Note 583 — Chapter VI · [168] DISCUSSION OF KINSHIP

Loc. cit., pp. 232, 233; compare also above p. 182, footnote. Apart from the naturally somewhat loose terminology (the passage about kinship is intended as an example only, and does not aim at a full treatment of the subject)—the passages quoted express the same ideas which served as a starting-point for this chapter.

I came across the paragraph in question unfortunately only after the MS. of the present chapter had been finished and the foregoing chapters had been printed. The opinion of Sir Laurence Gomme would also have been of value in support of the views expressed in the Introduction, pp. 6, 7, where I try to show that it is meaningless to use the word "family" as a rigidly determined concept of universal application. "The family as seen in savage society, and the family as it appears among the antiquities of the Indo-European people, are totally distinct in origin, in compass and in force" (Sir Laurence Gomme, loc. cit., pp. 236, 237). And the author applies his criticism to the same two writers who have been the objects of my attacks (Mr. A. Lang and Mr. N. W. Thomas, see op. cit., p. 236, footnote 1). And, again, Sir Laurence Gomme argues that the unqualified use of the term "family" is very harmful, "because of the universal application of this term to the smallest social unit of the civilized world, and because of the fundamental difference of structure of the units which roughly answer to the definition of family in various parts of the world" (op. cit., p. 235). Certainly there is also a fundamental analogy of structure between all forms of human family; but the problem must be set forth and it must be acknowledged that this social unit undergoes deep changes as other elements of social structure change.