“The degrees of kindred in a family are like the streamlets of a fountain, or the branches of a tree; although the streams differ in being more or less remote, and the branches in being more or less near, yet there is but one trunk and one fountain head.”459

The Hawaiian system of consanguinity realizes the nine grades of relations (conceiving them reduced to five by striking off the two upper and the two lower members) more perfectly than that of the Chinese at the present time.460 While the latter has changed through the introduction of Turanian elements, and still more through special additions to distinguish the several collateral lines, the former has held, pure and simple, to the primary grades which presumptively were all the Chinese possessed originally. It is evident that consanguinei, in the Chinese as in the Hawaiian, are generalized into categories by generations; all collaterals of the same grade being brothers and sisters to each other. Moreover, marriage and the family are conceived as forming within the grade, and confined, so far as husbands and wives are concerned, within its limits. As explained by the Hawaiian categories it is perfectly intelligible. At the same time it indicates an anterior condition among the remote ancestors of the Chinese, of which this fragment preserves a knowledge, precisely analogous to that reflected by the Hawaiian. In other words, it indicated the presence of the punaluan family when these grades were formed, of which the consanguine was a necessary predecessor.

In the “Timæus” of Plato there is a suggestive recognition of the same five primary grades of relations. All consanguinei in the Ideal Republic were to fall into five categories, in which the women were to be in common as wives, and the children in common as to parents. “But how about the procreation of children?” Socrates says to Timæus. “This, perhaps, you easily remember, on account of the novelty of the proposal; for we ordered that marriage unions and children should be in common to all persons whatsoever, special care being taken also that no one should be able to distinguish his own children individually, but all consider all their kindred; regarding those of an equal age, and in the prime of life, as their brothers and sisters, those prior to them, and yet further back as their parents and grandsires, and those below them, as their children and grandchildren.”461 Plato undoubtedly was familiar with Hellenic and Pelasgian traditions not known to us, which reached far back into the period of barbarism, and revealed traces of a still earlier condition of the Grecian tribes. His ideal family may have been derived from these delineations, a supposition far more probable than that it was a philosophical deduction. It will be noticed that his five grades of relations are precisely the same as the Hawaiian; that the family was to form in each grade where the relationship was that of brothers and sisters; and that husbands and wives were to be in common in the group.

Finally, it will be perceived that the state of society indicated by the consanguine family points with logical directness to an anterior condition of promiscuous intercourse. There seems to be no escape from this conclusion, although questioned by so eminent a writer as Mr. Darwin.462 It is not probable that promiscuity in the primitive period was long continued even in the horde; because the latter would break up into smaller groups for subsistence, and fall into consanguine families. The most that can safely be claimed upon this difficult question is, that the consanguine family was the first organized form of society, and that it was necessarily an improvement upon the previous unorganized state, whatever that state may have been. It found mankind at the bottom of the scale, from which, as a starting point, and the lowest known, we may take up the history of human progress, and trace it through the growth of domestic institutions, inventions, and discoveries, from savagery to civilization. By no chain of events can it be shown more conspicuously than in the growth of the idea of the family through successive forms. With the existence of the consanguine family established, of which the proofs adduced seem to be sufficient, the remaining families are easily demonstrated.

System of Relationship of the Hawaiians and Rotumans.

Transcriber's Note: Abbreviations: fa=father, mo=mother, GF=Grandfather, GM=Grandmother, GD=Granddaughter, GS=Grandson, bro=Brother, str=sister, gt=great, dau=daughter ms=male speaking, fs=female speaking, otm=older than myself, ytm=younger than myself. End of Transcriber's Note.

Vowel Sounds.—a, as in ale; ă, as in at; ä, as in father; ǐ, as in it; ŭ, as oo in food; kä′-na = male; wä-hee′-na = female.

CHAPTER III. - THE PUNALUAN FAMILY.

The Punaluan Family supervened upon the Consanguine.—Transition, how produced.—Hawaiian Custom of Punalua.—Its probable ancient Prevalence over wide Areas.—The Gentes originated probably in Punaluan Groups.—The Turanian System of Consanguinity.—Created by the Punaluan Family.—It proves the Existence of this Family when the System was formed.—Details of System.—Explanation of its Relationships in their Origin.—Table of Turanian and Ganowanian Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity.

The Punaluan family has existed in Europe, Asia, and America within the historical period, and in Polynesia within the present century. With a wide prevalence in the tribes of mankind in the Status of Savagery, it remained in some instances among tribes who had advanced into the Lower Status of barbarism, and in one case, that of the Britons, among tribes who had attained the Middle Status.

In the course of human progress it followed the consanguine family, upon which it supervened, and of which it was a modification. The transition from one into the other was produced by the gradual exclusion of own brothers and sisters from the marriage relation, the evils of which could not forever escape human observation. It may be impossible to recover the events which led to deliverance; but we are not without some evidence tending to show how it occurred. Although the facts from which these conclusions are drawn are of a dreary and forbidding character, they will not surrender the knowledge they contain without a patient as well as careful examination.

Given the consanguine family, which involved own brothers and sisters and also collateral brothers and sisters in the marriage relation, and it was only necessary to exclude the former from the group, and retain the latter, to change the consanguine into the punaluan family. To effect the exclusion of the one class and the retention of the other was a difficult process, because it involved a radical change in the composition of the family, not to say in the ancient plan of domestic life. It also required the surrender of a privilege which savages would be slow to make. Commencing, it may be supposed, in isolated cases, and with a slow recognition of its advantages, it remained an experiment through immense expanses of time; introduced partially at first, then becoming general, and finally universal among the advancing tribes, still in savagery, among whom the movement originated. It affords a good illustration of the operation of the principle of natural selection.

The significance of the Australian class system presents itself anew in this connection. It is evident from the manner in which the classes were formed, and from the rule with respect to marriage and descents, that their primary object was to exclude own brothers and sisters from the marriage relation, while the collateral brothers and sisters were retained in that relation. The former object is impressed upon the classes by an external law; but the latter, which is not apparent on the face of the organization, is made evident by tracing their descents.463 It is thus found that first, second, and more remote cousins, who are collateral brothers and sisters under their system of consanguinity, are brought perpetually back into the marriage relation, while own brothers and sisters are excluded. The number of persons in the Australian punaluan group is greater than in the Hawaiian, and its composition is slightly different; but the remarkable fact remains in both cases, that the brotherhood of the husbands formed the basis of the marriage relation in one group, and the sisterhood of the wives the basis in the other. This difference, however, existed with respect to the Hawaiians, that it does not appear as yet that there were any classes among them between whom marriages must occur. Since the Australian classes gave birth to the punaluan group, which contained the germ of the gens, it suggests the probability that this organization into classes upon sex once prevailed among all the tribes of mankind who afterwards fell under the gentile organization. It would not be surprising if the Hawaiians, at some anterior period, were organized in such classes.

Remarkable as it may seem, three of the most important and most wide-spread institutions of mankind, namely, the punaluan family, the organization into gentes, and the Turanian system of consanguinity, root themselves in an anterior organization analogous to the punaluan group, in which the germ of each is found. Some evidence of the truth of this proposition will appear in the discussion of this family.