Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/206

176 personally, such as Dr. Howitt and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, in whose opinion the natives are quite capable both of conceiving and of executing the system in question. That the natives understand their complex system perfectly, and work it smoothly and regularly, is certain. Why, then, should they not have originated it? Would they be more likely to understand and work it, as they do, without any serious hitch, if they had drifted into it by accident than if they had thought it out for themselves?

The other objection often brought against the theory of the deliberate institution of the Australian marriage system is that, if the system was designed to prevent the marriage of brothers with sisters, of parents with children, and of a man's children with his sister's children, it greatly overshoots the mark by simultaneously barring the marriage of many other persons who stand in none of these relationships to each other. This objection implies a total misconception of the Australian system of relationships. For, according to the classificatory system of relationship, which is universally prevalent among the Australian aborigines, the terms father, mother, brother, sister, son, and daughter are employed in a far wider signification than with us, so as to include many persons who are no blood relations at all to the speaker. The system sorts out the whole community into classes or groups, which are variously designated by these terms; the relationship which it recognises between members of a class or group is social, not consanguineous; and though each class or