Monday 26 September 2022

How To Make Long Distance Relationships Work / Keeping Your sex Life Hot

Living apart is hard for many couples, the lack of opportunities for intimacy puts strain on the relationship and some may find themselves growing apart. Kiiroo offers couples the chance to be intimate with each other even when you may be miles apart. With their couples sets you and your partner can keep your sd life alive and well - closing the distance emotionally and keeping your relationship strong and your marriage happy.

Phone sex (now with FaceTime) is a great way to keep the spice in a long distance relationship.


The 3 Ways To Spice Up Your Love Life With Good Phone Sex


Good phone sex can offer a new dynamic to your love life, It doesn’t have to mean instant gratification either, the sexual tension you can create with phone sex can be kept until you are both at home or somewhere else  and then released in a passionate episode.

So here are 3 simple ways to follow



1: Tell them what you would do to them, match where you go from their responses.
2: Describe your self-stimulation
as well as possible.
Talk your partner through what
you are doing and what you
imagine he or she is up to.
If you use a vibrator, do so
If you are missing your partner let them know it. If there
are things you wish they were doing to you, voice this.
3: Letting your lover know that in
your imagination they are the sex toy.

One final point, don’t be timid. Sex lifts our spirits to higher places, and is such a spiritual journey that no other church can take you on. Follow the 3 ways above and lift your love life with good phone sex and then complete your journey when you both get home.





Dark Erotic Fantasy Werecats & Virgins

Monday 15 August 2022

Improve & Spice up a Sexless Marriage + The 3 Ways To Spice Up Your Love Life With Good Phone Sex



You can bring your love life to new exotic heights with a costume and some role play. Below we will show you some simple ideas for costumes and role plays that will spice up your love life and take your sex to new levels. If you are unsure or nervous don’t be, what girl doesn’t like to dress up? You can live your great fantasies and act out parts of our great history with a saucy twist! And your partner will definitely appreciate it, I have regularly been a naughty angel with Mark the Evangelist. Follow the below instructions and not only will you spice up your love life, but you can also broaden your knowledge. Research items from the below lists, and then build a complete world around that costume or role play, build a mental image of what you look like, when you see yourself in costume really feel like your new character, what is your life like? What has led you to this moment? Create the memories, the ideals in your mind, create the sounds and smells in your mind. Make this fantasy world a reality in your mind. Let yourself completely go, and do things you would not normally do. Truly be your new self, and what they would do with their love life, how they would have sex. So, for the Angel, look up some biblical stories, as you read them construct the world in your mind’s eye. An Angel would celebrate sex as an act of love, or would be seduced and become a naughty fallen angel. Hear through the angel, see through its eyes, feel your beautiful wings, and feel how good it feels to make love like an angel.
New & Classic sexy outfits & Costume Ideas

Take a look at the list below to get some new costume ideas. The list is not comprehensive, but there may be a few here that you have not yet considered, that could, add an extra dimension to your sex life and give your love life, new life!
Angel
Devil
Temptation Underwear
Cheerleader
Sexy Football Babe
Vampire
Maid
Cowgirl (& Cowboy (him))
Goddess
Kitty Cat
Wild Cat
Law Enforcement
Military
Nurse
Doctor
Pirate
See Through Dress
Exotic Open Crotch Bodystocking
Sailor
Schoolgirl
Pilot
SuperWoman
Jessica Rabbit
Spider Widow
Belle
Princess Leia
Royal Guard
Snow White
Cinderella

Buy any of these costumes cheaply at Aliexpress


The 5 Ways to Spice up your Sex Life with a Mirror


You don’t need to pay a large amount of money just to spice up your sex life. You can take your sex too knew places without leaving your bedroom! Just get hold of a cheap mirror, but make it large enough so that you can comfortably see two people in it. Position it so the bed is clearly reflected and then try out the 5 ways below.
The 5 Ways to Use a Mirror to spice up your sexless Marriage


1: You might pretend that the mirror is a window into the
room next door.

2: You might angle your lovemaking so that you can
actually see the penis moving in and out of the vagina.
You might position yourself right in front of the mirror so
that watching yourself becomes part of the fun.

3: One of you might order the
other to do something specifically sexual; seeing yourself and your partner
in different sexual positions & acts can be highly arousing.

4: Sit side by side and self pleasure with a mirror in front of you.

5: Look into each others eyes through the mirror, maintain this throughout.

And that’s it, with a cheap mirror you have managed to heighten and explore new places of sexual enjoyment. Brining you love forward and lifting your spirit to new things.

