PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



AUSTRALIAN GROUP RELATIONS.* 



By A. W. Howitt, F. L. S., F. O. S. 



I — INTRODUCTION. 



There is probably no student of the development of civilized society 

 who will be prepared to maintain that the social unit, during the long 

 period over which history extends into the obscurity of the past, has 

 been, as it is now, the individual. On the contrary, it will I think be 

 readily admitted that the farther we go back the clearer it becomes 

 that it was the group, and not the individual, which formed the basis of 

 human society. 



It seems strange that, although this principle of group relationship 

 as the basis of social organization has been readily admitted as to peoples 

 of the past, it should have been violently denied as existing among 

 savages of the present day. The reason of this may be that the civil- 

 ized man and the savage contemplate their social relations from two 

 entirely different standpoints, though it might not be as difficult for 

 the former to think after the manner of the latter as it is for the latter 

 to fit himself mentally into the surroundings of the former. Train- 

 ing from childhood, with, perhaps, all hereditary tendency of thought, 

 renders this next to impossible to the savage ; but the civilized man has 

 this advantage, that with largely developed mental powers he is able, 

 where opportunity offers, and he cares to avail himself of it, to place 

 himself on the standpoint of the uncivilized, and thus with more or less 

 success to see the surroundings as the savage sees them, and to think 

 of them with his thoughts. 



This difficulty in projecting themselves, as it were, into the mind of 

 the savage, has proved a stumbling block in the path of many anthro- 

 pologists, who have studied the habits and beliefs of the lower races by 

 means of the too often hasty and superficial statements of travellers, 

 without having themselves any practical knowledge as to the modes of 

 thought of the tribes in question ; and thus they have not been in a 



* Read before the Anthropological Society of Washington. 



