U SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



must be found able, -when once established, to pei-petuate themselves through 

 indefinite periods of time. The question of their use must turn upon that of the 

 stability of their radical features. Development and modification, to a very 

 considerable extent, are revealed in the tables in which the comparison of forms 

 is made upon an extended scale; but it will be observed, on further examination, 

 that these changes are further developments of the fundamental conceptions which 

 lie, respectively, at the foundation of the two original systems. 



There is one powerful motive which might, under certain circumstances, tend^ 

 to the overthrow of the classificatory form and the substitution of the descriptive, 

 but it would arise after the attainment of civihzation. This is the inheritance of 

 estates. It may be premised that the bond of kindred, among uncivilized nations, 

 is a strong influence for the mutual protection of related persons. Among nomadic 

 stocks, especially, the respectability of the individual was measiired, in no small 

 degree, by the number of his kinsmen. The Avider the circle of kindred the 

 greater the assurance of safety, since they were the natural guardians of his rights 

 and the avengers of his wrongs. Whether designedly or otherwise, the Turanian 

 form of consanguinity organized the family upon the largest scale of numbers. 

 On the other hand, a gradual change from a nomadic to a civilized condition 

 would prove the severest test to which a system of consanguinity could be sub- 

 jected. The protection of the law, or of the State, Avould become substituted for 

 that of kinsmen; but with more effective power the rights of property might 

 influence the system of relationship. This last consideration, which Avould not 

 arise until after a people had emerged from barbarism, would be adequate beyond, 

 any other known cause to effect a radical change in a pre-existing system, if this 

 recognized relationships which would defeat natural justice in the inheritance of 

 property. In Tamilian society, where my brother's son and my cousin's son are 

 both my sons, a useful purpose may have been subserved by drawing closer, in 

 this manner, the kindred bond; but in a civilized sense it would be manifestly 

 unjust to place either of these collateral sons upon an equality with my own son 

 for the inheritance of my estate. Hence the growth of property and the settlement 

 of its distribution might be expected to lead to a more precise discrimination of 

 the several degrees of consanguinity if they were confounded by the previous 

 system. 



Where the original system, anterior to civilization, was descriptive, the tendency 

 to modification, under the influence of refinement, would be in the direction of a 

 more rigorous separation of the several lines of descent, and of a more systematic 

 description of the persons or relationships in each. It would not necessarily lead 

 to the abandonment of old terms nor to the invention of new. This latter belongs, 

 usually, to the formative period of a language. AVhen that is passed, compound 

 terms are resorted to if the descriptive phrases are felt to be inconvenient. 

 AVherever these compounds are found it will be known at once that they are 

 modern in the language. The old terms are not necessarily radical, but they have 

 become so worn down by long-continued use as to render the identification of their 

 component parts impossible. While the growth of nomenclatures of relationship 

 tends to show the direction in which existing systems have been modified, it seems 



