Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/205

Rh of being artificial; and the inference that they must have been deliberately devised, not created by a series of accidents, that they are a product of reason, not of chance, is confirmed by a closer examination. For it can easily be shown that the effect of dividing a tribe into two exogamous classes is to prevent the marriage of brothers with sisters; that the effect of dividing a tribe into four exogamous classes, with the characteristic rule of descent, is to prevent the marriage of parents with children; and that the effect of dividing a tribe into eight exogamous classes, with the characteristic rule of descent, is to prevent a man's children from marrying his sister's children—that is, its effect is to prevent the marriage of some, though not all, of those whom we call first cousins. As all the marriages which these rules actually bar are abhorred by the Australian aborigines, it is natural to infer that the effect which the rules produce is the effect which they were designed to produce; in other words, that the rules, which have certainly the appearance of being artificial, are really so, having been devised to accomplish the very object which in point of fact they do very successfully achieve. If this inference is sound, the deliberate institution of the Australian marriage system may be taken as proved.

The objections raised to this view by those who know the Australian natives only or mainly through books resolve themselves, roughly speaking, into two. First, they deny that the Australian savages are capable of thinking out a marriage system at once so complex and so regular. But this objection is outweighed by the testimony of those who best know the Australian aborigines