Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/171

 MR. ANDREW LANG'S THEORY OF THK ORIGIN OF EXOGAMY AND TOTEMISM.

HV (THE LATE) ANDREW LANG.

[In Mr. Andrew Lanf^'s last communication to Folk-Lore, which appears on pp. 376-8 of vol. xxiii., he say.s that " for the last three years I have written and rewritten, again and again, a work on Totemism and Exogamy ; but for various reasons, — partly the influ.x of new facts and new theories, partly weariness of controversy, — I do not expect to publish the volume. . . . But the chapter on my theory of totemic exogamy may perhaps be detachable ; if so, Folk-Lore may give it hospitality .' "

In accordance with the wish so e.xprcssed, the chapter referred to, (No. xiii., "The Author's Theory of the Origin of Exogamy and Totemism "), is printed below in the con- dition in which it is found in manuscript.

For the kind permission to make this extract from the unpublished work, members of the Society and other readers o{ Foik-Lore are indebted to Mrs. Lang, who is the literary executrix of her late husband. — Ed.]

EX0G.\MV is manifestly the greatest and most far-reaching of taboos. By this taboo every one is aftected. Something is forbidden, — a taboo is always prohibitive of something, — and, if we want to understand why anything is forbidden, we ask "to whose interest is it to prohibit this or that; cui prodcst?" Usually the persons who reap advantage by a taboo are the seniors of the community, the makers of customary law. Were any seniors ever interested in pro- hibiting all sexual unions (except their own) within any cfiven circle .'' I think there were such seniors !