Incest

“ Who cannot recall in his own experience love marriages of schoolmates or of cousins living in intimate association from their childhood? To say that such bringing up together creates "indifference" is obviously incorrect; to say that it leads to "aversion" is altogether unwarranted; and to trace to it such a feeling as our horror at the thought of marrying a sister, or mother, is simply preposterous.
The real source of the horror of incest in civilized communities was indicated more than two thousand years ago by Plato. ”

“ The crime of incest hath so much prevailed, not only among the higher, but among the lower orders of this people, that, not having the fear of God before their eyes, they are not ashamed of intermarrying with their relations, even in the third degree of consanguinity. ”

“ Thus delightfully ended the first lesson in love taught to my sister, and such was my first triumph over a maidenhead, double enhanced by the idea of the close ties of parentage between us. In after-life, I have always found the nearer we are related, the more this idea of incest stimulates our passions and stiffens our pricks, so that if even we be in the wane of life, fresh vigour is imparted by reason of the very fact of our evasion of conventional laws. ”

“ Turning to factors that have in general received less The biological absurdity of parent-child incest explicit recognition at the hands of the authorities who have written on the subject, we may note first that as regards the most fundamental type of incest as revealed by psycho-analytic study—that of parent and child—there is involved a sort of biological absurdity, which may well have been to some extent instrumental, through the agency of natural selection, of bringing about that inhibition of the incestuous tendencies for which we have to account. ”

“ If these influences have made incest a common practice How do past incestuous practices produce present tendencies to incest? at one period of man's history, in what ways has this practice contributed to the tendency to incest found at a later date and at the present day? ”

“ Compare the views of the bishop of Exeter, in the same Tracts, I, 19, who predicts an orgy of incest if the law be changed: "At the present, no doubt, there is a strong natural instinct against the marriage of a man with his own mother. ”

“ Insensate mother, who allowed the forfeiture of her child's chastity in order to avenge her own; caring nought for the purity of her own blood, so she might stain with incest the man who had cost her her own maidenhood at first! Infamous-hearted woman, who, to punish her defiler, measured out as it were a second defilement to herself, whereas she clearly by the selfsame act rather swelled than lessened the transgression! ”

“ If the aversion to incest had arisen merely as a consequence of the age-long practice of exogamy—which itself is due to other causes—there would be no reason why this aversion should be intimately connected with the positive tendency to incest or of sufficient strength to overcome this tendency, with the powerfulness of which we are now well acquainted. ”

“ From what source, in the final analysis, springs the dread of incest which must be recognized as the root of exogamy? It evidently does not suffice to appeal to an instinctive aversion against sexual intercourse with blood relatives, that is to say, to the fact of incest dread, in order to explain the dread of incest, if social experience shows that, in spite of this instinct, incest is not a rare occurrence even in our society, and if the experience of history can acquaint us with cases in which incestuous marriage of privileged persons was made the rule. ”

“ It must be admitted that a profound horror of incest is now "an almost universal characteristic of mankind, the cases which seem to indicate a perfect absence of this feeling being so exceedingly rare that they must be regarded merely as anomalous aberrations from a general rule." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sexual union between near relations nearly always causes a feeling of repugnance in man, and has been stigmatized by the term incest. Coitus between mother and son especially excites disgust. Sexual connection between parents and children, as well as between brothers and sisters is, however, common among certain tribes. Many other races allow marriage between brothers and sisters, but this is elsewhere generally condemned. ”

“ The interpretation of incest dread as an innate instinct must therefore be abandoned. The same holds true of another derivation of the incest prohibition which counts many supporters, namely the assumption that primitive races very soon observed the dangers with which inbreeding threatened their race and that they therefore had decreed the incest prohibition with a conscious purpose. ”

“ Whatever observations may have been made, the prohibition of incest is in no case founded on experience. Had the savage man discerned that children born of marriage between closely related persons are not so sound and vigorous as others, he would scarcely have allowed this knowledge to check his passions. ”

“ But it must not be supposed that the frequent practice of incest is confined to primitive races. Although in civilised communities regarded with almost universal condemnation, incest has probably always existed to some extent among certain sections of the population and the practice of incest among modern white races is undoubtedly much more prevalent than is commonly supposed. A well known British psycho-analyst assures me that in the exercise of their profession he and his colleagues hear with astonishing frequency of cases of incest, the report of which is otherwise suppressed. ”

“ An added mixture of irritability and animosity in his feelings leads us to suspect that the mother-in-law actually represents an incest temptation for the son-in-law, just as it not infrequently happens that a man falls in love with his subsequent mother-in-law before his inclination is transferred to her daughter. ”

“ Whereas all observers have interpreted the purpose and meaning of the avoidances between near relatives as protective measures against incest, different interpretations have been given for those prohibitions which concern the relationship with the mother-in-law. It was quite incomprehensible why all these races should manifest such great fear of temptation on the part of the man for an elderly woman, old enough to be his mother. ”

“ Only an exaggerated sexual desire, coupled with the absence of understanding for laws and morals, could nowadays lead to incest in any civilized country. Even in the crowded tenements where all members of the family of both sexes live and sleep in one room, incest is still a great rarity, and when such a case happens, it deeply wounds the feelings of the entire community. Such incestuous immoral attacks are, as a251 rule, made by low, brutal men in a state of intoxication or by those who suffer from weak-mindedness, by epileptics and by paranoiacs. ”

