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Urantia Book Paper 84 Marriage And Family Life
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
...
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Paper 84 Marriage And Family Life
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Introduction
MATERIAL necessity founded marriage, sex hunger embellished it, religion
sanctioned and exalted it, the state demanded and regulated it, while in later
times evolving love is beginning to justify and glorify marriage as the
ancestor and creator of civilization's most useful and sublime institution, the
home. And home building should be the center and essence of all educational
effort.
Mating is purely an act of self-perpetuation associated with varying degrees of
self-gratification; marriage, home building, is largely a matter of
self-maintenance, and it implies the evolution of society. Society itself is
the aggregated structure of family units. Individuals are very temporary as
planetary factors--only families are continuing agencies in social evolution.
The family is the channel through which the river of culture and knowledge
flows from one generation to another.
The home is basically a sociologic institution. Marriage grew out of
co-operation in self-maintenance and partnership in self-perpetuation, the
element of self-gratification being largely incidental. Nevertheless, the home
does embrace all three of the essential functions of human existence, while
life propagation makes it the fundamental human institution, and sex sets it
off from all other social activities.
1. PRIMITIVE PAIR ASSOCIATIONS
Marriage was not founded on sex relations; they were incidental thereto.
Marriage was not needed by primitive man, who indulged his sex appetite freely
without encumbering himself with the responsibilities of wife, children, and
home.
Woman, because of physical and emotional attachment to her offspring, is
dependent on co-operation with the male, and this urges her into the sheltering
protection of marriage. But no direct biologic urge led man into marriage--much
less held him in. It was not love that made marriage attractive to man, but
food hunger which first attracted savage man to woman and the primitive shelter
shared by her children.
Marriage was not even brought about by the conscious realization of the
obligations of sex relations. Primitive man comprehended no connection between
sex indulgence and the subsequent birth of a child. It was once universally
believed that a virgin could become pregnant. The savage early conceived the
idea that babies were made in spiritland; pregnancy was believed to be the
result of a woman's being entered by a spirit, an evolving ghost. Both diet and
the evil eye were also believed to be capable of causing pregnancy in a virgin
or un-
top of page - 932
married woman, while later beliefs connected the beginnings of life with the
breath and with sunlight.
Many early peoples associated ghosts with the sea; hence virgins were greatly
restricted in their bathing practices; young women were far more afraid of
bathing in the sea at high tide than of having sex relations. Deformed or
premature babies were regarded as the young of animals which had found their
way into a woman's body as a result of careless bathing or through malevolent
spirit activity. Savages, of course, thought nothing of strangling such
offspring at birth.
The first step in enlightenment came with the belief that sex relations opened
up the way for the impregnating ghost to enter the female. Man has since
discovered that father and mother are equal contributors of the living
inheritance factors which initiate offspring. But even in the twentieth century
many parents still endeavor to keep their children in more or less ignorance as
to the origin of human life.
A family of some simple sort was insured by the fact that the reproductive
function entails the mother-child relationship. Mother love is instinctive; it
did not originate in the mores as did marriage. All mammalian mother love is
the inherent endowment of the adjutant mind-spirits of the local universe and
is in strength and devotion always directly proportional to the length of the
helpless infancy of the species.
The mother and child relation is natural, strong, and instinctive, and one
which, therefore, constrained primitive women to submit to many strange
conditions and to endure untold hardships. This compelling mother love is the
handicapping emotion which has always placed woman at such a tremendous
disadvantage in all her struggles with man. Even at that, maternal instinct in
the human species is not overpowering; it may be thwarted by ambition,
selfishness, and religious conviction.
While the mother-child association is neither marriage nor home, it was the
nucleus from which both sprang. The great advance in the evolution of mating
came when these temporary partnerships lasted long enough to rear the resultant
offspring, for that was homemaking.
