# Marriage and Morals/Chapter X

Chapter X
Marriage
In this chapter I propose to discuss marriage without reference to children, merely as a relation between men and women. Marriage differs, of course, from other sex relations by the fact that it is a legal institution. It is also in most communities a religious institution, but it is the legal aspect which is essential. The legal institution merely embodies a practice which exists not only among primitive men but among apes and various other animals. Animals practise what is virtually marriage, wherever the cooperation of the male is necessary to the rearing of the young. As a rule, animal marriages are monogamic, and according to some authorities this is the case in particular amongst the anthropoid apes. It seems, if these authorities are to be believed, that these fortunate animals are not faced with the problems that beset human communities, since the male, once married, ceases to be attracted to any other female, and the female, once mar​ried, ceases to be attractive to any other male. Among the anthropoid apes, therefore, although they do not have the assistance of religion, sin is unknown, since instinct suffices to produce virtue. There is some evidence that among the lowest races of savages a similar state of affairs exists. Bushmen are said to be strictly monogamous, and I understand that the Tasmanians (now extinct) were invariably faithful to their wives. Even in civilized mankind faint traces of a monogamic instinct can sometimes be perceived. Considering the influence of habit over behaviour, it is perhaps surprising that the hold of monogamy on instinct is not stronger than it is. This, however, is an example of the mental peculiarity of human beings, from which spring both their vices and their intelligence, namely the power of imagination to break up habits and initiate new lines of conduct.
It seems probable that what first broke up primitive monogamy was the intrusion of the economic motive. This motive, wherever it has any influence upon sexual behaviour, is invariably disastrous, since it substitutes relations of slavery or purchase for relations based upon instinct. In early agricultural and pastoral com​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/144 ​themselves for their absence. At a slightly higher level, however, adultery in women is punished with death or at best with very severe penalties. Mungo Park’s account of Mumbo Jumbo used to be well known when I was young, but I have been pained in recent years to find highbrow Americans alluding to Mumbo Jumbo as a god of the Congo. He was in fact neither a god nor connected with the Congo. He was a pretence demon invented by the men of the upper Niger to terrify women who had sinned. Mungo Park’s account of him so inevitably suggests a Voltairean view as to the origins of religion that it has tended to be discreetly suppressed by modern anthropologists, who cannot bear the intrusion of rational scoundrelism into the doings of savages. A man who had intercourse with another man’s wife was, of course, also a criminal, but a man who had intercourse with an unmarried woman did not incur any blame unless he diminished her value in the marriage market.
With the coming of Christianity this outlook was changed. The part of religion in marriage was very greatly augmented, and infractions of the marriage law came to be blamed ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/146 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/147 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/148 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/149 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/150 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/151 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/152 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/153 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/154 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/155 ​Page:Bertrand Russell - Marriage and Morals (1929 printing, Horace Liveright, white pages).pdf/156