Development of Marriage and Kinship Author:Charles S. Wake, Rodney Needham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PRIMITIVE LAW OF MARRIAGE. The way has now been cleared for ascertaining the ideas which governed the development of the sexual relations amon... more »g the earliest races of mankind. If the intercourse between the sexes was not one of absolute promiscuity, it must have been affected by certain rules and regulations, which it will be necessary to identify. This cannot be done unless it is remembered that to the savage mind the promptings of the sexual instinct are as imperative as those of the instinct of self-preservation. It has already been pointed out1 that the subjective phase of the sexual instinct would, unless restrained, result in a condition of promiscuity, and possibly at first its operation, like that of the instinct of self-preservation, may have been subject to very slight control. We have seen reason to believe, however, that the activity of the sexual instinct was not allowed to go unchecked, and the " restraints on promiscuity" show their effect in the primitive law of marriage. These restraints have been divided into, 1st, social restraints, those arising from the claim of parents or others to have an interest in, or a right to control the conduct of, the females belonging to their family group; and 2ndly, natural restraints, those arising from the feeling that persons closely related by blood ought not to intermarry. The operation of the 1 Chap. i. p. 3. social restraints must gradually have led to the formation of a rule of conduct, the observance of which would be stringently enforced. The social regulation thus established would probably be seldom infringed within any particular group. When mankind became separated into several groups or hordes, " capture" by one horde from another might gradually become established as a means of obtaining wom...« less