Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Page 277

EDWARD WESTERMARCK
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solve problems which needed the co-operation of specialised bio-
logical research. The sociologists of that time relied too much on
Darwin’s theory of evolution, and lacked the illumination modern
research in heredity has cast on questions included under that
category. They believed that with the present as their point of
departure they could solve problems of that diffuse and form-
less enormous stretch of time known as the primitive age. Many
hypotheses acquired the character of proofs, although their
authors had not sufficiently worked out what they meant by
social origin. Regarded from a detached point of view, I think
it should be clear that in the culture of primitive peoples to-day
one can scarcely find more than parallels to, or at the most a
hint of the assumed primitive development. For even savages
of the most primitive type have had a historical development
of hundreds and thousands of years, which cannot have failed
to leave its traces.1)
After Westermarck’s Doctor’s disputation his work The
History of Human Marriage was published. Alfred Russel
Wallace wrote the preface. The work was quickly to find its
way all over the world and to be translated into several European
languages and at least one non-European, namely Japanese.
Westermarck’s methods of research and his conclusions were
new, his material unusually copious. The subject was viewed
from a new sociological, not to say historical angle: all manifesta-
tions of life, according to Westermarck, should be divided into
groups and each group studied with reference to its origin and
development: only by this means could history lay claim to the
rank and honour of a science in the highest meaning of the term,
as an important constituent of sociology. Descriptive historical
research, in Westermarck’s opinion, had no higher aim than to
furnish material for this science. ín the History of Human
Marriage Westermarck made a determined stand against the
legends of an original promiscuity; he opposed the views of
Bachofen, the Swiss jurist and sociologist, of McLennan, Morgan
and other research workers who supported the promiscuity theory
or the theory of communal marriage, which was Sir John Lub-
bock’s (Lord Avebury’s) term. Westermarck advanced argu-
x) c/. Numelin, The Wandering Spirit (London, New York 1937), p. 64;
idem, Den Gröna Grenen, En studie i dipl:s förhistoria (Helsingfors 1941),
P- 11 f.
18*