Regardless of the antagonisms of these early pairs, notwithstanding the
looseness of the association, the chances for survival were greatly improved by
these male-female partnerships. A man and a woman, co-operating, even aside
from family and offspring, are vastly superior in most ways to either two men
or two women. This pairing of the sexes enhanced survival and was the very
beginning of human society. The sex division of labor also made for comfort and
increased happiness.
2. THE EARLY MOTHER-FAMILY
The woman's periodic hemorrhage and her further loss of blood at childbirth
early suggested blood as the creator of the child (even as the seat of the
soul) and gave origin to the blood-bond concept of human relationships. In
early times all descent was reckoned in the female line, that being the only
part of inheritance which was at all certain.
The primitive family, growing out of the instinctive biologic blood bond of
mother and child, was inevitably a mother-family; and many tribes long held
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to this arrangement. The mother-family was the only possible transition from
the stage of group marriage in the horde to the later and improved home life of
the polygamous and monogamous father-families. The mother-family was natural
and biologic; the father-family is social, economic, and political. The
persistence of the mother-family among the North American red men is one of the
chief reasons why the otherwise progressive Iroquois never became a real state.
Under the mother-family mores the wife's mother enjoyed virtually supreme
authority in the home; even the wife's brothers and their sons were more active
in family supervision than was the husband. Fathers were often renamed after
their own children.
The earliest races gave little credit to the father, looking upon the child as
coming altogether from the mother. They believed that children resembled the
father as a result of association, or that they were "marked" in this manner
because the mother desired them to look like the father. Later on, when the
switch came from the mother-family to the father-family, the father took all
credit for the child, and many of the taboos on a pregnant woman were
subsequently extended to include her husband. The prospective father ceased
work as the time of delivery approached, and at childbirth he went to bed,
along with the wife, remaining at rest from three to eight days. The wife might
arise the next day and engage in hard labor, but the husband remained in bed to
receive congratulations; this was all a part of the early mores designed to
establish the father's right to the child.
At first, it was the custom for the man to go to his wife's people, but in
later times, after a man had paid or worked out the bride price, he could take
his wife and children back to his own people. The transition from the
mother-family to the father-family explains the otherwise meaningless
prohibitions of some types of cousin marriages while others of equal kinship
are approved.
With the passing of the hunter mores, when herding gave man control of the
chief food supply, the mother-family came to a speedy end. It failed simply
because it could not successfully compete with the newer father-family. Power
lodged with the male relatives of the mother could not compete with power
concentrated in the husband-father. Woman was not equal to the combined tasks
of childbearing and of exercising continuous authority and increasing domestic
power. The oncoming of wife stealing and later wife purchase hastened the
passing of the mother-family.
The stupendous change from the mother-family to the father-family is one of the
most radical and complete right-about-face adjustments ever executed by the
human race. This change led at once to greater social expression and increased
family adventure.
3. THE FAMILY UNDER FATHER DOMINANCE
It may be that the instinct of motherhood led woman into marriage, but it was
man's superior strength, together with the influence of the mores, that
virtually compelled her to remain in wedlock. Pastoral living tended to create
a new system of mores, the patriarchal type of family life; and the basis of
family unity under the herder and early agricultural mores was the unquestioned
and arbitrary authority of the father. All society, whether national or
familial, passed through the stage of the autocratic authority of a patriarchal
order.
top of page - 934
The scant courtesy paid womankind during the Old Testament era is a true
reflection of the mores of the herdsmen. The Hebrew patriarchs were all
herdsmen, as is witnessed by the saying, "The Lord is my Shepherd."
But man was no more to blame for his low opinion of woman during past ages than
was woman herself. She failed to get social recognition during primitive times
because she did not function in an emergency; she was not a spectacular or
crisis hero. Maternity was a distinct disability in the existence struggle;
mother love handicapped women in the tribal defense.
Primitive women also unintentionally created their dependence on the male by
their admiration and applause for his pugnacity and virility. This exaltation
of the warrior elevated the male ego while it equally depressed that of the
female and made her more dependent; a military uniform still mightily stirs the
feminine emotions.
