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"Future generations," writes Westermarck in his great history of moral ideas, "will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and lust."
For brief reading: WESTERMARCK, History of Human Marriage, Chaps. I-VI. HOWARD, History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. I, Chaps. I-III HEINEMAN, Physical Basis of Civilization, Chaps. For more extended reading: CRAWLEY, The Mystic Rose: A Study of Primitive Marriage. GEDDES AND THOMSON, Evolution of Sex. LETOURNEAU, The Evolution of Marriage. MORGAN, Ancient Society.
He then calls attention to the startling absence from the whole of Greek literature of any evidence that any man who had received the training which Greek culture gave ever fell in love with any woman. In his chapter on the "Subjection of Wives," Professor Westermarck further says: The status of wives is in various respects connected with the ideas held about the female sex in general.
See, e.g., Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, pp. 412 et seq. Thus an old Maori declared, a few years ago, that the decline of his race has been entirely due to the loss of the ancient religious faith in the tabu. The head, the hair, spots where apparitions appeared, places which the tohungas proclaimed as sacred, we have forgotten and disregarded.
In addition to the spoken words letters and telegrams of greeting were read from societies and individuals in twelve different countries. The distinguished guests of the occasion were Dr. Selma Lagerlöf of Sweden, who had recently received the Nobel Literature Prize, and Miss Helena Westermarck of Finland, the eminent writer and publicist.
So far as the evidence of animals next to man, therefore, goes, there is no reason for supposing that the human family life sprang from confused or promiscuous sex relations in which no permanent union between male and female parent existed. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe, as Westermarck says, that human family life is an inheritance from man's apelike progenitor.
Westermarck has argued powerfully in favour of the purificatory theory alone, and I am bound to say that his arguments carry great weight, and that on a fuller review of the facts the balance of evidence seems to me to incline decidedly in his favour.
Social Origins and Primal Law, pp. 4, 21. Westermarck, pp. 13, 42. Primal Law, pp. 209-212. We may conclude that there would be many of these groups, each with a male head, his wives and adult daughters, and children of both sexes. It is probable that they lived a nomadic life, finding a temporary home in a cave, rock, or tree-shelter, in some place where the supply of food was plentiful.
If Westermarck is right, it would seem that the lowest foundations of highly developed society have always consisted of the bodies and souls of women. If such be the historic fact, it may seem strange that only in our day, but now the world over, is heard the wail of women crying to be freed.
It cannot be said that we have yet begun to doubt the morality of killing men in war, though we no longer approve of killing women and children, or even non-combatants generally. Every age or land has its own morality. "Custom, in the strict sense of the word," well says Westermarck, "involves a moral rule.... Society is the school in which men learn to distinguish between right and wrong.
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