Do you have old dvd or video files of you both? Why not have your old dvd and video upscaled & remastered using AI


Saturday 30 July 2022

Marriage as a Trade

II

If I am right in my view that marriage for woman has always been not only a trade, but a trade that is practically compulsory, I have at the same time furnished an explanation of the reason why women, as a rule, are so much less romantic than men where sexual attraction is concerned. Where the man can be single-hearted, the woman necessarily is double-motived. It is, of course, the element of commerce and compulsion that accounts for this difference of attitude; an impulse that may have to be discouraged, nurtured or simulated to order—that is, at any rate, expected, for commercial or social reasons to put in an appearance as a matter of course and at the right and proper moment—can never have the same vigor, energy and beauty as an impulse that is unfettered and unforced.
More than once in my life I have been struck by the beauty of a man’s honest conception and21 ideal of love and marriage—a conception and ideal which one comes across in unexpected and unlikely persons and which is by no means confined to those whose years are still few in number and whose hearts are still hot within them. Only a few weeks ago I heard an elderly gentleman of scientific attainments talk something which, but for its sincerity, would have seemed to me sheer sentimental balderdash concerning the relations of men and women. And from other equally respectable gentlemen I have heard opinions that were beautiful as well as honest on the relations of the sexes, of a kind that no woman, being alone with another woman, would ever venture to utter. For we see the thing differently. I am not so foolish as to imagine that theory and practice in this or any other matter are in the habit of walking hand in hand; I know that for men the word love has two different meanings, and therefore I should be sorry to have to affirm on oath that the various gentlemen who have, at various times, favoured me with their views on the marriage question have one and all lived up to their convictions; but at least their conception of the love and duty22 owed by man and woman to each other was a high one, honourable, not wanting in reverence, not wanting in romance. Over and over again I have heard women unreticent enough upon the same subject; but, when they spoke their hearts, the picturesque touch—the flash and fire of romance—was never nearly so strong and sometimes altogether absent.
And I have never seen love—the sheer passionate and personal delight in and worship of a being of the other sex—so vividly and uncontrollably expressed on the face of a woman as on the face of a man. I have with me, as one of the things not to be forgotten, the memory of a cheap foreign hotel where, two or three years back, a little Cockney clerk was making holiday in worshipful attendance on the girl he was engaged to. At table I used to watch him, being very sure that he had no eyes for me; and once or twice I had the impulse that I should like to speak to him and thank him for what he had shown me. I have seen women in love time after time, but none in whom the fire burned as it burned in him—consumedly. I used to hope his Cockney goddess would have23 understanding at least to reverence the holy thing that passed the love of women....
How should it be otherwise—this difference in the attitude of man and woman in their relations to each other? To make them see and feel more alike in the matter, the conditions under which they live and bargain must be made more alike. With even the average man love and marriage may be something of a high adventure, entered upon whole-heartedly and because he so desires. With the average woman it is not a high adventure—except in so far as adventure means risk—but a destiny or necessity. If not a monetary necessity, then a social. (How many children, I wonder, are born each year merely because their mothers were afraid of being called old maids? One can imagine no more inadequate reason for bringing a human being into the world.) The fact that her destiny, when he arrives, may be all that her heart desires and deserves does not prevent him from being the thing that, from her earliest years, she had, for quite other reasons, regarded as inevitable. Quite consciously and from childhood the “not impossible he” is looked upon,24 not simply as an end desirable in himself, but as a means of subsistence. The marriageable man may seek his elective affinity until he find her; the task of the marriageable woman is infinitely more complicated, since her elective affinity has usually to be combined with her bread and butter. The two do not always grow in the same place.
What is the real, natural and unbiased attitude of woman towards love and marriage, it is perfectly impossible for even a woman to guess at under present conditions, and it will continue to be impossible for just so long as the natural instincts of her sex are inextricably interwoven with, thwarted and deflected by, commercial considerations. When—if ever—the day of woman’s complete social and economic independence dawns upon her, when she finds herself free and upright in a new world where no artificial pressure is brought to bear upon her natural inclinations or disinclinations, then, and then only, will it be possible to untwist a tangled skein and judge to what extent and what precise degree she is swayed by those impulses, sexual and maternal, which are now, to the exclusion of every other25 factor, presumed to dominate her existence. And not only to dominate, but to justify it. (A presumption, by the way, which seems to ignore the fact—incompatible, surely, with the theory of “incompleteness”—that celibacy irks the woman less than it does the man.)
