Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/528

 470 Reviews.

or tribe consists of two phratries, each composed of two classes, forming thus two pairs of classes having the right of connubium. These may be represented as A and Ai on the one side, and B and Bi on the other side, so that A would have co?inubium only with B, and A\ only with B\. The class A\ would consist of the children of the class A and the class B\ of the children of ^. In consequence of the prohibition, connubium with the forbidden classes would be regarded with aversion, as contrary to tribal usage, and ultimately doubtless with horror, as unnatural. By the hypothesis descent is traced in the first mstance through the mother only. Class A would thus con- sist of the mothers of class A\ and their brothers and sisters, giving those terms the wide extension usual in the tribes in question, and class B would consist of the mothers of class B\ and their brothers and sisters. But the men of class A (the brothers of the mothers of class A\) would be the fathers of class B\ ; and vice versa the men of class B would be the fathers of class Ai. Suppose, further, that by some revolution, the causes of which need not detain us, descent began to be traced in the male instead of the female line. The children of the women of class A would then form class ^i, as being the children of the men of class B ; and the children of the women of class B would be class Ai, as being the children of the men of class A. If the revolution were complete, there would be no difficulty about the children of the women of class A and the men of class B continuing to marry the children of the women of class B and the men of class A. But there is the influence of the ideas and feelings generated by the prohibitions and practices of countless generations to reckon with. Among the institutions of the society supposed is that of totemism. The men of class A (or some of them at any rate) and their children under paternal descent, would bear the totem of any given woman of the class. Although the children of that woman under paternal descent would not bear the same totem, yet they would continue to lie under the prohibition to marry in their mother's totem, and would regard with horror, as incest, the possibility of doing so, until the influence of the ideas and feelings just referred to had