Among the more advanced races, women are not so large or so strong as men.
Woman, being the weaker, therefore became the more tactful; she early learned
to trade upon her sex charms. She became more alert and conservative than man,
though slightly less profound. Man was woman's superior on the battlefield and
in the hunt; but at home woman has usually outgeneraled even the most primitive
of men.
The herdsman looked to his flocks for sustenance, but throughout these pastoral
ages woman must still provide the vegetable food. Primitive man shunned the
soil; it was altogether too peaceful, too unadventuresome. There was also an
old superstition that women could raise better plants; they were mothers. In
many backward tribes today, the men cook the meat, the women the vegetables,
and when the primitive tribes of Australia are on the march, the women never
attack game, while a man would not stoop to dig a root.
Woman has always had to work; at least right up to modern times the female has
been a real producer. Man has usually chosen the easier path, and this
inequality has existed throughout the entire history of the human race. Woman
has always been the burden bearer, carrying the family property and tending the
children, thus leaving the man's hands free for fighting or hunting.
Woman's first liberation came when man consented to till the soil, consented to
do what had theretofore been regarded as woman's work. It was a great step
forward when male captives were no longer killed but were enslaved as
agriculturists. This brought about the liberation of woman so that she could
devote more time to homemaking and child culture.
The provision of milk for the young led to earlier weaning of babies, hence to
the bearing of more children by the mothers thus relieved of their sometimes
temporary barrenness, while the use of cow's milk and goat's milk greatly
reduced infant mortality. Before the herding stage of society, mothers used to
nurse their babies until they were four and five years old.
Decreasing primitive warfare greatly lessened the disparity between the
division of labor based on sex. But women still had to do the real work while
men did picket duty. No camp or village could be left unguarded day or night,
but even this task was alleviated by the domestication of the dog. In general,
the coming of agriculture has enhanced woman's prestige and social standing; at
least this was true up to the time man himself turned agriculturist. And as
soon as man addressed himself to the tilling of the soil, there immediately
ensued great improvement in methods of agriculture, extending on down through
succes-
top of page - 935
sive generations. In hunting and war man had learned the value of organization,
and he introduced these techniques into industry and later, when taking over
much of woman's work, greatly improved on her loose methods of labor.
4. WOMAN'S STATUS IN EARLY SOCIETY
Generally speaking, during any age woman's status is a fair criterion of the
evolutionary progress of marriage as a social institution, while the progress
of marriage itself is a reasonably accurate gauge registering the advances of
human civilization.
Woman's status has always been a social paradox; she has always been a shrewd
manager of men; she has always capitalized man's stronger sex urge for her own
interests and to her own advancement. By trading subtly upon her sex charms,
she has often been able to exercise dominant power over man, even when held by
him in abject slavery.
Early woman was not to man a friend, sweetheart, lover, and partner but rather
a piece of property, a servant or slave and, later on, an economic partner,
plaything, and childbearer. Nonetheless, proper and satisfactory sex relations
have always involved the element of choice and co-operation by woman, and this
has always given intelligent women considerable influence over their immediate
and personal standing, regardless of their social position as a sex. But man's
distrust and suspicion were not helped by the fact that women were all along
compelled to resort to shrewdness in the effort to alleviate their bondage.
The sexes have had great difficulty in understanding each other. Man found it
hard to understand woman, regarding her with a strange mixture of ignorant
mistrust and fearful fascination, if not with suspicion and contempt. Many
tribal and racial traditions relegate trouble to Eve, Pandora, or some other
representative of womankind. These narratives were always distorted so as to
make it appear that the woman brought evil upon man; and all this indicates the
onetime universal distrust of woman. Among the reasons cited in support of a
celibate priesthood, the chief was the baseness of woman. The fact that most
supposed witches were women did not improve the olden reputation of the sex.
Men have long regarded women as peculiar, even abnormal. They have even
believed that women did not have souls; therefore were they denied names.
