At all events, although the evidence upon the division of consumption is rather scanty, the evidence about the division of labour is plentiful, and this latter may be regarded as one of the well-established features of Australian sociology.[951] The features of communism show us also that individual property in land has little economic meaning. If there is game, the privilege of hunting it is not an important one, since all members of the friendly group will partake of the results. To what was said regarding the unity of the family as an exclusive land owner (above, [pp. 150] sqq.), there is, therefore, nothing to be added.
The custom of a communistic division of game points also to the acknowledgment of family ties beyond the narrow circle of the individual family.[952] For the duty of a man in distributing the game, according to the majority of our statements (about eight in thirteen), is governed in the first place by the degree of relationship in which he stands to different people. And it is the individual, not the group relationship that is to be taken into account here. In Howitt's statements (which are the best) we see that the parents-in-law stand always in the first place. This agrees with what we read in Spencer and Gillen; and from both these statements we may conclude that these duties are a sort of continuation or equivalent of the bride-price, of which we find traces in Australia.
Let us say a few words about inheritance. As inheritance implies the existence of private property, we may look for it only where there is private property in Australia. In the first place there is "private landed property." We saw that "property" must be understood in the cases of individuals much more in a mystic, magical sense than otherwise.[953] Moreover, in the few cases where there is any mention of individual property in land, we found very little information about the principles according to which it is inherited. According to Roth, whose statement on individual proprietorship is the clearest one, we know that this individual right to land is not hereditary, but determined for magical and mystical reasons. In the other cases we are not informed at all how the individual or family comes into possession, or are informed in such an inexact way[954] that we cannot attach much value to the information. From our best sources (Spencer and Gillen and Roth) we know that the ties binding an individual to a given locality are of mystical, magico-religious character, and were determined not by heredity, but by a special principle connected with their beliefs, and we may suppose that this was the rule, especially as individual land ownership seems to be on the whole more of a magico-religious than of a purely economic order. As to the inheritance of other property, there is little to say about it, unimportant as it was itself.[955] According to some writers, it passes from father to son (e. g. Fraser). Elsewhere we read that it is inherited by certain groups of men from their common relations.[956] On the whole, inheritance does not seem to form any important binding element between parents and children, either in the male or in the female line.[957]
CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The aim of the foregoing pages was to give a correct description of the Australian individual family.[958] The chief practical difficulties lay in the methodological treatment of the evidence; in other words, in making the fullest possible use of the material, without inadvertently introducing conjectural elements. We established the necessity of our task by pointing out the following facts: (1) The contradictions, incompleteness and lack of precision in the descriptions of the individual family, given by field ethnographers, who sometimes even go so far as to deny the existence of this institution, such denials being based not upon observation, but upon speculative inference. (2) The discussion of the problem in question or of parts of it (marriage, relationship, descent, etc.), as usually found in ethnographical and sociological works, relates chiefly to the earlier stages of this institution, and as a rule leaves out of sight a series of important points, concerning its actual working, to draw attention to which was in part the aim of the present investigations. Now, considering that ethnological material, especially that from the Australian continent, plays a very important rôle in all general speculations on the history of marriage and the family—Australia being the best-known and the most extensive country inhabited by a very primitive race—it seemed that a careful examination of the facts of family life in Australia would be useful. (3) In the third place it appeared that a minute investigation in this direction might be interesting as an example of a correct sociological definition of the individual family in a given society. To give it, there had to be made a careful collection and classification of material in order to show which facts play an important part in the structure and functions of this institution.
An over-hasty comparative survey of social phenomena, especially if the writer is disposed to see everywhere analogies or even identities without due criticism, too often exaggerates irrelevant features and under-rates the most essential ones in a given area. To obtain an adequate picture of any social institution, even if so well marked by many physiological facts as is the individual family, it is necessary to set forth those of its features which are characteristic in a given society. Further, it appeared necessary to point out some facts, which show that the institution of the individual family is deeply connected with a whole series of customs, beliefs and fundamental phenomena of Australian society; and that it thus appears deeply rooted in its social conditions. In other words, that the individual family is the object of a set of well-determined, categorical, collective ideas. This modest task of a correct and detailed description, made on the basis of sufficient ethnographical material, was the chief aim of the present study.
A few words may be said in the first place about the practical difficulties met with in dealing with the evidence, as foreseen and discussed in the chapter on methodology. The views there set out were, briefly, that it is impossible to use the statements in their crude form, and that consequently they must be submitted to criticism; and that it is necessary also to use caution and method in drawing inferences from the evidence. The results seem to confirm these views. So, for example, we often met with a great deal of inaccuracy—e. g. in expressions like tribe, tribal, community, group, family—and we had always to be cautious and to ascertain carefully their meaning when dealing with the aboriginal mode of living. Sometimes we were able to ascertain this real meaning; sometimes the statement was quite or nearly useless owing to complete confusion. Furthermore, all qualifying expressions referring to the treatment and behaviour of husband and wife, expressions referring to sexual morality, etc., were in the highest degree inexact. Throughout the whole study there was constant necessity for dealing critically with the text of the evidence.
In the second place we had always to analyze the information and to ask a series of definite questions of it. So, for example, in the sexual side of family life we divided our problem into three main questions, and these again into sub-headings. Again the relations between husband and wife were viewed from the legal point (authority of husband), from the psychological point (affection), and in their functional aspect (behaviour and treatment). The relations between parents and children were divided into several headings (affection, treatment, education, etc.), and so forth. On some of such particular points it has been possible to obtain quite definite answers. Where there was a hopeless contradiction, it was carefully pointed out. In the same manner a reliable but apparently singular statement was carefully noted, even if it differed from all the rest of the information. In general the chief methodic rule in utilizing the evidence was to arrange the whole argument and inferences in the clearest possible manner. To this end the number of the statements for and against any opinion was always given; the compatibility of a given inference with the well-established facts of Australian sociology was investigated; and the experimentum crucis, so much recommended by Steinmetz, was applied wherever possible. Attention also has been paid to the geographical point of view. Wherever it has been possible to ascertain local differences in customs, beliefs or institutions, or to show that such differences are localized in more extensive areas, care was taken to point it out. It is obviously an error to take "the Australian Aborigines" as an ethnic unit. Nevertheless many general, fundamental features of family life are undoubtedly common to all the tribes.
The individual family involves both the individual relations between husband and wife, and between parents and children.[959] These two relationships are obviously so intimately connected that the individuality of one of them has as its consequence the individuality of the other; each characteristic feature of one of them stands in a functional relation to some characteristic feature of the other. Both these relationships were studied and their mutual dependence in several respects was indicated.