In all periods of transition which a process in change in progress implies, we expect to find cases where the conservative force of tradition from the past has delayed recognition of the too novel present, and we discover that circumstances have moved too rapidly for the intelligence of the times. If we keep this fact in view, we have thus seemed to find a natural explanation of the knotty point which was the cause of dispute between Mr. Morgan and Mr. McLennan,[12] and we may thus venture to say that each was both wrong and right in his views of the classificatory system in general. Each has mistaken a part for a whole, and they were ignorant that they were upholding two sides of the same question. Mr. Morgan was in error in assuming the system's too intimate connection with a determination of affinities in blood, in relation to which primarily, as we hope to have shown, it had really neither purpose nor aim, as also in his too hasty assumption of a consanguine family founded on brother and sister incest, based on a mere conjectural solution of a verbal detail, an assumption which he himself acknowledges had no other foundation.
Mr. McLennan was in error in maintaining that the classificatory system concerned terms of address alone. To quote his own words: 'What duties or rights are affected by the "relationships" comprised in the classificatory system? Absolutely none; they are barren of consequences, except indeed as comprising a code of courtesies and ceremonial addresses in social intercourse.' On the other hand, as we have tried to show, the system had precisely both intention and effect in regulation, as regards sexual feeling, which is the strongest passion in nature. And yet each disputant again was right in a degree, for, in later times, the classificatory distinctions really served as terms of address as regards the clan [tribe?], whilst again the primitive terms, which simply describe generations of persons in their relation to the group, were afterwards, by philological transmutation, to come to have a more definite meaning expressing the sense of the personal parent.
NOTE TO CHAPTER VIII
Group Marriage
The idea that 'group marriage' exists among the dusky natives of Australia, and that 'the group is the social unit as regards marriage' (as explained in the earlier part of this book), was introduced by Messrs. Howitt and Fison in their Kamilaroi and Kurnai (1880). Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, in their Natives of Central Australia (1899), support the views of Messrs. Fison and Howitt. 'Under certain modifications group marriage still exists as an actual custom, regulated by fixed and well recognised rules, amongst various Australian tribes' (p. 56). 'Individual marriage does not exist either in name or practice in the Urabunna tribe' (p. 63). Mr. Crawley argues, on the other hand, that individual marriage does exist among the Urabunna, 'though slightly modified' (Mystic Rose, p. 482). For each 'slight modification,' the husband's consent must be obtained. The system is regarded by Mr. Crawley, not as a survival of promiscuity, more or less modified, but as an 'abnormal development.' He believes in individual marriage, as, from the earliest known times, 'the regular type of union of man and woman.' 'One is struck by the high morality of primitive man' (pp. 483-484).
What Mr. Atkinson meant by saying that 'marriage is communal,' I do not understand, as, on his theory, sexual jealousy must have prevented each man of a generation, in a group, from being equally the husband of each woman, not his sister. The young braves are supposed to bring in women captives from without, and to marry them 'communally,' Then what becomes of jealousy? They ought rather to have fought for their captive, on the principles of a golf tournament, the survivor and winner taking the bride. Mr. Atkinson never saw his work except in his manuscript, and might have made modifications on such points as this, where he seems to me to lose grasp of his idea, as in his theory of recognition of the children of 'the outside suitor,' he seems to bring male descent into action at a period when, as he asserts elsewhere, it was not yet recognised by customary law. On the Keddies (p. 287) I have no information, the author giving no reference. A. L.
[1] Ancient Society, p. 384, Lewis H. Morgan.
[2] Ibid. p. 402.