What, one wonders, would be the immediate result if the day of independence and freedom from old restrictions were to dawn suddenly and at once? Would it be to produce, at first and for a time, a rapid growth amongst all classes of women of that indifference to, and almost scorn of, marriage which is so marked a characteristic of the—alas, small—class who can support themselves in comfort by work which is congenial to them? Perhaps—for a time, until the revulsion was over and things righted themselves. (I realize, of course, that it is quite impossible for a male reader to accept the assertion that any one woman, much less any class of women, however small its numbers, can be indifferent to or scornful of marriage—which would be tantamount to admitting that she could be indifferent to, or scornful of, himself.—What follows, therefore, can only appear to him as26 an ineffectual attempt on the part of an embittered spinster to explain that the grapes are sour; and he is courteously requested to skip to the end of the chapter. It would be lost labour on my part to seek to disturb his deep-rooted conviction that all women who earn decent incomes in intelligent and interesting ways are too facially unpleasant to be placed at the head of a dinner-table. I shall not attempt to disturb that conviction; I make it a rule never to attempt the impossible.) This new-born attitude of open indifference and contempt, while perhaps appearing strained and unnatural, is, it seems to me, a natural one enough for women whose daily lives have falsified every tradition in which they were born and bred.
For the tradition handed down from generations to those girl children who now are women grown was, with exceptions few and far between, the one tradition of marriage—marriage as inevitable as lessons and far more inevitable than death. Ordering dinner and keeping house: that we knew well, and from our babyhood was all the future had to give to us. For the boys there would be other things; wherefore our small27 hearts bore a secret grudge against Almighty God that He had not made us boys—since their long thoughts were our long thoughts, and together we wallowed in cannibals and waxed clamorous over engines. For them, being boys, there might be cannibals and engines in the world beyond; but for us—oh, the flat sameness of it!—was nothing but a husband, ordering dinner and keeping house. Therefore we dreamed of a settler for a husband, and of assisting him to shoot savages with a double-barrelled gun. So might the round of household duties be varied and most pleasantly enlivened.
Perhaps it was the stolid companionship of the doll, perhaps the constant repetition of the formula “when you have children of your own” that precluded any idea of shirking the husband and tackling the savage off our own bat. For I cannot remember that we ever shirked him. We selected his profession with an eye to our own interests; he was at various times a missionary, a sailor and a circus-rider; but from the first we recognized that he was unavoidable. We planned our lives and knew that he was lurking vaguely in the background28 to upset our best-laid calculations. We were still very young, I think, when we realized that his shadowy personality was an actual, active factor in our lives; that it was because of him and his surmised desires that our turbulent inclinations were thwarted and compressed into narrow channels, and that we were tamed and curbed as the boys were never tamed and curbed. When that which the boys might do with impunity was forbidden to us as a sin of the first water, we knew that it was because he would not like it. The thought was not so consciously expressed, perhaps; but it was there and lived with us. So we grew up under his influence, presuming his wishes, and we learned, because of him, to say, “I can’t,” where our brothers said, “I can,” and to believe, as we had been taught, that all things, save a very few (such as ordering dinner and keeping house) were not for us because we were not men. (Yet we had our long, long thoughts—we had them, too!) That was one thing that he desired we should believe; and another was that only through him could we attain to satisfaction and achievement; that our every desire that was not centred upon29 him and upon his children would be barren and bitter as Dead Sea ashes in the mouth. We believed that for a long time....
And he was certain to come: the only question was, when? When he came we should fall in love with him, of course—and he would kiss us—and there would be a wedding....
Some of us—and those not a few—started life equipped for it after this fashion; creatures of circumstance who waited to be fallen in love with. That was indeed all; we stood and waited—on approval. And then came life itself and rent our mother’s theories to tatters. For we discovered—those of us, that is, who were driven out to work that we might eat—we discovered very swiftly that what we had been told was the impossible was the thing we had to do. That and no other. So we accomplished it, in fear and trembling, only because we had to; and with that first achievement of the impossible the horizon widened with a rush, and the implanted, hampering faith in our own poor parasitic uselessness began to wither at the root and die. We had learned to say, “I can.” And as we went on, at first with fear and30 then with joy, from impossibility to impossibility, we looked upon the world with new eyes.
To no man, I think, can the world be quite as wonderful as it is to the woman now alive who has fought free. Those who come after her will enter by right of birth upon what she attains by right of conquest; therefore, neither to them will it be the same. The things that to her brother are common and handed down, to her are new possessions, treasured because she herself has won them and no other for her. It may well be that she attaches undue importance to these; it could scarcely be otherwise. Her traditions have fallen away from her, her standard of values is gone. The old gods have passed away from her, and as yet the new gods have spoken with no very certain voice. The world to her is in the experimental stage. She grew to womanhood weighed down by the conviction that life held only one thing for her; and she stretches out her hands to find that it holds many. She grew to womanhood weighed down by the conviction that her place in the scheme of things was the place of a parasite;31 and she knows (for necessity has taught her) that she has feet which need no support. She is young in the enjoyment of her new powers and has a pleasure that is childish in the use of them. By force of circumstances her faith has been wrested from her and the articles of her new creed have yet to be tested by experience—her own. Her sphere—whatever it may prove to be—no one but herself can define for her. Authority to her is a broken reed. Has she not heard and read solemn disquisitions by men of science on the essential limitations of woman’s nature and the consequent impossibility of activity in this or that direction?—knowing, all the while, that what they swear to her she cannot do she does, is doing day by day!

