The whole subject is thorny, and I must crave pardon for venturing to differ, provisionally, on several important points, from authorities whose learning, research, and experience far exceed my own. The facts which they have collected from personal knowledge of savages, and from reading, often group themselves otherwise in my eyes than in theirs--the perspective is different. My observations, therefore, are submitted to criticism with all diffidence. Only the main lines of a complex discussion are here traversed, and the works cited are, as a rule, either by English-speaking authors, or, at least, are sometimes accessible in English translations. It will be seen that students have differed greatly, not only from each other, but, at different times, from themselves, under the influence of new facts brought in from the most remote and isolated of savage races. One author is most interested in this, another in that, factor of the problem. The difficulty of the subject cannot be exaggerated; for the origins of our human society cannot be _historically_ traced behind the institutions of the races now lowest in the scale of culture. We are driven to risk hypotheses. Again, it is by no means certain that some of these lowest peoples of to-day (say the Arunta of Central Australia) represent a moment in the main current of the stream of tendency, a point through which all progress has passed. The ideas and institutions of such tribes may be mere local ‘sports,’ other divergencies may have arisen in other quarters, and it would be an error (repudiated by Mr. McLennan, the founder of the study in England) to suppose that, everywhere, exactly the same series of changes evolved itself in due sequence. ‘In one place or another everything may have been going on,’ I have heard Mr. McLennan observe. Once more, the subject is obscure because the races apparently ‘nearest the beginning,’ the naked Australians, houseless hunters, just emerging from the palæolithic condition as regards implements, are, as to society and system of thought, very far from being ‘primitive;’ very remote from ‘the beginning.’ Their social rules are various and extremely complex, especially as regards marriage: some of their social customs are perhaps inexplicable--a field for modern guesswork--their speculative philosophy is, in one instance, ingenious, elaborate, and highly peculiar. The ‘beginning’ lies far behind them, yet their society and institutions may have their germs (on the Darwinian theory) in a state of all but complete brutality.