During early times there existed great fear of the first sex relation with a
woman; hence it became the custom for a priest to have initial intercourse with
a virgin. Even a woman's shadow was thought to be dangerous.
Childbearing was once generally looked upon as rendering a woman dangerous and
unclean. And many tribal mores decreed that a mother must undergo extensive
purification ceremonies subsequent to the birth of a child. Except among those
groups where the husband participated in the lying-in, the expectant mother was
shunned, left alone. The ancients even avoided having a child born in the
house. Finally, the old women were permitted to attend the mother during labor,
and this practice gave origin to the profession of midwifery. During labor,
scores of foolish things were said and done in an effort to facilitate
delivery. It was the custom to sprinkle the newborn with holy water to prevent
ghost interference.
Among the unmixed tribes, childbirth was comparatively easy, occupying only two
or three hours; it is seldom so easy among the mixed races. If a woman
top of page - 936
died in childbirth, especially during the delivery of twins, she was believed
to have been guilty of spirit adultery. Later on, the higher tribes looked upon
death in childbirth as the will of heaven; such mothers were regarded as having
perished in a noble cause.
The so-called modesty of women respecting their clothing and the exposure of
the person grew out of the deadly fear of being observed at the time of a
menstrual period. To be thus detected was a grievous sin, the violation of a
taboo. Under the mores of olden times, every woman, from adolescence to the end
of the childbearing period, was subjected to complete family and social
quarantine one full week each month. Everything she might touch, sit upon, or
lie upon was "defiled." It was for long the custom to brutally beat a girl
after each monthly period in an effort to drive the evil spirit out of her
body. But when a woman passed beyond the childbearing age, she was usually
treated more considerately, being accorded more rights and privileges. In view
of all this it was not strange that women were looked down upon. Even the
Greeks held the menstruating woman as one of the three great causes of
defilement, the other two being pork and garlic.
However foolish these olden notions were, they did some good since they gave
overworked females, at least when young, one week each month for welcome rest
and profitable meditation. Thus could they sharpen their wits for dealing with
their male associates the rest of the time. This quarantine of women also
protected men from over-sex indulgence, thereby indirectly contributing to the
restriction of population and to the enhancement of self-control.
A great advance was made when a man was denied the right to kill his wife at
will. Likewise, it was a forward step when a woman could own the wedding gifts.
Later, she gained the legal right to own, control, and even dispose of
property, but she was long deprived of the right to hold office in either
church or state. Woman has always been treated more or less as property, right
up to and in the twentieth century after Christ. She has not yet gained
world-wide freedom from seclusion under man's control. Even among advanced
peoples, man's attempt to protect woman has always been a tacit assertion of
superiority.
But primitive women did not pity themselves as their more recently liberated
sisters are wont to do. They were, after all, fairly happy and contented; they
did not dare to envision a better or different mode of existence.
5. WOMAN UNDER THE DEVELOPING MORES
In self-perpetuation woman is man's equal, but in the partnership of
self-maintenance she labors at a decided disadvantage, and this handicap of
enforced maternity can only be compensated by the enlightened mores of
advancing civilization and by man's increasing sense of acquired fairness.
As society evolved, the sex standards rose higher among women because they
suffered more from the consequences of the transgression of the sex mores.
Man's sex standards are only tardily improving as a result of the sheer sense
of that fairness which civilization demands. Nature knows nothing of
fairness--makes woman alone suffer the pangs of childbirth.
The modern idea of sex equality is beautiful and worthy of an expanding
civilization, but it is not found in nature. When might is right, man lords it
over woman; when more justice, peace, and fairness prevail, she gradually
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emerges from slavery and obscurity. Woman's social position has generally
varied inversely with the degree of militarism in any nation or age.
But man did not consciously nor intentionally seize woman's rights and then
gradually and grudgingly give them back to her; all this was an unconscious and
unplanned episode of social evolution. When the time really came for woman to
enjoy added rights, she got them, and all quite regardless of man's conscious
attitude. Slowly but surely the mores change so as to provide for those social
adjustments which are a part of the persistent evolution of civilization. The
advancing mores slowly provided increasingly better treatment for females;
those tribes which persisted in cruelty to them did not survive.
