The origin and development of the moral ideas

P. 377, n. 1.—In his book, Totemism and Exogamy, Sir J. G. Frazer has definitely separated exogamy from totemism and thereby, it is to be hoped, saved us from further speculations about the totemic origin of the exogamous rules. Like myself, Frazer thinks (iv. 105 sqq.) that these rules have sprung from an aversion to the marriages of near kin. But whilst my own belief is that the aversion to such marriages through an association of ideas led to the prohibitions of marriage between members of the same clan on account of the notion of intimacy connected with a common descent and a common name, Frazer is of opinion that exogamy was deliberately instituted for the purpose of preventing the sexual unions of near kin. To me it seems almost inconceivable that the extensive, cumbersome, and sometimes very complicated institution of exogamy should have been invented simply as a precaution against unions between the nearest relatives.

Granting the prevalence of an aversion to the marriages of near kin, Frazer is confronted with the question how it has originated. His answer is, “We do not know and it is difficult even to guess.” Yet he makes a cautious attempt to solve the riddle. He observes (iv. 156 sqq.) that the great severity with which incest is generally punished by savages seems to show that they believe it to be a crime which endangers the whole community. It may have been thought to render the women of the tribe sterile and to prevent animals and plants from multiplying; such beliefs, Frazer remarks, appear in point of fact to have been held by many races in different parts of the world. But he admits himself that all the peoples who are known to hold them seem to be agricultural, and that incest is in particular supposed to have a sterilising effect on the crops. It is indeed a poor argument to conjecture that a careful search among the most primitive exogamous peoples now surviving, especially among the Australian aborigines, might still reveal the existence of a belief in the sterilising or injurious effects of incest “upon women generally and particularly upon edible animals and plants.” It may also be asked if it really is reasonable to presume that an aversion which had originated in the superstition mentioned could have remained unimpaired among all the civilised nations of the world. Moreover, if this superstition were the root of the aversion to incest, we should still have to explain the origin of the superstition itself, and this Frazer has not even attempted to do.

If, on the other hand, the abhorrence of incest has originated in the way I have suggested, the superstition which he is inclined to regard as the cause of that feeling is a very natural result of it or of the prohibition to which it gave rise. That this is the case is all the more probable because the same injurious effects as are attributed to incest are supposed to result from other sexual irregularities as well, such as adultery and fornication (cf. supra, ii. 417).

Sir J. G. Frazer also subjects my theory to a detailed criticism (iv. 96 sqq.). He admits that there seems to be some ground for believing in the existence of “a natural aversion to, or at least a want of inclination for, sexual intercourse between persons who have been brought up closely together from early youth”; but he finds it difficult to understand how this could have been changed into an aversion to sexual intercourse with persons near of kin, and maintains that, till I explain this satisfactorily, the chain of reasoning by which I support my theory breaks down entirely at the crucial point. For my own part I think that the transition which Frazer finds so difficult to understand is not only possible and natural, but well-nigh proved by an exactly analogous case of equally world-wide occurrence and of still greater social importance, namely, the process which has led to the association of all kinds of social rights and duties with kinship. As I have pointed out above (ch. xxxiv.), the maternal and paternal sentiments, which largely are at the bottom of parental duties and rights, cannot in their simplest forms be based on a knowledge of blood relationship, but respond to stimuli derived from other circumstances, notably the proximity of the helpless young, that is, the external relationship in which the offspring from the beginning stand to the parents.

Nor is the so-called filial love in the first instance rooted in considerations of kinship; it is essentially retributive, the agreeable feeling produced by benefits received making the individual look with pleasure and kindliness upon the giver. Here again the affection is ultimately due to close living together, and is further strengthened by it, as appears from the cooling effect of long separation of children from their parents. So also fraternal love and the duties and rights which have sprung from it depend in the first place on other circumstances than the idea of a common blood; and the same may be said of the tie which binds together relatives more remotely allied. Its social force is ultimately derived from near relatives’ habit of living together. “Men became gregarious by remaining in the circle where they were born; if, instead of keeping together with their kindred, they had preferred to isolate themselves or to unite with strangers, there would certainly be no blood-bond at all. The mutual attachment and the social rights and duties which resulted from this gregarious condition were associated with the relation in which members of the group stood to one another—the relation of kinship as expressed by a common name—and these associations might last even after the local tie was broken,” being kept up by the common name (supra, ii. 203).

