[571] "No advocate of innate ideas will maintain their existence on relationship by blood," op. cit., p. 83.
[572] Primitive Paternity, i. pp. 257-258.
[573] Sidney Hartland, ii. p. 99.
[574] Of course I insist here only upon the logical and methodological priority of the psychological determination of kinship over the genealogical. In reality, wherever individual paternal kinship exists, the genealogies may be drawn first, and they possess an independent value, even if we did not know what is the content of the aboriginal idea of kinship. There is a series of highly valuable sociological conclusions that may be drawn from a system of genealogies (compare Dr. Rivers' article on this subject in Sociological Review, 1910, pp. 1 sqq.).
I do not, therefore, agree with the following remark of Sir Laurence Gomme (op. cit., p. 232): "It is of no use preparing a genealogical tree on the basis of civilized knowledge of genealogy if such a document is beyond the ken of the people to whom it relates. The information for it may be correctly collected, but if the whole structure is not within the compass of savage thought it is a misleading anthropological document." If it is possible at all to collect a genealogy, that means that individual kinship exists in such a community; in other words the "structure is within the compass of savage thought," only it is not apprehended by them in the same manner as by us. It is certainly true that in many cases the knowledge of this aboriginal apprehension is essentially needful for a sociologist. This has been argued in the text.
[575] Camb. Univ. Exp., v. chap. iii. on Kinship, pp. 129 sqq. In particular, pp. 142-152, under the headings "The Functions of certain Kin," and "Kinship Taboos."
[576] Recorded by Dr. Haddon, loc. cit., v. p. 210.
[577] Kam. and Kurn.
[578] A.S., i. p. 316.
[579] Ibid., p. 318.