NATURE 



553 



THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1902. 



THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. 

 The Mystic Rose : a Study of Primitive Marriage. By 

 Ernest Crawley, M.A. Pp. xviii + 492. (London : 

 Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1902.) Price 12s. net. 



THE interest of the scientific problems concerning 

 the origin and development of the marriage re- 

 lation is perennial. A large part of that interest, though 

 by no means all of it, is derived from the complexity 

 of the factors, the obscurity enshrouding the prehistoric 

 development of the race, and the consequent difficulties 

 attending all investigations into primitive culture. It is 

 forty years since Bachofen published his work on " Das 

 Mutterrecht," to which may fitly be applied that much- 

 abused epithet "epoch-making,'' for it initiated all really 

 scientific inquiry into the subject. Since then anthro- 

 pologists, one after another, have incessantly attempted 

 to complete, to correct or to controvert the bold Swiss 

 jurist's conclusions. Mr. Crawley is the latest in the 

 field. He comes well-equipped for his task. He brings 

 psychology to the aid of anthropology, and many of his 

 psychological observations display real insight and throw 

 an important light upon the customs described. His 

 reading has been wide, and his illustrations are generally 

 well chosen. But he rests too often upon second-hand 

 authorities like Floss and Featherman when the original 

 sources are not difficult to reach, overlooking the possi- 

 bility that the context of passages used by such compilers 

 may seriously modify their summaries. 



Mr. Crawley's theory of marriage is founded upon the 

 universal institution (if it be right to call it an institution) 

 of taboo. He holds that man was probably not always 

 gregarious. At all events, " in early society he had none 

 of the solidarity of clan, tribe, or kin, which is often 

 attributed to him." He was strongly individualistic. 

 .\s an individual he felt both attraction and repulsion for 

 society. He longed for union with others, and yet he 

 feared their influences. This conflict of emotions gave 

 birth to the complicated system of taboo. It was natur- 

 ally strongest in the mysterious allurements and repul- 

 sions of sex. Xext to the craving for food, sexual desire 

 is the most powerful of human appetites. The difference 

 of sex, entailing a difference of physical function, of 

 physical and moral aptitudes and of occupations, inevit- 

 ably divided man from woman. It produced a sense of 

 strangeness, which behoved caution. That very strange- 

 ness, and the consequent shyness, intensified the attrac- 

 tion. All the strength of taboo was therefore concentrated 

 upon sexual relations. From their early days children 

 of different sexes were more or less separated. At 

 puberty (a time of special danger) that separation was 

 en;phasised by ceremonies, explained by instruction, and 

 rendered perpetual by the vocations of the two sexes. 

 But separation is impossible. The sexes instinctively 

 seek one another. The puberty-ceremonies, therefore, 

 are a preparation for new and closer relations. \'ery 

 often theyamount to preliminary marriage-rites, espousing 

 the one sex to the other in the abstract, and preparing it 

 for the concrete individual union to be consummated in 

 due time. They do not, however, remove the dangers 

 NO. 1694, VOL. 65] 



" responsible for the taboo between the sexes and the 

 various sexual properties of which the contagion is 

 feared." It is the function of the marriage-ceremonies 

 proper " to neutralise these dangers and to make the 

 union safe, prosperous and happy," and, moreover, to 

 bind the contracting parties "so as to prevent, if pos- 

 sible, later repudiation." The object " is not, and never 

 was, to join together the man or the woman, as the case 

 may be, with 'the life, or blood, or flesh of the tribe.' 

 There is no trace of this sentimental socialism in primi- 

 tive society, though there are facts which look like it, no 

 more than there is or ever was a community of wives ; 

 marriage is between individuals and is an individualistic 

 act. The mere existence of the egoistic impulse, not to 

 be casually identified with jealousy, is enough to discredit 

 the suggestion ; and the tendency of society from primi- 

 tive animalism upwards has been from individualism to 

 socialism. It is a perversion of history and of psycho- 

 logy as well, to make man more communistic the more 

 primitive he is." 



From this sketch of the argument it will be seen that 

 the author arrives at the main conclusions of Dr. Wester- 

 marck in his " History of Human Marriage," but by a 

 different route. The wide, if not universal, prevalence 

 of a complicated system of taboo among savages is ex- 

 plained by a primitive individualism. This primitive 

 individualism, if it existed in the full force ascribed to it 

 by Mr. Crawley, must, however, have resulted from the 

 solitary habits of our primitive human and pre-human 

 ancestors. But were their habits solitary ? No attempt 

 is made by Mr. Crawley to prove this. Dr. Westermarck 

 certainly attempted it, but his evidence is meagre, vague, 

 often contradicted by his own witnesses, and generally 

 unsatisfactory. The most it could be held to show was 

 that certain outcast races like the Veddahslive ordinarily 

 in pairs or very small communities ; while other low races 

 disperse, when food is scarce, into small separate hordes 

 or families to search for sustenance, coming together 

 again at other times. Seeing that mankind, wherever 

 they have been found in a savage state, are, with such 

 exceptions as these, found gregarious, a heavy onus of 

 proof surely lies on those who either assert or assume 

 the race to have been originally solitary. The fear of all 

 contact, to which Mr. Ci-awley reduces, as its lowest 

 term, the influence of taboo, must have arisen from 

 normal absence of contact, and especially of contact 

 with the opposite sex. But this even Dr. Westermarck's 

 evidence does not prove. Had it been the case, mankind 

 would have speedily perished in the struggle for exist- 

 ence, or been confined, like the higher apes, to limited 

 districts and small numbers. Space to discuss the matter 

 here is wanting. It must suffice to say that the evidence 

 seems to me to point to the development of mankind from 

 a gregarious ape or ape-like being, and that all theories 

 based on a contrary assumption at present lack support. 

 Among such theories is that of a primitive monogamy. 

 The opposite theory — that of a primitive promiscuity — 

 does not imply perpetual, unbounded, meretricious change 

 of partners. There is some reason to think that man- 

 kind, like other mammals, had once a definite breeding. 

 season. If so, the conduct of other mammals subject to 

 " rut " may lead us to suspect that constancy on the part 

 of women at such times was hardly more pronounced 



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