Here we have an immense group of facts which, though ultimately depending upon close living together, have been interpreted in terms of kinship. Why, then, could not the same have been the case with the aversion to incest and the prohibitory rules resulting from it? They really present a most striking analogy to the instances just mentioned. They have been associated with kinship because near relatives normally live together. They have come to include relatives more remotely allied who do not live together, owing to an association of ideas, especially through the influence of a common name; clan exogamy has its counterpart, for instance, in the blood feud as a duty incumbent on the whole clan. But there are also cases in which marriages between unrelated persons who have been brought up together in the same family, or who belong to the same local group, are held blamable or are actually prohibited; and so there are, even in early society, social rights and duties which are associated not with a common descent but with close living together.

Frazer asks: “If the root of the whole matter is a horror of marriage between persons who have always lived with each other, how comes it that at the present day that horror has been weakened into a mere general preference for marriage with persons whose attractions have not been blunted by long familiarity?… Why should the marriage of a brother with a sister, or of a mother with a son, excite the deepest detestation, … while the origin of it all, the marriage between housemates, should excite at most a mild surprise too slight probably to suggest even a subject for a farce, and should be as legitimate in the eye of the law among all civilised nations as any other marriage?” For my own part, I believe that marriage between a man and his foster-daughter or between a foster-brother and a foster-sister, in case the social relations between them have been exactly similar to those of blood-relatives of corresponding degrees, would cause more than a mild surprise, and appear unnatural and objectionable. As I have said above (ii. 375), I do not deny that unions between the nearest blood-relatives inspire a horror of their own, but it seems quite natural that they should do so considering that from earliest times the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together has been expressed in prohibitions against unions between kindred. Nor can it be a matter of surprise that the prohibitory rules so commonly refer to marriages of kindred alone.

Law only takes into account general and well-defined cases, and hence relationships of some kind or other between persons who are nearly always kindred are defined in terms of blood-relationship. This is true not only of the prohibitions of incest, but of many duties and rights inside the family circle.

Sir J. G. Frazer raises another objection to my theory. He argues that, if exogamy resulted from a natural instinct, there would be no need to reinforce that instinct by legal pains and penalties; the law only forbids men to do what their instincts incline them to do, and hence we may always safely assume that crimes forbidden by law are crimes which many men have a natural propensity to commit. I must confess that this argument greatly surprises me. Of course, where there is no transgression there is no law. But Frazer cannot be ignorant of the variability of instincts and of the great variability of the sexual instinct; nor should he forget that there are circumstances in which a natural sentiment may be blunted and overcome. Would he maintain that there can be no deep natural aversion to bestiality because bestiality is forbidden by law, and that the exceptional severity with which parricide is treated by many law books proves that a large number of men have a natural propensity to kill their parents? The law expresses the feelings of the majority and punishes acts that shock them.

Sir J. G. Frazer accuses me of having extended Darwin’s methods to subjects which only partially admit of such treatment, because my theory of the origin of exogamy attempts to explain the growth of a human institution “too exclusively from physical and biological causes without taking into account the factors of intelligence, deliberation, and will.” This, he adds, is “not science, but a bastard imitation of it.” What have I done to incur so severe an accusation? I have suggested that the instinctive aversion to sexual intercourse between persons who have been living very closely together from early youth may be the result of natural selection. I am inclined to think—and so is Frazer—that consanguineous marriages are in some way or other detrimental to the species. This fact would lead to the development of a sentiment which would be powerful enough, as a rule, to prevent injurious unions—a sentiment which would not, of course, show itself as an innate aversion to sexual connections with near relatives as such, but as an aversion on the part of individuals to union with others with whom they lived closely together from early childhood. These, as a matter of fact, would be blood-relations, and the result would consequently be the survival of the fittest. All that I have done, then, is to appeal to natural selection to explain the origin of a primeval instinctive sentiment; and I can never believe that this is to transgress the legitimate boundaries of Darwinism.

