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This article examines the marriage rules and kinship system of tribes in Australia. A settlement in Northern Australia in 1824 established contact with the Iwaidja tribe of Port Essington. This tribe presents a system of three matrilineal divisions, each comprising numerous totem groups. Two of these divisions intermarry with the third. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown described and discussed the kinship system and marriage rules of the Kariera tribe of Western Australia. A special form of kinship terminology was found to be associated with a marriage rule permitting marriage with the mother's brother's daughter's and father's sister's daughter. Various factors which are concerned in Australian marriage rules has ranged between purely local-group organizations, highly developed class systems, and systems which represent a compromise between these two contested forms of organization. It is therefore necessary to recapitulate the argument to some extent in order to present it in a possible historical perspective. The intermarriage of local totemic groups in accordance with any set custom will cause these groups to be associated in such a way that a pattern of genealogical sequences of named groups will tend to appear and consequently certain groups will tend to present to one another certain statuses of relationship which may be expressed in relationship terms.

This article studies the mentality of the Australian native. The Australian native has been repeatedly chosen to illustrate the lowest point of human development. The lowest stage of all straight-haired men, and perhaps of all the human species, is occupied by the Australian aborigines or Austral Negro. Between the most highly developed animal souls and the lowest developed human souls, there exist only a small quantitative, but no qualitative difference, and this difference is much less than the difference between the lowest and highest human souls, or than the difference between the highest and the lowest animal souls. In disposition, the Australian aborigines are bright, laughter-loving folk, but they are treacherous, untruthful and hold human life cheaply. They have no great physical courage. They are mentally in the condition of children. None of them have an idea of what the West calls moral, except the simple one of right or wrong arising out of property. The mentality of the Australian aborigines really places them nearly on a level with the apes. It is found that a backward culture, such as that of the natives of Australia, has much more substance, and affords wider scope of mental activity.

The article focuses on issues related to democracy. The importance of trying to understand democracy at the present time is very apparent. In some sense or other, it is more and more coming to be recognised as the dominant tendency in all those countries that are commonly described as civilized. And, indeed, in nearly all parts of the world the various countries seem to be approximating to a common civilization, which is largely based on principles of a democratic type. It is perhaps in some of the smaller countries, such as Switzerland, and in some of the younger colonies, such as Australia and New Zealand, that these democratic tendencies can be studied in their least diluted form. In Great Britain, notwithstanding the strong tendency that it has to cling to the traditions of the past, it can hardly be questioned that the influence of democratic ideals is constantly increasing. This influence is not confined to the sphere of imperial or local politics, but permeates whole life of the British.