Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/202



dependence of social organization in a given society upon the ideas, beliefs, and sentiments current there is of primary importance to the anthropologist. Among savage races we often find unexpected and fantastic views about natural processes, and correspondingly extreme and one-sided developments of social organization as regards kinship, communal authority, and tribal constitution. In this chapter I shall give an account of the Trobrianders' idea of the human organism as it affects their beliefs about procreation and gestation, beliefs which are embodied in oral tradition, customs, and ceremonies, and which exercise a deep influence on the social facts of kinship and on the matrilineal constitution of the tribe.

The natives have a practical acquaintance with the main features of the human anatomy, and an extensive vocabulary for the various parts of the human body and for the internal organs. They often cut up pigs and other animals, while the custom of post mortem Rh