April 22, 1922] 



NA TURE 



503 



has not lost much of its uncompromising tone. But 

 the issues have narrowed down somewhat. There is no 

 longer a question of accepting the naive theory which 

 regarded family as a kind of universal germ of all social 

 evolution ; nor, on the other hand, does any com- 

 petent sociologist take very seriously the fifteen suc- 

 cessive stages of promiscuity, group marriayc, Punalua 

 marriage, etc. Prof. Westermarck and his school do 

 not maintain the rigidly patriarchal theory, and they 

 are fully aware of the importance of matrilineal descent, 

 of the maternal uncle's authority, and of the various 

 kinship anomalies connected with matriliny. The 

 classificatory terms of relationship are, moreover, not 

 considered by Prof. Westermarck as mere terms of 

 address, but as important indications of status. 



The representatives of the opposite school had also 

 to make some concessions, though rather reluctantly 

 and grudgingly. Scarcely any one nowadays would 

 be so irreverent towards our ape-like ancestors and 

 ancestresses as to suspect them of living in a general state 

 of promiscuity. But there is still a formidable list of 

 names, among them some of the most eminent repre- 

 sentatives of modern anthropology, quoted by Prof. 

 Westermarck (vol. i, p. 103 «.), who consider primitive 

 promiscuity as " not improbable," " plausible," " by 

 no means untenable," and use this hypothesis con- 

 stantly as a skeleton-key to open all questions of 

 sex. Group marriage is still, though somewhat faint- 

 heartedly, affirmed to have existed, and even some 

 savages are forced to live up to their evil reputation — 

 in the speculations and bare assertions of some writers. 

 The Punalua family leads an even more shadowy ex- 

 istence, merging into a combined polyandry and poly- 

 gamy. The most tenacious survival of the Bachofen- 

 Morgan-MacLennan theories seems to be the kinship 

 terms, themselves a most fecund breeding-place for all 

 kinds of survival theories. 



Thus Prof. Westermarck in this new edition is not 

 altogether relieved of the necessity of dealing with the 

 hypothesis of promiscuity, and in chapters iii.-ix. he 

 examines the various classes of evidence adduced in its 

 favour. There is a number of statements affirming 

 directly the existence of promiscuous conditions among 

 this or that tribe or people. Some of them come from 

 garrulous and credulous writers of antiquity and have 

 to be discarded as pure fables ; others, from modem 

 travellers, equal them in untrustworthiness and futility. 

 On this point no one will certainly controvert the author 

 when he says " that it would be difficult to find a more 

 untrustworthy collection of statements." The in- 

 vestigation then turns to that remarkable group of 

 ethnological facts— 7^5 Priniae Nodis, licence of festive 

 and religious character, prenuptial and orgiastic sexual 

 intercourse — in which the powerful instinct of sex, 

 NO. 2738, VOL. 109] 



curbed and fettered by social regulations, takes, in its 

 own time, revenge on man by dragging him down to 

 the level of a beast. Prof. Westermarck fully admits 

 the importance and extent of these phenomena; his 

 survey indeed shows the extreme range and the often 

 astounding perversity of these deviations. But he 

 declines resolutely to see in any of these facts a sur- 

 vival of pristine promiscuity, for in all cases the facts 

 reveal most powerful motive forces, and can be attri- 

 buted to definite psychological and social causes. The 

 theory of survival is moreover irreconcilable with the 

 fact that we find side by side with licentious tribes, 

 savages who maintain strict chastity ; that some of the 

 most primitive ones are virtuous, whilst the most 

 luxuriant growth of licence is found in more advanced 

 communities ; that, finally, civilisation instead of 

 abolishing these phenomena only modifies them. 



The chapters on customary and regulated sexual 

 licence are full of penetrating suggestions, and the 

 facts, skilfully marshalled, are made to speak for them- 

 selves, and will supply a lasting compendium for 

 students of sexual psychology. But what appears most 

 valuable in this, not less than in other parts of the work, 

 are the methods and implications of the argument. 

 Prof. Westermarck has an abhorrence of the now 

 fashionable tendency of explaining the whole by its 

 part, the essential by the irrelevant, the known by the 

 unknown. He refuses to construct out of meagre and 

 insufficient evidence a vast, hypothetical building, 

 through the narrow windows of which we would have to 

 gaze upon reality, and see only as much of it as they 

 allow. The obvious, common -sense and essentially 

 scientific way of proceeding is to get firm hold of the 

 fundamental aspects of human nature — in this case the 

 psychology of sex, the laws of primitive human group- 

 ing, the typical beliefs and sentiments of savage 

 people — and, in the light of this, to analyse each fact 

 as we meet it. But to construct the unverifiable 

 hypotheses of primitive promiscuity and interpret facts 

 in terms of figments is, as Prof. Westermarck shows, a 

 method which leads nowhere and lures us from the 

 true scientific path. 



Some of the other chapters of Prof. Westermarck's 

 book give us another approach to the psychology' of 

 sex and to the theory of human marriage. Sex is a 

 most powerful instinct — one of the modern schools of 

 psychology tries to derive from it almost all mental 

 process and sociological cr>'StalIisation. However this 

 may be, there is no doubt that masculine jealousy 

 (chap, ix.), sexual modesty (chap, xii.), female coyness 

 (chap, xiv.), the mechanism of sexual attraction (chap. 

 XV. and xvi.) and of courtship (chap, xiii.) — all these 

 forces and conditions made it necessary that even 

 in the most primitive human aggregates there should 



