426 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



the next place, by allowing the males to marry into two classes of 

 females, instead of one, a still greater advance was made, and of a 

 radical character. These changes must be regarded as reformatory 

 movements tending to the realization of the true ideal of the tribe, in 

 which, as elsewhere stated, a man can marry a woman of any tribe but 

 his own, and also of any foreign nation. The Kamilaroi tribal system 

 is below this final stage. Beside this, it still retains a conjugal system 

 more stupendous and extraordinary than any hitherto found in any 

 nation of barbarians, or in any other nation of savages. 



The social state of the Kamilaroi, with the classes in full vigor, but 

 enveloped in a tribal organization progressing gradually to their over- 

 throw, seems much nearer the primitive constitution of society than any 

 organized form previously known. It has, in all probability, remained 

 in this condition substantially for centuries, the changes above indi- 

 cated representing the whole amount since the tribal idea was devel- 

 oped. It does not follow that this form of the system was indigenous 

 in Australia, since it may have been carried, with their remote island 

 ancestors, from a primitive Asiatic seat, and maintained, with slight 

 changes, through the intermediate periods of time. The antiquity of 

 the tribal organization is without known limits. It is, at least, coeval 

 in its germ with the time when brothers and sisters ceased to inter- 

 marry. The hypothesis of its propagation from an original centre into 

 all the families of mankind is much more in harmony with ascertained 

 facts than any other, looking to its spontaneous or indigenous develop- 

 ment in many different places and in different ages. Original ideas, 

 absolutely independent of previous knowledge and experience, are 

 necessarily few in number, and as rare as original germs of animal 

 life. Were it possible to reduce the present sum of human ideas to 

 underived originals, the numerical result would be startling. Human 

 experience has run in such uniform channels as to suggest the presence 

 of a governing element incorporated in the original constitution of man, 

 which predetermined the direction and limits of this experience. This 

 argument leads to an original man ; and to his development, through 

 growth and specific reproduction, which necessarily must have been 

 progressive, logical, and homogeneous. The tribal organization seems 

 to have sprung from this class of primary conceptions. 



The barbarian family, which has been frequently named, is more 

 easily characterized than defined. Its nucleus was a pair, of which the 

 man regarded the woman as his principal wife, and the woman the man 



