The result of Lord Avebury’s analysis of Mr. Morgan’s tables of terms is to prove progress in the discrimination of degrees of kin, though ancient sweeping terms occasionally survive among races fairly advanced out of savagery. ‘Relationship is, at first, regarded as a matter, not of blood, but of tribal organisation’ (p. 208). Here I agree that words or terms for what we call relationship often do seem to denote status, duty, service, and intermarriageableness in the community. But I do not think that the ties of blood are thereby proved to have been unknown. Maternity could not be doubtful, especially where the mother nursed her child for several years. Lord Avebury adds, ‘the terms for what we call relationships are, among the lower races of men, mere expressions for the results of marriage customs, and do not comprise the idea of relationship as we understand it’ (p. 210). For this reason, I think, we must avoid the fallacy of arguing as if the terms _did_ denote ‘relationship as we understand it,’ when we wish to prove a past of communal marriage. The terms indicate, in Lord Avebury’s words, ‘the connection of individuals _inter se_, their duties to one another, their rights, and the descent of their property.’ This is precisely my own opinion, and for this very reason I do not hold that these terms arose in ignorance as to who was the mother, or even the father, of a child. All the duties and rights, as Lord Avebury says, ‘are regulated more by the relation to the tribe than to the family’--in our sense of ‘family.’ But this, in my view, proves that the terms (in their present significance) are relatively late and advanced, for the institution of the Tribe (as I understand the word) implies the friendly combination of many totem kins, and of many ‘fire-circles,’ into the tribe, the large local aggregate. No such combination can have been truly ‘primitive.’ But we have seen that Lord Avebury seems to use ‘tribe’ in various places, as equivalent to ‘family,’ ‘clan,’ _gens_, and, apparently, to ‘totem kin.’ Quite possibly he means that the horde is prior to what I may call the ‘fire-circle,’ the ‘very small community,’ which, in places, he terms ‘the tribe,’ or so I understand him. If so, I cannot follow him here, as I am not inclined to think that truly primitive man lived in hordes of considerable numbers: the difficulties of supply, among other reasons, make the idea improbable. If I have failed to understand Lord Avebury, perhaps his somewhat indeterminate terminology may plead my excuse. [Footnote 1: ‘Report of the Committee of the Legislative Council on Aborigines.’ Victoria, pp. 9, 69, 77.] [Footnote 2: _Prehistoric Times_, p. 598.] [Footnote 3: G. Scott Lang, _The Aborigines of Australia_, p. 10.] CHAPTER VIII THE ORIGIN OF TOTEM NAMES AND BELIEFS