Taboo and Genetics

Taboo and Genetics, by Melvin Moses
Knight,

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Title: Taboo and Genetics
Author: Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
Release Date: December 11, 2004 [eBook #14325]
Language: English
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Transcriber's note: The irregular footnote markers in this text [numbers] refer to the
reference book the author used, and not always to the specific page numbers. These
reference books are listed numerically at the end of each chapter. The footnotes are
marked with [letters] and the referenced footnotes are contained within the text, near to
the footnote marker. Therefore, occasionally the numerical footnote markers are out of
sequence. Words that were italicized are now marked by an underscore (i).

TABOO AND GENETICS
A Study of the Biological, Sociological and Psychological Foundation of the Family
by

M. M. KNIGHT, PH.D.
IVA LOWTHER PETERS, PH.D.
PHYLLIS BLANCHARD, PH.D.
Author of The Adolescent Girl
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co.
1921

DEDICATED TO OUR FRIEND AND TEACHER, FRANK HAMILTON HANKINS

PREFACE
Scientific discovery, especially in biology, during the past two decades has made
necessary an entire restatement of the sociological problem of sex. Ward's so-called
"gynæcocentric" theory, as sketched in Chapter 14 of his Pure Sociology, has been
almost a bible on the sex problem to sociologists, in spite of the fact that modern
laboratory experimentation has disproved it in almost every detail. While a comparatively
small number of people read this theory from the original source, it is still being scattered
far and wide in the form of quotations, paraphrases, and interpretations by more popular
writers. It is therefore necessary to gather together the biological data which are available
from technical experimentation and medical research, in order that its social implications
may be utilized to show the obsoleteness of this older and unscientific statement of the
sex problem in society.
In order to have a thoroughly comprehensive survey of the institutions connected with
sexual relationships and the family and their entire significance for human life, it is also
necessary to approach them from the ethnological and psychological points of view. The
influence of the primitive sex taboos on the evolution of the social mores and family life
has received too little attention in the whole literature of sexual ethics and the sociology
of sex. That these old customs have had an inestimable influence upon the members of
the group, modern psychology has recently come to recognize. It therefore seems
advantageous to include these psychological findings in the same book with the
discussion of the sex taboos and other material with which it must so largely deal.
These fields--biology, ethnology, and psychology--are so complicated and so far apart
technically, although their social implications are so closely interwoven, that it has
seemed best to divide the treatment between three different writers, each of whom has
devoted much study to his special phase of the subject. This leads to a very simple
arrangement of the material. The first part deals with the physical or biological basis of
the sex problem, which all societies from the most primitive to the most advanced have
had and still have to build upon. The second part deals with the various ideas man has

developed in his quest for a satisfactory adaptation of this physical basis to his own
requirements. Part three attempts to analyze the effect of this long history of social
experimentation upon the human psyche in its modern social milieu.
In the social evolution of the human mind, the deepest desires of the individual have been
often necessarily sacrificed to the needs of the group. Sometimes they have been
unnecessarily sacrificed, since human intelligence is, unfortunately, not omniscient.
Nevertheless, the sum total of human knowledge has now become great enough so that it
is at least well to pause and take account of its bearing on the age-old problem of family
life, in order that our evolution henceforth may be guarded by rational control rather than
trial and error in so far as is possible. Such a summarization of our actual knowledge of
the biology, sociology and psychology of the foundations of the family institution this
book aims to present, and if it can at the same time suggest a starting point for a