132 EXOGAMY IN CHINA 



8. That of M. Fustel de Coulanges, that the use 

 of force, or pretended force, arose froiri the supposed 

 necessity of resisting transference from the Gods of 

 one family to those of another. 



9. That it arose from totemism: that just as a 

 man felt himself precluded from eating an animal be- 

 longing to his totem, so it would be wrong, or dan- 

 gerous, to marry a woman of his own totem. 



10. That suggested by Lord Avebury himself and 

 already referred to that exogamy followed upon ''com- 

 munal marriage" as the earliest condition of human 

 society. In Lord Avebury 's view exogamy was the 

 result, and a concomitant, of "Marriage-by-capture." 



Of the theories just stated, I think the exogamy 

 of the Chinese race was "a recoil from an early 

 housemate, " but it was more than that. It was an 

 "avoidance" of blood, enforced under the dread sanc- 

 tion, physical and spiritual, of harm to those who 

 offended, and to those who permitted it, and to be 

 expiated only by vengeance upon the evil doers. 



Westermarck in "The History of Human Mar- 

 riage," published in 1903, says: — 

 Westermarck, "Of course there is no innate aversion to marriage 



Human Marriage, with near relations; but there is an innate aversion to 

 p. 544. marriage between persons living very closely together 



from early youth, and, as such persons are in such 

 cases related, this feeling displays itself chiefly as a 

 horror of intercourse between near kin. The existence 

 of an innate aversion of this kind is proved, not only 

 by common experience, but by an abundance of 

 ethnographical facts which show that it is not in the 

 first place by degrees of consanquinity, but by close 

 living together, that prohibitory laws against inter- 

 marriage are determined." 



An innate aversion to marriage with one with 

 whom one had lived from childhood, or rather a desire 

 to marry some one else, the allurement of the unknown, 

 would account for a habit or custom of marrying one's 

 immediate kin; but it does not explain why marrying 

 one's near kin should be held, as it was held by 

 exogamous races, to be an offence against the spirits, 

 and one's fellow men. Such an aversion would make 

 such a custom easier to follow; but the compelling 

 motive for the prohibition must lie deeper than that. 



It is not more likely that the "avoidance of blood," 

 the well known primitive fears of a mysterious danger 

 connected with any mating, magnified to horror at the- 



