QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Ch.4, Section I

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Pg.132

"The first task of those customs that constitute the moral code of a group is to regulate the relations of the sexes, for these are a perennial source of discord, violence, and possible degeneration. The basic form of this sexual regulation is marriage, which may be defined as the association of mates for the care of offspring. It is a variable and fluctuating institution, which has passed through almost every conceivable form and experiment in the course of its history, from the primitive care or offspring without the association of mates to the modern association of mates without the care of offspring."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section I, 1935

"[Charles Jean Marie Letourbeau, French anthropologist] said of marriage that 'every possible experiment compatible with the duration of savage or barbarian societies has been tried, or is still practiced, among various races, without the least thought of the moral ideas generally prevailing in Europe.' In addition to experiments in permanence there were experiments in relationship. In a few cases we find 'group marriage,' by which a number of men belonging to one group married collectively a number of women belonging to another group. In Tibet, for example, it was the custom for a group of brothers to marry a group of sisters, and for the two groups to practice sexual communism between them, each of the men cohabiting with each of the women. Caesar reported a similar custom in ancient Britain. Survivals of it appear in the 'levirate,' custom existing among the early Jews and other ancient peoples, by which a man was obligated to marry his brother's widow; this was the rule that so irked Onan."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section I, 1935

"What was it that led men to replace the semi-promiscuity of primitive society with individual marriage? Since, in a great majority of nature peoples, there are few, if any, restraints on premarital relations, it is obvious that physical desire does not give rise to the institution of marriage. For marriage, with its restrictions and psychological irritations, could not possibly compete with sexual communism as a mode of satisfying the erotic propensities of men. Nor could the individual establishment offer at the outset any mode of rearing children that would be obviously superior to their rearing by the mother, her family, and the clan. Some powerful economic motives must have favored the evolution of marriage. In all probability (for again we must remind ourselves how little we really know of origins) these motives were connected with the rising institution of property.

   Individual marriage came through the desire of the male to have cheap slaves, and to avoid bequeathing his property to other men's children. [...] But monogamy, like letters and the state, is artificial, and belongs to the history, not to the origins, of civilization."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section I, 1935

"Whatever form the union might take, marriage was obligatory among nearly all primitive people. The unmarried male had no standing in the community, or was considered only half a man. Exogamy, too, was compulsory: that is to say, a man was expected to secure a wife from another clan than his own. Whether this custom arose because the primitive mind suspected the evil effects of close inbreeding, or because such intergroup marriages created or cemented useful political alliances, promoted social organization, and lessened the danger of war, or because the capture of a wife from another tribe had become the fashionable mark of male maturity, or because familiarity breeds contempt and distance lends enchantment to the view -- we do not know. In any case the restriction was well-nigh universal in early society; and though it was successfully violated by the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Incas, who all favored the marriage of brother and sister, it survived into Roman and modern aw and consciously or unconsciously moulds our behavior to this day."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section I, 1935

"In all these forms and varieties of marriage there is hardly a trace of romantic love. We find a few cases of love-marriages among the Papuans of New Guinea; among other primitive peoples we come upon instances of love (in the sense of mutual devotion rather than mutual need), but usually these attachments have nothing to do with marriage. In simple days men married for cheap labor, profitable parentage, and regular meals. "In Yariba," says Lander, "marriage is celebrated by the natives as unconcernedly as possible; a man thinks as little of taking a wife as of cutting an ear of corn -- affection is altogether out of the question." Since premarital relations are abundant in primitive society, passion is not damned up by denial, and seldom affects the choice of a wife. For the same reason -- the absence of delay between desire and fulfillment -- no time is given for the brooding introversion of frustrated, and therefore idealizing, passion which is usually the source of youthful romantic love. Such love is reserved for developed civilizations, in which morals have raised barriers against desire, and the growth of wealth has enabled some men to afford, and some women to provide, the luxuries and delicacies of romance; primitive people are too poor to be romantic. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section I, 1935

"[...] The primitive male looked upon marriage in terms not of sexual license but of economic cooperation. He expected the woman -- and the woman expected herself -- to be not so much gracious and beautiful (though he appreciated these qualities in her) as useful and industrious; she was to be an economic asset rather than a total loss; otherwise the matter-of-fact "savage" would never have thought of marriage at all. Marriage was a profitable partnership, not a private debauch; it was a way whereby a man and a woman, working together, might be more prosperous than if each worked alone. Wherever, in the history of civilization, woman has ceased to be an economic asset in marriage, marriage has decayed; and sometimes civilization has decayed with it."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section I, 1935