his knife--but they both are
stricken with a sort of paralysis at the very suggestion of infringing
these taboos.

(1) See Westermarck, Ibid., ii. 586.

Marriage-customs have always been a fertile field for the generation
of taboos. It seems doubtful whether anything like absolute promiscuity
ever prevailed among the human race, but there is much to show that wide
choice and intercourse were common among primitive folk and that the
tendency of later marriage custom has been on the whole to LIMIT this
range of choice. At some early period the forbiddal of marriage between
those who bore the same totem-name took place. Thus in Australia "no man
of the Emu stock might marry an Emu woman; no Blacksnake might marry a
Blacksnake woman, and so forth." (1) Among the Kamilaroi and the Arunta
of S. Australia the tribe was divided into classes or clans, sometimes
four, sometimes eight, and a man of one particular clan was only
marriageable with a woman of another particular clan--say (1) with (3)
or (2) with (4), and so on. (2) Customs with a similar tendency, but
different in detail, seem to have prevailed among native tribes in
Central Africa and N. America. And the regulations in all this matter
have been so (apparently) entirely arbitrary in the various cases that
it would almost appear as if the bar of kinship through the Totem had
been the EXCUSE, originating perhaps in some superstition, but that the
real and more abiding object was simply limitation. And this perhaps was
a wise line to take. A taboo on promiscuity had to be created, and for
this purpose any current prejudice could be made use of. (3)

(1) Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, p. 66.

(2) See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Australia.

(3) The author of The Mystic Rose seems to take this view. See
p. 214 of that book.

With us moderns the whole matter has taken a different complexion. When
we consider the enormous amount of suffering and disease, both of mind
and body, arising from the sex-suppression of which I have just spoken,
especially among women, we see that mere unreasoning taboos--which
possibly had their place and use in the past--can be tolerated no
longer. We are bound to turn the searchlight of reason and science on a
number of superstitions which still linger in the dark and musty
places of the Churches and the Law courts. Modern inquiry has shown
conclusively not only the foundational importance of sex in the
evolution of each hu