of his immediate group. Among European peoples also, the terms 'father' and 'mother' are sometimes used in connection with men and women outside this relationship. For example, the Russians, particularly, have a custom of addressing as 'little father' and 'little mother' persons who are not in the least related to them. That which makes it highly probable that in the so-called Malayan system of relationship we are dealing not with degrees of relationship but with age-periods, is, in the last event, a different phenomenon--one that has hitherto been overlooked in connection with these discussions. In the very regions whose languages employ this nomenclature, custom prescribes that the youths and men live in separation from the women and children from their earliest years on. This is the institution of the men's club with its age-groups. Its social rôle is an important one, crowding even the family association into the background. Under such circumstances, the individual is naturally interested first of all in his companions of the same age-group, for each of these usually occupies a separate apartment in the men's house. Thus, the so-called Malayan system of relationship is really not a system of relationship at all, but a nomenclature of age-groups based on social conditions. These conditions bring it about that companions of the same sex are more closely associated than are men and women. In the men's houses a companion of the same group is a brother, one of the next older group, a father. Together with these men the individual goes to war and to the hunt. Thus, these phenomena cannot be said to belong to the lowest stage of culture. Nor, obviously, does this terminology, which has reference to differences of age, exclude any particular form of marriage. In this case it is a mistake to associate the names 'father,' 'mother,' 'brother,' etc., with the concepts that we attach to these words.