OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 



493 



Aryan, Semitic, and Uralian families possessed the classificatory system, and broke 

 it np when they reached the family state in its present sense. 



Upon this family, as now constitnted, modern civilized society is organiz(>d and 

 reposes. Tlie whole previous experience and progress of mankind culminated and 

 crystallized in this one great institution. It was of slow growth, planting its roots 

 fiir back in the ages of barbarism ; a final result, to Avhich the experience of the 

 ages had steadily tended. The family, which in this view of the case is essentially 

 modern, is the offspring of this vast and varied experience of the ages of barbarism. 

 Since the family was reached, it has also had its stages of progress, and a number 

 of them. The rise of family names, as distinguished from the single personal name 

 common in barbarous nations, is comparatively modern in the Aryan family. The 

 Roman Gens is one of the earliest illustrations. This people produced the triple 

 formula to indicate the name of the individual, of the Gens or great family, and of 

 i\ve particidar famUij within the Gens. Out of this arose, in due time, the doc- 

 trine of agnation, to distinguish the relationship of the males, Avho bore the family 

 name, from that of the females of the same family. Agnatic relationship was 

 made superior to cognatic, since the females were transferred, by marriage, to the 

 families of their husbands. This overthrew the last vestige of tribalism, and gave 

 to the family its complete individuality. 



XV. The Overthrow of the Classificatory System of Relationship, and the Sub- 

 stitution of the Descriptive. 



It is not my intention to discuss the fragments of evidence yet remaining here 

 and there, tending to show that the Aryan, Semitic, and Uralian famiUes once pos- 

 sessed the classificatory system. I shall content myself with remarking that if 

 such were the fact, the rights of property and the succession to estates would 

 insure its overthrow. Such an hypothesis involves the concession that the remote 

 ancestors of the Celts, and of the Esthonians, and Finns as well, had once attained 

 to the earliest stages of civilization. It is more than probable that the Uralian 

 nations, after reaching the first stages of civilization, were forced out of their area 

 by Aryan nations, and were never afterwards able to recover their lost advantages. 

 Their system of consanguinity seems to require, for its interpretation, such an 

 antecedent experience. Property alone is the only conceivable agency sufficiently 

 potent to accomplish so great a work as the overthrow of the classificatory, and 

 the substitution of the descriptive system. This is shown by the present condition 

 of the classificatory system in the partially civilized nations. 



Finally, in considering the relations of these several customs and institutions to 

 each other, and their order of origination, it cannot be supposed that there was a 

 trenchant line of demarcation between them. They must \ia\e sprung up gradu- 

 ally, prevailed more or less concurrently, and been modified in different areas imd(n- 

 special influences. In the midst of unequal degrees of development, there must 

 have been a constant tendency, under their operative force, from a lower to a higher 

 condition. Remains of each and all of these customs and institutions are still 

 found in some of the nations of mankind. The first seven Avere probably reached 

 at a very early epoch aftei' substantial progress had commenced. 



If this solution of the origin of the classificatory system is accepted, another 



