OP THE HUMAN FAMILY. 487 



An exposition of the entire series of customs and institutions upon which these 

 solutions are founded, together with a discussion of the historical evidence of their 

 existence and spread are necessary to a full appreciation of the probable correctness 

 of these solutions. But they cover too wide a field, and embrace too many con- 

 siderations to be treated in this connection. I am, therefore, reluctantly com- 

 pelled to limit myself to what seem to be the controlling propositions, although the 

 conclusions reached are thereby open to the charge of being too sweeping in their 

 character. In any event this discussion is but the introduction of the subject ot 

 which it treats. Further investigations, in its various departments, will modify 

 the positions here taken, as well as the conclusions reached, or confirm their truth- 

 fulness. 



The present existence of the classificatory system of relationship, with the 

 internal evidence of its transition from the Malayan to the Turanian form, is, of 

 itself, a powerful argument in favor of the prevalence of these customs and institu- 

 tions, and of their origination substantially in the order stated. All except the 

 first and second, and perhaps the fourth, still prevail in portions of the human 

 family, and are known to have existed as far back, in the past, as the oldest his- 

 torical records ascend ; with abundant evidence of the existence of some of them 

 from time immemorial. Evidence is not wanting in many barbarous nations, at 

 the present time, of an antecedent state of promiscuous intercourse involving the 

 cohabitation of brothers and sisters as its primary form. It will not be difficult, 

 hereafter, to accumulate such a body of evidence upon this subject as to leave no 

 doubt upon the question. 



It remains to notice the order of origination of these customs and institutions as 

 a great progressive series founded upon the growth of man's experience ; and to 

 consider their reformatory character. The establishment of this series as a means 

 of recovering the thread of man's history through the primitive ages is the principal 

 result of this solution of the origin of the classificatory system. Upon these ques- 

 tions some suggestions will be submitted, in doing which it will be necessary to 

 recapitulate the series. 



I. Promiscuous Intercourse. 



This expresses the lowest conceivable stage of barbarism in which mankind 

 could be found. In this condition man could scarcely be distinguished from the 

 brute, except in the potential capacity of his endowments. Ignorant of marriage 

 in its proper sense, of the family, except the communal, and with the propensity to 

 pair still undeveloped, he was not only a barbarian but a savage ; with a feeble 

 intellect and a feebler moral sense. His only hope of elevation lay in the fierce- 

 ness of his passions, and in the improvable character of his nascent mental and 

 moral powers. The lessening volume of the skull and its low animal characteris- 

 tics as we recede in the direction of the primitive man, deliver decisive testimony 

 concerning his immense inferiority to his civilized descendants. The implements 

 of stone and flint found over the greater part of the earth, attest the rudeness of 

 his condition when he subsisted chiefly upon fish, leaving it doubtful whether to 

 become a fisherman he had not raised himself from a still more humble condition. 

 That the ancestors of the present civilized nations were, in the primitive ages, 



