of disclosing the secrets of ancient marriage customs has, in spite of all the labour and ingenuity bestowed upon it, been a source of error rather than knowledge.”
Dr. Westermarck explains in his Preface that his decision to write this book “did not spring from a desire for opposition,” and it may be frankly stated that his criticisms of the views of other anthropologists are advanced with courtesy and a full appreciation of their importance. At the same time his readers will, from their knowledge of his previous editions, have been prepared to learn that he differs from his colleagues on questions of primary importance. Thus, his repudiation of the existence of group marriage leads him to deny that matrilinear peoples “had full-fledged mother-right in former times,” mainly on the ground that the “fullest mother-right prevails among agricultural tribes, whereas the matrilinear system is nowhere feebler than among the Australian aborigines, who still live in the hunting and food-collecting stage.” Nor does he accept the suggestions that mother-right everywhere preceded father-right, that the Mylitta rite at Babylon was a puberty ceremony, that it was a widespread belief in early times that pregnancy was caused otherwise than by the normal congress of the sexes, that the object of the rules of avoidance of relations was to prevent incest.
The general treatment of marriage is biological, marriage being defined as “a more or less durable connexion between male and female lasting beyond the mere art of propagation till after the birth of the offspring.” It is true that this, in a second definition, is further expanded: “it may be defined as a relation of one or more men to one or more women which is recognised by custom or law and involves certain rights and duties both in the case of the parties entering the union and in the case of the children born of it.” This biological view can with difficulty be reconciled with the folk-lore side of marriage, and the latter is throughout overshadowed by the former. This difficulty, which was unavoidable in the scheme of his book, cannot help embarrassing the reader.
A work which for thirty years has ranked as an anthropological classic, has passed through five editions, besides versions
