial conditions impose the various forms of sexual union, quite independently of the caprice of individuals, or of the degree of culture and social development.
In attempting to estimate the moral worth of a people, a race, or a civilisation, we are much more enlightened by the position given to woman than by the legal type of the conjugal union. This type, besides, is usually more apparent than real. In many civilisations, both dead and living, legal monogamy has for its chief object the regulation of succession and the division of property. With much naïveté and effrontery, many legislators have sanctioned polygamy in reality by recognising the domestic concubinate by the side of legal monogamy. As for the position of the wife who is reputed to be specially legitimate, it is often much inferior to that enjoyed by the woman who lives under other conjugal régimes which are theoretically less elevated. In the greater number of countries more or less monogamic, which I have just passed in review, woman, whether married or not, has been subjected to extreme subordination. In an exceptional case she acquires a certain independence, where, thanks to maternal inheritance, she can become possessed of personal or real estate. It is to money alone, and not to the moralising influence of monogamy, that woman in barbarous countries owes the power of attaining a certain independence, for the two peoples who have granted it to her, the Egyptians in antiquity and the Touaregs of our own day, lived or live under a legislation which authorises polygamy. It is important also to notice that in the valley of the Nile, and in the Sahara, feminine emancipation is only the privilege of those women who belong to the ruling and propertied classes.
Upon the whole, in every country and in every time, woman, organically weaker than man, has been more or less enslaved by him, unless in the case where legislation has allowed her to use an artificial force to serve her as a shield. This fictitious force, before which virile brutality has lowered its flag, has been money, wherever the laws regulating succession have permitted women to raise themselves to the dignity of proprietors.
A similar lesson will be given us by the study of the monogamic régime among the white races of Asia and of Europe. There also we shall see riches serve woman as a defensive, and sometimes even offensive weapon, against the severity of laws and customs.