the
Classificatory System[146].

V. The Tribal Organisation, i.e. totemic exogamy plus promiscuity,
giving the Turanian and Ganowanian System[147].

VI. Monogamy.

The objections to this theory or group of theories are numerous, and it
will not be necessary to consider them all here. Were it not that no one
has since Morgan's day attempted to trace in detail the course of
evolution from promiscuity to monogamy, it would be almost superfluous
to discuss the theories of a work on primitive sociology dating back
nearly thirty years.

With some points Morgan has failed to deal in a way that commends itself
to us in the light of knowledge accumulated since his day; with others
he has not attempted to deal, apparently from a want of perception of
their importance.

First and foremost among the points with which Morgan has failed to deal
is that of the constitution of the primitive group. Was it composed of
parents and children only or were more than two generations represented?
If the former, why were the children expelled? if the latter, how are
brother and sister marriages introduced, when _ex hypothesi_ the father
of any given child was unknown and may have been any adult male? If
Morgan and his supporters evade this difficulty by defining brother and
sister as children of the same mother, they are met by the obvious
objection that no revolution in a promiscuous group would result in the
marriage of children of the same mother. _Ex hypothesi_ there were
several child-bearing women in the group, and their children, if a
reform were introduced prohibiting marriage outside one's own
generation, would intermarry; but the children of these women are, on
the definition adopted, not brothers and sisters.

If brother and sister does not mean children of the same mother, what
does it mean?

By what process are these names supposed to have come into existence in
a promiscuous group? If brother in this sense is taken to imply common
parentage, the name must clearly denote the relation between two males
because, although a whole group of men had access to the mother, the
male parent was or may have been the same person in each case, and this
whether the mother was the same or not. Now, quite apart from the fact
that primitive man was unlikely to have evolved a term for such an
indefinite relationship, except in so far as it involved rights or
duties, it is obvious that great complications would arise which would
in practice