Sir J. G. Frazer himself thinks that “we may safely conclude that infertility is an inevitable consequence of inbreeding continued through many generations in the same place and under the same conditions,” and in support of this view he quotes the valuable opinions of Mr. Walter Heape and Mr. F. H. A. Marshall. He thus finds that the principles of exogamy present “a curious resemblance” to the principles of scientific breeding, but he rightly assumes that this analogy cannot be due to any exact knowledge or farseeing care on the part of its savage founders. How then shall we explain this analogy? Frazer’s answer is that “it must be an accidental result of a superstition, an unconscious mimicry of science.” In prohibiting incest the poor savages “blindly obeyed the impulse of the great evolutionary forces which in the physical world are constantly educing higher out of lower forms of existence and in the moral world civilisation out of savagery. If that is so, exogamy has been an instrument in the hands of that unknown power, the masked wizard of history, who by some mysterious process, some subtle alchemy, so often transmutes in the crucible of suffering the dross of folly and evil into the fine gold of wisdom and good.” I hope it will not be considered uncalled-for impertinence on my part to ask if this reasoning is a specimen of what Frazer regards as science proper in contradistinction to my own “bastard imitation of it”?

In any attempt to explain the origin of exogamy there are, in my opinion, three parallel groups of facts of general occurrence which necessarily must be taken into consideration:—Firstly, the prohibitions of incest and rules of exogamy themselves; secondly, the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living together from early youth; thirdly, the injurious consequences of inbreeding. As for the facts of the first group, Frazer and I agree that they all have the same root, exogamy being in some way or other derived from an aversion to the marriages of near kin. As for the facts of the second group, Frazer at all events admits that “there seems to be some ground” for believing in them. As for the facts of the third group, there is complete agreement between us. I ask: Is it reasonable to think that there is no causal connection between these three groups of facts? Is it right to ignore the second group altogether, as does Frazer, and to look upon the coincidence of the first and the third as accidental? I gratefully acknowledge that Frazer’s chapter on the Origin of Exogamy has only strengthened my belief in my own theory.

Other objections to my theory have recently been made by Messrs. Hose and McDougall in their work on The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, vol. ii., p. 197, note. They observe that intercourse between a youth and his sister-by-adoption is not regarded as incest in these tribes, and that they know at least one instance of marriage between two young Kenyahs brought up together as adopted brother and sister. “This occurrence of incest between couples brought up in the same household,” they say, “is, of course, difficult to reconcile with Professor 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.” They moreover maintain that “the occurrence of incest between brothers and sisters, and the strong feeling of the Sea Dyaks against incest between nephew and aunt (who often are members of distinct communities),” are facts which are fatal to this theory.

In my attempt to explain the rules against incest I certainly did not overlook the fact that these rules very frequently have reference to persons who are, or may be, members of different communities, and I found no difficulty in accounting for it (see supra, ii. 369; History of Human Marriage, p. 330 sq.). Curiously enough Messrs. Hose and McDougall’s own attempt to solve the problem is, if I understand them rightly, based on the supposition that the prohibitions of intermarriage originally referred to persons who belonged to the same community. They write:—“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 consorting of the patriarch with the younger generation of females, i.e. his daughters, and against intercourse between the young males admitted to membership of the group and the wives of the patriarch, would be the essential conditions of advance of social organisation. The enforcement of these penalties would engender a traditional sentiment against such unions, and these would be the unions primitively regarded as incestuous. The persistency of the tendency of the patriarch’s jealousy to drive his sons out of the family group as they attained puberty would render the extension of this sentiment to brother-and-sister unions easy and almost inevitable. For the young male admitted to the group would be one who came with a price in his hand to offer in return for the bride he sought. Such a price could only be exacted by the patriarch on the condition that he maintained an absolute prohibition on sexual relations between his offspring so long as the young sons remained under his roof.” I should like to know how Messrs. Hose and McDougall, on the basis of this theory, would explain “the strong feeling of the Sea Dyaks against incest between nephew and aunt (who often are members of distinct communities),” and, generally speaking, the rules prohibiting the intermarriage of persons belonging to different local groups. For the rest, I must confess that the assumptions on which their whole theory rests seem to me extremely arbitrary.