Some day, no doubt, the pendulum will adjust itself and swing true; a generation brought up to a wider horizon as a matter of course will look around it with undazzled eyes and set to work to reconstruct the fundamental from the ruins of what was once esteemed so. But in the meantime the new is—new; the independence that was to be as Dead Sea ashes in our mouth tastes very sweet indeed; and the unsheltered32 life that we were taught to shrink from means the fighting of a good fight....
Selfishness, perhaps—all selfishness—this pleasure in ourselves and in the late growth of that which our training had denied us. But then, from our point of view, the sin and crime of woman in the past has been a selflessness which was ignoble because involuntary. Our creed may be vague as yet, but one article thereof is fixed: there is no merit in a sacrifice which is compulsory, no virtue in a gift which is not a gift but a tribute.

Sunday 3 July 2022

Hesiod’s Advice for choosing a wife


Hesiod’s Advice for choosing a wife

Bring a wife to your house when you are of the right age, not far short of thirty years nor much above. This is the right age for marriage. Your wife should have been an adolescent for four years, and married to you in the fifth. Marry a virgin so that you can teach her good ways. Especially marry one who lives near you and be observant about everything around you. See that your marriage is not a joke to your neighbours, for a man wins nothing better than a good wife; and again he wins nothing worse than a bad wife, greedy for food, who roasts her man without fire, strong though he is, and brings him to a premature old age.

Monday 6 January 2020

Getting fit revealed as the most attractive thing you can do to improve relationship

Getting fit has been revealed on the latest study to be one of the best ways to improve existing relationships and improve chances of finding new love.

The highest success rate among fitness products and services was personal training by a huge 30%
People who were studied for this expressed the one to one nature of personal training as the biggest influence on success rate.

But really any form of improved fitness has been shown to increase peoples relationships.

