vi PREFACE. 



been able to cross the barrier which separates the Aryan from the Semitic lan- 

 guages, and these are the two most thoroughly explored, and discover the pro- 

 cesses by which, if originally derived from a common speech, they have become 

 radically changed in their ultimate forms. It was with special reference to the 

 bearing which the systems of consanguinity and affinity of the several families of 

 mankind might have upon this vital question, that the research, the results of 

 which are contained in this volume, was undertaken. 



In the systems of relationship of the great families of mankind some of the 

 oldest memorials of human thought and experience are deposited and preserved. 

 They have been handed down as transmitted systems, through the channels of the 

 blood, from the earliest ages of man's existence upon the earth ; but revealing 

 certain definite and progressive changes with the growth of man's experience in 

 the ages of barbarism. To such conclusions the evidence, drawn from a comparison 

 of the forms which now prevail in different families, appears to tend. 



All the forms thus far discovered resolve themselves, in a comprehensive sense, 

 into two, the descriptive and the classificatory, which are the reverse of each other 

 in their fundamental conceptions. As systems of consanguinity each contains a 

 plan, for the description and classification of kindred, the formation of which was 

 an act of intelligence and knowledge. They ascend by the chain of derivation to 

 a remote antiquity, from which, as defined and indurated forms, their propagation 

 commenced. Whether as organic forms they are capable of crossing the line of 

 demarcation which separates one family from another, and of yielding evidence of 

 the ethnic connection of such families, will depend upon the stability of these 

 forms, and their power of self-perpetuation in the streams of the blood through 

 indefinite periods of time. For the purpose of determining, by ample tests, whether 

 these systems possess such attributes, the investigation has been extended over a 

 field sufficiently wide to embrace four-fifths and upwards, numerically, of the entire 

 human family. The results are contained in the Tables. 



A comparison of these systems, and a careful study of the slight but clearly 

 marked changes through which they have passed, have led, most unexpectedly, to 

 the recovery, conjecturally at least, of the great series or sequence of customs and 

 institutions which mark the pathway of man's progress through the ages of barba- 

 rism ; and by means of which he raised himself from a state of promiscuous inter- 

 course to final civilization. f The general reader may be startled by the principal 

 inference drawn from the classificatory system of relationship, namely, that it 

 originated in the intermarriage of brothers and sisters in a communal family, and 

 that this was the normal state of marriage, as well as of the family, in the early 

 part of the unmeasured ages of barbarism. But the evidence in support of this 

 conclusion seems to be decisive. Although it is difficult to conceive of the ex T 



