Folkways, by William Graham Sumner

A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages,
Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals

CHAPTER XII

INCEST

Definition. — Incest notion was produced from the folkways. — The notion that inbreeding is harmful. — Status-wife, work-wife, love-wife. — The abomination of incest. — The incest taboo is strongest in the strongest groups. — Incest in ethnography. — Incest in civilized states. — Where the line is drawn, and why. — Human self-selection. — Restriction by biological doctrine not sufficiently warranted. — Summary of the matter now.

508. Definition of incest. Incest is the marital union of a man and a woman who are akin within the limits of a prohibition current at the time in the laws or mores of the group. The primitive notion of kinship did not divide kinship into grades of remoteness as we do. Very often it was counted by classes or age strata. In the totem system all the women of his mother's totem were tabooed to a man, although their cousinship to himself might be very remote. At the same time, he could marry his father's sister's daughter, or his mother's brother's daughter, unless his father and his uncle had married women of the same totem. Inasmuch as a man and his wife must have different totems and the children took the totem of their mother, a man might marry his own daughter. Generally this was forbidden by supplementary rules, but in Buka and North Bougainville it occurs not infrequently.1658 The varieties of the consanguinity taboo are very numerous. They are entirely different in theory under the mother family and the father family. They are now very different in different states of our Union.1659 If the taboo on marriage is not defined in terms of "blood" or assumed kinship, violation of it is not incest. For instance, in the mediæval church, two persons who had been sponsors in baptism to the same child might not marry. Also, if two persons are debarred 480by affinity, violation is not incest. In England a man may not marry his deceased wife's sister. If he does it, his marriage is unlawful, but it is not incest. The definition of incest must include the notion of a blood connection as blood connection is understood in that group at the time. Other prohibitions may be expedient, or may seem required by propriety (e.g. the marriage of a man with his father's widow), but they do not come under incest.

Restrictions on marriage by kinship, as the people in question construed kinship, go back to the most primitive society. Some very primitive people have intricate restrictions, and they maintain them by the severest social sanctions.

509. Incest notion produced from the folkways. It is evident that primitive people must have received a suggestion or impression of some important interest at stake in this matter. They adopted taboos and established folkways to protect interests. In time these taboos and folkways won very great force and high religious sanction; also a sense of abomination was produced which seemed to be a "natural" feeling. There certainly is no natural feeling. The abomination is conventional and traditional. The Pharaohs, Ptolemies, and Incas, also the Zoroastrians, are sufficient to show that there is no reason for the abomination in any absolute or universal facts. The sanctions by which savage people sustained the taboo were the strongest possible, — exile and death. Here we have, therefore, a social limitation of the greatest force, sanctioned by religion and group consent and growing into an abomination which has come down to us and which we all feel, but which is a product of the most primitive folkways; and yet we do not know the motive for it in the minds of primitive men. In the matter of cannibalism we saw (Chapter VIII) that with advancing civilization a taboo has been set up against a food custom which appears to have been universal amongst primitive men; that is, we have reversed and hold in abomination what they did. In regard to incest we have accepted and fully ratified their taboo.

510. Notion that inbreeding is harmful. This taboo and the reasons for it are a complete enigma unless the primitive people 481had observed the evils of close inbreeding. Inbreeding maintains the excellence of a breed at the expense of its vigor. Outbreeding (unless too far out) develops vigor at the expense of the characteristic traits. It is very probable, but not absolutely certain, that inbreeding is harmful. Any marriage between persons who have the same faults of inheritance causes the offspring to accumulate faults and to degenerate. Close kinship creates a probable danger that faults will be accumulated. This is a logical deduction. Embryology, at present, seems to teach that there is a combination and extrusion of germ units of such a kind that the physiological process conforms only in a measure to this logical deduction, and the historical-statistical verification of the harm of inbreeding remains very imperfect. It is possible that at first, and within limits, inbreeding is not harmful, but becomes such if repeated often. Is it possible that the lowest savages can have perceived this and built a policy on it? Morgan1660 thinks that it is possible. Westermarck1661 thinks it beyond the mental power of the lowest races. He thinks that, by natural selection, those groups which practiced inbreeding for any reason died out or were displaced by those who followed the other policy. He goes on to propose a theory that persons who grew up, or who now grow up, in intimacy develop an instinctive antipathy to sex relations with each other.1662 While it is true that primitive savages do not observe and reflect, it is also true that, in their own blundering way, when their interests are sharply at stake, they do observe, and they change their ways accordingly. Therefore they appear to us at one time hopelessly brutish; at another time we are amazed at their ingenuity and their mental activity (myths, legends, proverbs, maxims). If the loss or pain is great enough, the savage man is capable of astounding cleverness to escape it. After animal breeding began men had ample opportunity to observe the effects of close inbreeding. There is more doubt now about the penalties of inbreeding than there is about the power of savage men to perceive them and try to escape them, if they exist.

