Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/548

 492 the history of institutions, and it is the basis for the development of many of the principles underlying the formation of the village community. Worked back among the various tribes of savage man we find it incidental everywhere to the agricultural stage of economical development, though, of course, existing in varying degrees of perfection. That agricultural life is more primitive than pastoral life is one of the facts which, I think, will be proved by the history of the village community whenever that history is written. And alongside of this must be considered the history of the conception of incest—one of the most important chapters of which Mr. Westermarck has given us.

It is impossible, perhaps, to do more than touch upon some of the issues brought about by Mr. Westermarck's book. That I am concerned more with the institutional side of marriage has made me say more in apparent opposition to Mr. Westermarck's views than, perhaps, I am really prepared for. Undoubtedly he is right in stating that students of ethnography cannot be too comprehensive in their search for materials; but in analysing his evidence, as I am doing at some length without the possibility of producing the results in this review, I am struck with the remarkable manner in which he has managed to piece together in good literary form so complex a study. The power is almost to be dreaded. It carries with it something more than the bare equations of a scientific problem, and it is this "something more" which has to be guarded against by the student.

An examination of some of the details of such a work as Mr. Westermarck's is the only possible means whereby to test the value of its general conclusions. If we dispute his initial conclusion that "among our earliest human ancestors the family, not the tribe, formed the nucleus of every social group, and in many cases was itself, perhaps, the only social group", it is more, perhaps, a question of terminology than an actual difference of opinion on the