.

[1653] De Julleville, 21, 74, 86, 89, 107, 304.

[1654] Mahaffy, _The Greek World under Roman Sway_, 324.

[1655] Schultze-Gaevernitz in Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung_, 117.

[1656] Schallmeyer, _Vererbung und Auslese_, 231.

[1657] Rudeck, _Gesch. der Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit in
Deutschland_, 422.

CHAPTER XII

INCEST

Definition.--Incest notion was produced from the folkways.--The
notion that inbreeding is harmful.--Status-wife, work-wife,
love-wife.--The abomination of incest.--The incest taboo is
strongest in the strongest groups.--Incest in ethnography.--
Incest in civilized states.--Where the line is drawn, and why.--
Human self-selection.--Restriction by biological doctrine not
sufficiently warranted.--Summary of the matter now.

+508. Definition of incest.+ Incest is the marital union of a man and a
woman who are akin within the limits of a prohibition current at the
time in the laws or mores of the group. The primitive notion of kinship
did not divide kinship into grades of remoteness as we do. Very often it
was counted by classes or age strata. In the totem system all the women
of his mother's totem were tabooed to a man, although their cousinship
to himself might be very remote. At the same time, he could marry his
father's sister's daughter, or his mother's brother's daughter, unless
his father and his uncle had married women of the same totem. Inasmuch
as a man and his wife must have different totems and the children took
the totem of their mother, a man might marry his own daughter. Generally
this was forbidden by supplementary rules, but in Buka and North
Bougainville it occurs not infrequently.[1658] The varieties of the
consanguinity taboo are very numerous. They are entirely different in
theory under the mother family and the father family. They are now very
different in different states of our Union.[1659] If the taboo on
marriage is not defined in terms of "blood" or assumed kinship,
violation of it is not incest. For instance, in the mediaeval church, two
persons who had been sponsors in baptism to the same child might not
marry. Also, if two persons are debarred by affinity, violation is not
incest. In England a man may not marry his deceased wife's sister. If he
does it, his marriage is unlawful, but it is not incest. The definition
of incest must include the notion of a blood con