Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
The hypothesis that such a custom points to primitive promiscuity is ably combated by Westermarck, and is involved in great difficulties; it is, however, maintained by Messrs.
It is for this reason i.e., because it is a question of what is and not of merely what some think ought to be that practical morals form the proper subject of science. "If the word 'ethics' is to be used as the name for a science," Westermarck says, "the object of that science can only be to study the moral consciousness as a fact."
See Westermarck, op. cit., pp. 54-56. A system of taboos is very strongly established, and as we should expect the women appear to be most active in maintaining these sexual separations. If a man, even by mistake, kills the sex-totem of the women, they are as much enraged as if it were one of their own children, and they will turn and attack him with their long poles.
We have here what appears to be a much more reasonable explanation of mother-kin and mother-right than that of Bachofen. Yet many have argued powerfully against it. Westermarck especially, has shown that belief in an early stage of promiscuous relationship is altogether untenable. It is needless here to enter into proof of this.
V, VIII. Sutherland, op. cit, chap. XV. F. Thilly, INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, chap. III. Westermarck, op. cit, chap. V. Darwin, DESCENT OF MAN, partt. I, chap. III. J. H. Hyslop, ELEMENTS OF ETHICS, chaps. VI, VII. J. S. Mill, UTILITARIANISM, chap. v. H. W. Wright, SELF-REALIZATION, part. I, chap.
The varying customs of different peoples in this matter are set forth by Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, Ch. The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal importance that they should train themselves.
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.
Rengger, Naturgeschichte der Säugelliere von Paraguay, p. 11, cited by Westermarck, op. cit., p. 158. J. M. Wheeler, “Primitive Marriage,” an article in Progress, 1885, p. 128. McGee, “The Beginning of Marriage,” American Anthropologist, Vol. Haddon, “Western Tribes of the Torres States,” Journal of the Anthropological Society, Vol. XIX, Feb. 1890. Cited by Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex, Vol.
If, now, we enquire, What are the earliest offences against which public action is taken? and why? we may remember that Mr. Hobhouse has stated them to be witchcraft and breaches of the marriage law; and that the punishment of those offences corresponds, as he has said, "roughly to our own administration of justice" (I, 81). Now, in the case of breaches of the marriage laws mating with a cousin on the mother's side instead of with a cousin on the father's side, marrying into a forbidden class it is obvious that there is no individual who has suffered injury and that there is no individual to experience resentment. It is the community that suffers or is expected to suffer; and it expects to suffer, because it, in the person of one of its members, has offended. Collectively it is responsible for the misdeeds of its members. Whom, then, has it offended? To whom is it responsible? Who will visit it with punishment, unless it makes haste to set itself right? The answer given by a certain tribe of the Sea Dyaks makes the matter clear: they, Mr. St. John tells us in his Life in the Forests of the Far East (I, 63, quoted by Westermarck, I, 49), "are of opinion that an unmarried girl proving with child must be offensive to the superior powers, who, instead of always chastising the individual, punish the tribe by misfortunes happening to its members. They therefore on the discovery of the pregnancy fine the lovers, and sacrifice a pig to propitiate offended heaven, and to avert that sickness or those misfortunes that might otherwise follow." That is, of course, only one instance. But we may safely say that the marriage law is generally ascribed to the ordinance of the gods, even in the lowest tribes, and that breaches of it are offences against heaven. It is unnecessary to prove, it need only be mentioned, that witchcraft is conspicuously offensive to the religious sentiment, and is punished as an offence against the god or gods. When, then, we consider the origin and nature of justice, not from an abstract and
On the Fire-festivals in general pp. 328-331. General resemblance of the fire-festivals to each other, 328 sq.; two explanations of the festivals suggested, one by W. Mannhardt that they are sun-charms, the other by Dr. E. Westermarck that they are purificatory, 329 sq.; the two explanations perhaps not mutually exclusive, 330 sq. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals, pp. 331-341.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking