PECULIARITIES 197 



the connection of a man with an adopted daughter, 

 and (possibly on account of this frequency) this is 

 the kind which is most strongly reprobated. It is 

 obvious also that this form of incest requires a 

 specially strong check in any community in which 

 the adoption of children is a common practice. For, 

 in the absence of severe penalties for this form of 

 incest, a man might be tempted to adopt female 

 children in order to use them as concubines. We 

 find support for this view of the ground of the 

 especially severe censure on incest of this form in 

 the fact that intercourse between a youth and his 

 sister-by-adoption (or vice versa) is not regarded as 

 incest, and the relation is not regarded as any bar 

 to marriage. We know of at least one instance 

 of marriage between two young Kenyahs brought 

 up together as adopted brother and sister.^ Of 



^ This occurrence of incest between couples brought up in the same house- 

 hold is, of course, difficult to reconcile with Prof. Westermarck's well-known 

 theory of the ground of the almost universal feeling against incest, namely that 

 it depends upon sexual aversion or indifference engendered by close proximity 

 during childhood. But medical men who have experience of slum practice in 

 European towns can supply similar evidence in large quantity. And the 

 medical psychologists of the school of Freud could cite much evidence against 

 this theory. 



We cannot refrain from throwing out here a speculative suggestion towards 

 the explanation of the feeling against incest which seems to find support in 

 certain of the facts of this area. It seems to us that the feeling with which 

 incest is regarded is an example of a feeling or sentiment engendered in each 

 generation by law and tradition, rather than a spontaneous reaction of indi- 

 viduals, based on some special instinct or innate tendency. The occurrence 

 of incest between brothers and sisters, and the strong feeling of the Sea Dayaks 

 against incest between nephew and aunt (who often are members of distinct 

 communities), are facts which seem to us fatal to Prof Westermarck's theory, 

 as well as to point strongly to the view that the sentiment has a purely 

 conventional or customary source. Now, if we accept some such view of the 

 constitution of primitive society as has been suggested by Messrs. Atkinson 

 and Lang {Primal Law), namely, that the social group consisted of a single 

 patriarch and a group of wives and daughters, over all of whom he exercised 

 unrestricted power or rights ; we shall see that the first step towards the 

 constitution of a higher form of society must have been the strict limitation of 

 his rights over certain of the women, in order that younger males might be 

 incorporated in the society and enjoy the undisputed possession of them. The 

 patriarch, having accepted this limitation of his rights over his daughters for 

 the sake of the greater security and strength of the band given by the inclusion 

 of a certain number of young males, would enforce all the more strictly upon 

 them his prohibition against any tampering with the females of the senior 

 generation. Thus very strict prohibitions and severe penalties against the con- 

 sorting of the patriarch with the younger generation of females, i.e. his 



