_The Hawaiian Principle._ While the term ‘descriptive’ admits of a fairly unambiguous definition, the same cannot be said for the word ‘classificatory’. Morgan, after explaining his use of the former, states that a system of the second type reduces blood-relatives to great classes by a series of apparently arbitrary generalizations, applying the same terms to all the members of the same class. “It thus confounds relationships, which, under the descriptive system, are distinct, and enlarges the signification both of the primary and secondary terms beyond their seemingly appropriate sense.”[6] This is looking at the matter from the arbitrarily selected point of view of our own nomenclature (which Morgan improperly, as Rivers has shown, regarded as descriptive). Objectively considered, even descriptive terminologies are classificatory, inasmuch as they do not individualize, but content themselves with such generalizations as classing together, say, all the father’s brothers instead of uniformly specializing according to age. For this reason I regard as misplaced Dr. Rivers’ emphasis on whether a term designates a single individual or a wider group. What, then, lies at the basis of the classificatory principle? Dr. Rivers, following Tylor, reduces it to the clan factor or rather to the influence of the dual organization of ancient society, by which it was divided into exogamous moieties. But this important suggestion, to which we shall have to revert, applies avowedly only to one form of the classificatory system and involves, therefore, the hypothesis that this preceded other forms. This may prove to be valid, but we cannot prejudice an empirical survey by taking its proof for granted and cannot, therefore, simply substitute ‘clan’ for ‘classificatory’ systems--apart from the fact that to talk of systems instead of principles or features in this connection is demonstrably misleading. It is quite clear that ‘classificatory’ can be used only in a loose sense, to indicate wider groupings of kin than those to which we are accustomed; and that there is no _necessary_ evolutionary relation between the two forms usually classed under this head. The empirical data are simply these. In certain systems, blood-relatives are classed according to generation regardless of nearness of kinship and of their maternal or paternal affiliations; in others, there is bifurcation, the maternal and paternal kin of at least the generations nearest to the speaker being distinguished. We may call the former the ‘unforked merging’, or geographically the ‘Hawaiian’ mode of classification; the latter may be correspondingly referred to as ‘forked merging’, or ‘Dakota’. One point which it is essential to remember even at this early stage of our survey is that these principles, together with the descriptive one, are very far from exhausting the varieties found.