Reason: The husbands of my sisters are my husbands as well as theirs. This difference, however, exists: I can distinguish my own children from those of my sisters, to the latter of whom I am a step-mother. But since this relationship is not discriminated, they fall into the category of my sons and daughters. Otherwise they would fall without the system.
VII. All the children of several own brothers are brothers and sisters to each other.
Reason: These brothers are the husbands of all the mothers of these children. The children can distinguish their own mothers, but not their fathers, wherefore, as to the former, a part are own brothers and sisters, and step-brothers and step-sisters to the remainder; but as to the latter, they are probable brothers and sisters. For these reasons they naturally fall into this category.
VIII. The children of these brothers and sisters are also brothers and sisters to each other; the children of the latter are brothers and sisters again, and this relationship continues downward among their descendants indefinitely. It is precisely the same with the children and descendants of several own sisters, and of several brothers and sisters. An infinite series is thus created, which is a fundamental part of the system. To account for this series it must be further assumed that the marriage relation extended wherever the relationship of brother and sister was recognized to exist; each brother having as many wives as he had sisters, own or collateral, and each sister having as many husbands as she had brothers, own or collateral. Marriage and the family seem to form in the grade or category, and to be coextensive with it. Such apparently was the beginning of that stupendous conjugal system which has before been a number of times adverted to.
IX. All the brothers of my father are my fathers; and all the sisters of my mother are my mothers.
Reasons, as in I, III, and VI.
X. All the brothers of my mother are my fathers.
Reason: They are my mother’s husbands.
XI. All the sisters of my mother are my mothers.
Reasons, as in VI.