242 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



and the good. The communal life which flows from 

 their co-sexual life leads to words of sex receiving the 

 additional senses of tilth, of building, of construction, 

 and ultimately of art (ban, tak). The gathering (ver- 

 gaderung, djopa) for clan-meal and clan-talk is the first 

 germ of civic institutions, of mahal, gericht, and finally 

 of parliament. The choral mating -songs, developed 

 sex-calls, which followed the clan-meal, lead to chorus, 

 hymns, comedy, and tragedy on the one hand, and to 

 most of the still existing marriage customs and habits 

 on the other. Music, art, social virtues, civic rights, 

 are one and all seen to take their origin in that 

 ultimate sex-freedom of kin, which is opposed to every 

 moral feeling of the civilised man of to-day. Even 

 many features of his religious belief and his religious 

 eremonies can be traced back to the old kin -group 

 worship of the goddess of fertility. The common 

 meal, the drinking of blood to establish a sibbe or 

 peace -kinship, the adoration of mother and child, the 

 baptism and the god-parents, all have their prototypes 

 and origins in the matriarchal period of human evolu- 

 tion. Nor is the product of that period only evidenced 

 by Aryan words for sex and kinship, it is manifest in 

 Aryan folklore of every kind ; it is exhibited in the 

 earlier history of all the other branches of the great 

 human family ; it is to be found in many phases of still 

 existing savage life ; nay, we may note isolated features 

 of it still extant among the less advanced Aryan races 

 of to-day. Among the Slavs we still find village com- 

 munities having many of the features of the communal 

 kindred group, and practising religious ceremonies which 