Brothers are prohibited from marrying their sisters because the old patriarch drove away his grown-up sons out of jealousy; but his jealousy was not strong enough to prevent other young males from joining the band. On the contrary, he allowed them to be incorporated in it, because they added to its strength; nay, he gave them his own daughters in marriage, and refrained henceforth himself from intercourse with these young women so rigorously that ever since a father has been prohibited from marrying his daughter. But the young men had to pay a price for their wives. It may be asked: Why did not the old patriarch accept a price from his own sons or let them work for him, instead of mercilessly turning them out of their old home, although they would have been just as good protectors of it as anybody else? And why did he give the young men his daughters? He might have kept the young women for himself and let the young men have the old ones. This is what is done by the old men in Australia, where the young girls are, as a rule, allotted to old men, and the boys, whenever they are allowed to marry, get old lubras as wives (Malinowski, The Family among the Australian Aborigines, p. 259 sqq.). Yet, in spite of this custom, there is no country where incest has been more strictly prohibited than in Australia.

Messrs. Hose and McDougall maintain that the occurrence of incest between brothers and sisters and the feeling of the Sea Dyaks against incest between nephew and aunt are facts which seem “to point strongly to the view that the sentiment has a purely conventional or customary source.” I ask: Is it reasonable to suppose that, if this were the case, the feeling against sexual intercourse between the nearest relatives could have so long survived the conditions from which it sprang without showing any signs of decay? As I have pointed out above, the prohibited degrees are very differently defined in the customs or laws of different peoples, generally being more numerous among peoples unaffected by modern civilisation than they are in more advanced communities; and it appears that the extent to which relatives are prohibited from intermarrying is closely connected with the intimacy of their social relations. Whilst among ourselves cousins are allowed to intermarry, there is still a strong sentiment against intercourse between parents and children and between brothers and sisters, who in normal cases belong to the same family circle. Why should the feeling against incest have survived in this case but not in others, if it had a purely conventional origin? And how could any law based on convention alone account for the normal absence of erotic feelings in the relation between parents and children and brothers and sisters? It is true that cases of intercourse between the nearest relatives do occur, but they are certainly quite exceptional. Messrs.

Hose and McDougall say themselves (p. 198) that “incest of any form is very infrequent” among the tribes of Borneo, and they seem to know of only one instance of marriage between young Kenyahs brought up together as adopted brother and sister, although such marriages are allowed. To maintain that cases of this kind are fatal to my theory seems to me as illogical as it would be to assume that the occurrence of a horror feminæ in many men disproves the general prevalence of a feeling of love between the sexes.

P. 396, n. 1.—In his recent work, The Family among the Australian Aborigines, Dr. Malinowski has come to the same conclusion. He observes that the individual family plays a foremost part in the social life of those aborigines; it has a very firm basis in their customs and ideas, and “by no means bears the features of anything like recent innovation, or a subordinate form subservient to the idea of group marriage.” The Australian husband had generally a definite sexual “over-right” over his wife, which secured to him the privilege of disposing of her, or at least of exercising a certain control over her conduct in sexual matters, even though this “over-right” did not, as a rule, amount to an exclusive right. There were customs like wife-lending, exchange of wives, ceremonial defloration of girls by old men, the different forms of licence practised at large tribal gatherings, and especially the Pirrauru relationship found in several of the southern central tribes. But all this does not constitute group marriage, the complete content of which does not consist in sexual relations alone. Dr. Malinowski emphasises the fact that marriage cannot be detached from family life; “it is defined in all its aspects by the problems of the economic unity of the family, of the bonds created by common life in one wurley, through the common rearing of, and affection towards, the offspring.” In nearly all these respects even the Pirrauru relationship essentially differs from marriage, and cannot, therefore, seriously encroach upon the individual family.

