The Growth of the Marriage Relation. 83 



friends is shown by their allowing her to be carried off, 

 which also operates as a relinquishment of their right to 

 her offspring, and the ceremony can at any future time be 

 referred to as evidence of these facts, as well as of the 

 marriage itself, if it should be called in question on either 

 side. 



Returning now to individual marriage it may be 

 doubted whether its enforced practice, by the force of cir- 

 cumstances, would lead to its general establishment on a 

 moral basis. The substitution of systematic monogamy 

 for polygyny or polyandry is due to a subjective change, 

 rather than an external change of conditions; although 

 there does not appear to be any special tendency to such a 

 system, apart from the general progress which is exhibited 

 in the evolution of human society. The feeling of self- 

 respect which is probably at the root of individual marriage 

 of the true type, is very strong among the Chinese, as it is 

 with other peoples of a similar degree of culture, although 

 men are allowed certain latitude Avhich is not conceded to 

 women. That feeling forbids women to remarry on the 

 death of their husbands, and it must be influential over the 

 conduct of the men themselves. Self-respect is assigned as 

 a reason for the abandonment of polyandry by the Kandyan 

 chiefs, and there is no doubt that it has much to do with 

 the fact of polygyny losing its hold on the higher classes 

 in Egypt and other Mohammedan countries, the establish- 

 ment of monandry among whom may be regarded as a real 

 moral advance. 



If the development of monandry is the result of a sub- 

 jective change, mvich more must it be so with the higher 

 phase of individual marriage in which neither the man nor 

 the woman can enter into the marriage relation with another 

 individual, unless released from their first tie by divorce or 

 death. Probably there have always been examples of this 

 higher marriage among the Chinese, whose ideas as to the 

 requirement of a son to perform the funereal rites are 

 shared by the Hindoos and the allied Aryan peoples of 

 antiquity, among whom monogamy was developed. This, 

 however, differs essentially from the monandry of the 

 Turanian peoples, in that not only is it founded on mutual 

 regard, with exchange of presents instead of wife-purchase, 

 but it is placed under the sanction of religion. 



Monogamy thus represents the highest phase of develop- 