The Adamites and Nodites accorded women increased recognition, and those groups
which were influenced by the migrating Andites have tended to be influenced by
the Edenic teachings regarding women's place in society.
The early Chinese and the Greeks treated women better than did most surrounding
peoples. But the Hebrews were exceedingly distrustful of them. In the Occident
woman has had a difficult climb under the Pauline doctrines which became
attached to Christianity, although Christianity did advance the mores by
imposing more stringent sex obligations upon man. Woman's estate is little
short of hopeless under the peculiar degradation which attaches to her in
Mohammedanism, and she fares even worse under the teachings of several other
Oriental religions.
Science, not religion, really emancipated woman; it was the modern factory
which largely set her free from the confines of the home. Man's physical
abilities became no longer a vital essential in the new maintenance mechanism;
science so changed the conditions of living that man power was no longer so
superior to woman power.
These changes have tended toward woman's liberation from domestic slavery and
have brought about such a modification of her status that she now enjoys a
degree of personal liberty and sex determination that practically equals man's.
Once a woman's value consisted in her food-producing ability, but invention and
wealth have enabled her to create a new world in which to function--spheres of
grace and charm. Thus has industry won its unconscious and unintended fight for
woman's social and economic emancipation. And again has evolution succeeded in
doing what even revelation failed to accomplish.
The reaction of enlightened peoples from the inequitable mores governing
woman's place in society has indeed been pendulumlike in its extremeness. Among
industrialized races she has received almost all rights and enjoys exemption
from many obligations, such as military service. Every easement of the struggle
for existence has redounded to the liberation of woman, and she has directly
benefited from every advance toward monogamy. The weaker always makes
disproportionate gains in every adjustment of the mores in the progressive
evolution of society.
In the ideals of pair marriage, woman has finally won recognition, dignity,
independence, equality, and education; but will she prove worthy of all this
new and unprecedented accomplishment? Will modern woman respond to this great
achievement of social liberation with idleness, indifference, barrenness, and
infidelity? Today, in the twentieth century, woman is undergoing the crucial
test of her long world existence!
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Woman is man's equal partner in race reproduction, hence just as important in
the unfolding of racial evolution; therefore has evolution increasingly worked
toward the realization of women's rights. But women's rights are by no means
men's rights. Woman cannot thrive on man's rights any more than man can prosper
on woman's rights.
Each sex has its own distinctive sphere of existence, together with its own
rights within that sphere. If woman aspires literally to enjoy all of man's
rights, then, sooner or later, pitiless and emotionless competition will
certainly replace that chivalry and special consideration which many women now
enjoy, and which they have so recently won from men.
Civilization never can obliterate the behavior gulf between the sexes. From age
to age the mores change, but instinct never. Innate maternal affection will
never permit emancipated woman to become man's serious rival in industry.
Forever each sex will remain supreme in its own domain, domains determined by
biologic differentiation and by mental dissimilarity.
Each sex will always have its own special sphere, albeit they will ever and
anon overlap. Only socially will men and women compete on equal terms.
6. THE PARTNERSHIP OF MAN AND WOMAN
The reproductive urge unfailingly brings men and women together for
self-perpetuation but, alone, does not insure their remaining together in
mutual co-operation--the founding of a home.
Every successful human institution embraces antagonisms of personal interest
which have been adjusted to practical working harmony, and homemaking is no
exception. Marriage, the basis of home building, is the highest manifestation
of that antagonistic co-operation which so often characterizes the contacts of
nature and society. The conflict is inevitable. Mating is inherent; it is
natural. But marriage is not biologic; it is sociologic. Passion insures that
man and woman will come together, but the weaker parental instinct and the
social mores hold them together.
