Again, age likewise has considerable influence on social status. It is not merely a case of being graded as a youth until once for all you legally "come of age," and are enrolled, amongst the men. The grading of ages is frequently most elaborate, and each batch mounts the social ladder step by step. Just as, at the university, each year has apportioned to it by public opinion the things it may do and the things it may not do, whilst, later on, the bachelor, the master, and the doctor stand each a degree higher in respect of academic rank; so in darkest Australia, from youth up to middle age at least, a man will normally undergo a progressive initiation into the secrets of life, accompanied by a steady widening in the sphere of his social duties and rights. Lastly, locality affects status, and increasingly as the wandering life gives way to stable occupation. Amongst a few hundred people who are never out of touch with each other, the forms of natal association hold their own against any that local association is likely to suggest in their place. According to natal grouping, therefore, in the broad sense that includes sex and age no less than kinship, the members of the tribe camp, fight, perform magical ceremonies, play games, are initiated, are married, and are buried. But let the tribe increase in numbers, and spread through a considerable area, over the face of which communications are difficult and proportionately rare. Instantly the local group tends to become all in all. Authority and initiative must always rest with the men on the spot; and the old natal combinations, weakened by inevitable absenteeism, at last cease to represent the true framework of the social order. They tend to linger on, of course, in the shape of subordinate institutions. For instance, the totemic groups cease to have direct connection with the marriage system, and, on the strength of the ceremonies associated with them, develop into what are known as secret societies. Or, again, the clan is gradually overshadowed by the family, so that kinship, with its rights and duties, becomes practically limited to the nearer blood-relations; who, moreover, begin to be treated for practical purposes as kinsmen, even when they are on the side of the family which lineage does not officially recognize. Thus the forms of natal association no longer constitute the backbone of the body politic. Their public importance has gone. Henceforward, the social unit is the local group. The territorial principle comes more and more to determine affinities and functions. Kinship has dethroned itself by its very success. Thanks to the organizing power of kinship, primitive society has grown, and by growing has stretched the birth-tie until it snaps. Some relationships become distant in a local and territorial sense, and thereupon they cease to count. My duty towards my kin passes into my duty towards my neighbour. * * * * *