fiancée, and it seems indeed that all commerce is to cease after the first pregnancy.[1]
We will now consider the Hebrew levirate, which is only a particular case of a very general fact.
We find the levirate mentioned twice in the Bible. At first in Genesis: "Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her, and raise up seed to thy brother."[2] Again, in Deuteronomy: "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger; her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it shall be, that the first-born whom she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel."[3] The Hebrew levirate was therefore a sort of obligatory and fictitious adoption of a nephew by the deceased uncle. We shall soon see that in all primitive or barbarous societies this adoption is largely practised, and that it is absolutely equivalent to a real filiation.
The verses which follow inform us that, with the Hebrews, the levirate was rather a moral than a legal obligation; the brother-in-law could even refuse it; but in refusing, he incurred the public contempt, and had to submit to a degrading ceremony: "And if the man like not to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of an husband's brother unto me; then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if he stand, and say, I like not to take her; then shall his brother's wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and she shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that doth not build up his brother's house. And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed."[4]
In India the principal object of the levirate, applied
