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may fall upon any member of the group. "The act of one member is conceived to make all the tribe impious, to offend its particular god, to expose all the tribe to penalties from heaven. When the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the Athenians were frightened and furious; they thought they should all be ruined because some one had mutilated a god's image and so offended him."[26] "The children were reproved for cutting and burning embers, on the ground that this might be the cause for the accidental cutting of some member of the family."[27] In the third place, besides these sources of custom, in the usefulness or lucky character of certain acts, there is also the more immediate reaction of individuals or groups to certain ways of acting according "as things jump with the feelings or displease them."[28] An act of daring is applauded, whether useful or not. The individual judgment is caught up, repeated, and plays its part in the formation of group opinion. "Individual impulse and social tradition are thus the two poles between which we move." Or there may even be a more conscious discussion analogous to the action of legislatures or philosophic discussion. The old men among the Australians deliberate carefully as to each step of the initiation ceremonies. They make customs to be handed down.
§ 2. MEANS OF ENFORCING CUSTOMS
The most general means for enforcing customs are public opinion, taboos, ritual or ceremony, and physical force.
Public Approval uses both language and form to express its judgments. Its praise is likely to be emphasized by some form of art. The songs that greet the returning victor, the decorations, costumes, and tattoos for those who are honored, serve to voice the general sentiment. On the other hand ridicule or contempt is a sufficient penalty to enforce compliance with many customs that may be personally irksome. It is very largely the ridicule of the men's house which enforces certain customs among the men of peoples which have that institution. It is the ridicule or scorn of both men and women which forbids the Indian to marry before he has proved his manhood by some notable deed of prowess in war or chase.
Taboos.—Taboos are perhaps not so much a means for enforcing custom, as they are themselves customs invested with peculiar and awful sanction. They prohibit or ban any contact with certain persons or objects under penalty of danger from unseen beings. Any events supposed to indicate the activity of spirits, such as birth and death, are likely to be sanctified by taboos. The danger is contagious; if a Polynesian chief is taboo, the ordinary man fears even to touch his footprints. But the taboos are not all based on mere dread of the unseen.
"They include such acts as have been found by experience to produce unwelcome results.—The primitive taboos correspond to the fact that the life of man is environed by perils: His food quest must be limited by shunning poisonous plants. His appetite must be restrained from excess. His physical strength and health must be guarded from dangers. The taboos carry on the accumulated wisdom of generations which has almost always been purchased by pain, loss, disease, and death. Other taboos contain inhibitions of what will be injurious to the group. The laws about the sexes, about property, about war, and about ghosts, have this character. They always include some social philosophy." (Sumner, Folkways, pp. 33 f.)
They may be used with conscious purpose. In order to have a supply of cocoanuts for a religious festival the head men may place a taboo upon the young cocoanuts to prevent them from being consumed before they are fully ripe. The conception works in certain respects to supply the purpose which is later subserved by ideas of property. But it serves also as a powerful agency to maintain respect for the authority of the group.
Ritual.—As taboo is the great negative guardian of customs, ritual is the great positive agent. It works by forming habits, and operates through associations formed by actually doing certain acts, usually under conditions which appeal to the emotions. The charm of music and of orderly movement, the impressiveness of ordered masses in processions, the awe of mystery, all contribute to stamp in the meaning and value. Praise or blame encourages or inhibits; ritual secures the actual doing and at the same time gives a value to the doing. It is employed by civilized peoples more in the case of military or athletic drill, or in training children to observe forms of etiquette, so that these may become "second nature." Certain religious bodies also use its agency. But in primitive life it is widely and effectively used to insure for educational, political, and domestic customs obedience to the group standards, which among us it secures to the codes of the army, or to those of social etiquette. Examples of its elaborate and impressive use will be given below under educational ceremonies.
Physical Force.—When neither group opinion, nor taboo, nor ritual secures conformity, there is always in the background physical force. The chiefs are generally men of strength whose word may not be lightly disregarded. Sometimes, as among the Sioux, the older braves constitute a sort of police. Between different clans the blood feud is the accepted method of enforcing custom, unless a substitute, the wergeld, is provided. For homicide within a clan the remaining members may drive the slayer out, and whoever meets such a Cain may slay him. If a man murdered his chief of kindred among the ancient Welsh he was banished and "it was required of every one of every sex and age within hearing of the horn to follow that exile and to keep up the barking of dogs, to the time of his putting to sea, until he shall have passed three score hours out of sight."[29] It should be borne in mind, however, that physical pains, either actual or dreaded, would go but a little way toward maintaining authority in any such group as we have regarded as typical. Absolutism, with all its cruel methods of enforcing terror, needs a more highly organized system. In primitive groups the great majority support the authority of the group as a matter of course, and uphold it as a sacred duty when it is challenged. Physical coercion is not the rule but the exception.
§ 3. CONDITIONS WHICH BRING OUT THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUP STANDARDS AND RENDER GROUP CONTROL CONSCIOUS
Although customs or mores have in them an element of social approval which makes them vehicles of moral judgment, they tend in many cases to sink to the level of mere habits. The reason—such as it was—for their original force—is forgotten. They become, like many of our forms of etiquette, mere conventions. There are, however, certain conditions which center attention upon their importance and lift them to the level of conscious agencies. These conditions may be grouped under three heads. (1) The education of the younger, immature members of the group and their preparation for full membership. (2) The constraint and restraint of refractory members and the adjustment of conflicting interests. (3) Occasions which involve some notable danger or crisis and therefore call for the greatest attention to secure the favor of the gods and avert disaster.
1. Educational Customs.—Among the most striking and significant of these are the initiation ceremonies which are so widely observed among primitive peoples. They are held with the purpose of inducting boys into the privileges of manhood and into the full life of the group. They are calculated at every step to impress upon the initiate his own ignorance and helplessness in contrast with the wisdom and power of the group; and as the mystery with which they are conducted imposes reverence for the elders and the authorities of the group, so the recital of the traditions and performances of the tribe, the long series of ritual acts, common participation in the mystic dance and song and decorations, serve to reënforce the ties that bind the tribe.
Initiation into the full privileges of manhood among the tribes of Central Australia, for instance, includes three sets of ceremonies which occupy weeks, and even months, for their completion. The first set, called "throwing up in the air," is performed for the boy when he has reached the age of from ten to twelve. In connection with being thrown up in the air by certain prescribed members of his tribe, he is decorated with various totem emblems and afterward the septum of his nose is bored for the insertion of the nose-bone. At a period some three or four years later a larger and more formidable series of ceremonies is undertaken, lasting for ten days. A screen of bushes is built, behind which the boy is kept during the whole period, unless he is brought out on the