These examples show clearly that it would be incorrect to treat physiological consanguinity as a constant and indispensable constituent of parental kinship.
Besides these Australian examples[524] there may be adduced many cases from other societies in which the ties of blood play no part in the collective ideas of kinship. The Naudowessies have the curious idea that their offspring are indebted to their father for their souls, the invisible part of their essence, and to the mother for their corporeal and visible part.[525] Here the father's part in procreation was probably known, but the interpretation thereof was not the correct physiological one, but one that created, so to say, a spiritual connection as the bond of paternal kinship, whereas maternal kinship was conceived in terms of consanguinity. On the other hand, "according to Kafir ideas a child descends chiefly, though not exclusively, from the father"[526]—a belief analogous to that of the South-East Australians. The same belief was held in several higher societies (Egyptians, Hindoos, Greeks).[527] Dargun has made a list of peoples among whom the (social) father of the children is quite indifferent as to whether they are really begotten by him.[528] Among the Todas, where the determination of paternity is quite out of the question, owing to their polyandry, fatherhood is determined only by the performance of a conventional ceremony (the rite of pursütpimi, or handing over to the pregnant woman a miniature bow and arrow). This constitutes fatherhood; the man who has performed this ceremony is the (social) father of the child, even if it were certain that he had not begotten it.[529] Another interesting case was discovered by Dr. Rivers amongst the Banks Islanders. There fatherhood is determined by the fact of paying the midwife.
But the most noteworthy cases in regard to the present subject are those where fatherhood in its social sense is not consanguineous owing to the ignorance of the physiological laws of reproduction (a state of things mentioned already as obtaining in Central Australia). This ignorance is of general sociological importance, because there are well-founded reasons for believing that it was once universal amongst primitive mankind, as may be held to be proved by Mr. E. S. Hartland in his thorough treatise on Primitive Paternity. For the detailed argument the reader must be referred to this fundamental work.[530] Mr. Sidney Hartland has besides drawn sociological conclusions from those facts in their bearing upon paternal kinship. In Chapter IV of the first volume he gives numerous examples of peoples among whom there is no tie of consanguinity between father and son.[531]
To ascertain the influence of physiological ties of blood on this relation in a given society it is needful to know the way in which they present themselves to the aboriginal mind. That is, we must know the collective ideas of a given society on the facts of procreation. Do they know, or do they not know, the father's part in procreation? But this is not sufficient. Even if they know a certain physiological fact, they may not acknowledge its bearing upon kinship, they may attach no importance to its social aspect. So it is with the fact of physiological maternity in the South-East Australian tribes and with paternity in the cases quoted by Dargun. And it happens very often that in peoples where the causal connection between copulation and pregnancy is well known, fatherhood is by no means determined by its physiological aspect. Not only the collective knowledge of the physiological facts, but also the collective attitude towards them, must therefore be taken into consideration.[532] In short, it may be said that physiological consanguinity has no direct bearing upon social facts.
To define consanguinity in its social meaning, the collective ideas held by a given society on the facts of procreation must be considered. Consanguinity, therefore, is the set of relations involved by the collective ideas under which the facts of procreation are viewed in a given society. And it must be borne in mind that these ideas express not only the purely theoretical views of the social mind on the facts of procreation; they also involve different emotional elements, and especially the social importance given to these facts by society. Consanguinity (as a sociological concept) is therefore not the physiological bond of common blood; it is the social acknowledgment and interpretation of it.
