INDEX TO ABBREVIATIONS.
| Allg. Miss. Zts., 1 Am. Anth., 2 Am. Phil. Soc., 44 Ann. Soc., 3 Aust. Ass. Adv. Sci., 45 Col. Mag., 8 C. T., 54 Ethn. Notes, 35 Fort. Rev., 14 J. A. I., 23 J. R. G. S., 24 J. R. S. N. S. W., 25 J. R. S. Vict., 48 | Nat. Tr., 54 Nor. Tr., 55 N. Q. Ethn. Bull., 6 N. T., 21 Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., 44 Proc. R. G. S. Qn., 46 Proc. R. S. Vict., 48 R. G. S. Qn., 47 Sci. Man, 52 T. R. S. S. A., 58 West. Aust., 60 Zts. vgl. Rechtsw., 64 |
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Social organisation. Associations in the lower stages of culture. Consanguinity and Kinship. The Tribe. Kinship groups; totem kins; phratries.
The passage from what is commonly termed savagery through barbarism to civilisation is marked by a change in the character of the associations which are almost everywhere a feature of human society. In the lower stages of culture, save among peoples whose organisation has perished under the pressure of foreign invasion or other external influences, man is found grouped into totem kins, intermarrying classes and similar organised bodies, and one of their most important characteristics is that membership of them depends on birth, not on the choice of the individual. In modern society, on the other hand, associations of this sort have entirely disappeared and man is grouped in voluntary societies, membership of which depends on his own choice.
It is true that the family, which exists in the lower stages of culture, though it is overshadowed by the other social phenomena, has persisted through all the manifold revolutions of society; especially in the stage of barbarism, its importance in some directions, such as the regulation of marriage, often forbidden within limits of consanguinity much wider than among ourselves, approaches the influence of the forms of natal association which it had supplanted. In the present day, however, if we set aside its economic and steadily diminishing ethical sides, it cannot be compared in importance with the territorial groupings on which state and municipal activities depend.
If the family is a persistent type the tribe may also be compared to the modern state; it is, in most parts of the world, no less territorial in its nature; membership of it does not depend among the Australians on any supposed descent from a common ancestor; and though residence plus possession of a common speech is mentioned by Howitt as the test of tribe, it is possible in Australia, under certain conditions[1], to pass from one tribe to another in such a way that we seem reduced to residence as the test of membership. This change of tribe takes place almost exclusively where tribes are friendly, so far as is known; and we may doubt whether it would be possible for a stranger to settle, without any rite of adoption, in the midst of a hostile or even of an unknown tribe; but this is clearly a matter of minor importance, if adoption is not, as in North America, an invariable element of the change of tribe. Although membership of a tribe is thus loosely determined, tribesmen feel themselves bound by ties of some kind to their fellow-tribesmen, as we shall see below, but in this they do not differ from the members of any modern state.