Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/344

322 who possess even an approximate mastery of their complexities. One is therefore tempted to suggest that it is this complexity which makes the social organisation of the Australians so obtrusive that it comes into the focus of direct and fully conscious attention. If this argument from our own incapacity stood alone, I should attach little importance to it. It would be the utilisation of a line of argument which I believe to be thoroughly vicious, being based on the idea that because an institution is strange and unintelligible to us, it must therefore be so to those of whose life it forms an integral part. But this argument does not stand alone. The accounts of various writers make it probable that the social regulations of the Australians do not work smoothly; that doubtful cases frequently arise which have to be settled by the elders; and there seems also to be little doubt that these knotty points arise, not merely in personal and concrete matters, but may involve the interpretation and even in some cases the modification of customary social regulations. So far as I am aware, the Australians are again exceptional in this respect. In places with which I have myself had to deal, the chiefs or elders or other governing element of the community often have to decide matters of fact, such as the exact relationship of persons to one another, the paternity of a child, the right of persons to land, etc., but it is most exceptional that they have to interpret or modify social regulations. The only example of which I can think is when there arises the necessity for the interpretation of the extent of the classificatory principle of relationship, and I do not know of a single instance in which there has been such deliberate modification of social regulations as seems to occur in Australia.

There is reason to believe, then, that the complexities of Australian social structure are such as to bring it frequently into focal attention, and make it a matter with an obvious and vivid interest. It is at least remarkable that a people