“ Moreover, if we suppose a number of small clans, A, B, C, D and E, to meet each other again and again, and the men and women to unite promiscuously, it is clear that the result would be a mixture of relationships of a very incestuous character. The incest of brothers and sisters by the same father would be possible and of almost all other relations, though that of brothers and sisters by the same mother would not be caused. ”

“ In the further development of the classification of the marriage system there seems to be a tendency to go beyond the prevention of natural and group incest, and to prohibit marriage between more distant group relations, in a manner similar to the Catholic church, which extended the marriage prohibitions always in force for brother and sisters, to cousins, and invented for them the grades of spiritual kinship. ”

“ INCEST (Lat. incestus, unchaste) , sexual intercourse between persons so related by kindred or affinity that legal marriage cannot take place between them (see Marriage, especially the section Canon Law) . In England incest formerly was not generally treated as a crime, although, along with other offences against morals, it was made punishable by death in 1650. Since the Restoration it had, to use Blackstone’s phrase, been left to the “feeble coercion of the spiritual courts,” but bills to make it a criminal offence have at various times been unsuccessfully introduced in Parliament. ”

“ Whereas, I, good people, forgetting my duty to Almighty God, have committed the detestable sin of incest, by contracting marriage, or rather the show or effigy of marriage, with Mary Ann Taylor, the sister of my late wife, and thereby have justly provoked the heavy wrath of God against me, to the great danger of my own soul, and the evil example of others ”

“ Now, when the whole passage, as it stands in Selden, is read, how apparent is it, that the Puritan's quotation fails in presenting the true meaning of this oriental scholar. Selden here certainly considered the 6th verse of Lev. 18, a part of which he recites, as referring to incest. What is incest? The crime of cohabiting or of sexual intercourse between those who, on account of near relationship, are interdicted marriage. If a man have commerce with a female to whom he does not sustain such a relation, his sin may be fornication or adultery; but it cannot be incest. ”

“ For the evidence of incestuous marriages, see Westermarck, op. cit., 292 ff., 331 ff.; Starcke, op. cit., 44, 209 ff.; Spencer, Principles of Sociology, I, 636; Giraud-Teulon, Origines, 60 ff.
[380] This may perhaps explain why half-sisters and half-brothers may marry among the Todas where relationship is in the male line: Marshall, A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, 206, 221.
[381] Here and there among low races one finds examples of alleged incest recorded. Thus among the New England Indians marriages between brothers and sisters are said to have existed: Waitz, Anthropologie, III, 106. ”

“ But incest stands in the path to this goal, that is to say, the necessity of in some way again gaining entrance into the mother’s womb. One of the simplest ways would be to impregnate the mother, and to reproduce one’s self identically. But here the incest prohibition interferes; therefore, the myths of the sun or of rebirth teem with all possible proposals as to how incest can be evaded. A very simple method of avoidance is to transform the mother into another being or to rejuvenate [453] her after birth has occurred, to have her disappear again or have her change back. ”

“ Thus you continue the story of incest, even although you have no consciousness of your crime. But we maintain our modesty not in appearance, but in our heart we gladly abide by the bond of a single marriage; in the desire of procreating, we know either one wife, or none at all. We practise sharing in banquets, which are not only modest, but also sober: for we do not indulge in entertainments nor prolong our feasts with wine ”

“ Incest is, in fact, sexual relations between individuals of any age too closely related to marry. It need not necessarily involve an adult and a child, and it goes beyond child sexual abuse. But more important, child sexual abuse goes beyond father-daughter incest. Intrafamilial incest between an adult and child may be the most common form of child sexual abuse, but it is not the only form. ”

“ The crime of incest, in their opinion, would blast the whole harvest, if the wrong were not speedily repaired. Epidemics and other calamities that affect the whole people are almost always traced by them to incest, by which is to be understood any marriage that conflicts with their customs.46.3 The natives of Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, imagine that heavy rains are caused by the tears of a god weeping at the commission of adultery or fornication. The punishment for these crimes is death. ”

“ But intercourse between those who are related by consanguinity or affinity does not, of itself, contain any deformity, else it would never have been lawful. Therefore incest is not a determinate species of lust.
On the contrary, The species of lust are distinguished according to the various conditions of women with whom a man has unlawful intercourse. Now incest implies a special condition on the part of the woman, because it is unlawful intercourse with a woman related by consanguinity or affinity as stated (OBJ [2] ) . Therefore incest is a determinate species of lust. ”

“ When, on the contrary, brothers and sisters or near relatives have been separated from each other since an early age, they often fall in love with each other when they meet later on. There is, therefore, no innate or instinctive repugnance to incest in itself, but only against sexual union between individuals who have lived together since childhood. ”

“ I add, therefore:—Let it be well observed that a time beyond that expressed by the words "in her life-time," must be understood to be of the essence of all the prohibitions. That is to say (and the awful importance of the matter requires it to be stated plainly) , that it is incest and not adultery which is the subject of the prohibitions throughout. A man is prohibited from marrying his Mother not merely during his Father's lifetime, but always—his Sister, not merely, if she be married, and, if so, during her husband's life-time, but always. ”