Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/208

178 persons whom the authors of it had no intention of separating; it was a device admirably adapted to effect just what its inventors intended, neither more nor less."

"But while there are strong grounds for thinking that the system of exogamy has been deliberately devised and instituted for the purpose of effecting just what it does effect, it would doubtless be a mistake to suppose that its most complex form, the eight-class system, was struck out at a single blow. All the evidence and probability are in favour of the view that the system originated in a simple division of the community into two exogamous classes only; that, when this was found insufficient to bar marriages which the natives regarded as objectionable, each of the two classes was again subdivided into two, making four exogamous classes in all; and, finally, that, when four exogamous classes still proved to be insufficient for the purpose, each of them was again subdivided into two, making eight exogamous classes in all. Thus from a simple beginning the Australians appear to have advanced step by step to the complex system of eight exogamous classes, the process being one of successive bisections or dichotomies. The first bisection, as I have said, prevented the marriage of brothers with sisters; the second bisection, combined with the characteristic rule of descent, prevented the marriage of parents with children; and the third bisection, combined with the characteristic rule of descent, prevented the marriage of a man's children with the children of his sister; in other words, it prevented the marriage of some, but not all, of those whom we call first cousins."

But, if the system was devised to prevent the marriage of brothers with sisters, of parents with children, and of a man's children with his sister's children, it seems to follow