children of the race who lived without thought of the morrow.[1]
And finally it must be pointed out that a prohibition against inbreeding as an element weakening to the race, which is imposed from practical hygienic motives, se«ms quite inadequate to explain the deep abhorrence which our society feels against incest. This dread of incest, as I have shown elsewhere,[2] seems to be even more active and stronger among primitive races living to-day than among the civilized.
In inquiring into the origin of incest dread it could be expected that here also there is the choice between possible explanations of a sociological, biological, and psychological nature in which the psychological motives might have to be considered as representative of biological forces. Still, in the end, one is compelled to subscribe to Frazer’s resigned statement, namely, that we do not know the origin of incest dread and do not even know how to guess at it. None of the solutions of the riddle thus far advanced seems satisfactory to us.[3]
I must mention another attempt to explain the
- ↑ Charles Darwin says about savages: “They are not likely to reflect on distant evils to their progeny.”
- ↑ See Chapter I.
- ↑ “Thus the ultimate origin of exogamy and with it the law of incest—since exogamy was devised to prevent incest—remains a problem nearly as dark as ever.” “Totemism and Exogamy,” I, p. 165.
