Page images
PDF
EPUB

can face danger in any shape, and will seek it out for the pleasure of encountering it,-will be more likely to admire a woman whose timidity drives her to his bosom to nestle for protection, than a masculine courageous woman who always rights her own wrongs. He might laugh at her weakness; but he will caress and console her for the quality which makes him love her more for its confiding and relying helplessness. A masculine woman in body and mind, admires the soft feminine qualities of her sex, more than the powerful, masculine qualities of men; consequently, she will seek a mate having the properties she desires. If she should happen to meet with a man so feminine that he only needs the petticoat to pass for a woman, it is ten to one that the admiration is mutual, and a love match is formed at sight. A tall, thin, dark complexioned woman, contrasts herself very unfavorably with a short, fleshy, blue eyed, fair skinned rival. She admires what she lacks; for although she may possess the beauty of her kind, yet she admires the embonpoint of the fair beauty, which is not of her kind : consequently, she prefers a short, fleshy, fair, blueeyed man; and such a man would also see more beauty in her, than in the rival whom she envied. We might multiply examples; but our readers will find examples enough among their acquaintances, if they will only draw the distinction between love and money matches. And such as desire a more full exemplification of this law than we can afford to give to it, we refer to Mr. Walker's anthropological works.

Many persons might imagine, without reflection,

that matches so opposite in complexion, stature, temperament, habit of body, and consequently in dispositions, feelings, tempers, and understandings, would be productive of unhappiness to the parties, and evil consequences to the children. Such however is not generally the case, although it may occasionally happen; and when such exceptions do occur they almost always arise from some evil habits contracted by one, or both, of the parties, not necessarily incident to their tempers, dispositions, or understandings. The all-wise Creator ordained the law of love for the happiness of mankind; and obedience to it always confers happiness, unless the parties are obnoxious to punishment for violations of other natural laws. No two persons precisely alike in tempers, dispositions, and mental qualities, have ever been positively happy in married life. Like the notes in music, married people must slide through the gamut, combining the highest with the lowest notes, the bass with the tenor and treble, to produce harmony. One note cannot for ever be sounded on one key, flat or sharp, without offending the ear. If the law were that persons of like tempers, dispositions, and intellectual powers, should always seek each other in marriage, our race would degenerate; for the same reason it would degenerate if near blood relations should continually intermarry. In truth, there is a natural repugnance between persons of like properties. Wants and deficiencies are the causes of desires, and the occasions of love matches, the permanent happiness of married life, and the gradual improvement of the species.

The fifth proposition for consideration is," That

within the circle of each species crosses of individuals of different temperaments are highly beneficial; but out of this circle crosses of individuals of different species are always prejudicial."

The benefit to be derived from crosses of different constitutional temperaments of individuals, in the same species, is acknowledged by the laws of all nations, ancient and modern. These laws are only declaratory of the natural law that crosses of different temperaments, in intermarriages, are beneficial; because, if "it were natural and proper that identity of constitutional temperaments should intermarry, and that such intermarriages were beneficial to progeny, human enactments, prohibiting them within any degree of propinquity, would be impolitic and improper. But it is not only human law which recognises this principle; for the law of God is equally imperative to prohibit marriages of those in close affinity. Even among tribes so rude that they are under no restraint from human or revealed laws, the natural law operates with sufficient force to prevent alliances within certain degrees of propinquity. Thus it appears that intermarriages, within certain degrees of consanguinity, are prohibited by all laws natural, human, and divine. Exclusive of the natural abhorrence entertained by all men, to close alliances, the good policy of such laws must be evident to those who have paid the least attention to the practice of some families of marrying cousins, which very generally entails some misfortune upon progeny. So, too, in countries in which castes, nobility, and state policy, confine intermarriages, for a series of generations, to a particular class, if the class

should not be sufficiently numerous to admit of perfect crosses of temperaments, the progeny must degenerate. In countries which admit, as well by their laws, as by their customs, the utmost latitude to the operations of the natural law of sexual love, a few generations, however, produce an almost entire change of constitutional temperaments in progeny."

"It is at the first view astonishing," says Sir W. Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, book 2, chap. 14-"to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every man has, within no very great number of degrees: and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending degree-his own parents; he hath four in the second-the parents of his father, and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third-the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same rule of progression, he hath one hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh; a thousand and twentyfour in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate."

Thus, according to the doctrine of the descent of blood, which was the doctrine before the works of Mr. Walker appeared, every human creature must, at the twentieth degree of descent, making no allowance for intermarriages in the same family, have in his veins above a million different kinds of blood, besides the many millions of different qualities the original pair of ancestors had from whom he reckons. But Mr. Walker says that the doctrine of the transmission of blood is absurd; and, indeed, he has very

* As the tables of lineal ancestors and collateral kindred, given by Blackstone in notes to the above chapter, may be interesting to future inquirers into the early population of countries, we furnish the two notes containing them. "This (the number of lineal ancestors) will appear surprising to those who are unacquainted with the increasing power of progressive numbers: but is palpably evident from the following table of geometrical progression, in which the first term is 2, and the denominator is also 2: or to speak more intelligibly, it is evident for that each of us has two ancestors in the first degree; the number of whom is doubled at every remove, because each of our

considerably shaken its foundations, as generally it is understood. He contends, and with considerable force, that parents always impart organizations, and moral and mental qualities, to progeny, by halves, in mass, without interference with each other; that is, that the human system is divided into two distinct parts, which he denominates the locomotive, and the vital systems; the animal instincts and passions, he connects with the locomotive, and the

ancestors has also two immediate ancestors of his own." The following table exhibits the number of lineal ancestors to the twentieth degree:

[blocks in formation]

In regard to the number of kindred which every man has, Blackstone remarks: "If we only suppose each couple of our ancestors to have left, one with another, two children; and each of those children on an average to have left two more (and without such a supposition the human species must be daily diminishing); we shall find that all of us have now subsisting near two hundred and seventy millions of kindred in the fifteenth degree, at the same distance from the several common ancestors as ourselves are; besides those that are one or two descents nearer to, or farther from the common stock, who may amount to as many more. And if this calculation should appear incompatible with the number of inhabitants on the earth, it is because, by intermarriages among the several descendants from the same ancestor, a hundred or a thousand modes of consanguinity may be consolidated in one person, or he may be related to us in a

m

« PreviousContinue »