ABSTRACT
The Henry Myers lecture is meant to be addressed to a mixed audience of anthropologists and non-anthropologists of varied interests. Robertson Smith was not the only scholar of his generation who perceived the connection between the institutions of kinship on the one hand, and religious beliefs and practices on the other. Anthropologists have long been familiar with the parallels in primitive society. But its cardinal importance in social life was only beginning to be understood in 1932, partly through coming into the limelight of psychoanalysis but more particularly through the kinship studies of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. The avoidances observed by first-born children towards their parent of like sex were quickly and frequently brought to the author's notice among the Tallensi. Piety is a word packed with ambiguity, for people , and not altogether free of derogatory associations.
