Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/347

Rh of the tribe, would have been accustomed to attack and slay, or drive away the younger men, when masculine instincts began to show themselves in these, or to reduce them to a state of submission; and in the course of evolution the milder alternative has prevailed. Without pronouncing an opinion on the point, it is sufficient to adduce it here as showing that the precept we are considering has so little to do with the Decalogue that, to a scientific man who approaches the Australian mysteries having no theological preoccupation, they suggest something on a totally different plane from the Fifth Commandment.

The next precept is: "To share everything they have with their friends." "Do to others as you would have others do to you," observes Mr. Lang under his breath; and elsewhere he refers to "the central moral doctrine of Christianity," and "the lesson of Our Lord" (pp. 196, 195, 235). The interpretation is, however, not so easy and offhand. The precept as given by Mr. Howitt is not—none of them is—an exact report, but a very summary statement. And in reporting it he has chosen words unfortunately ambiguous. To attain a fairly correct notion of its real meaning, we must know something of the customs of the Australian race in general, and in particular of the Kurnai. Among a race low as this in scale of civilisation very little property was owned. There is some discrepancy in the evidence as to individual ownership of land; but on the whole there can be little doubt that Mr. Brough Smyth is right in summing up against it. It is possible that the cases of individual ownership referred to by Grey and Eyre were invasions of tribal or clan rights; and if so, one object of the instructions summarised in Mr. Howitt's second precept may have been to discountenance, in the general interest, any aggressions of the kind. It is more likely