511. Status-wife, work-wife, love-wife. In the primitive horde it appears that there was a prescribed wife for each man, or the 482classification was such that his choice was restricted to a very small number. The prescribed wife was a status-wife. She alone could hold the position of a true "wife." The man might also capture a woman abroad who would be a worker, or work-wife, and she might win the man, so that she became a love-wife. There would often be a comparison between the children of the status-wife and the children of a work-wife or love-wife, in which the latter would appear the more vigorous. If so, there would be a school in which the advantages of outbreeding would appear as a fact, although not explained.

512. Abomination of incest. The taboos in the mores contain prescriptions as to the allowable consanguinity of spouses. There is a great horror of violating them. This sentiment is met with amongst people who have scarcely any other notion of crime, or of right and wrong. The rules are enforced by death or banishment as penalties of violation. The notion of harm in inbreeding has spread all over the earth. It has come down to ourselves. In the form in which it was held by savage people it was mistaken to such a degree that they might, in spite of it, practice close inbreeding. Our study of the mores teaches us that there must have been, antecedent to this state of the mores in regard to this matter, a long development of interests, folkways, rites, and superstitions.1663 It is believed, not without reason, that the horde life would tend to run into grooves in which the prescribed wife would be a close relative, in the final case a sister. Experience of this might produce the rules of prohibition. The captured wife was also a trophy, and the play of this fact on vanity would always tend to disintegrate the system of endogamy. There are many reasons why endogamy seems more primitive than exogamy, and it required force of interest, superstition, or vanity to carry a society over from the former to the latter. A calamity might come to reënforce the interest,1664 but can hardly be postulated to explain a custom so widespread. All the ultimate causes of the law of incest, therefore, lie beyond our investigation. They are open only to conjecture and speculation. The case is very 483important, however, to show the operation of the mores on facts erroneously assumed, and their power to work out their effects, as an independent societal operation, without regard to error in the material to which they are applied.

513. Incest taboo strongest in the strongest groups. We shall see, in the cases to be presented, that incest has a wider definition and a stricter compulsion in great tribes, and in prosperity or wealth, than in small groups and poverty. The definiteness of this taboo, and the strictness with which it is enforced, seem to be correlative with the energy of the tribal discipline in general and the vigor of the collective life of the group. Wives can be got abroad, either by capture or contract, only by those who command respect for their power or who use power. On the other hand, endogamy is both cause and effect of weakness and proceeds with decline. Some cases will be given below in which incestuous marriages occur where the parties are unable to obtain any other wives. Neglect of the incest taboo is rather a symptom than a cause of group decline.

519. Incest in civilized states. The ancient kings of Teneriffe, if they could not find mates of equal rank, married their sisters to prevent the admixture of plebeian blood.1687 In the Egyptian mythology Isis and Osiris were sister and brother as well as wife and husband. The kings of ancient Egypt married their sisters and daughters. The doctrine of royal essence was very exaggerated, and was applied with quantitative exactitude. A princess could not be allowed to transmit any of it away from the possessor of the throne. There is said to be evidence that Ramses II married two of his own daughters and that Psammetik I married his daughter. Artaxerxes married two of his daughters.1688 The Ptolemies adopted this practice. The family married in and in for generations, especially brothers and sisters, although sometimes of the half-blood. "Indicating the Ptolemies by numbers according to the order of their succession, II married his niece and afterwards his sister; IV his sister; VI and VII were 486brothers and they consecutively married the same sister; VII also subsequently married his niece; VIII married two of his own sisters consecutively; XII and XIII were brothers and consecutively married their sister, the famous Cleopatra." "The line of descent was untouched by these intermarriages, except in the two cases of III and VIII." The close intermarriages were sterile. The line was continued by others.1689 The Peruvian Incas, but not other Peruvians, married their sisters.1690 In the Vedic mythology the first man and king of the dead, Yama, had his sister, Yami, to wife. In a hymn these two are represented as discussing the propriety of marriage between brother and sister. This shows the revolt of later mores against what once was not tabooed.1691 The scholars think that Herodotus (III, 31), by his story of the question whether Cambyses could marry his sister, shows that such marriages were not allowed amongst the ancient Persians. They are mentioned as a usage of the magi. In the Avesta they are prescribed as holy and meritorious. They are enjoined by religion. They were practiced by the Sassanids,1692 although in the Dinkart version of the law they are apologized for and to some extent disavowed.1693 After the time of Cambyses such marriages occurred, especially in the royal family. They now occur amongst the Persians.1694