Male and female are, practically regarded, two distinct varieties of the same
species living in close and intimate association. Their viewpoints and entire
life reactions are essentially different; they are wholly incapable of full and
real comprehension of each other. Complete understanding between the sexes is
not attainable.
Women seem to have more intuition than men, but they also appear to be somewhat
less logical. Woman, however, has always been the moral standard-bearer and the
spiritual leader of mankind. The hand that rocks the cradle still fraternizes
with destiny.
The differences of nature, reaction, viewpoint, and thinking between men and
women, far from occasioning concern, should be regarded as highly beneficial to
mankind, both individually and collectively. Many orders of universe creatures
are created in dual phases of personality manifestation. Among mortals,
Material Sons, and midsoniters, this difference is described as male and
female; among seraphim, cherubim, and Morontia Companions, it has been
denominated positive or aggressive and negative or retiring. Such dual
associations greatly multiply versatility and overcome inherent limitations,
even as do certain triune associations in the Paradise-Havona system.
top of page - 939
Men and women need each other in their morontial and spiritual as well as in
their mortal careers. The differences in viewpoint between male and female
persist even beyond the first life and throughout the local and superuniverse
ascensions. And even in Havona, the pilgrims who were once men and women will
still be aiding each other in the Paradise ascent. Never, even in the Corps of
the Finality, will the creature metamorphose so far as to obliterate the
personality trends that humans call male and female; always will these two
basic variations of humankind continue to intrigue, stimulate, encourage, and
assist each other; always will they be mutually dependent on co-operation in
the solution of perplexing universe problems and in the overcoming of manifold
cosmic difficulties.
While the sexes never can hope fully to understand each other, they are
effectively complementary, and though co-operation is often more or less
personally antagonistic, it is capable of maintaining and reproducing society.
Marriage is an institution designed to compose sex differences, meanwhile
effecting the continuation of civilization and insuring the reproduction of the
race.
Marriage is the mother of all human institutions, for it leads directly to home
founding and home maintenance, which is the structural basis of society. The
family is vitally linked to the mechanism of self-maintenance; it is the sole
hope of race perpetuation under the mores of civilization, while at the same
time it most effectively provides certain highly satisfactory forms of
self-gratification. The family is man's greatest purely human achievement,
combining as it does the evolution of the biologic relations of male and female
with the social relations of husband and wife.
7. THE IDEALS OF FAMILY LIFE
Sex mating is instinctive, children are the natural result, and the family thus
automatically comes into existence. As are the families of the race or nation,
so is its society. If the families are good, the society is likewise good. The
great cultural stability of the Jewish and of the Chinese peoples lies in the
strength of their family groups.
Woman's instinct to love and care for children conspired to make her the
interested party in promoting marriage and primitive family life. Man was only
forced into home building by the pressure of the later mores and social
conventions; he was slow to take an interest in the establishment of marriage
and home because the sex act imposes no biologic consequences upon him.
Sex association is natural, but marriage is social and has always been
regulated by the mores. The mores (religious, moral, and ethical), together
with property, pride, and chivalry, stabilize the institutions of marriage and
family. Whenever the mores fluctuate, there is fluctuation in the stability of
the home-marriage institution. Marriage is now passing out of the property
stage into the personal era. Formerly man protected woman because she was his
chattel, and she obeyed for the same reason. Regardless of its merits this
system did provide stability. Now, woman is no longer regarded as property, and
new mores are emerging designed to stabilize the marriage-home institution:
1. The new role of religion--the teaching that parental experience is
essential, the idea of procreating cosmic citizens, the enlarged understanding
of the privilege of procreation--giving sons to the Father.
top of page - 940
2. The new role of science--procreation is becoming more and more voluntary,
subject to man's control. In ancient times lack of understanding insured the
appearance of children in the absence of all desire therefor.
3. The new function of pleasure lures--this introduces a new factor into racial
survival; ancient man exposed undesired children to die; moderns refuse to bear
them.
4. The enhancement of parental instinct. Each generation now tends to eliminate
from the reproductive stream of the race those individuals in whom parental
instinct is insufficiently strong to insure the procreation of children, the
prospective parents of the next generation.
