Research Items

Abstract

PROMISCUITY AND PRIMITIVE MARRIAGE.—A discussion on promiscuity and group marriage by Lieut.-Col. E. F. Gordon Tucker and Mr. Leslie H. Gilbert appears in the Sociological Review, vol. 18, No. 4. Col. Tucker holds that the investigation of marriage must start with the physiological facts of the intensity of the sexual inclination. He argues that while no very helpful lesson can be derived from the varied conduct of the Quadrumana as to the sexual relations of human precursors among savage men, we get on one hand a widespread ‘incest horror,’ and, on the other, compulsory marriage among close relatives, but not the closest. Yet among Polynesians brother and sister marriage is a source of honour. Postulating a primitive group, the extent of continuity in gregariousness would be dependent on food supply. If the group were constant and sedentary, promiscuity would arise owing to the strength of the sex instinct and the hypothetical absence of the restraining forces of education, law, and religion. It is a question whether sexual jealousy would be strong enough to overcome these forces. Where the group was not constant owing to scarcity of food supply, either permanent or seasonal, individual men going off to find food would each take a woman to perform woman's work—root and beetle grubbing—and this custom would tend to give rise to individual marriage. In these conditions it is unnecessary to postulate promiscuity as a precedent condition of the classifica-tory system of relationships as Morgan did. The position of the mother's brother follows as a natural result. In his reply Mr. Gilbert argues from the universality of the individual marriage, while the terms of the classificatory system might be deduced from the Levirate and Sororate, which functions actively to-day, and further, that in the marriage groups, eligibility for marriage does not necessarily connote actual sexual relation. The so-called vestigial customs are magico-religious, though no one explanation can account for the diverse sexual orgies. The promiscuity theory demands the abrogation of the parental instinct, both of woman and man, which are essential to the survival of society in view of the conditions of human birth and infancy.