82:5.9 Outmarriage itself was a peace promoter; marriages between the tribes lessened hostilities. Outmarriage led to tribal co-ordination and to military alliances; it became dominant because it provided increased strength; it was a nation builder. Outmarriage was also greatly favoured by increasing trade contacts; adventure and exploration contributed to the extension of the mating bounds and greatly facilitated the cross-fertilization of racial cultures.
82:5.10 The otherwise inexplicable inconsistencies of the racial marriage mores are largely due to this outmarriage custom with its accompanying wife stealing and buying from foreign tribes, all of which resulted in a compounding of the separate tribal mores. That these taboos respecting in-marriage were sociologic, not biologic, is well illustrated by the taboos on kinship marriages, which embraced many degrees of in-law relationships, cases representing no blood relation whatsoever.
6. RACIAL MIXTURES
82:6.1 There are no pure races in the world today. The early and original evolutionary peoples of colour have only two representative races persisting in the world, the yellow man and the black man; and even these two races are much admixed with the extinct coloured peoples. While the so-called white race is predominantly descended from the ancient blue man, it is admixed more or less with all other races much as is the red man of the Americas.
82:6.2 Of the six coloured Sangik races, three were primary and three were secondary. Though the primary races — blue, red, and yellow — were in many respects superior to the three secondary peoples, it should be remembered that these secondary races had many desirable traits which would have considerably enhanced the primary peoples if their better strains could have been absorbed.
82:6.3 Present-day prejudice against “half-castes,” “hybrids,” and “mongrels” arises because modern racial crossbreeding is, for the greater part, between the grossly inferior strains of the races concerned. You also get unsatisfactory offspring when the degenerate strains of the same race intermarry.
82:6.4 If the present-day races of Urantia could be freed from the curse of their lowest strata of deteriorated, antisocial, feeble-minded, and outcast specimens, there would be little objection to a limited race amalgamation. And if such racial mixtures could take place between the highest types of the several races, still less objection could be offered.
82:6.5 Hybridization of superior and dissimilar stocks is the secret of the creation of new and more vigorous strains. And this is true of plants, animals, and the human species. Hybridization augments vigour and increases fertility. Race mixtures of the average or superior strata of various peoples greatly increase creative potential, as is shown in the present population of the United States of North America. When such matings take place between the lower or inferior strata, creativity is diminished, as is shown by the present-day peoples of southern India.
82:6.6 Race blending greatly contributes to the sudden appearance of new characteristics, and if such hybridization is the union of superior strains, then these new characteristics will also be superior traits.
82:6.7 As long as present-day races are so overloaded with inferior and degenerate strains, race intermingling on a large scale would be most detrimental, but most of the objections to such experiments rest on social and cultural prejudices rather than on biological considerations. Even among inferior stocks, hybrids often are an improvement on their ancestors. Hybridization makes for species improvement because of the role of the dominant genes. Racial intermixture increases the likelihood of a larger number of the desirable dominants being present in the hybrid.
82:6.8 ¶ For the past 100 years more racial hybridization has been taking place on Urantia than has occurred in thousands of years. The danger of gross disharmonies as a result of crossbreeding of human stocks has been greatly exaggerated. The chief troubles of “half-breeds” are due to social prejudices.
82:6.9 The Pitcairn experiment of blending the white and Polynesian races turned out fairly well because the white men and the Polynesian women were of fairly good racial strains. Interbreeding between the highest types of the white, red, and yellow races would immediately bring into existence many new and biologically effective characteristics. These three peoples belong to the primary Sangik races. Mixtures of the white and black races are not so desirable in their immediate results, neither are such mulatto offspring so objectionable as social and racial prejudice would seek to make them appear. Physically, such white-black hybrids are excellent specimens of humanity, notwithstanding their slight inferiority in some other respects.
82:6.10 ¶ When a primary Sangik race amalgamates with a secondary Sangik race, the latter is considerably improved at the expense of the former. And on a small scale — extending over long periods of time — there can be little serious objection to such a sacrificial contribution by the primary races to the betterment of the secondary groups. Biologically considered, the secondary Sangiks were in some respects superior to the primary races.
82:6.11 After all, the real jeopardy of the human species is to be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the inferior and degenerate strains of the various civilized peoples rather than in any supposed danger of their racial interbreeding.
82:6.12 [Presented by the Chief of Seraphim stationed on Urantia.]
PAPER № 83
THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION
83:0.1 This is the recital of the early beginnings of the institution of marriage. It has progressed steadily from the loose and promiscuous matings of the herd through many variations and adaptations, even to the appearance of those marriage standards which eventually culminated in the realization of pair matings, the union of one man and one woman to establish a home of the highest social order.
83:0.2 Marriage has been many times in jeopardy, and the marriage mores have drawn heavily on both property and religion for support; but the real influence which forever safeguards marriage and the resultant family is the simple and innate biologic fact that men and women positively will not live without each other, be they the most primitive savages or the most cultured mortals.
83:0.3 It is because of the sex urge that selfish man is lured into making something better than an animal out of himself. The self-regarding and self-gratifying sex relationship entails the certain consequences of self-denial and ensures the assumption of altruistic duties and numerous race-benefiting home responsibilities. Herein has sex been the unrecognized and unsuspected civilizer of the savage; for this same sex impulse automatically and unerringly compels man to think and eventually leads him to love.
1. MARRIAGE AS A SOCIETAL INSTITUTION
83:1.1 Marriage is society’s mechanism designed to regulate and control those many human relations which arise out of the physical fact of bisexuality. As such an institution, marriage functions in two directions:
83:1.2 1. In the regulation of personal sex relations.
83:1.3 2. In the regulation of descent, inheritance, succession, and social order, this being its older and original function.