Thursday 5 December 2019

Sexual selection influenced by the desire for offspring

We have hitherto dealt only with the poetry of sexual selection—love; now something is to be said of its prose—dry calculation. And we may conveniently begin with man’s appreciation of woman’s fertility, as this has some of the characteristics of an instinct. Desire for offspring is universal in mankind. Abortion, indeed, is practised now and then, and infanticide frequently takes place among many savage peoples; but these facts do not disprove the general rule.
See more at Applied Eugenics
Speaking of the Crees, Chippewyans, and other Indians on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, Harmon says that “all Indians are very desirous of having a numerous offspring.”2216 Among the Ingaliks,377 “children are anxiously desired, even when women have no husbands.”2217 Among the Mayas, disappointed couples prayed earnestly, and brought many offerings to propitiate the god whose anger was supposed to have deferred their hopes.2218 “Be numerous in offspring and descendants,” is a frequent marriage benediction or salutation in Madagascar; for to die without posterity is looked upon as a great calamity, and is termed “dead as regards the eye.”2219 A negro considers childlessness the greatest disaster which can happen to him;2220 Bosman once asked one of the king’s captains in Fida how many children he had, and he answered, sighing, that he was so unhappy as not to have many—he could not pretend to have had above seventy, including those who were dead. Among the Waganda and Wanyoro, great rejoicings take place in the case of the birth of twins.2221 The Shaman heathens of Siberia regarded an abundance of children and cattle as the most essential condition of a man’s happiness.2222 “Honest people have many children,” a Japanese proverb says;2223 the Chinese regard a large family of sons as a mark of the divine favour;2224 and to become the father of a son is described in Indian poems as the greatest happiness which may fall to the share of a mortal.2225 In Persia, childlessness is considered the most horrible calamity.2226 One of the chief blessings that Moses in the name of God promised the Israelites was a numerous progeny; and the ancient Romans regarded the procreation of legitimate children as the real end of marriage.2227 “He who has no children, has no happiness either,” the South Slavonians say;2228378 and German folk-lore compares a marriage without offspring with a world without sun.2229
A woman therefore is valued not only as a wife but as a mother. Nowhere has greater stress been laid on this idea than in ancient Lacedaemon. A husband, if he considered that the unfruitfulness of the marriage was owing to himself, gave his matrimonial rights to a younger man, whose child then belonged to the husband’s family; and to the wives of men who, for example, fell in battle before having children, other men, probably slaves, were assigned, that there might be heirs and successors to the deceased husband.2230 Among many peoples the respect in which a woman is held is proportionate to her fecundity,2231 and a barren wife is frequently despised as an unnatural and useless being.2232 In Angola, according to Livingstone, in the native dances, “when any one may wish to deride another, in the accompanying song a line is introduced, 'So and so has no children, and never will get any.’” The offended woman feels the insult so keenly that it is not uncommon for her to rush away and commit suicide.2233 Among the Creeks, a man always calls his wife his son’s mother;2234 and, among the Todas, in addressing a man with the casual question, “Are you married?” the ordinary way of putting it would be to say, “Is there a son?”2235
It is obvious, then, that fecundity must be one of the qualities which a man most eagerly requires from his bride. Mr. Reade tells us that, in certain parts of Africa, especi379ally in malarious localities, where women are so frequently sterile, no one cares to marry a girl till she has borne a child; and among the Votyaks, according to Dr. Buch, a girl gets married sooner if she is a mother.2236
We have seen several instances of husband and wife not living together as married people before the birth of a child. Among the Creeks, marriages were contracted for a year, but if they proved fruitful, they were, as a rule, renewed.2237 Again, with regard to an order of the Essenes, Josephus states that, considering succession to be the principal part of human life, they tried their spouses for three years, and then married them only if there was a prospect of the union being fruitful.2238 Among many peoples it is the practice for a man to repudiate a barren wife.
The desire for offspring, with its consequence, the appreciation of female fecundity, is due to various causes. First, there is in man an instinct for reproduction. Mr. Marshall remarks, “Of this desire for progeny I have seen many examples amongst the Todas, so strongly marked, but to all appearances apart from the sense of personal ambition, and separate from any demands of religion or requirements for support in old age, as to give the impression that it was the primitive faculty of Philoprogenitiveness, acting so insensibly, naturally, as to have the character more of a plain instinct, than of an intelligent human feeling.”2239 With this instinct a feeling of parental pride is associated. “Children,” says Hobbes, “are a man’s power and his honour.”2240