520. In the Chaldean religion the gods and goddesses were fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, and mothers, as well as husbands and wives, to each other. The notions of "son of god" and "mother of god" were very current. Marduk is son of Ea and intercessor for men with him.1695 In the laws of Hammurabi, if a man consorts with his mother after the death of his father, both are to be burned. Incest with a daughter is punished only by banishment. This light punishment may be only a concession to public opinion, since the culprits injured no interest but their own.1696

487521. In the Old Testament Abraham married his half-sister by the same father. In 2 Sam. xiii. 13 it is shown that such a marriage was allowable in David's time, but Ezek. xxii. 11 refers to such a marriage as an abomination. Nahor's wife was his niece by his brother. Jacob married two sisters at the same time, both his cousins. Esau married his cousin. Judah took to wife his son's widow, but disapproval of that is expressed. Amram, the father of Moses, married his paternal aunt. These unions were all in contravention of the Levitical law. There are statements of the law which differ: Levit. xviii and xx; Deut. xxi. 20; xxvii. 20-23. In Ezek. xxii. 10 and 11 incest is charged as a special sin of the Jews. In the post-exilic and rabbinical periods the law varied from the old law. In general it was extended to include under the taboo more distant relatives.1697

Marriages between brothers and sisters were allowed in Phœnicia, but were contracted probably only when the woman had inherited something in which her brother had no share.1698

522. In Homer Zeus and Hera are brother and sister. Union of mother and son is regarded as shocking, but not that of brother and sister.1699 Arete was niece and wife of Alcinous, and was especially respected.1700 In the case of Œdipus the union of mother and son, by error, was terribly punished.1701 In the tragedy of Andromache marriages between mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, are mentioned as characteristic of barbarians. Dionysius of Syracuse, having lost his wife, married Doris and Aristomache on the same day. With Doris he had three children and with Aristomache four. His son by Doris, Dionysius, married Sophrosyne, his daughter by Aristomache. Dion, the brother of Aristomache, married a daughter of Aristomache.1702 Whether these marriages were extraordinary in Sicily we do not know. They may not represent the current mores as to marriage, but only the shamelessness possible to a Sicilian tyrant. At Athens the only limitations were on the ascending 488and descending relationships, but it appears that in later times marriages between brother and sister were disapproved.1703

523. The term "incest" was applied at Rome to the case of a man present at the purification of women, on the feast of the Bona Dea, May 1.1704 The sense of the word is, then, nearly equal to "profane." The emperor Claudius married his niece Agrippina and made such marriages lawful. Gaius1705 restricted this precedent to its exact form, marriage of a brother's daughter, not sister's daughter, and further restricted it, if the brother's daughter was in any forbidden degree of affinity.

524. In the Ynglinga saga Niord takes his sister to wife, because the law of Van-land allowed it, although that of the Ases did not.1706 Other cases in the Edda go to show that the taboo on such marriages was not in the ancient mores of Scandinavia.1707 In the German poems of the twelfth century it belongs to the description of the heathen kings that they are fierce and suspicious towards all who woo their daughters, and that they sometimes intend to marry their own daughters after the death of their queens.1708

525. Those Arabs of Arabia Felix who practiced fraternal polyandry also formed unions with their mothers.1709 Robertson Smith thinks that this means their fathers' wives.1710 The Arabs were convinced of the evil of marriage between cousins.1711

526. A mediæval traveler reports of the Mongols that they paid no heed to affinity in marriage. They took two sisters at once or in succession. The only limitation was that they must not marry mothers, daughters, or sisters by the same mother.1712 In Burma and Siam, at least until very recent times, in the royal families of the different subdivisions brothers and sisters married.1713

527. In Russia, in the seventeenth century, men in the government service who were often sent out on duty and had no homes, 489and whose incomes were small, were reproached by an ecclesiastic with the fact that they lived in vice with their mothers, sisters, and daughters.1714 Marriages between persons related by blood are frequent in Corsica and are considered the most auspicious marriages.1715

528. The Kabyles stone to death those who voluntarily commit incest and the children born of incestuous unions. The taboo, in their usage, includes parents and children-in-law, brothers and sisters-in-law, and foster brothers and sisters.1716

529. In 1459 there died at Arras a canon, eighty years old, who had committed incest with his daughters and with a granddaughter whom he had had by one of them.1717

