Socrates and the master spirits of his time the human
mind has advanced.[1] Shakspeare and a few others comfort
us with the thought that it has not retrograded, but no
other land can show the flood of light that shone in Greece,
when her scanty freemen raised painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and philosophy to heights perpetually
aimed at, seldom reached, and never surpassed. Leaving
as beyond discussion in these pages the unspeakable blessings conferred upon man by Christianity, the world has
little to show except in mechanical contrivances and discoveries, flowing from the inductive system. Recorded
gains indeed are never lost. Material advantages are
innumerable, but mental transformation, by way of
heightened faculty, no one will venture to claim as the
result of man's exertions. The bare idea of John Stuart
Mill confronted by the easy superiority of Socrates would
drive such a thought from the most boastful.
Mr. Howitt, reflecting on the condition of a group of persons all connected by blood, has evolved a theory that originally "brothers had their wives in common, or a group of sisters their husbands in common,"[2] and that from this promiscuous intercourse the savage mind engendered an elaborate code which made such intercourse impossible. It was common to many Australian tribes to have a comprehensive term which included many relations. Thus a father's brother's child and a mother's sister's child on the River Peake in South Australia bore the same relative term to their cousin. At Lake Alexandrina, in the same colony, the cousin bore one appellation if male, and another if female. As there were terms to comprehend a grandfather's or grandmother's brothers and sisters, and as every living relation bore a significant term reciprocated by another, the
- ↑ The judgment of Mr. Lecky (History of European Morals) and Mr. Galton (Hereditary Genius) go far beyond the affirmation in the text.
- ↑ He adopts the terminology of Dr. Morgan (Ancient Society). A "consanguine family" signifies intermarriage of brothers and sisters in groups. A Punaluau family" indicates intermarriage of several brothers to each other's wives in a group. A "Syndiasmian family" indicates "the pairing of a male and female, but without exclusive cohabitation." Not one of these forms was extant in Australia, and yet it is attempted to derive the intricate and unswerving marriage laws of the tribes from them!
