關於 - Ethics
版本 - 英文書
刊號 - Y869ERG0BAB
發行 - 2015-12-25

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 1. The Kinship Group.—The kinship group is a body of persons who conceive of themselves as sprung from one ancestor, and hence as having in their veins one blood. It does not matter for our study whether each group has actually sprung from a single ancestor. It is highly probable that the contingencies of food-supply or of war may have been an original cause for the constitution of the group, wholly or in part. But this is of no consequence for our purpose. The important point is that the members of the group regard themselves as of one stock. In some cases the ancestor is believed to have been an animal. Then we have the so-called totem group, which is found among North American Indians, Africans, and Australians, and was perhaps the early form of Semitic groups. In other cases, some hero or even some god is named as the ancestor. In any case the essential part of the theory remains the same: namely, that one blood circulates in all the members, and hence that the life of each is a part of the common life of the group. There are then no degrees of kindred. This group, it should be noted, is not the same as the family, for in the family, as a rule, husband and wife are of different kinship groups, and continue their several kinship relations. Among some peoples marriage ceremonies, indeed, symbolize the admission of the wife into the husband's kinship, and in this case the family becomes a kinship group, but this is by no means universally the case.

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