OF THE HUMANFAMILY. 483 



It is not easily explained. The Hawaiian custom, as stated, is restricted to several 

 own brothers and their wives, and to several own sisters and their husbands. To 

 account for this infinite scries it must be further assumed that this privilege of 

 barbarism extended wherever the relationship of brother and sister was recognized 

 to exist ; each brother having as many wives as he had sisters, and each sister as 

 many husbands as she had brothers, whether own or collateral. 



7. All the children of several own sisters are brothers and sisters to each other ; 

 all their children are brothers and sisters again ; and so downward indefinitely. 



Reasons as in 5 and 6. 



8. All the children of several own brothers on one hand, and of their several own 

 sisters on the other, are brothers and sisters to each other; the children of the 

 latter are brothers and sisters again ; and so downward indefinitely. 



Reasons as in 5 and 6. 



9. All the brothers of my father are my fathers. 

 Reasons as in 1. 



10. All the sisters of my mother are my mothers. 

 Reasons as in 1 and 3. 



11. All the sisters of my father are my mothers. 

 Reasons as in 2. 



12. All the brothers of my mother are my fathers. 

 Reason. My mother is the wife of all her brothers. 



13. All the children of my several collateral brothers and sisters are, without 

 distinction, my sons and daughters. 



Reasons as in 1, 3, and 6. 



14. All the children of the latter are my grandchildren. 

 Reasons as in 2. 



15. All the brothers and sisters of my grandparents are likewise my grand- 

 parents. 



Reasons. They are the fathers and mothers of my father and mother. 



Every blood relationship recognized under the M alayan system is thus explained 

 from the nature of descents, and is seen to be the one actually existing, as near as 

 the parentage of individuals could be known. The system, therefore, follows the 

 flow of the blood instead of thwarting or diverting its currents. It is a natural 

 rather than an arbitrary and artificial system. As thus explained it appears to 

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

 the assumption of which custom is necessary to explain its origin from the nature 

 of descents. When the Hawaiian custom, which finds its antetype in the former, 

 supervened it brought other males and females into the family, but it must have 

 left the previous custom unaffected ; otherwise several of the Malayan relationships 

 would have been untrue to the nature of descents as they existed. 



The several marriage relationships may be explained with more or less of cer- 

 tainty upon the same principles. 



This solution of the origin of the Malayan system, although it rests, aside from 

 the Hawaiian custom, upon the assumption of the intermarriage of brothers and 

 sisters, is sufficiently probable in itself to deserve serious attention. It uncovers 



