Note 94.1 — PSYCHE’S TASK

The mutual avoidance between a man and his wife’s relations seems to be partly grounded on a fear of rendering the wife infertile. The theory is perhaps confirmed by the observation that in some tribes the avoidance between a man and his wife’s mother lasts only until he has had a child by his wife;94.1 while in others, though avoidance continues longer, it gradually wears away with time as the man and woman advance in years,94.2 and in others, again, it is observed only between a man and his future mother-in-law, and comes to an end with his marriage.94.3 These customs suggest that in the minds of the people who practise them there is a close connexion between the avoidance of the wife’s relations and the dread of an infertile marriage. The Indians of Yucatan, as we saw, believe that if a betrothed man were to meet his future mother-in-law or father-in-law, he would thereby lose the power of begetting children. Such a fear seems to be only an extension by false analogy of that belief in the disastrous consequences of illicit sexual relations which we dealt with in an earlier part of this chapter,94.4 and of which we shall have more to say presently.94.5 From thinking, rightly or wrongly, that sexual intercourse between certain persons is fraught with serious dangers, the savage jumped to the conclusion that social intercourse between them may be also perilous by virtue of a sort of physical infection acting through simple contact or even at a distance; or if, in many cases, he did not go so far as to suppose that for a man merely to see or touch his mother-in-law sufficed to blast the fertility of his wife’s womb, yet he may have thought, with much better reason, that intimate social converse between him and her might easily lead to something worse, and that to guard against such a possibility it was best to raise a strong barrier of etiquette between them. It is not, of course, to be supposed that these rules of avoidance were the result of deliberate legislation; rather they were the spontaneous and gradual growth of feelings and thoughts of which the savages themselves perhaps had no clear consciousness. In what precedes I have merely attempted to sum up in language intelligible to civilized man the outcome of a long course of moral and social evolution.