=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.