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natives are Avithout laws, commimisls and all on an equality. It 

 follows as a matter of course, that he himself alone represents the 

 legislator as well as the magistrate to the natives who live with- 

 in his precinct. The SOCIAL ORGANISATION WHICH HAS IN THIS 

 WAY ESCAPKI) OBSERVATION IS CERTAINLY ALWAYS SIMPLE, BUT 

 WELL ADAPTED to its aim and even indispensable in consideration 

 of the conditions to which the subsistence of a sealhunting 

 nation is submitted. The extraordinary energy they have dis- 

 played in their struggle for life, in braving the most deterring 

 physical difficulties necessitates cooperation and for this reason 

 laws and discipline. What is termed communism in living, as 

 characterising all the earlier steps of culture does not rest upon 

 absolute equality, but is regulated with regard lo the number 

 and the rights of its. members and counterbalanced by strict 

 obligations as to the education, the functions and acts of the 

 individuals. 



So far as our knowledge extends, examples of an organi- 

 sation strictly corresponding to the INDIAN «GENTES« is not as 

 yet discovered among the Eskimo. As at present informed the 

 Indian «gens» consists of a group of relatives tracing a common 

 lineage to a remote, even more or less mythical ancestor. 

 This may be either accordingly to father or to mother- right, 

 as in some tribes the children belong to the «gens» of the 

 father, in others to that of the mother and no man can marry 

 in his own gens. If even an organisation of this kind may 

 exist in the Western regions, its maintainance elsewhere seems 

 to be incompatible with the extraordinary despersion, the scanty 

 intercourse between the small communities into which the 

 nation always tends to divide. But if the original ideas of the 

 «gentes» organisation is that of preventing degeneration by mar- 

 riages betAveen too nearly related persons, the same is observed 

 as a ruling principle in the Eskimo society. It is well known 

 that RELATIONSHIP IS HIGHLY THOUGHT OF BY THE ESKIMO. 

 This fact is evident merely from the rather complicated system 



