As mentioned above, many authors, who have contributed so much in other respects to our knowledge of Australian kinship organization, have not entered into details as to the family life, or actual relationship. Even Mr. Thomas, although he quite acknowledges the existence of individual relationship, confines himself to the remark that in Australia exists "the family in the European sense." But this expression is not adequate. We cannot possibly find in Australia any social unit that would exactly fit the forms of our individual family; for this is intimately connected with the structure of our society, and none of the social conditions it requires are found in Australia. We can only say a unit which is _analogous_ to our individual family, and even then we would be more metaphorical than exact. Mr. Lang, on the other hand, is not exhaustive enough for our purpose--which is a description of the family unit that will define it fully for sociological use. Nevertheless as he writes in reply to Dr. Rivers he has accepted the latter's methodological standpoint, and he gives a series of apposite remarks and examples. But he concludes: "It is needless to give more examples; the savage Australian does discriminate between his actual and his tribal relations." This conclusion is quite correct, but it is not sufficient. The mere affirmation that the actual relationship exists and is recognized by the natives is not enough. This has been obvious to every careful, unprejudiced reader of the first-hand ethnographical material. The aim of the present study is to _define what_ this individual relationship is; to describe its different aspects and features; how it manifests itself in its different social functions and, as far as can be ascertained, how it must impress itself upon the native mind. And here lies the important methodological point on which some stress must be laid. It is not _the_ actual relationship, or _the_ individual family, or "family in the European sense" which we have to look for in Australia. It is the aboriginal Australian individual family, with all its peculiarities and characteristic features, which must be reconstructed from the evidence. It will be necessary to describe minutely all the relationships generally embraced by the term Family,[19] and to describe them in terms taken from the native social life. In other words we have to look for the connection between the facts of family life and the general structure of society and forms of native life; and to take into account all psychological data available, such as ideas on procreation and reincarnation. [19] Defining that term only broadly at the outset.