OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: FEBRUARY 11, 1868. 439 



accordance with the nature of descents. It is, therefore, a natural 

 system, for the reason that the relationships recognized are those which 

 actually exist. But it assumes as its fundamental basis the antecedent 

 existence of marriage between single pairs. Before this system could 

 come into existence, mankind must have raised themselves to this state 

 of marriage ; after which this form of marriage, and not nature, teaches 

 the descriptive system of relationship. It is important that this dis- 

 tinction should be noted. 



In the second form, consanguinei are never described by a combina- 

 tion of the primary terms ; but they are classified into categories, and 

 the same term of relationship is applied, without distinction, to each 

 of the members of the same category. This is the system of the 

 Malayan, Ganowanian, and Turanian families. It suggests the proba- 

 bility that there might have been a state of society in the primitive 

 ages in which marriage between single pairs was unknown, in which 

 the family, in its modern sense, was unknown ; but in which a sys- 

 tem of relationship might have originated in compound marriages in 

 a communal family, and thus be in strict accordance with the nature 

 of descents, and, therefore a natural system because it recognized the 

 relationships actually existing. This suggestion should also be noted. 



1. System of Relationship of the Aryan Family. 



A knowledge of the descriptive system became important for two 

 principal reasons. First,, it was necessary to find the limits of its 

 spread to circumscribe the classificatory form : and, secondly, it was 

 necessary to find the basis upon which it rested, to reach the instru- 

 mentalities by means of which the classificatory system, if it ever pre- 

 vailed among the remote ancestors of the Aryan family, might possibly 

 have been overthrown, and the descriptive substituted in its place. 



As none of the characteristics of the former system are involved 

 in the solution of the origin of the latter, it will be sufficient for my 

 present purpose to present the substance of the Aryan form without 

 comment. The Itoman, as found in the Pandects* and Institutes of 

 Justinian,t will be used as the typical system. Its completeness and 

 perfection is due to the Roman civilians, and arose from a necessity for 

 a code of descents, defining the relations of consanguinei to each other, 

 to regulate the transmission of property by inheritance. 



* Panel. Lib. XXXVIII. Tit. X. " Do gradibus et adfinibus et nominibus 

 eorum." 



\ Just. Inst. Lib. III. Tit. VI. " Dc gradibus Cognationum." 



