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.
§ 2. MEANS OF ENFORCING CUSTOMS
The most general means for enforcing customs are public opinion, taboos,
ritual or ceremony, and physical force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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