Among the Hebrews and the ancient Aryan nations, the desire for offspring, particularly sons, had its root chiefly in religious belief, being a natural outcome of the idea that the spirits of the dead were made happy by homage received at the hands of their male posterity. The same is the case with the Chinese2241380 and Japanese,2242 and perhaps, to a certain extent, with some peoples at a lower stage of civilization. The savage believes that the life which goes on after death, differs in nothing from this life, that wants and pursuits remain as before, that consequently the dead man’s spirit eats and drinks, and needs fire for warmth and cooking. It is, of course, his surviving descendants who have to see that he is well provided for in these respects. Hence the offerings to deceased ancestors for various periods after death and the feasts for the dead.2243 Among the Thlinkets according to Holmberg, it sometimes happens that a man spends his whole fortune as well as his wife’s marriage portion on such a feast, and has to live as a poor man for the rest of his life.2244
But no doubt children are most eagerly longed for by savage men because they are of use to him in his lifetime. They are easily supported when young, and in times of want they may be left to die or be sold. When a few years old, the sons become able to hunt, fish, and paddle, and later on they are their father’s companions in war. The daughters help their mother to provide food, and, when grown up, they are lucrative objects of trade. Finally, when old, the parents would often suffer want had they not their children to support them.2245 Hence, in a savage condition of life, children are the chief wealth of the family. And the same is the case at somewhat higher stages of social development. Mr. Lane remarks that, in Egypt, “at the age of five or six years, the children become of use to tend the flocks and herds; and at a more advanced age, until they marry, they assist their fathers in the operations of agriculture. The poor in Egypt have often to depend entirely upon their sons for support in their old age; but many parents are deprived of these aids, and consequently reduced to beggary, or almost to starvation.”2246 To a certain extent, this holds good for the uneducated classes in Europe also.
381
With the progress of civilization the desire for offspring has become less intense. The religious motive has of course died out in the Christian world, and, in proportion as social life becomes more complicated, and a professional education becomes more necessary for success in the struggle for existence, children, at least in “the upper classes” and among towns-people, put their parents to expense instead of being a source of wealth. A childless couple may indeed, deplore the absence of children; but a woman is no longer held in respect only, or principally, as a mother; and marriage, according to modern ideas, is something more than an institution for the procreation of legitimate offspring. Yet it is remarkable that, in Switzerland, although barrenness is no sufficient reason for a man to repudiate his wife, two-fifths of the total number of divorces take place between married people who have no children whilst the sterile marriages amount only to one-fifth of the number of marriages.2247
A wife is of use to her husband not merely because she gives him labourers, but also because she herself is a labourer. Drying and preparing fish and meat, lighting and attending to the fire, transporting baggage, picking berries, dressing hides and making clothes, cooking food and taking care of the children—these are, in the savage state, the chief pursuits of a wife. Among agricultural and cattle-farming peoples, she has besides, to cultivate the soil and to tend the cattle. A wife, therefore, is chosen partly because of her ability to perform such duties. Thus, among the Greenlanders, cleverness in sewing and skill in the management of household affairs are the most attractive qualities of a woman.2248 Among other Eskimo tribes and in Tierra del Fuego, middle-aged men will connect themselves with old women who are best able to take care of their common comforts.2249 The Inland Columbians, according to Mr. Bancroft, make “capacity for work the standard of female excellence;”2250 and, among the Turkomans, young widows fetch double the price of spinsters,382 because they are more accustomed to hard labour, and more experienced in household concerns.2251
A husband’s function is to protect his family from enemies and to prevent them falling into distress. A woman, as we have already seen, even instinctively prefers a courageous and strong man to one who is cowardly and feeble. But reflection also makes her choose a man who is well able to defend her and to provide food. Among the Comanches, says Mr. Parker, “young girls are not averse to marry very old men, particularly if they are chiefs, as they are always sure of something to eat.”2252
At more advanced stages of civilization, money and inherited property often take the place of skill, strength, and working ability. Thus, wife-purchase and husband-purchase, still persist in modern society, though in disguised forms.

