502 



NA TURE 



[April 22, 1922 



and the potential profits, of all future revolutionary 

 discoveries comparable with that which;, in 1856, led to 

 the displacement of natural colouring matters by the 

 products of coal-tar chemistry. 



Sexual Life and Marriage among Primitive 

 Mankind. 



The History of Human Marriage. By Prof. E. Wester- 

 marck. Fifth edition, rewritten. Vol. 1, pp. xxiv 

 + 571. Vol. 2, pp. xii + 595. Vol. 3, pp. viii + 587. 

 (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1921.) Three 

 Volumes. 845. net. 



COMPARATIVE sociology, in many of its branches, 

 started with very simple and homely concepts, 

 and now, after a career of imaginative and somewhat 

 sensational spinning of hypotheses, we find it returning 

 in its latest developments to the position of common 

 sense. The subject of family and marriage, of their 

 origins and evolution, epitomises such a typical course of 

 sociological speculation. In the views about the human 

 family, there was first the uncritical assumption that 

 the family was the nucleus of human society ; that 

 monogamous marriage has been the prototype of all 

 varieties of sex union ; that law, authority and govern- 

 ment are all derived from patriarchal power ; that the 

 State, the Tribe, economic co-operation and all other 

 forms of social association have gradually grown out 

 of the small group of blood relatives, issued from one 

 married couple, and governed by the father. This 

 theory satisfied common sense, supplied an easily 

 imaginable course of natural development, and was 

 in agreement with all the unquestioned authorities, 

 from the Bible to Aristotle. 



But some sixty years ago, among the many revolu- 

 tions in scientific thinking and method, the family 

 theory of society seemed to have received its death- 

 blow. The independent researches of Bachofen, 

 Morgan and MacLennan seemed to prove beyond doubt, 

 by the study of survivals and ethnographic phenomena, 

 by methods of linguistics, ..comparative study and 

 antiquarian reconstruction, that the whole conception 

 of primeval monogamous marriage and early human 

 family was nothing but a myth. Primitive humanity, 

 they said, lived in loosely organised hordes, in which 

 an almost complete lack of sexual regulation, a state 

 of promiscuity, was the usage and law. This, the 

 authors of this school concluded, can be seen from many 

 survivals, from the analysis of classificatory systems 

 of relationship, and from the prevalence of matri- 

 lineal kinship and matriarchate. Thus, instead of the 

 primitive family we have a horde ; instead of marriage, 

 promiscuity ; instead of paternal right, the sole in- 

 NO. 2738, VOL. 109] 



fluence of the mother and of her relatives over the 

 children. Some of the leaders of this school con- 

 structed a number of successive stages of sexual 

 evolution through which humanity was supposed to 

 have passed. Starting from promiscuity, mankind 

 went through group marriage, then the so-called con- 

 sanguineous family or Punalua, then polygamy, till, 

 in the highest civilisations, monogamous marriage 

 was reached as the final product of development. 

 Under this scheme of speculations, the history of human 

 marriage reads like a sensational and somewhat 

 scandalous novel, starting from a confused but interest- 

 ing initial tangle, redeeming its unseemly course by a 

 moral denouement, and leading, as all proper novels 

 should, to marriage, in which " they lived happily 

 ever after." 



After the first triumphs of this theory were over, there 

 came, however, a reaction. The earliest and most 

 important criticism of these theories arose out of the 

 very effort to maintain them. 



In the middle eighties of last century, a young and 

 then inexperienced Finnish student of anthropology 

 started to add his contribution to the views of Bach- 

 ofen and Morgan. In the course of his work, however, 

 the arguments for the new and then fashionable 

 theories began to crumple in his hands, and indeed 

 to turn into the very opposite of their initial shape. 

 These studies, in short, led to the first publication by 

 Prof. Westermarck in 1891 of his " History of Human 

 Marriage," in which the author maintained that mono- 

 gamous marriage is a primeval human institution, and 

 that it is rooted in the individual family ; that matri- 

 archate has not been a universal stage of human de- 

 velopment ; that group marriage never existed, still 

 less promiscuity, and that the whole problem must 

 be approached from the biological and psychological 

 point of view, and though with an exhaustive, yet 

 with a critical application of ethnological evidence. 

 The book with its theories arrested at once the atten- 

 tion both of all the specialists and of a wider public, and 

 it has survived these thirty years, to be reborn in 1922 

 in an amplified fifth edition of threefold the original 

 size and manifold its original value. For since then 

 Prof. Westermarck has developed not only his methods 

 of inductive inference by writing another book of wider 

 scope and at least equal importance, " Origin and De- 

 velopment of Moral Ideas," but he has also acquired a 

 first-hand knowledge of savage races by years of 

 intensive ethnographic field work in Morocco, work 

 which has produced already numerous and most valu- 

 able records. 



Where does the problem stand now ? First of all, 

 the contest is not ended yet, and divergencies of opinion 

 obtain on some fundamental points, while controversy 



