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The idea that there could be a substantial identity between the moral rules of different savage races, and even between their moral rules and ours, was an idea that simply was not entertained. Nevertheless, it was a fact, though unnoticed; and now it is a fact which, thanks to Dr Westermarck, is placed beyond dispute.
"In New South Wales," says Westermarck, "the first-born of every lubra used to be eaten by the tribe 'as part of a religious ceremony. In the realm of Khai-muh, in China, according to a native account, it was customary to kill and devour the eldest son alive. Among certain tribes in British Columbia the first child is often sacrificed to the sun.
Westermarck argues that among nearly all peoples there is a feeling against sexual relationship with members of the same family or household, and as sex was thus banished from the sphere of domestic life a notion of its general impurity arose; Northcote points out that from the first it has been necessary to seek concealment for sexual intercourse, because at that moment the couple would be a prey to hostile attacks, and that it was by an easy transition that sex came to be regarded as a thing that ought to be concealed, and, therefore, a sinful thing.
Westermarck, who explains exogamy as arising from “an instinct against marriage of near kin.” But we have no proof of the existence of any such instinct. Mr. Crawley’s view is similar: he connects the custom with the idea of sexual taboo, which makes certain marriages a deadly sin. It is evident that these causes could not have operated with the brute patriarch. One great point in favour of Mr.
Westermarck, in criticising the matriarchal theory, has said: “The inference that ‘kinship through females only’ has everywhere preceded the rise of ‘kinship through males,’ would be warranted only on condition that the cause, or the causes, to which the maternal system is owing, could be proved to have operated universally in the past life of mankind.” Now, this is what I believe I am able to do.
VII. Actions that are in accordance with custom call forth public approval, actions that are opposed to custom call forth public resentment, and Westermarck powerfully argues that such approval and such resentment are the foundation of moral judgments. "'Immoral," he points out, "never means anything but contrary to the mores of the time and place."
There is, however, no need whatever to abolish or to supplement the good old ancient word "morality," so long as we clearly realize that, on the practical side, it means essentially custom. Westermarck, op. cit., vol. i, p. 19. See, e.g., "Exogamy and the Mating of Cousins," in Essays Presented to E.B. Tylor, 1907, p. 53.
Westermarck that the midsummer festival has belonged from time immemorial to the Berber race, and that so far as it is now observed by the Arabs of Morocco, it has been learned by them from the Berbers, the old indigenous inhabitants of the country. Dr.
Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, pp. 306-7. Religion of the Semites, pp. 427-9. For a fuller discussion of the subject, see Studies in the Psychology of Sex, by Havelock Ellis, 1901. Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, p. 666. Westermarck, p. 666. Frazer, Taboo, p. 150. See the Rev.
Each generation believes that this difficulty is a thing of the past, but each generation is only tolerant of past innovations. Those of its own day are met with the same persecution as though the principle of toleration had never been heard of. "In early society," says Westermarck, "customs are not only moral rules, but the only moral rules ever thought of.
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