Tuesday 5 November 2019

THE FORMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE

THE FORMS OF HUMAN MARRIAGE


As to the history of the forms of human marriage, two inferences regarding monogamy and polygyny may be made with absolute certainty: monogamy, always the predominant form of marriage, has been more prevalent at the lowest stages of civilization than at somewhat higher stages; whilst, at a still higher stage, polygyny has again, to a great extent, yielded to monogamy.
As already said, wars, often greatly disturbing the proportion of the sexes among peoples with a highly developed tribal organization, exercise a much smaller influence in that respect in societies of a ruder type. As in such societies all men are nearly equal, and, to quote Mr. Wallace, “each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellow, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never takes place,”3192 no great scope is left for polygynous habits.
Plurality of wives has comparatively few attractions for the men of rude communities, where life is supported chiefly by hunting, and female labour is of slight value. In societies of a higher kind, the case is different. True, in such societies a man has to buy his wife, and women are often costly chattels; but this obstacle to polygyny is more than counterbalanced by the accumulation of wealth and the distinction of classes.
Nothing, indeed, is more favourable to polygyny than506 social differentiation. “In its highest and regulated form,” Mr. Morgan justly observes, “it presupposes a considerable advance of society, together with the development of superior and inferior classes, and of some kinds of wealth.”3193 Speaking of the Iroquois, Colden long ago remarked that, “in any nation where all are on a par as to riches and power, plurality of wives cannot well be introduced.”3194 According to Waitz, the reason why polygyny is very rare among the Hottentots is, that they do not know of any disparity in rank and wealth.3195 The Rock Veddahs have no class distinction, and, though each party among them has a headman—the most energetic senior of the tribe,—he exercises scarcely any authority.3196 Almost the same may be said of most of the monogamous savage peoples whom we have mentioned. Thus, among the Pádams, all, except slaves, are equal in rank;3197 and of the Kukis it is said that all eat and drink together, and that “one man is as good as another.”3198 This is true of the Chittagong Hill tribes in general, who enjoy a perfect social equality, their nomadic life precluding any great accumulation of wealth.3199 Among the Hill Dyaks, as Mr. Spencer observes, chiefs are unable to enforce genuine subordination; the headman of each Bodo and Dhimál village has but nominal authority; and the governor of a Pueblo town is annually elected.3200 In Tana, where the authority of a chief does not seem to extend a gunshot beyond his own dwelling, few chiefs have more than three wives, and most of them have only one or two.3201 On the other hand, throughout Africa, polygyny and great class distinctions occur simultaneously. We may therefore safely conclude that polygyny became more prevalent in proportion as differentiation increased with the progress of civilization.
It is a notable fact that the higher savages and barbarians507 indulge in this practice to a greater extent than the very lowest races. These, with few exceptions, are either strictly monogamous, or but little addicted to polygyny. The lowest forest tribes in Brazil and the interior of Borneo are monogamous. Among the Veddahs and Andamanese, monogamy is as rigidly insisted upon as anywhere in Europe. According to Captain Lewin, the monogamous Toungtha are “unamenable to the lures of civilization,” and he thinks it will be found difficult, if not impossible, to wean them from their savage life.3202 The Mrús are despised as wild men by the polygynous Khyoungtha;3203 and the Californians, who, according to Mr. Powers, were far less addicted to polygyny than the Atlantic Indians, are “a humble and a lowly race, ... one of the lowest on earth.”3204
Certain peoples who were originally monogamous are known to have adopted polygyny under the influence of a higher civilization. Thus, according to Professor Vámbéry, there is not a single indication that polygyny was an institution of the primitive Turco-Tartars, and even now it is almost unknown among the nomadic peoples of that race.3205 Dr. Mason and Mr. Smeaton state that, among the Karens, it is occasionally practised only by those who are brought much in contact with the Burmese.3206 Among the Hindus, according to Mr. Dutt, polygyny seems to have grown in the latter part of the Vedic age, as there are scarcely any allusions to it in the earlier hymns.3207 Goguet observes that “fables which can be traced back to the earliest times give us no instance of any man’s having more than one lawful wife.”3208 Although the majority of the heroes in the writings of Kalidasa are described as polygynists,3209 the principal divinities whom the Hindus acknowledge are repre508sented as married to but one legitimate wife.3210 The higher position so generally granted to the first married wife in polygynous families seems to indicate in most cases a transition from monogamous to polygynous habits, and not vice versa, as has often been suggested.3211
Monogamy is the more likely to have prevailed almost exclusively among our earliest human ancestors, since it does so among the man-like apes. Mr. Darwin certainly mentions the Gorilla as a polygamist;3212 but the majority of statements we have regarding this animal are to the opposite effect. Relying on the most trustworthy authorities, Professor Hartmann says, “The Gorilla lives in a society consisting of male and female and their young of varying ages.”3213
We may thus take for granted that civilization up to a certain point is favourable to polygyny; but it is equally certain that in its higher forms it leads to monogamy.
One of the chief advantages of civilization is the decrease of wars. The death-rate of men has consequently become less, and the considerable disproportion between the sexes which, among many warlike peoples, makes polygyny almost a law of nature, no longer exists among the most advanced nations. No superstitious belief keeps the civilized man apart from his wife during her pregnancy and whilst she suckles her child; and the suckling time has become much shorter since the introduction of domesticated animals and the use of milk. To a cultivated mind youth and beauty are by no means the only attractions of a woman; and civilization has made female beauty more durable. The desire for offspring as we509 have seen, has become less intense. A large family, instead of being a help in the struggle for existence, is often considered an insufferable burden. A man’s kinsfolk are not now his only friends, and his wealth and power do not depend upon the number of his wives and children. A wife has ceased to be a mere labourer, and for manual labour we have to a great extent substituted the work of domesticated animals and the use of implements and machines.3214 Polygyny has thus, in many ways, become less desirable for the civilized man than it was for his barbarian and savage ancestors. And other causes have co-operated to produce the same result.
When the feelings of women are held in due respect, monogamy will necessarily be the only recognized form of marriage. In no way does the progress of mankind show itself more clearly than in the increased acknowledgment of women’s rights, and the causes which, at lower stages of development, may make polygyny desired by women themselves, do not exist in highly civilized societies. The refined feeling of love, depending chiefly upon mutual sympathy and upon appreciation of mental qualities, is scarcely compatible with polygynous habits; and the passion for one has gradually become more absorbing.
Will monogamy be the only recognized form of marriage in the future? This question has been answered in different ways. According to Mr. Spencer, “the monogamic form of the sexual relation is manifestly the ultimate form; and any changes to be anticipated must be in the direction of completion and extension of it.”3215 Dr. Le Bon, on the other hand, thinks that European laws will, in the future, legalize polygyny;3216 and M. Letourneau remarks that, although we may now look upon monogamy as superior to any other form510 of marriage yet known, “we need not consider it the Ultima Thule in the evolution of connubial ceremonies.”3217 But we may without hesitation assert that, if mankind advance in the same direction as hitherto; if, consequently, the causes to which monogamy in the most progressive societies owes its origin continue to operate with constantly growing force; if, especially, altruism increases, and the feeling of love becomes more refined, and more exclusively directed to one,—the laws of monogamy can never be changed, but must be followed much more strictly than they are now.


