OP THE HUMAN FAMILY. 481 



andria, since under one of its branches the several brothers live in polygynia, and 

 their wives in polyandria ; and under the other, the several sisters live in polyandria, 

 and their husbands in polygynia. In other words, it is promiscuous intercourse 

 within prescribed limits. The existence of this custom necessarily implies an ante- 

 cedent condition of promiscuous intercourse, involving the cohabitation of brothers 

 and sisters, and perhaps of parent and child ; thus finding mankind in a condition 

 akin to that of the inferior animals, and more intensely barbarous than we have 

 been accustomed to regard as a possible state of man. It will be seen in the 

 sequel that this custom springs naturally out of the communal family founded upon 

 the intermarriage of brothers and sisters. Seen in this light it is at least suppo- 

 sable that the Hawaiian custom still embodies the evidence of an organic move- 

 ment of society to extricate itself from a worse condition than the one it produced. 

 For it may be affirmed, as a general proposition, that the principal customs and 

 institutions of mankind have originated in great reformatory movements. The 

 Pinaluanic Bond must, therefore, be regarded as a compact between several brothers 

 to defend their common wives, and a like compact between the husbands of several 

 sisters to defend their common wives against the violence of society, thus implying 

 a perpetual struggle amongst the males for the possession of the females. If this 

 supposed origin of the custom is accepted as real, it must be regarded as one of a 

 series of similar movements by means of which mankind emerged from a state of 

 promiscuous intercourse, and afterwards, step by step, and through a long and 

 varied experience, attained to marriage between single pairs, and finally to the 

 family as it now exists. In this series the two, holding the position of paramount 

 importance, are 1st, the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, and 2d, the tribal 

 organization. Repulsive and distasteful as every suggestion must be that assumes 

 an antecedent condition of man in which the propensity to pair and live in the 

 family relation, now so powerfully developed, did not exist ; in which both marriage 

 in the proper sense and the family were unknown, and in which the mental and 

 moral powers of man must have been extremely feeble in comparison Avith his 

 present; yet such a condition is rendered extremely probable from the fact that it 

 explains the origin of the Malayan system, which, as the first stage of the Turanian 

 and Ganowanian, must have sprung from the relations actually subsisting between 

 the several members of the communal family as it then existed. This, at least, 

 would be the first presumption. 



Whether brothers and sisters intermarried and cohabited amongst the Hawaiians 

 we have, at present, no evidence to submit. The fact will be assumed, and if by 

 its assumption the origin of their system of relationship can be fully and com- 

 pletely explained, the existence of the system will tend to prove the fact. 



In the order adopted the Malayan system will be first explained from the nature 

 of descents, by the Hawaiian custom, and the intermarriage of brothers and sisters 

 with antecedent promiscuous intercourse ; and after that the Turanian, by the tribal 

 organization. 



It will be remembered that under the former system the primary relationships 

 only are recognized and named. To these must be added the relationships of 

 grandparent and grandchild. These terms are applied to consanguinei in a definite 



61 April. 1870. 



