HORN EXPEDITION—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
49 
recognised in the facts already mentioned, viz.: tliat the Luritcha natives do not 
speak English, that their remoter situation brings them less frequently than the 
Aruntas, under the observation of those few settlers who care to undertake such 
investigations and the still fewer who know how to extract information from 
unwilling or suspicious witnesses. 
No one who enters upon this subject can fail to ask himself what has brought 
about these elaborate and complex schemes of social organisation amongst 
Australian tribes, most, if not all, of which seem to fall within a definite system 
in spite of variations in complexity and completeness. The view, usually accepted, 
is that they have been deliberately designed as a provision against consanguineous 
marriages, an instinctive horror of which is believed to exist amongst most races 
of men. 
No doubt such organisations are the means of preventing such marriages, and 
anyone who will take the trouble to work out symbolically for a few generations 
the results of the various schemes will easily see their relative degree of eflfective- 
ness in this direction, and he will find, of course, that the restrictions on marriage 
increase with the greater degree of elaboration of the subdivisions. But even if 
the explanation be admitted that the class divisions have been adopted designedly 
for this purpose of imposing marriage restrictions and thus preventing consan¬ 
guineous marriages, there still remains the fundamental difficulty of explaining 
the precise grounds on which rest the alleged instinctive horror of incestuous 
marriages with which man and particularly uncivilised man is generally credited. 
The whole of this question is certainly closely bound up and is probably 
identical with that of the origin of exogamous marriage itself—a subject which has 
been discussed by many philosophical and ethnological writers and which has 
recently been ably reviewed in a masterly manner by Westermarck* who advances 
opinions of his own upon the question. 
The exact basis on which the repugnance to consanguineous marriages rest.s, 
however, still remains an unsolved ethnological problem, no explanation as yet 
being wholly free from objection, and probably the whole question is one in which 
we shall not advance beyond the stage of conjecture. 
The subject is altogether too long for complete discussion in this place, but I 
will only say in reference to the explanation which is probably more free from 
objections than any other and which, perhaps, is most generally received, viz.: that 
* “ The History of Human Marriage.’ 
8 