Nor can we regard this relationship as a survival of previous group marriage. Dr. Malinowski also points out (p. 89 sq.) how highly objectionable it is that “our best informants (especially Howitt and Spencer and Gillen) describe the facts of sexual life of to-day in terms of their hypothetical assumptions.”

P. 419, n. 5.—For Moorish beliefs relating to contact between sexual uncleanness and holiness see my essays, The Moorish Conception of Holiness (Baraka), p. 123 sqq., and Ceremonies and Beliefs connected with Agriculture, certain Dates of the Solar Year, and the Weather in Morocco, pp. 17, 22, 23, 28, 46, 47, 54.

P. 463, n. 8.—During the years that have passed since the first edition of this book was issued, the study of homosexuality has been carried on with remarkable activity. The following books are exclusively devoted to this subject:—Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker, by F. Karsch-Haack (1911), Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk, by Edward Carpenter (1914), and Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes, by Magnus Hirschfeld (1914). Carpenter’s book chiefly deals with the invert in early religion and in warfare. Hirschfeld’s work is a veritable encyclopædia of homosexuality—according to Dr. Havelock Ellis, “not only the largest but the most precise, detailed, and comprehensive—even the most condensed—work which has yet appeared on the subject.” In 1915 Dr. Havelock Ellis issued a third, revised and enlarged, edition of his Sexual Inversion.

P. 485, n. 1.—This passage and, generally, the suggestion that there is a certain relationship between the social reaction against homosexuality and against infanticide, have been excluded from the last edition of Dr. Havelock Ellis’s book.

P. 584, n. 1.—There is hardly any subject which during the last four or five years has been more eagerly discussed by students of social anthropology than the relation between religion and magic. It has been dealt with, e.g., by Sir J. G. Frazer in The Magic Art, by Professor Durkheim in Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, by Dr. Marett in The Threshold of Religion and other writings, by Dr. Irving King in The Development of Religion, by Professor Leuba in A Psychological Study of Religion, by Mr. Sidney Hartland in Ritual and Belief, and by the present Archbishop of Sweden, Nathan Söderblom, in his book Gudstrons uppkomst. According to the French school of sociologists, religion is social in its aims and magic antisocial; and this distinction has lately been accepted by Dr. Marett, who writes (Anthropology, p. 209 sq.): “Magic I take to include all bad ways, and religion all good ways, of dealing with the supernormal—bad and good, of course, not as we may happen to judge them, but as the society concerned judges them.” But this use of the terms is neither in agreement with traditional usage nor, in my opinion, suitable for the purpose of scientific classification. Besides black magic, or witchcraft, there is also white magic; even a medieval theologian like Albertus Magnus asserts that “magical science is not evil, since through knowledge of it evil can be avoided and good attained.”

The French distinction between magic and religion implies that a prayer to a god for the destruction of an enemy must be classified as religion if it is offered in a cause which is considered just by the community, but as magic if it is disapproved of. If a man makes a girl drink a love-potion in order to gain her favour, it is religion if their union is desirable from the society’s point of view, but if he gives the same drink to another man’s wife it is magic. The best part of what has been hitherto called imitative or homœopathic magic no longer remains magic at all; if water is poured out for the purpose of producing rain it is homœopathic magic only in case rain is not wanted by the community, but if it is done during a drought it is religion. Thus the very same practices are qualified as religious or magical according as they have social or antisocial ends; and, as Mr. Hartland rightly asks (Ritual and Belief, p. 76): “How shall we define these ends?”

It should be added, however, that the definition of religion which I have given in the text has reference only to religion in the abstract, not to the various religions. In the popular sense of the word, a religion may include many practices which are what I have called magical. As I have said above (p. 649), “both Christianity in its earlier phases and Muhammedanism are full of magical practices expressly sanctioned by their theology.” Although the magical and the strictly religious attitude differ from each other, they are not irreconcilable, and may therefore very well form parts of one and the same religion; there is no such thing as a magic being opposed to a religion. By a religion is generally understood a system of beliefs and rules of behaviour which have reference to men’s relations to one or several supernatural beings whom they call their god or gods, that is, supernatural beings who are the objects of a regular cult and between whom and their worshippers there are established and permanent relationships. If it be admitted that the word religion may be thus legitimately used in two different senses, I think there is little ground left for further controversy on the subject. After all, sociologists may more profitably occupy their time than by continuous quarrelling about the meaning of terms.

