[Anthropology by Robert Marett]@TWC D-Link book
Anthropology

CHAPTER VI
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Thus it may exclude real relationships; whilst, contrariwise, it may include such as are purely fictitious, as when some one is allowed by law to adopt a child as if it were his own.

Now, under civilized conditions, though there is, as we have just seen, such an institution as adoption, whilst, again, there is the case of the illegitimate child, who can claim consanguinity, but can never, in English law at least, attain to kinship, yet, on the whole, we are hardly conscious of the difference between the genuine blood-tie and the social institution that is modelled more or less closely upon it.

In primitive society, however, consanguinity tends to be wider than kinship by as much again.

In other words, in the recognition of kinship one entire side of the family is usually left clean out of account.

A man's kin comprises either his mother's people or his father's people, but not both.


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