i84 TABOO AND GENETICS 



tive than our own. The new family begins 

 with the ceremonial breach of taboo, — the 

 taboo which enjoins the shunning of woman 

 as a being both sacred and unclean. Once 

 married, the woman falls under the property 

 taboo, and is as restricted as ever she was before 

 marriage, although perhaps in slightly different 

 ways. In ancient Rome, the wife was not 

 mistress of the hearth. She did not repre- 

 sent the ancestral gods, the lares and penates, 

 since she was not descended from them. In 

 death as in life she counted only as a part 

 of her husband. Greek, Roman and Hindu 

 law, all derived from ancestor worship, agreed 

 in considering the wife a minor. (5). 



These practices are of the greatest significance 

 in a consideration of the modern institutional 

 taboos which surround the family. Students 

 agree that our own mores are in large part 

 derived from those of the lowest class of freed- 

 men in Rome at the time when Christianity took 

 over the control which had fallen from the hands 

 of the Roman emperors. These mores were 

 inherited by the Bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages, 

 and were passed on by them as they acquired 

 economic supremacy. Thus these practices have 

 come down to us unchanged in spirit even if 

 somewhat modified in form, to fit the changed 

 environment of our times. 



The standardization of the family with its 



