Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/97

Rh In an article published in 1907 I showed that it rather represents a late stage in the history of the more ordinary forms of the classificatory system. My conclusion at that time was based on the scanty evidence derived from the relatively few Oceanic systems which had then been recorded, but my work since that article was written has shown the absolute correctness of my earlier opinion, which I can now support by a far larger body of evidence than was available in 1907. It remains possible, however, that the Hawaiian system may have had its source in promiscuity, even though this condition be late rather than primitive, but it would be going beyond the scope of these lectures to deal fully with this subject here. I cannot forbear, however, from mentioning that Hawaiian promiscuity, in so far as it existed, was not the condition of the whole people, but only of the chiefs who alone were allowed to contract brother and sister marriages, while I have evidence that the avoidance of brother and sister in Melanesia, which has so often been regarded as a survival of man's early promiscuity, is capable of a very different explanation. Our available knowledge, whether derived from features of the classificatory system or from other social facts, does not provide one shred of evidence in favour of such a condition as was put forward by Morgan as the earliest stage of human society, nor is there any evidence that such