The Marriage of Relatives

In the earliest ages, marriage between the nearest of kin was permitted by custom and by law; a man did not scruple to marry his sister, his paternal aunt, his maternal aunt — even his own daughter.

In their sexual mingling, human beings were animal-like: no sanctity for blood, and none for lineage.

Abram married Sarah, who before the marriage was his sister; after it she became his sister and his wife.

And the Torah tells us that Sarah was a beautiful woman.

Abraham traded on her beauty, and sheltered behind her from the wrath of "Pharaoh" and the tyranny of "Abimelech," saying to her: "Say thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake."

And through her Abram came into ample wealth and many goods.

Then he took her back and begot by her Isaac, from whom issued a blessed seed and a great people that was, and still is, the pivot of movement and the mainspring of action among the various nations and peoples.

Among the "Chosen People" these relations multiplied, until Moses came and forbade them, cursing those who practiced them.

Moses, in his law, was humane: he put an end to the animality of his people.

"None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness." "The nakedness of thy father shalt thou not uncover, nor the nakedness of thy mother, nor the nakedness of thy father's wife, nor the nakedness of thy sister the daughter of thy father, nor the nakedness of thy son's daughter or thy daughter's daughter, nor the nakedness of thy father's sister or thy mother's sister. The nakedness of thy father's brother thou shalt not uncover; to his wife thou shalt not approach. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law, nor the nakedness of thy brother's wife, nor the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, nor her son's daughter, nor her daughter's daughter." (Book of Leviticus)

The Christian religions followed upon this law, seeing in it an acceptable code that joins the animality of nature to the humanity of society.

And the Prophet of Islam set it down in the very body of his law as a sacred verse: "Forbidden unto you are your mothers, and your daughters, and your sisters, and your fathers' sisters, and your mothers' sisters, and your brothers' daughters, and your sisters' daughters, and your mothers who have suckled you, and your foster sisters, and the mothers of your wives, and your stepdaughters who are in your keeping, born of your wives unto whom ye have gone in — but if ye have not gone in unto them, then it is no sin for you — and the wives of your sons who are of your own loins; and that ye should take two sisters together, save what hath already passed. Verily God is Forgiving, Merciful."

Certain Christian (sects) went to extremes in their legislation, forbidding marriage between relatives to the fifth degree; and their extremism was built upon sound foundations of health and of society. But people in past ages did not understand matters of health and society, so the lawgivers told them: these are laws laid down by the Church, and whoever strays from them shall be punished with excommunication and with hellfire.

And the people submitted to them — fleeing from the ban of the Church and the humiliation and shame that attend it, and fearing the torment of hell and the blaze of the fire.

Well done, this legislation of the men of the Church! In it they were wise and reasonable men.

This aberration has grown rare in modern times, and people have come to call a man who marries his sister or his daughter an animal or a brute. Yet no society is wholly free of the brutish.

But human evolution is sure to do away with this sexual aberration, which taste rebuffs and which the social bodies of today find repugnant.

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Marriage is a great bond that draws peoples together and mingles nations, and the blending of civilizations by way of intermarriage is the ideal method for removing fanaticism from the children of the different creeds and the followers of the many sects. Whenever you see the members of a nation, or a sect, or a family refusing to intermarry with other nations, sects, and families, know that there a seed is sprouting from the seeds of fanaticism and selfishness.

Had the Jews mingled with the rest of the peoples and intermarried with others among them, the children of Israel would not today, in every quarter of the inhabited world, be (regarded) with the eye of wariness and hatred. And had the religions renounced their teachings forbidding their children to marry those of another faith, religious and sectarian fanaticism — the scourge of the whole world, and of the East above all — would have died out.

In vain do the reformers strive to remove fanaticism from these Eastern lands. Education does not remove it, culture does not wipe out its evil, and the enacted laws do nothing to ward off its dangers.

Intermarriage between the various sects and communities, or the kinship by marriage that results from it — these, and nothing else, are the best roads to the East's

deliverance from the woes of fanaticism.

Your salvation is in your own hands, O sons of the East. Your disease lies in your religious fanaticism, and the foreigner knows this disease, and is at work to exploit it.

Either you consent to this exploitation, or you rise up to shake off its yoke. And there is no way to that save by drawing near to one another, creeds and sects alike, by way of mutual intermarriage. Do your religious chiefs forbid you? Cast them off. Do your religions and their laws stand in your way? Set them aside. And know that if religion does not yield good — all good — there is no profit in it. Keep of the religions their sound teachings, which command kindness and love and forbid what is evil, and leave aside those of their laws that lead to division and dispersion. If you remain clinging to the agents of disintegration and the commandments of separation, you place in the hands of your enemies a weapon with which they will fight you, and you will remain enslaved.

There is no salvation for the East but in its casting off fanaticism; and fanaticism will not be cast off until the female element enters into the apparatus of salvation; and there is no way to that save by intermarriage between the various sects and creeds. Will the East awake, then, and work for its own salvation?

The second danger of the marriage of near kin is that which touches the soundness of offspring and progeny. Marriage between relatives preserves the traits of the ancestors, be they good or bad. Such is the law of heredity. The children are bound over to their fathers and forefathers: it may pass close at hand, from fathers to sons, and it may at times pass from afar, from grandsires to grandchildren.

And once we know that some undesirable traits must exist even in the best and soundest of families, it becomes clear to us how these are transmitted by continual intermarriage among relatives, and grow more firmly rooted, generation after generation, in their offspring. Thus we see that families which keep to intermarriage within the family, and do not mingle with others by way of procreation, show particular traits and habits by which they are known and which set them apart from all others. And if one family is found distinguished by good traits and habits through its adherence to family intermarriage, there are ten families in which unwholesome habits and traits, and hereditary diseases and infirmities, come to the fore.

Conversely, when a man marries a woman not of his family, or not of his people, a blending takes place between the traits inherited from the two stocks. And with the continuance of this kind of marriage, change and transformation come about.

Thus do the traits of peoples change — their habits, their morals, and the health of their children.

The betterment of offspring comes by way of the choice of the two spouses. This is directed selective choice, carried over from Darwin's law of natural selection. In the wisdom of the farmers we have a proof of the soundness of this rule: for the farmers graft the tree whose fruit is weak or bad with a graft from a tree whose fruit is good.

And if we say that marriage between kinsfolk is undesirable, this does not mean that marriage between a sound element and an unsound one is any better.

The two elements must be chosen, so that the sound marries the sound. As for the unsound — hand it over to the Hitlerite system! Let it be done away with by being kept from breeding; for it is better for humanity that numbers should lessen and the stock improve, than that the stock should worsen and the peoples multiply, thereby multiplying men's afflictions, their greeds, their rivalries, and their wars.