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Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3 |
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traditional principles, and not from spontaneous feelings. The cultivation of family sentiments by traditional education is carried out with as much attention as the cultivation of national patriotism.
The social group, or "family", which is the object of traditional reverence and moral obligation varies considerably in its composition in different societies. It is a very differently constituted group in China, in India, from what it is in England or in France. In the former countries the "joint family" includes a multitude of more or less nominal relatives; in England the family circle is narrowed down to a small number of members. In some societies the moral obligation of family devotion is represented by a like obligation towards the whole tribe or clan. Among the Arabs, as in all tribal societies, that sentiment is "a fierce overpowering passion and at the same time the first and most sacred of duties[1]". A similar devotion to the clan was conspicuous among the North American Indians. But they, at the same time, regarded their wives as "strangers", and their children as not belonging to the group to which their allegiance was addressed.
A large number of writers on social anthropology have based their accounts of the origin of those social groups, and of the family in particular, upon the supposition that those groups owe their origin to the sentiments with which they are regarded. The family, according to those writers, arose primarily as a result of the operation of "natural sentiments", or "instincts", or "functional" responses. But it appears more probable that the sentiments are a consequence, rather than a cause, of established social groups. The policies governing family relationships and transactions were until quite recent times openly avowed as resting upon economic interests. In pagan times, among our Nordic ancestors, "marriage was not based upon mutual love and affection, but on wealth and social standing. It was a business affair[2]". The description applies accurately to the generality of marriages among the well-to-do classes, and to a large extent among property-owning peasants also, throughout European countries until very recent times[3].
The romanticism which became current in the period following
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1933, Seite 356. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_Jahrgang_2_Heft_3.pdf/38&oldid=- (Version vom 31.5.2022)
- ↑ R. Dozy, Islam in Spain, p. 7.
- ↑ Knut Gjerset, A History of the Scandinavian Peoples, vol. 1, p. 91.
- ↑ In England, where the family sentiments are so highly developed, "marriages were arranged among people of good estate and condition with a very frank display of mercenary motives". One lady writes, discussing a match: "Her father will give her five thousand pounds, as she is sickly and not likely to marry." Another relative wrote: "Here is a match for your son, Mr. Wilson's daughter of Surrey, that I think is worthy your consideration; they offer 5,500." (G. Hill, Women in English Life, vol. 1, p. 168 sq.)
