collected the vast mass of material by which the essential characters of the system were demonstrated, and it was he who was the first to recognise the great theoretical importance of his new discovery. It is the denial of this importance by his contemporaries and successors which furnishes the best proof of the credit which is due to him for the discovery. The very extent of the material he collected [1] has probably done much to obstruct the recognition of the importance of his work. It is a somewhat discouraging thought that, if Morgan had been less industrious and had amassed a smaller collection of material which could have been embodied in a more available form, the value of his work would probably have been far more widely recognised than it is to-day. The volume of his material is, however, only a subsidiary factor in the process which has led to the neglect or rejection of the importance of Morgan's discovery. The chief cause of the neglect is one for which Morgan must himself largely bear the blame. He was not content to demonstrate, as he might to some extent have done from his own material, the close connection between the terminology of the classificatory system of relationship and forms of social organisation. There can be little doubt that he recognised this connection, but he was not content to demonstrate the dependence of the terminology of relationship upon social forms the
- ↑ Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. xvii.; Washington, 1871.