But the home as an institution, a partnership between one man and one woman,
dates more specifically from the days of Dalamatia, about one-half million
years ago, the monogamous practices of Andon and his immediate descendants
having been abandoned long before. Family life, however, was not much to boast
of before the days of the Nodites and the later Adamites. Adam and Eve exerted
a lasting influence on all mankind; for the first time in the history of the
world men and women were observed working side by side in the Garden. The
Edenic ideal, the whole family as gardeners, was a new idea on Urantia.
The early family embraced a related working group, including the slaves, all
living in one dwelling. Marriage and family life have not always been identical
but have of necessity been closely associated. Woman always wanted the
individual family, and eventually she had her way.
Love of offspring is almost universal and is of distinct survival value. The
ancients always sacrificed the mother's interests for the welfare of the child;
an Eskimo mother even yet licks her baby in lieu of washing. But primitive
mothers only nourished and cared for their children when very young; like the
animals, they discarded them as soon as they grew up. Enduring and continuous
human associations have never been founded on biologic affection alone. The
animals love their children; man--civilized man--loves his children's children.
The higher the civilization, the greater the joy of parents in the children's
advancement and success; thus the new and higher realization of name pride
comes into existence.
The large families among ancient peoples were not necessarily affectional. Many
children were desired because:
1. They were valuable as laborers.
2. They were old-age insurance.
3. Daughters were salable.
4. Family pride required extension of name.
5. Sons afforded protection and defense.
6. Ghost fear produced a dread of being alone.
7. Certain religions required offspring.
Ancestor worshipers view the failure to have sons as the supreme calamity for
all time and eternity. They desire above all else to have sons to officiate in
the post-mortem feasts, to offer the required sacrifices for the ghost's
progress through spiritland.
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Among ancient savages, discipline of children was begun very early; and the
child early realized that disobedience meant failure or even death just as it
did to the animals. It is civilization's protection of the child from the
natural consequences of foolish conduct that contributes so much to modern
insubordination.
Eskimo children thrive on so little discipline and correction simply because
they are naturally docile little animals; the children of both the red and the
yellow men are almost equally tractable. But in races containing Andite
inheritance, children are not so placid; these more imaginative and adventurous
youths require more training and discipline. Modern problems of child culture
are rendered increasingly difficult by:
1. The large degree of race mixture.
2. Artificial and superficial education.
3. Inability of the child to gain culture by imitating parents--the parents are
absent from the family picture so much of the time.
The olden ideas of family discipline were biologic, growing out of the
realization that parents were creators of the child's being. The advancing
ideals of family life are leading to the concept that bringing a child into the
world, instead of conferring certain parental rights, entails the supreme
responsibility of human existence.
Civilization regards the parents as assuming all duties, the child as having
all the rights. Respect of the child for his parents arises, not in knowledge
of the obligation implied in parental procreation, but naturally grows as a
result of the care, training, and affection which are lovingly displayed in
assisting the child to win the battle of life. The true parent is engaged in a
continuous service-ministry which the wise child comes to recognize and
appreciate.
In the present industrial and urban era the marriage institution is evolving
along new economic lines. Family life has become more and more costly, while
children, who used to be an asset, have become economic liabilities. But the
security of civilization itself still rests on the growing willingness of one
generation to invest in the welfare of the next and future generations. And any
attempt to shift parental responsibility to state or church will prove suicidal
to the welfare and advancement of civilization.
Marriage, with children and consequent family life, is stimulative of the
highest potentials in human nature and simultaneously provides the ideal avenue
for the expression of these quickened attributes of mortal personality. The
family provides for the biologic perpetuation of the human species. The home is
the natural social arena wherein the ethics of blood brotherhood may be grasped
by the growing children. The family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in
which parents and children learn those lessons of patience, altruism,
tolerance, and forbearance which are so essential to the realization of
brotherhood among all men.
