For between this father and son there was yet no real peace, only a truce, and that enduring but so long as the latter respected those marital rights of the former which we found extending over all that was feminine in the horde. The intelligent acceptance by the intruding junior of the sole right of the senior to union with the females of a group, was its sine qua non, which the dawn of intellectuality in the race as inevitably imposed as it happily permitted. Such a step in advance as a possible obedience, ex animo, to such a law would be immense. Therefrom would issue the vital point of a conception of moral reserves in marital rights as regards the other sex; the germ of a profound and fundamental difference between brute and man. For the first time in the history of the world we encounter the factor which is to be the leading power in future social metamorphosis, i.e. an explicit distinction between female and female, as such. The superlative fact, indeed, in relation to our general argument, appears—namely, that certain females are now to become sacred to certain males, and that both (nota bene) are members of the same family circle.
But what shall be, in such an age, the notes of a law conveying this noble sentiment of sanctity, which, disarming jealousy, could permit peace where before strife reigned? How give the outer expression of the inner feeling, now aroused, of a change in the past intersexual attitude of certain group members? Whence borrow the eloquence which shall ordain rules in restriction of intercourse whilst yet, for Homo Alalus, they must needs be mute in expression.[1] In the primal law alone, as I hope in its portrayal to show, can each condition be comprised and found as such. It will be marked and recognised by a physical trait whose presence is as significant and imperative as it is characteristic of the epoch. For a sentiment of restraint in feeling, whilst articulate speech was yet lacking, could only be expressed by restrictive checks in act and deed, requiring mere visual perception for interpretation—acts we may here note, which, as insulating the individual, would also inevitably tend to consecration.
Now we mentioned in our first chapter that, in connection with the primal law, certain cases of so-called avoidance, and especially that between near relatives, would have interest for us and probably afford aid in proof. We drew attention to the strange features marking these customs, which had rendered their origin a source of wondering conjecture to all inquirers. It may be that precisely the actual anomalism of these characteristics may render them eloquent in our case. In view of our past argument, in very deed, nothing now becomes insignificant in these quaint rules of non-propinquity between certain near relations; nothing inexpressive in the ordinance of non-recognition between individuals well known to each other; nothing not suggestive in the dread of mere contact between those whom nature would place closest together, no lack of import in the strange taciturnity so incongruous with our garrulous later days of unloosed tongues. There is a possible vestige of a past era of dumb show in their eloquent muteness; of connection in their actual utter unreason with a long dead past of all unfamiliar habits and manners. Further, is verily aught lacking, in these latter-day customs of avoidance, of the necessarily archaic features of a possible primeval law? If these in truth were still existent, would they not, with such traits in common, be simply classed with those? Undoubtedly so, as it seems to me.
Now in the course of our argument it has appeared that the inclusion of the son as the second adult male in a group would evolve, as the most primitive rule of action, restriction of intercourse between its component females and the intruder. But in such a group, the former would necessarily be to the latter in the relation of mother and sisters. Such restriction, again, taking the only possible form, would be avoidance of these relations, and thus there is a concurrence in resemblance with that particular habit of avoidance on which we enlarged in our first pages, viz. that between brother and sister (and now less strictly), between mother and son. Do we not thus seem to lay a finger on an actual law, still an every-day working factor in savage life, which is not only identical with, but is in very deed the primal law itself, in form at least? The acceptation of such intolerably irksome restraints as avoidance, in the daily economy of savage life, has seemed forcibly to imply a fundamental cause of profound depth. This cause now seems laid open to us. The unaccountable and seemingly unreasonable restrictions on intercourse which mark it thus betray their appropriate origin in a time of comparative unreason.
This then, the primal law—avoidance between a brother and sister—with appalling conservatism has descended through the ages (in conservance of form, if not of ultimate purpose). It ordained in the dawn of time a barrier between mother and son, and brother and sister, and that ordinance is still binding on all mankind [but in Egypt and Peru, for example, the opposite of this rule, for special reasons, has prevailed]. Between these for ever, a bit was placed in the mouth of desire, and chains on the feet of lust. Their mutual relationship is one that has been held sacred from a sexual point of view, in most later ages. It only remains for us to repeat that it follows that this law, as applied in the group composed of a single family, is, as we pointed out, the parent of exogamy; continuance within the group necessarily and logically entailed marriage without; but, again as we said, it was itself the offspring of the early idea. For this idea, in its assumption that sovereignty in marital right was compatible with solitude alone, was shaken to its depths when a second presence threatened rivalry, and demanded remedy in the action of law, which it has seemed to us could only take the form we have tried to portray[2] in the primal law.
NOTE TO CHAPTER IV
To the Editor this theory seems worthy of the ingenuity of his old friend and kinsman. Granting that early man was a speechless jealous brute, dwelling in groups consisting of a patriarchal beast, and all the females whom he could catch, and all the females whom he could beget; granting that he drove all his adolescent sons out; and finally (under the circumstances described) kept one or a few sons at home, his rule would tabu all females of the group to these sons. Otherwise there would be a fight.
The sons would have to bring in mates from without—the result is Exogamy. But Mr. Atkinson does not observe the numerous tabus existing among savages, on ordinary (not sexual) intercourse between men and women; as if each individual, of each sex, was or might be dangerous to each individual of the other sex; that is no idea of our speechless brute ancestors, of Mr. Atkinson's hypothesis. These tabus do not amount to absolute avoidance, but they do amount to very marked restrictions; for example, on eating together, or sleeping under the same roof, even where husbands and wives are concerned. For the facts, to save repetition, it is enough to refer to Mr. Crawley's book, The Mystic Rose. Now if these less rigid tabus between the sexes (which Mr. Atkinson noted in his observations on the life of New Caledonian natives) arose in the general savage superstitious dread of everything not a man's or woman's own self, they might become more rigid as propinquity increased. The most dangerous female would be the female who had most chance of being dangerous, by virtue of propinquity, namely the sister. She would therefore be the most strictly barred. The closest of all relations, that of lover and lover, and man and wife, would be most severely guarded, as most dangerous, by tabus. All this would happen (granting the verifiable condition of savage superstitious dread) even if Mr. Atkinson's theory of our speechless beast ancestors' way of life were wrong.
We should probably find the effects (Avoidance and Exogamy) even if the primeval causes postulated by him never actually existed. Moreover any avoidance between mother and son that may exist (as in the case of the mothers of chiefs, in New Caledonia, and their sons) is perhaps no more than part of the general rule of restricted familiarity between the sexes, whether that rule arises from a superstition, or from the circumstance that men and women sometimes 'disturb each other damnably,' as Lord Byron remarked to his wife. It might be argued that the exogamous prohibition is only one aspect of the general totem tabu; and that, in the case of brothers and sisters, incest against the totem tabu needed to be guarded against (as most likely to occur) by precautions of avoidance peculiarly stringent. These precautions, then, would not necessarily come down from the time of our hypothetical speechless beast ancestors. They might come down from that time, but the descent, it may be objected, is not necessary. The rules might have arisen among men as human as we are—Totemists. On the other hand, it might be argued for Mr. Atkinson that his hypothetical groups must be infinitely older than Totemism. When totem names were imposed on the earlier groups, the totem name and mark would only be a method of distinguishing group from group, probably becoming the germ of later superstitions by which everything connected with the totem was tabued, in each case, to the groups bearing its name. Either alternative hypothesis is easily conceivable: on the whole, I prefer the theory that exogamy arose, or an exogamous tendency arose, as in Mr. Atkinson's hypothesis, and was later sanctioned by the totem superstition.