In view of the fierceness of the struggle for food and the attitude
toward the stranger among all primitives, the outcast's life chances
were unenviable. It was preferable to adapt one's self to the social
order. "Bad" traits were the more easily suppressed in return for the
re-enforcement of power which was the striking feature of group life;
power over enemies, power over nature, and a re-enforcement of the
emotional life of the individual which became the basis on which were
built up the magico-religious ceremonies of institutionalized religion.

It is the purpose of this study to consider a phase of social life in
which there can be traced a persistence into modern times of a primitive
form of control which in a pre-rational stage of group life made
possible the comparatively harmonious interplay of antagonistic forces.
This form of control is called Taboo. A student of the phenomenon, a
recognized authority on its ethnological interpretation, says of it: "To
illustrate the continuity of culture and the identity of the elementary
human ideas in all ages, it is sufficient to point to the ease with
which the Polynesian word _tabu_ has passed into modern
language."[1, p.16]

We shall attempt to show that at least one form of taboo, the
Institutionalized Sex Taboo, is co-extensive with human social
experience, and exists to-day at the base of family life, the socialized
form of sex relationship. The family as a social institution has been
scarcely touched until a very recent historical period by the
rationalizing process that has affected religious and political
institutions. Economic changes resultant upon the introduction of an
industrial era which showed the importance of women in diverse social
relations were causes of this new effort at adaptation to changing
conditions. It became apparent that taboos in the form of customs,