CHAPTER IX 



CONSANGUINITY 



The marriage of persons nearly related in blood is 

 generally believed to be hurtful to the species. Mal- 

 formations, scrofula, blindness, deafness, sterility, 

 paralysis, and insanity have long been supposed to 

 be entailed upon the unhappy offspring of consan- 

 guineous unions ; and by the great Hindu, Mosaic, 

 Eoman, Christian, and Mussulman codes such unions 

 are rigorously condemned. In its origin this idea 

 of the evil effects of the alliance of near kin was 

 probably religious ; it can hardly have been scientific. 

 A repugnance to consanguineous unions has grown 

 up in civilised communities, but the natural instincts, 

 whether of man or of the lower animals, do not forbid 

 them. Among many primitive peoples, including the 

 Persians, the Spartans, and the Egyptians, brothers 

 and sisters were allowed to marry. A son of the 



