CHAPTER XXXVII 



PASTORAL MARRIAGE 



High authorities in Sociology suggest that there is 

 something in the pastoral life that peculiarly affects 

 the relations between the sexes, and they adduce the 

 Todas of India and the Masai and the Bahima of Africa 

 to show that very great laxity in these relations, together 

 with very low types of marriage, may be found among 

 pastoral peoples.* Polygamy in particular, or, at least, 

 concubinage with native women of an inferior race has 

 been a character of the patriarchal or pastoral state in 

 many countries from the time of Abraham onwards. 

 When Penan affirms that the pastoral phase " bred 

 personal honesty and the family instinct" in olden 

 times, we must therefore understand by the family the 

 patriarchal, not the monogamous, family. The men 

 who founded the pastoral system in AustraHa were 

 Englishmen and Scot&men who knew no other than the 

 monogamous family of advanced civilisation. Some of 

 the earlier of th"&m, like the Berry brothers, were ascetes 

 in practice and died unmarried (but one Berry was 

 married), while others, like John Mc Arthur, were noted 

 for the mutual fidelity of the parties through long years 

 of separation and the tender beauty of the marital rela- 

 tionship. The phase of purity, unhappily, did not con- 

 tinue, or was not universal. Lacking the power of 

 choosing life-companions among women of their o\mi 

 class and sometimes their own race, and conscious of 

 holding a patriarchal position that raised them above the 

 * Feazee, Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 139. 

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