Human society would be greatly improved if the civilized races would more
generally return to the family-council practices of the Andites. They did not
maintain the patriarchal or autocratic form of family government. They were
very brotherly and associative, freely and frankly discussing every proposal
and regulation of a family nature. They were ideally fraternal in all their
family
top of page - 942
government. In an ideal family filial and parental affection are both augmented
by fraternal devotion.
Family life is the progenitor of true morality, the ancestor of the
consciousness of loyalty to duty. The enforced associations of family life
stabilize personality and stimulate its growth through the compulsion of
necessitous adjustment to other and diverse personalities. But even more, a
true family--a good family--reveals to the parental procreators the attitude of
the Creator to his children, while at the same time such true parents portray
to their children the first of a long series of ascending disclosures of the
love of the Paradise parent of all universe children.
8. DANGERS OF SELF-GRATIFICATION
The great threat against family life is the menacing rising tide of
self-gratification, the modern pleasure mania. The prime incentive to marriage
used to be economic; sex attraction was secondary. Marriage, founded on
self-maintenance, led to self-perpetuation and concomitantly provided one of
the most desirable forms of self-gratification. It is the only institution of
human society which embraces all three of the great incentives for living.
Originally, property was the basic institution of self-maintenance, while
marriage functioned as the unique institution of self-perpetuation. Although
food satisfaction, play, and humor, along with periodic sex indulgence, were
means of self-gratification, it remains a fact that the evolving mores have
failed to build any distinct institution of self-gratification. And it is due
to this failure to evolve specialized techniques of pleasurable enjoyment that
all human institutions are so completely shot through with this pleasure
pursuit. Property accumulation is becoming an instrument for augmenting all
forms of self-gratification, while marriage is often viewed only as a means of
pleasure. And this overindulgence, this widely spread pleasure mania, now
constitutes the greatest threat that has ever been leveled at the social
evolutionary institution of family life, the home.
The violet race introduced a new and only imperfectly realized characteristic
into the experience of humankind--the play instinct coupled with the sense of
humor. It was there in measure in the Sangiks and Andonites, but the Adamic
strain elevated this primitive propensity into the potential of pleasure, a new
and glorified form of self-gratification. The basic type of self-gratification,
aside from appeasing hunger, is sex gratification, and this form of sensual
pleasure was enormously heightened by the blending of the Sangiks and the
Andites.
There is real danger in the combination of restlessness, curiosity, adventure,
and pleasure-abandon characteristic of the post-Andite races. The hunger of the
soul cannot be satisfied with physical pleasures; the love of home and children
is not augmented by the unwise pursuit of pleasure. Though you exhaust the
resources of art, color, sound, rhythm, music, and adornment of person, you
cannot hope thereby to elevate the soul or to nourish the spirit. Vanity and
fashion cannot minister to home building and child culture; pride and rivalry
are powerless to enhance the survival qualities of succeeding generations.
Advancing celestial beings all enjoy rest and the ministry of the reversion
directors. All efforts to obtain wholesome diversion and to engage in uplifting
play are sound; refreshing sleep, rest, recreation, and all pastimes which
prevent the boredom of monotony are worth while. Competitive games,
storytelling,
top of page - 943
and even the taste of good food may serve as forms of self-gratification. (When
you use salt to savor food, pause to consider that, for almost a million years,
man could obtain salt only by dipping his food in ashes.)
Let man enjoy himself; let the human race find pleasure in a thousand and one
ways; let evolutionary mankind explore all forms of legitimate
self-gratification, the fruits of the long upward biologic struggle. Man has
well earned some of his present-day joys and pleasures. But look you well to
the goal of destiny! Pleasures are indeed suicidal if they succeed in
destroying property, which has become the institution of self-maintenance; and
self-gratifications have indeed cost a fatal price if they bring about the
collapse of marriage, the decadence of family life, and the destruction of the
home--man's supreme evolutionary acquirement and civilization's only hope of
survival.
[Presented by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.]
top of page - 944
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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