Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/95

Rh special social conditions which have arisen within each kind of social grouping, either as the result of changes within each form of social organisation or of transitions from one form to another. We know of a far larger number of such varieties within the classificatory system than within those due to the two forms of the family, and this is probably due in some measure to the fact that the classificatory system is still by far the most widely distributed form over the earth's surface. Still more important, however, is the fact that among the peoples who use the classificatory system there is an infinitely greater variety of social institution, and especially of forms of marriage, than exist among civilised peoples whose main social unit, the family, is not one which is capable of any extended range of variation. The result of the complete survey has been to justify my use of the classificatory system as the means whereby to demonstrate the dependence of the terminology of relationship upon social conditions. It is the great variability of this mode of denoting relatives which makes it so valuable an instrument for the study of the laws which have governed the history of that department of language by which mankind has denoted those who stand in social relations to himself.

You may have been wondering whether I am going to say anything about the merits of the controversy which has till now given to systems of relationship their chief interest among students of