Mr. McLennan suggests that, in early times, polyandry was the rule and monogamy and polygyny exceptions. According to his view, the only marriage law in which female kinship could have originated was polyandry—polyandry of “the ruder sort,” in which the husbands are not kinsmen. And it is, he says, impossible not to believe that the Levirate—that is, the practice of marrying a dead brother’s widow—is derived from polyandry.3218 The fallacy of the first inference, which assumes the system of “kinship through females only” to depend upon uncertainty as to fathers, has already been shown. The second inference will be found to be equally erroneous.
The Levirate is undoubtedly a wide-spread custom;3219 and, if511 it could be proved to be a survival of polyandry, we should be compelled to conclude that this form of marriage was at one time very common. Where women are regarded as property, they are, of course, inherited like other possessions.3220 In many cases the brother, or, in default of a brother, the nearest male relation, is expressly stated to be entitled to have the widow; and, if he does not marry her, he has nevertheless, the guardianship over her, and may give her away or sell her to some other man.3221 But there are several peoples who consider the Levirate a duty rather than a right.3222 Among the Thlinkets, for example, when a husband dies, his brother or512 his sister’s son must marry the widow, and the neglect of this obligation has occasioned bloody feuds.3223 The law requiring a man to take care of a sister-in-law is analogous to other duties devolving on kinsfolk, such as the vendetta, &c. Mr. McLennan lays stress on the fact that it is the deceased husband’s brother who inherits his widow. “How came the right of succession,” he says, “to open, as in the ruder cases, to the brother in preference to the son of the deceased? We repeat that the only explanation that can be given of this is, that the law of succession was derived from polyandry.”3224 But among many of the peoples who have the custom of the Levirate, sons either inherit nothing or are preceded by brothers in succession.3225 Among the Santals, for instance, “when the elder brother dies, the next younger inherits the widow, children, and all the property.”3226 Among a few peoples, the widow together with the other property of the dead man goes either to his brother or to his sister’s son.3227 But it is more natural, where succession runs in the female line, that the widow should be married by the brother than by the nephew, because, as a rule, she is much older than the nephew, and he, in many cases, is too young to marry and to maintain her properly.
Even when a son inherits the other property of his father, it is easy to understand why he does not inherit the widow. To inherit her is, generally speaking, to marry her. But nowhere is a son allowed to marry his own mother; hence it is natural, at least where monogamy prevails, that the right of succession in this case should belong to the brother. In poly513gynous families, on the other hand, it often happens that the eldest son, or all the sons, inherit the father’s widows, the mother being in each case excepted.3228 Among the Bakalai, a tribe in Equatorial Africa, widows are permitted to marry the son of their deceased husband, and, if there be no son, they may live with the deceased husband’s brother.3229 As regards the Negroes of Benin, Bosman states that, if the mother of the eldest son, the only heir, be alive, he allows her a proper maintenance, but his father’s other widows, especially those who have not had children, the son takes home, if he likes them, and uses as his own; but if the deceased leaves no children, the brother inherits all his property.3230 Among the Mishmis, the heir obtains the wives, with the exception of his own mother, who goes to the next male relation.3231 Concerning the Kafirs of Natal, Mr. Shooter observes that, “when a man dies, those wives who have not left the kraal remain with the eldest son. If they wish to marry again, they must go to one of their late husband’s brothers.”3232 The rules of succession are thus modified according to circumstances, and they are not uniform even among the same people. It frequently happens that the brother succeeds to the chieftainship, whilst the son inherits the property of the dead man3233—no doubt because the brother, being older and more experienced, is generally better fitted for command than the son.3234
Mr. McLennan calls attention to the fact that, among certain peoples, the children begotten by the brother are accounted the children of the brother deceased.3235 “It is obvious,” he514 says, “that it could more easily be feigned that the children belonged to the brother deceased, if already, at a prior stage, the children of the brotherhood had been accounted the children of the eldest brother, i.e., if we suppose the obligation to be a relic of polyandry.”3236 But this explanation is very far-fetched. As Dr. Starcke justly observes, a man may, from a juridical point of view, be the father of a child, though he is not so in fact.3237 In New Guinea, says M. Bink, “à la mort du père, c’est l’oncle (frère du père) qui se charge de la tutelle; si l’enfant devient orphelin, il reconnaît son oncle comme son père.”3238 In Samoa, the brother of a deceased husband considered himself entitled to have his brother’s wife, and to be regarded by the orphan children as their father.3239 And, among the Kafirs of Natal, the children of a deceased man’s widow born in marriage with his brother, belong to his son.3240 Quite in accordance with these facts, the children of a widow may be considered to belong to her former husband. Indeed, where death without posterity is looked upon as a horrible calamity, the ownership of the children is a thing of the utmost importance for the dead man. It is only when the deceased has no offspring that the Jewish, Hindu, and Malagasy laws prescribe that the brother shall “raise up seed” to him.
Mr. McLennan has thus failed in his attempt to prove that polyandry has formed a general stage in the development of marriage institutions; and we may almost with certainty infer that it has always been exceptional. We have already pointed out the groundlessness of Mr. McLennan’s suggestion that in all, or nearly all, the primitive hordes there was a want of balance between the sexes, the men being in the majority on account of female infanticide.3241 Moreover, though515 polyandry is due to an excess of men, it would be a mistake to conclude that an excess of men always causes polyandry. This practice presupposes an abnormally feeble disposition to jealousy—a peculiarity of all peoples among whom polyandry occurs. The Eskimo are described as a race with extraordinarily weak passions.3242 Among the Sinhalese, says Dr. Davy, jealousy is not very troublesome among the men, and the infidelity of a woman is generally easily forgiven.3243 The people of Ladakh are a mild, timid, and indolent race.3244 The Kulu husbands “sont très peu jaloux.”3245 The same is said by Mr. Fraser with regard to the people of Sirmore. The women are “entirely at the service of such as will pay for their favours, without feeling the slightest sense of shame or crime in a practice from which they are not discouraged by early education, example, or even the dread of their lords, who only require a part of the profit.”3246 The Tibetans are represented as very little addicted to jealousy,3247 being, as Mr. Wilson remarks, a race of a peculiarly placid and unpassionate temperament.3248 But such a lack of jealousy, as we have seen, is a rare exception in the human race, and utterly unlikely to have been universal at any time.
Polyandry seems, indeed, to presuppose a certain amount of civilization. We have no trustworthy account of its occurrence among the lowest savage races. Mr. Bridges writes that the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego consider it utterly abominable. With regard to the Veddahs, Mr. Bailey states,516 “Polyandry is unknown among them. The practice is alluded to with genuine disgust. I asked a Veddah once what the consequence would be if one of their women were to live with two husbands, and the unaffected vehemence with which he raised his axe, and said, ‘A blow would settle it,’ showed conclusively to my mind the natural repugnance with which they regard the national custom of their Kandyan neighbours.”3249 These neighbours are much superior to the Veddahs in civilization; and the other peoples practising polyandry have left the lowest stages of development far behind them. The Eskimo are a rather advanced race, and so are the polyandrous nations of the Asiatic continent. Speaking of the people of Sirmore, Mr. Fraser observes, “It is remarkable that a people so degraded in morals, and many of whose customs are of so revolting a nature, should in other respects evince a much higher advancement in civilization than we discover among other nations, whose manners are more engaging, and whose moral character ranks infinitely higher. Their persons are better clad and more decent; their approach more polite and unembarrassed; and their address is better than that of most of the inhabitants of the remote Highlands of Scotland; ... and their houses, in point of construction, comfort and internal cleanliness, are beyond comparison superior to Scottish Highland dwellings.”3250 On the arrival of the Spaniards, the polyandrous inhabitants of Lancerote were distinguished from the other Canarians, who were strictly monogamous, by marks of greater civilization.3251
We have seen that in polyandrous families the husbands are generally brothers, and that the eldest brother, at least in many cases, has the superiority, the younger husbands having almost the position, if the term may be used, of male concubines. It is a fair conclusion that, in such instances, polyandry was originally an expression of fraternal benevolence on the part of the eldest brother, who gave his younger brothers a share in his wife, if, on account of the scarcity of women, they would otherwise have had to live unmarried. If additional wives were afterwards acquired, they would naturally be considered the common property of all the brothers. In this way the group-marriage of the Toda type seems to have been evolved.