472 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



The present existence of the classificatory system, with the interna 

 evidence of its transition from the Malayan to the Turanian form is in 

 itself a powerful argument in favor of the existence of the customs 

 and institutions previously assumed ; and also in favor of the origina- 

 tion of the i-emainder of the series in the order stated. All except the 

 first and second, and perhaps the fourth, still prevail in portions of the 

 human family, and are knowni to have existed as far back in the past 

 as the oldest historical records ascend, with abundant evidence of the 

 previous existence of some of them from time immemorial. 



It yet remains to present a few facts with reference to .the order of 

 their origination as a great progressive series founded upon the growth 

 of man's experience, and also with reference to their reformatory 

 character. The establishment of this series, as a means for recovering 

 th(i thread of man's history through the primitive ages, is the principal 

 result of this solution of the origin of the classificatory system. 



For the purpose of presenting a few. of these facts, it will be neces- 

 sary to recapitulate the series. 



1. Promiscuous Intercourse. — This expresses the lowest conceiv- 

 able stage of barbarism in which mankind could be found. In this 

 condition man could scarcely be distinguished from the mutes, except 

 in the potential capacity of his endowments. Ignoi-ant of marriage in 

 its proper sense, of the family except the communal, and with the 

 propensity to pair still undeveloped, he was not only a barbarian, but a 

 savage, with a feeble intellect and a still feebler moral sense. His 

 only hope of elevation rested in the fierceness of his passions, and in the 

 improvable character of his nascent mental and moral powers. The 

 lessening volume of the skull and its low animal characteristics, as we 

 recede in the direction of the primitive man, deliver a decisive testimony 

 concerning his immense inferiority to his civilized descendants. The 

 implements of stone and flint found over the greater part of the earth 

 attest the rudeness of his condition when he subsisted chiefly upon 

 fi.-h ; leaving it doubtful whether, to become a fisherman, he had not 

 raised himself from a still more humble condition. That the ances- 

 tois of the present civilized nations were, in the primitive ages, savages 

 of this description, is not improbable ; neither is it a violent supposition 

 tliat they, as well as the ancestors of the present barbarous nations, 

 once lived in a state of promiscuous intercourse, of which., as to the 

 latter, their systems of consanguinity and affinity still embody the evi- 



