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Meaning of Customs or Mores.—Wherever we find groups of men living as outlined in Chapter II., we find that there are certain ways of acting which are common to the group—"folkways." Some of these may be due merely to the fact that the members are born of the same stock, just as all ducks swim. But a large part of human conduct, in savage as truly as in civilized life, is not merely instinctive. There are approved ways of acting, common to a group, and handed down from generation to generation. Such approved ways of doing and acting are customs, or to use the Latin term, which Professor Sumner thinks brings out more clearly this factor of approval, they are mores.[23] They are habits—but they are more. They imply the judgment of the group that they are to be followed. The welfare of the group is regarded as in some sense imbedded in them. If any one acts contrary to them he is made to feel the group's disapproval. The young are carefully trained to observe them. At times of special importance, they are rehearsed with special solemnity.

Authority Behind the Mores.—The old men, or the priests, or medicine men, or chiefs, or old women, may be the especial guardians of these customs. They may modify details, or add new customs, or invent explanations for old ones. But the authority back of them is the group in the full sense. Not the group composed merely of visible and living members, but the larger group which includes the dead, and the kindred totemic or ancestral gods. Nor is it the group considered as a collection of individual persons. It is rather in a vague way the whole mental and social world. The fact that most of the customs have no known date or origin makes them seem a part of the nature of things. Indeed there is more than a mere analogy between the primitive regard for custom and that respect for "Nature" which from the Stoics to Spencer has sought a moral standard in living "according to nature." And there is this much in favor of taking the world of custom as the standard: the beings of this system are like the person who is expected to behave like them; its rules are the ways in which his own kin have lived and prospered, and not primarily the laws of cosmic forces, plants, and animals.

Origin of Customs; Luck.—The origin of customs is to be sought in several concurrent factors. There are in the first place the activities induced by the great primitive needs and instincts. Some ways of acting succeed; some fail. Man not only establishes habits of acting in the successful ways; he remembers his failures. He hands successful ways down with his approval; he condemns those that fail.

This attitude is reënforced by the views about good luck and bad luck. Primitive man—and civilized man—is not ruled by a purely rational theory of success and failure. "One might use the best known means with the greatest care, yet fail of the result. On the other hand, one might get a great result with no effort at all. One might also incur a calamity without any fault of his own."[24] "Grimm gives more than a thousand ancient German apothegms, dicta, and proverbs about 'luck.'"[25] Both good and bad fortune are attributed to the unseen powers, hence a case of bad luck is not thought of as a mere chance. If the ship that sailed Friday meets a storm, or one of thirteen falls sick, the inference is that this is sure to happen again. And at this point the conception of the group welfare as bound up with the acts of every member, comes in to make individual conformity a matter for group concern—to make conduct a matter of mores and not merely a private affair. One most important, if not the most important, object of early legislation was the enforcement of lucky rites to prevent the individual from doing what might bring ill luck on all the tribe. For the conception always was that the ill luck does not attach itself simply to the doer, but 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.