Turning to the other question, to be answered from our evidence--the question of paternal authority or _potestas_--let us first fix the meaning of the word. To the word authority (_potestas_) a legal sense can be given. Then it expresses the sum of the rights that legally are allotted to the father over his children. So in Rome _potestas_ meant the absolute power of life, death and liberty that the father legally possessed over the persons of his children.[750] Every legal relation presupposes a possibility of interference or enforcement on the part of some social authority, and it assumes a set of fixed norms sanctioned in some way by society. Now we do not possess any knowledge of any such possibility in the case of the parental relationship, or of any norms that are laid down in any form by the Australian aboriginal society for the said relationship. The terms _authority_ or _potestas_, therefore, cannot be used in their strict sense or indeed in any sense at all if we imply a _legal meaning_ to them. We are more justified in applying them to the Australian natives, if we use them as an expression of the mere fact that the father could do anything he liked with his children, that he had an absolute power over them. But even here we should be careful in ascribing the exclusive power to the father. In the only cases where the question of a decision as to the child's lot arises, _i. e._ in the cases of infanticide and giving the girl away in marriage, there are contradictory instances ascribing the power of decision to some one else. So, for instance, in the Mukjarawaint tribe the father was not allowed to decide whether his child was to be killed or not at birth; it was the grandparents' affair. Curr affirms, on the other hand, that infanticide depended exclusively upon the father. In some tribes it was not the father's privilege to give his daughter in marriage. Nevertheless, as was shown above in Chapter II, as a rule it was the father who disposed of his daughter. [750] Compare also the discussions above, pp. 185 _sqq._