414 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



tery, and to surrender itself to its powerful influence. Its dominance 

 as a passion marks the epoch of civilization commenced. We must 

 recognize this remarkable passion as the only power able to master the 

 hindrances and overcome the obstructions in the pathway of civiliza- 

 tion. Property and civilization are substantially convertible terms. 

 A minute knowledge of the processes of evolution of this idea would 

 constitute in some respects the most extraordinary chapter of the 

 mental history of mankind. 



The materials to be presented in this paper tend to illustrate, and 

 are confined to, the state of marriage, of the family, and of the tribal 

 organization among the Australian aborigines. 



Systems of consanguinity and the tribal organization as they are 

 now found to exist among savage and barbarous nations are chiefly 

 important from the light they seem to throw upon the growth of the 

 idea of the family through successive stages of development. Some 

 of these systems of consanguinity are either primitive or quite near 

 the primitive form, whilst others are in different stages of advance- 

 ment. They indicate with substantial certainty that the Communal 

 Family, founded upon the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, was the 

 first and earliest form of the family in the primitive ages ; or, at least, 

 the earliest we are as yet able to recognize. Between this and the 

 Barbarian Family (second stage of the family) there was a wide in- 

 terval. The tribal organization intervened between these forms, and 

 produced the gradual transition from one into the other. It seems to 

 have been the primary object of this organization to break up the 

 intermarriage of brothers and sisters, although the same result was 

 reached among the Australian aborigines by a sexual organization 

 anterior, in the order of time, to the totemic system. Brothers and 

 sisters were necessarily of the same tribe, and marriage between them 

 was permanently abolished by the prohibition of intermarriage in the 

 tribe. The tribal organization tended to inaugurate marriage between 

 single pairs, since it forced individuals to seek wives from other tribes, 

 or to acquire them by negotiation, by purchase, and by capture. This 

 tendency, however, was retarded by the subdivision of the same people 

 into several tribes, which furnished each other with wives ; but more 

 especially by a system of regulated cohabitation, running by conjugal 

 right {jura conjugialia)* through a large circle of related persons. 



* The Romans made a distinction between connubium, which related to wedlock, 

 considered as a civil institution, and conjugium, which was a mere physical union. 