530. Where the line is drawn, and why. The instances show that the notion of incest is by no means universal or uniform, or attended by the same intensity of repugnance. It is not by any means traceable to a constant cause. Plutarch1718 discussed the question why marriages between relatives were forbidden by the traditional mores of his time. He conjectured various explanations. Fear of physical degeneration is not one of them. We must infer that such consequences had not then been noticed or affirmed. We have found cases in which no taboo existed and cases in which close intermarriages are especially approved. An operation of syncretism, when different usages and ideas have been brought together by conquest and state combinations, must be allowed for. In some cases a great interest was thought to be at stake; in other cases no importance was attached to the matter. The mores developed under the notions which got control by accident or superstition. There was no rational ground for the taboo, and none even blindly connected with truth of fact, until the opinion gained a footing that close intermarriage was unfavorable to the number or vigor of the offspring. Unless that opinion is accepted as correct there is no reason for the taboo now.1719 Incest is, for us, 490a thing so repugnant that we consider the feeling "natural." We may test the feeling by our feeling as to the marriage of first cousins. First cousins are very commonly married in England. Such marriages are under no civil or ecclesiastical prohibition, and although many persons disapprove of them on grounds of expediency, and parents might refuse to consent to them, they do not come under the abomination of incest. In many states of the United States marriages of first cousins are illegal. In Kansas they are put under heavy penalties. We hear no preaching against close in-marriage. The matter is not discussed. The limitations are set in the current mores and are accepted without dispute. Evidently the only question is where the line should be drawn. If it was proposed to forbid the marriage of first cousins some discussion might be aroused. If it was decided wise to forbid such marriages, it would take long for such a sentiment of repugnance to be developed in regard to them as we now feel in regard to the marriage of sisters, or even of aunts and nieces. In history the movement must have been in the other direction. The repugnance arose first and then became a ground for the rules.

531. Human self-selection by taboo and other-worldliness. Laws against incest and all caste rules which arbitrarily limit the number of persons whom a given individual may marry may be regarded as blind attempts of mankind to practice some kind of self-selection. Sex selection inside the human race is the highest requirement which life now addresses to man as an intelligent being, and the very highest result which our sciences could produce would be to give us trustworthy guidance in a policy of sex selection. It is not possible for some persons to dispose of the life determination of others, as breeders control the union of beasts. What is needed is that individuals, in making their own decisions for their own self-realization, shall understand the whole range of interests which are involved, and shall do what it is expedient or necessary to do to satisfy them all. In times past men and women have thus limited themselves by rules about incest, group and class marriage, rank or caste, religion, wealth, and other considerations. In every society there are traits which are approved 491and others which are disapproved in each sex. In marrying, people are influenced by these appreciations and they select for or against them. Thus marriage is controlled by a complicated selection according to a number of standards which prevail at the time and place. At present the popular view seems to be that all standards are false, and that the limitations ought to be trampled on as representing abandoned ideals. It is thought that the whole matter ought to be left to the control of an unintelligent impulse, which is capable of any caprice, but whose authority is imperative. Perverse as the old restrictions often were, they had in them a notion of self-selection such as is needed now, if only the criteria and standards which are correct can be ascertained. The old restrictions contained a notion of breeding up, a notion which is by no means false, if we can get a rational idea of what is "up." No marriage ought now to be contracted without full application of all we know about heredity and selection. If, in any society, marriages were thus contracted, the effect would be most favorable on posterity, and on the power in action and the perpetuity of the group, for the net result would be that those who are least fit to propagate the race would be the ones who would be left unmarried or would marry each other. In the latter case their posterity would soon disappear, and the evil factors would be eliminated. A father now refuses his daughter to a drunkard, a criminal, a pauper, a bankrupt, an inefficient man, one who has no income, etc. Some men refuse their daughters to irreligious men, or to men who are not of their own sect or subsect. Some allow inherited wealth, or talent, or high character, etc., to outweigh disadvantages. In short, we already have selection. It always has existed. The law of incest was an instinctive effort in the same direction. The problem is the same now as it always has been, — to refine and correct the standards and to determine their relative importance.

