she actually bore the sons of the other women or that the whole group of women produced their sons by their joint efforts.  Finding that the term which is translated “son” is equally applied by the remainder of the group of women to the son of the individual woman, whose case we have been considering, we may discard the former hypothesis and come to the conclusion that if there was a period of group marriage there was also one of group motherhood.  This interesting fact may be commended to the attention of zoologists.

It is perhaps unnecessary to pursue the argument any further.  The single point on which Spencer and Gillen rely is sufficiently refuted by a single reductio ad absurdum.  If more proof is needed it may be found in Dr Howitt’s work[151].  We learn from him that a man is the younger brother of his maternal grandmother, and consequently the maternal grandfather of his second cousin.  Surely it is not possible in this case to contend that the “terms of relationship” are expressive of anything but duties and status.  It seems unreasonable to maintain in the interests of an hypothesis that a man can be his own great uncle and the son of more than one mother.

From the foregoing discussion it will be clear that there are very grave, if not insurmountable, difficulties in the way of regarding the “terms of relationship” as being in reality such.  In reply to those who regard them as status terms it is urged that if they are not terms of relationship, then the savages have no terms of any sort to express relationships which we regard as obvious, the implication being that this is unthinkable.

Now in the first place it may be pointed out that the converse is certainly true.  Civilised man has a large number of terms of relationship, but he has none for such ideas as noa; a boy has no term for all men who might have been his father; a woman has no name for the children of all women who might have married her husband, if she had not anticipated them.  To the savage this is just as unthinkable as the converse seems to be to some civilised men.

In the second place it is perfectly obvious that the savage has, as a matter of fact, no names for the quite unmistakeable relationship of mother and child.  The name which an Australian mother applies to her son, she applies equally to the sons of all other women of her own status; the name which a son applies to his mother, he applies equally to all the women of her status, whether married or unmarried, in old age, middle life, youth, or infancy.  If there is no term for this relation we can hardly argue that the absence of terms for other relations is unthinkable.

Morgan attempted to meet this objection by urging that in a state of promiscuity a woman would apply the same name to the children of other women as to her own, because they were or might be by the same father.  But in the first place this assumes that the relationship to the father was considered rather than the relationship to the mother, and this is against all analogy.  In the second place, even granting Morgan’s postulate, the relation of a mother to her son is not that of a wife to the children of other wives of a polygynous husband.  Poverty of language is therefore established in this case, and may be taken for granted where the obvious relationships are concerned.