Mr. Atkinson accepts, for the excessively early stage of semi-human
society with which his hypothesis deals, the necessity of procuring
mates for the young bucks by capture from a hostile group. Now Dr.
Westermarck writes, ‘Mr. McLennan thinks that marriage by capture arose
from the rule of exogamy;’ and Mr. Atkinson holds that it arose from
the necessity of the case. The old patriarch allowed no female born
within his group to be united to his sons. Dr. Westermarck says, ‘It
seems to me extremely probable that the practice of capturing women
for wives is due chiefly to the aversion to close intermarrying ...
together with the difficulty a savage man has in procuring a wife in a
friendly manner, without giving compensation for the loss he inflicts
on her father’ (Westermarck, 368-369). He admits a period when ‘the
idea of barter had hardly occurred to man’s mind,’ But Mr. Atkinson
is thinking of a state of affairs in which the idea of barter had not
occurred at all. Even at Dr. Westermarck’s stage of the dawn of barter,
‘marriage by capture must have been very common.’ But Mr. Crawley
argues that because, in his opinion, ‘types of formal and connubial
capture’ are not survivals from actual capture, therefore ‘the theory
that mankind ... ever, in normal circumstances, were accustomed to
obtain their wives by capture from other tribes, may be regarded as
exploded’ (_Mystic Rose_, p. 367). This dictum does not affect Mr.
Atkinson’s theory. Semi-human beings, in the conditions imagined by
him, might be obliged to get their wives by capture, whether existing
types of so-called formal capture are survivals of actual hostile
capture or not. If Mr. Atkinson accepts the formal abductions as
survivals of real captures and so as proofs of his argument, and if
such formal abductions are not survivals of real capture--still, as Dr.
Westermarck says, even after the supposed stage of semi-human life,
‘marriages by capture must have been very common’--in Mr. Atkinson’s
hypothetical still earlier stage, they must have been universal.
CHAPTER VI
FROM THE GROUP TO THE TRIBE
Resemblance of semi-brutal group, at this stage, to actual savage
tribe.--Resemblance merely superficial.--In this hypothetical
semi-brutal group paternal incest survives.--Causes of its decline
and extinction.--The Sire’s widows in the group.--Arrival of outside
suitors for them.--Brothers of wives of the group.--New comers
barred from marital rights over their daughters.--Jealousy of their
wives intervenes.--Value of sisters to be bartered for sisters
of another group discovered.--Consequent resistance to incest of
group sire.--Natural selection favours groups where resistance is
successful.--Cousinage recognised in practice.--Intermarrying sets
of cousins become phratries.--Exceptional cases of permitted incest
in chiefs and kings.--No known trace of avoidance between father and
daughter.--Progress had rendered such law superfluous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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