P. 608, n. 4.—In The Dying God, p. 204, n. 1, Sir J. G. Frazer writes: “There is a good deal to be said in favour of Dr. Westermarck’s theory, which is supported in particular by the sanctity attributed to the regalia. But on the whole I see no sufficient reason to abandon the view adopted in the text, and I am confirmed in it by the Shilluk evidence, which was unknown to Dr. Westermarck when he propounded his theory.”

According to Professor C. G. Seligman to whom Frazer is indebted for detailed information on the subject (op. cit. p. 17 sqq.) it is a fundamental article of the Shilluk creed that the spirit of Nyakang, the divine or semi-divine hero who settled the Shilluk in their present territory and founded the dynasty of their kings, is incarnate in the reigning king, who is accordingly himself invested to some extent with the character of a divinity. But while the Shilluk hold their kings in high, indeed religious, reverence and take every precaution against their accidental death, nevertheless they cherish the conviction that the king must not be allowed to become ill or senile, lest with his diminishing vigour the cattle should sicken and fail to bear their increase, the crops should rot in the fields, and man, stricken with disease, should die in ever-increasing numbers. To prevent these calamities it used to be the regular custom with the Shilluk to put the king to death whenever he showed signs of ill-health or failing strength. Nay, from Dr. Seligman’s enquiries it appears that even while the king was yet in the prime of health and strength he might at any time be attacked by a rival and have to defend his crown in a combat to the death. According to the common Shilluk tradition any son of a king had the right thus to fight the king in possession and, if he succeeded in killing him, to reign in his stead.

Now “an important part of the solemnities attending the accession of a Shilluk king appears to be intended to convey to the new monarch the divine spirit of Nyakang, which has been transmitted from the founder of the dynasty to all his successors on the throne. For this purpose a sacred four-legged stool and a mysterious object which bears the name of Nyakang himself are brought with much solemnity from the shrine of Nyakang at Akurwa to the small village of Kwom near Fashoda, where the king elect and the chiefs await their arrival. The thing called Nyakang is said to be of cylindrical shape, some two or three feet long by six inches broad. The chief of Akurwa informed Dr. Seligman that the object in question is a rude wooden figure of a man, which was fashioned long ago at the command of Nyakang in person. We may suppose that it represents the divine king himself and that it is, or was formerly, supposed to house his spirit, though the chief of Akurwa denied to Dr. Seligman that it does so now…. The image of Nyakang is placed on the stool; the king elect holds one leg of the stool and an important chief holds another…. A bullock is killed and its flesh eaten by the men of certain families called ororo, who are said to be descended from the third of the Shilluk kings. Then the Akurwa men carry the image of Nyakang into the shrine, and the ororo men place the king elect on the sacred stool, where he remains seated for some time, apparently till sunset.

When he rises, the Akurwa men carry the stool back into the shrine, and the king is escorted to three new huts, where he stays in seclusion for three days. On the fourth night he is conducted quietly, almost stealthily, to his royal residence at Fashoda, and next day he shows himself publicly to his subjects.”

As regards this so-called evidence it should, first, be noticed that it is only Dr. Seligman’s own conjecture that the mysterious object called Nyakang is or has been supposed to contain the spirit of the holy founder of the dynasty, and that this conjecture is expressly said to be opposed to the present beliefs of the natives. On the other hand it is obvious that the object in question is regarded as a holy object, and that its holiness, or a particle of it, is supposed to be transmitted to the new king through material contact—an idea which well agrees with my own theory. But even if the Shilluk had once believed that their king was a reincarnation of the spirit of Nyakang, that belief could hardly be regarded as a direct proof of the idea that the soul of the slain man-god is transmitted to his royal successor. The Shilluk believe that Nyakang, unlike his royal descendants of more recent times, did not die but simply disappeared.