Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/201

Rh eyesight suffered. There is no doubt at all that the kinsmen feel the personal loss much less. On the other hand, their conventional sentiment of bereavement and realization of the maiming of their group do not leave them unaffected. But here we enter upon a problem, that of feelings and ideas relating to the solidarity of the clan, which, if followed up, would take us too far away from our subject. The study of marriage has led us away from the study of sex in the narrower sense of the word. We have had to consider questions of social organization, and the legal, economic, and religious setting of the relation between husband and wife, parents and children. This last subject, parenthood, will still occupy us in the next two chapters, before we pass to the detailed analysis of the sexual impulse in its cultural manifestations among our natives. Rh