It may be said, therefore, that consanguinity is not always considered as the essence of kinship. If now we wish to determine what are the common features of the different ideas which in different societies define kinship, the only answer is that the said ideas affirm in one way or another a very close, intimate tie between offspring and parents. These ideas may refer kinship to physiological facts (consanguinity as found in the major part of human societies); or they may base kinship on the performance of a quite conventional ceremony (Todas, Banks Islanders); or they may affirm a very close tie between parent and child, on the base of some religious or magic belief (spiritual tie, transmission of soul: the Naudoweissies and some Australian tribes, as will be seen below). It is evident, therefore, that the general idea of kinship cannot be construed in terms of any of these special sets of ideas. The essential features that must be claimed for these ideas (i. e. those ranged in the class of kinship ideas) are: (1) that they must refer to the relation between child and father or mother;[533] and (2) that they must affirm an intimate bond of union of some kind between the parties involved. As may be easily conceived, it will be difficult in very low societies to get hold of these ideas, that is, to obtain the exact answer to the question, "What is kinship?" It is now impossible even to measure exactly the difficulty of getting a precise answer to this question, as ethnographers have never paid special attention to this point. Nevertheless, in Australia we shall be able to get at least some glimpses, which are of the highest theoretical interest. And even the negative result—that the idea of consanguinity must be considered wanting in the majority of Australian tribes—is of considerable theoretical value.
Besides the general question, "What is considered as the source of parental (maternal and paternal) kinship?" we may ask questions about the various other ideas connected with kinship. Here come in the legal, moral, and customary ideas, by which society exercises its normative power in reference to the said relation. Some of these are expressed in different social functions.[534] Others may be reached by the study of beliefs, traditions, customs and other forms of folk-lore. The well-known customs of the couvade are one of the typical functions of the father, in which there is an expression of a deep connection of a magical kind between the father and his offspring. Whatever explanation of these customs may be given,[535] it cannot be denied that they are based upon the idea of a very intimate tie between the two individuals involved, and that this tie is conceived as being of a mystical character.
There is also a series of social rules which regulate the social position of the offspring according to that of its parents. This group of rules might appropriately be called descent in the social sense of this word.[536] In the Australian societies, e. g. the membership of different social groups—as the local group, the totemic clan, the phratry, the class—is determined by the membership of one of the parents of the given individual. And many authors speak of tribes with paternal and maternal descent. It must be borne in mind, nevertheless, that in order to use the word descent in a definite sense it is always necessary to add what social group is meant. For it is possible that membership in the local group is determined by the father, membership of the phratry by the mother, and membership in the clan by neither of them. The facts of descent do not seem to play a very important rôle and are not suitable to be chosen as the most important feature of kinship. The facts of inheritance also have not very much influence upon kinship (compare below, [pp. 290], [291]).
As it is easy to see, looking at our own ideas on parental kinship, all the normative ideas, whether religious, moral or legal, are in close connection with the central, basic idea, i. e. in the case of our society, the idea of consanguinity. And these normative ideas are brought by the collective mind into causal connection with the central idea of community of blood.[537] It would be the ideal of sociological research as regards our present subject if we could bring in any given society all the normative ideas into such a causal dependence upon the central idea, and explain how they are conceived by the collective mind as the outgrowth of this root idea; thus showing how all the legal, moral and customary aspects converge on the fundamental concept of kinship. Unhappily, in low societies the imperfection of ethnographic material would frustrate any attempt at such an enterprise. In Australia our knowledge of these aspects—moral, legal and customary—is very scanty. Although they are all undoubtedly in quite a rudimentary state, careful investigation would possibly disclose many points of extreme interest.
One other problem must be discussed here more in detail, owing to its great theoretical importance, viz. the legal aspect of parental kinship. We have defined above the meaning of the word legal.[538] In connection with what has been said, we may affirm that the legal is only one of the many aspects of kinship; that legal ideas, as far as known for any given society, must be taken into account when defining kinship, but that the latter cannot possibly be reduced to its legal aspect only. And it is still more incorrect[539] to represent physiological consanguinity and legal power over the child as two mutually exclusive sets of facts beyond which there can be no determination of parental kinship. We find the opinion expressed by many authors, especially with regard to Australia, that where-ever the tie binding parent and child was not constituted by the acknowledgment of consanguinity, that there always it was based on legal principles such as potestas, authority, Machtstellung, or other similar ones.