But still other complications will be found to arise as the effect of
the original concept of the classificatory system when brought face
to face with new and advanced social order, which will have closer
relation to our present argument. The distinctive feature in the
economy of the primitive group in its relation to all other groups
was mutual hostility. The instinctive distrust of strangers would be
accentuated by the habitual hostile capture of females, for such
groups, except in the case of the incest between father and daughter,
were yet purely exogamous. But such mutual hostility implies isolation
of each community. Thus all law evolved, as we have said, would be
purely with a view to regulation of the internal economy of a single
consanguine group alone. Now in such a group, the division into
generations of old male, male, and young male implied (although not as
yet understood as between generations) the relationship of parents and
children. Each generation is either child or parent to the other. As
marriage is communal,[10] all the fathers in one generation are fathers
to all the children in the next indiscriminately, and conversely these
children recognise as fathers all the males of the senior generation.
It follows that the relationship of all the members of a generation
is purely fraternal, all are brothers and sisters to each other, and
in this consanguine family they were really either actually so, or at
least half brothers and half sisters.
Between these the primal law of celibacy between brother and sister
as such embraced the whole generation. Now as long as the family was
thus simply constituted, no friction would arise. The brothers, in
common, captured and married in common some outside female,[11] and
their children constituted solely the next generation. The sisters were
either stolen or emigrated to other groups; but we have seen that a
moment would come when this process ceased to be universal. The sister
came to remain in her own group, and she was joined by some outside
suitor; with the advent of their children, who are cousins to the
others, would arise dire perplexities, in view of the old law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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