Note 173 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Ib., p. 29. Mr. Lang conjectures (p. 114) that the master of a small group, actuated by sexual jealousy, ‘expelled all his adult sons as they came to puberty.’ Such a group, he remarks, would have been ‘necessarily exogamous in practice’, and then (ib., p. 143) would have come the rule, ‘No marriage within the local group.’ But would it have been to the interest of the master to expel sons who were useful? What would have become of them? Would not the same sexual jealousy that ex hypothesi prompted their expulsion have prevented the master of any other group from receiving them? And if the master was killed in hunting after he had expelled his sons, what became of the other members of the group?
In connexion with Mr. Lang’s book, see Man, vi, 1906, No. 17, pp. 27-8, No. 34, pp. 51-4, No. 87, p. 131, and No. 112, p. 182.