532. Restrictions by biological facts as yet too uncertain. As yet, undoubtedly, the great reason why people are reluctant to construct a policy of marriage and population on biological doctrines is that those doctrines are too uncertain. The reluctance is well justified. Hasty action, based on shifting views of fact 492and law, would simply add new confusion and trouble to that produced by the customs and legislative enactments which we have inherited from the past and which were based on transcendental doctrines. So long as we do not know whether acquired modifications are inheritable or not, we are not prepared to elaborate a policy of marriage which can be dogmatically taught or civilly enforced. This much, however, is certain, — the interests of society are more at stake in these things than in anything else. All other projects of reform and amelioration are trivial compared with the interests which lie in the propagation of the species, if those can be so treated as to breed out predispositions to evils of body and mind, and to breed in vigor of mind and body. It even seems sometimes as if the primitive people were working along better lines of effort in this matter than we are, when we allow marriage to be controlled by "love" or property; when our organs of public instruction taboo all which pertains to reproduction as improper; and when public authority, ready enough to interfere with personal liberty everywhere else, feels bound to act as if there was no societal interest at stake in the begetting of the next generation.

533. It is self-evident that there ought to be no restriction on marriage except such as is necessary to protect some interest of the parties, their children, or the society. The necessity must also be real and not traditional or superstitious. The evils of inbreeding are so probable as to justify strong prejudice against consanguine marriages. If primitive men set up the taboo on incest without knowing this, they acted more wisely than they knew. We who have inherited the taboo now have knowledge which gives a rational and expedient reason for it. The mores, therefore, still have a field of useful action to strengthen and reaffirm the taboo. There is also a practical question still unsettled, — whether the marriage of first cousins should be included in the taboo.

1658 Parkinson, Ethnog. d. Nordwestl. Salomo Ins., 6.

1659 Snyder, Geog. of Marriage.

1660 Anc. Soc., 424.

1661 Marriage, 317.

1662 Ibid., 319, 334, 352.

1663 Durkheim in L'Année Sociologique, I, 59-65.

1664 Starcke, Prim. Fam., 230.

1665 Ethnog. Brasil., 115.

1666 Ibid., 334 note.

1667 Umschau, VIII, 496.

1668 JAI, XXIV, 169.

1669 Perelaer, Dyaks, 59.

1670 Wilken, Volkenkunde, 267.

1671 Hopkins, Relig. of India, 531.

1672 Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 276.

1673 N. S. Ethnol. Soc., London, II, 311; Sarasin, Veddahs, 466.

1674 Gli Amori degli Uomini, 272.

1675 Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde, XXXV, 151.

1676 Ibid., XLI, 203.

1677 JAI, XXI, 361.

1678 Junker, Afrika, III, 291.

1679 Sibree, Great Afr. Island, 252.

1680 von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, II, 27.

1681 Pallas, Voyages (French), IV, 69.

1682 Smithson. Rep., 1866, 310.

1683 Sieroshevski, Yakuty (russ.), I, 560.

1684 Bur. Eth., XI, 180.

1685 Abercromby, Finns, I, 182.

1686 Voyages and Travels, 358.

1687 N. S. Amer. Anthrop., II, 478.

1688 Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, I, 50.

1689 Galton, Hered. Genius, 151.

1690 Prescott, Peru, I, 117.

1691 Hopkins, Relig. of India, 131; Zimmer, Altind. Leben, 333.

1692 Darmstetter, Zend-Avesta, Introd., xlv.

1693 Justi, Persien, 225.

1694 Geiger, Ost-Iran. Kultur, 245-247.

1695 Tiele, Gesch. der Relig. im Alterthum, I, 174.

1696 Müller, Hammurabi, 129.

1697 Jewish Encyc., s.v. "Incest," VI, 571.

1698 Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 237.

1699 Il., IV, 58; XIV, 296; XI, 223; Od., X, 7; cf. VIII, 267; XI, 271; VIII, 306; VII, 65.

1700 Od., XII, 338; XIII, 57.

1701 Keller, Homer. Soc., 205, 232.

1702 Burckhardt, Griech. Kulturgesch., I, 197.

1703 Becker-Hermann, Charikles, III, 288.

1704 Rossbach, Röm. Ehe, 266.

1705 Instit., I, 62.

1706 Laing, Sagas of the Norse Kings, I, 273.

1707 Weinhold, D. F., I, 235.

1708 Lichtenberger, Nibelungen, 334

1709 Strabo, XVI, 4, 25, or 783.

1710 Jo. Philol., IX, 86.

1711 Wellhausen, Ehe bei den Arabern, 441.

1712 Rubruck, Eastern Parts, 77.

1713 Yule, Court of Ava, 86.

1714 Kostomarow, Dom. Life and Customs of Great Russia (russ.), 154.

1715 Gubernatis, Usi Nuziali, 273.

1716 Hanoteau et Letourneux, Les Kabyles, III, 206.

1717 Lea, Inquis., III, 639.

1718 Quaest. Rom., 108.

1719 Starcke, Prim. Fam., 211.

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