+582+. Thus, the necessity for the protection of life and property (including wives and children) has produced certain rules of conduct, which are at first handed on orally and maintained by custom, and gradually are formulated in written codes. The protection of the tribal life is secured by the tribal leaders as representatives of society. The protection of individual interests is at first in the hands of the individuals concerned, but always under the sanction of society. The murderer, the thief, and the adulterer are dealt with by the person injured or by his clan or family, in accordance with generally recognized regulations. As social life becomes more elaborate, such regulations become more numerous and more discriminating; every new ethical rule springs from the necessity of providing for some new social situation. In all communities the tendency is toward taking the protection of interests out of the hands of the individual and committing it to the community; this course is held to be for the advantage of society.[935] +583+. As men are constituted, to account for the growth of moral customs we need to assume only social life; practically all our requirements that refer to the relations between men are found among early tribes, and it may be taken for granted that any body of human beings, living together and having some form of activity, would work out some such system of rules, mostly negative or prohibitive but also to some extent positive. Even the law of kindness, a product of natural human sympathy, exists among the lowest known peoples. The reference of moral growth to social necessities does not involve the denial of a germinal sense of right and wrong or of germinal moral ideals, but this sense and these ideals arise, through reflection, from experience. We are here concerned only with the actual conduct of men traceable in the early forms of society. +584+. But while social life is the basis of ethical construction, the actual ethical constitution of men has been influenced by religion, in later times by the supplying of lofty ideals and sanctions, in early times by a magical determination of things injurious. It is this second category that is covered by the term 'taboo,' a Polynesian word said to mean 'what is prohibited.' Prohibitions arising from natural human relations constitute civil law; those arising from extrahuman or other magical influences constitute taboo.[936] +585+. Early man, regarding all objects as possibly endowed with power, selects out of the whole mass by observation and experience certain objects which affect his life, his relations with which he finds it desirable to define. These are all mysterious;[937] some are helpful, some harmful. The helpful objects become lucky stones, amulets. The injurious or dangerous objects are the more numerous; in an atmosphere of uncertainty the mysterious is dreaded, avoided, and guarded against by rules.[938]