504 



NATURE 



[April 22, 1922 



exist powerful means of regulating, suppressing and 

 directing this instinct. There is no doubt that all the 

 psychological forces of human sexual passion, as well 

 as the conditions of primitive life, must have tended to 

 produce a primeval habit of individual pairing. We 

 have to imagine a man and a woman forming more or 

 less permanent unions which lasted until well after 

 the birth of the offspring. This, Prof. Westermarck 

 develops in the first chapter of his work. A union 

 between man and wife, based on personal affection 

 springing out of sexual attachment, based on economic 

 conditions, on mutual services, but above all on a 

 common relation to the children, such a union is the 

 origin of the human family. This primeval habit, 

 according to the " tendency of habits to become rules 

 of conduct," develops with time into the institution of 

 family and marriage, and " marriage is rooted in the 

 family, rather than the family in marriage." 



Marriage, indeed, right through the book, is con-' 

 ceived in the correct sociological manner, that is, as 

 an institution based on complex social conditions. The 

 greatest mistake of the writers of the opposing school — 

 a mistake which, I think, they have not corrected even 

 in the most recent publications — is their identification 

 of marriage with sexual appropriation. Nor is this 

 pitfall easy to avoid. For us, in our own society, the 

 exclusiveness of sexual rights is the very essence of 

 marriage. Hence we think of marriage in terms of 

 individual sexual appropriation, and project this con- 

 cept into native societies. When we find, therefore, 

 groups of people living in sexual communism, as un- 

 doubtedly happens among a few tribes within a limited 

 compass, we have a tendency at once to jump to con- 

 clusions about " group marriage." 



To the majority of savages, however, sexual appro- 

 priation is by no means the main aspect of marriage. 

 To take one example, there are the Trobriand Islanders, 

 studied by the present writer, who live in the greatest 

 sexual laxity, are matrilineal, and possess an institution 

 which is probably the nearest approach to " group 

 marriage" that exists or could ever have existed. 

 Indeed, it resembles it much more, I think, than does 

 the celebrated Pirrauru of the Dieri in Central Australia. 

 These natives satisfy their sexual inclinations through 

 all forms of licence, regulated and irregular, and then 

 settle down to marry, decidedly not only or even mainly 

 to possess a partner in sex, but chiefly out of personal 

 attachment, in order to set up a household with its 

 economic advantages, and last, not least, to rear 

 children. The institution of individual marriage and 

 family among them is based on several other founda- 

 tions besides sex, though sex — naturally — enters 

 into it. 

 Space does not allow me to follow Prof. Westermarck 

 NO. 2738, VOL. 109] 



into his dialectic contests with the most eminent of 

 his contemporaries — ^with Sir James Frazer and Dr. 

 Rivers about the kinship terms (chap, vi.) ; with Sir 

 James Frazer and Mr. Hartland on matriliny (chap, viii.) ; 

 and with all of them, as well as Spencer and Gillen, on 

 group marriage (chap. xxvi.). In all these arguments we 

 find the same extensive use of ethnological material, 

 the same breadth of view and moderation of doctrine, 

 above all, the same sound method of explaining the 

 detail by its whole, the superstructure by its foundation. 

 In the treatment of kinship and matriliny, too little 

 concession is perhaps made to the important theories 

 of Sir James Frazer and Mr. Hartland, whose views, 

 unquestionably correct, that ignorance of paternity 

 is universal and primitive among savages. Prof. 

 Westermarck cannot accept. Nor can he see perhaps 

 sufficiently clearly the enormous infiuencCof this savage 

 ignorance on primitive ideas of kinship. As Sir James 

 Frazer says : 



" Fatherhood to a Central Australian savage is a 

 very different thing from fatherhood to a civilized 

 European. To the European father it means that he 

 has begotten a child on a woman ; to the Central 

 Australian father it means that the child is the offspring 

 of a woman with whom he has a right to cohabit. . . . 

 To the European mind the tie between a father and his 

 child is physical ; to the Central Australian it is social " 

 (" Totemism and Exogamy," i. p. 236). The distinction 

 between a physiological and a social conception of 

 kinship is indeed essential. But, on the whole, Prof. 

 Westermarck's views do not diverge so much from 

 those of Frazer's, who, on the other hand, occupies a 

 moderate position among the supporters of the opposite 

 theories. 



Prof. Westermarck's explanation of exogamy, and 

 of the prohibition of incest — which I think will come 

 to be considered as a model of sociological construction, 

 and which remarkably enough seems to find favour 

 with no one — can only be mentioned here. The 

 excellent chapters on marriage rites (chaps, xxiv.- 

 xxvi.) ; the analysis of what could be called the 

 numeric varieties of marriage, monogamy and poly- 

 gamy (chaps, xxvii.-xxviii.) ; polyandry (xxix.-xxx.) ; 

 duration of marriage (xxxii.-xxxiii.), stand somewhat 

 apart from the main argument of the book. Each 

 division is a monograph, a Corpus Inscriptionum Matri- 

 montalium, a treatise in itself. 



The book is and will remain an inexhaustible fount 

 of information, a lasting contribution towards the 

 clearing up of some of the most obscure aspects of 

 human evolution, and it marks an epoch in the 

 development of sociological method and reasoning. 



B. Malinowskl 



