154 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



promiscuity within certain wide limits in the past, and sanctioning 

 the same within narrower limits in the present. About the class- 

 marriages there is no difficulty. Their general existence is 

 established beyond all question both amongst exogamous and 

 endogamous tribes in Australia, North America, and other regions. 

 Indeed their special importance is due to the fact that strikingly 

 analogous systems still prevail in so many other remote lands, 

 "a circumstance which should go far to uphold the doctrine of 

 the unity of the human race V 



But in the present connection their interest lies in the fact 

 that they exclude the idea of community of women, so that, were 

 class-marriages universal in Australia, Mr Curr would be right in 

 asserting that " the husband is the absolute owner of his wife 

 (or wives) 2 ," and there would be no room for any form of legalised 

 promiscuity. This is seen from the very conditions of the class- 

 system, the chief points of which are: i. All male and female 

 members of a class belong each to a special class determined 

 by parentage ; 2. Marriage within the several classes is barred 

 to their several members, so that no one of, say, Class A, can 

 marry anyone of that class ; 3. Marriage is restricted to certain 

 prescribed classes, so that no one of Class A can marry into any 

 other class, but only into Class B or other prescribed class. 

 4. Except in one doubtful case (the Kurnai) the children belong 

 to a class, which is not that of either parent, but results neverthe- 

 less from parentage. This leads to complications, developing 

 into a system " which seems too intricate to have been the in- 

 vention of tribes so low down in the scale of mental capacity*" 

 and leads eventually to disintegration. 



But although general, the system is not universal, so that 

 theoretically room might be made for the group or 

 communal system, first described by the Rev. Lorimer 



System Fison 4 , then accepted by the late Lewis H. Morgan 4 . 



and despite Mr Curr's crushing exposure, still taken 



of which, as pointed out in Ethnology, p. 9, primitive man can have no thought, 

 though fully alive to the necessity of providing for his daily bread. 



1 Curr, op. cit. I. p. in. - Ib. p. 109. 3 Ib. p. 118. 



4 In Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 1880. Mr A. W. Howitt, joint author of 

 this work, does not commit himself to the theory ; but Prof. Morgan, who 



