A prohibition may perhaps have arisen very early, even if Mr.
Atkinson’s hypothesis (that the rule of marriage outside the group
arose in a state of brutality) be rejected. ‘The origin of bars to
marry is, in fact, complex,’ writes Mr. Crawley. A dislike of marriage
with a group-mate, familiar, through contiguity, from infancy, may
have been developed among early men;[30] and may have been reinforced
by the probably later superstitions which create ‘sexual tabu,’ and
mutual avoidance, among many existing peoples. Men and women are,
by savages, conceived to be mysteriously perilous to each other,
especially when they live in close contiguity. Mr. Crawley also allows
for Mr. Atkinson’s main factor, jealousy, ‘proprietary feeling,
which is one crude means by which the family has been regulated and
maintained.’[31] If these things were so (whether we go back to Mr.
Atkinson’s semi-brutal ancestors, or not), then, contrary to Mr. Donald
McLennan’s opinion, and to general opinion, it would not ‘appear to be
possible to demonstrate that Totemism preceded exogamy,’ or at least
preceded the exogamous tendency. For, in the first place, exogamy might
conceivably tend to arise before the explicit idea of kinship--whether
male or female--arose. Mr. Atkinson’s ‘primal law’ would be unuttered
in speech (speech, by his theory, there was none), but would amount
to this: ‘I, the patriarchal bull of this herd, will do my best to
kill you, the adult young bulls, if you make any approaches to any of
the cows in this crowd.’ There is no notion of ‘incest,’ but there is
jealousy producing the germ exogamy. The young bulls must find mates
outside of the local herd--or do without. This rule persisted, on Mr.
Atkinson’s theory, till the hypothetical anthropoid became a man, and
named his group (or had it named for him, as I later suggest) by a
totem name.
But real human and speaking beings might enforce marriage outside of
the group, though they did not perhaps think explicitly of kindred (or,
at least, did not think the idea fully out), still less of ‘incest,’ as
sin. Mr. McLennan’s theory, as given in his works, was partly identical
with that of Mr. Atkinson. ‘The earliest human groups can have had
no _idea_ of kinship’--they must, therefore, have been rather low
savages. ‘But,’ he said, ‘they were held together by a _feeling_ of
kinship,’ not yet risen into explicit consciousness. Cat and kitten
have, probably, _feeling_ of kinship, and that _feeling_ is very
strong, while it lasts, in the maternal cat, while between semi-human
mothers and children, arriving so very slowly at maturity, mother-kin
must have been consciously realised very early. Mr. McLennan then
showed the stages by which the savage would gradually, by reflection,
reach explicit consciousness of female kinship, of mother-relationship,
sister and brother relationship, and all the degrees of _female_ kin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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