2. _Degrees._—To Schurtz, degrees are symptomatic of age classes. Wherever he finds them in societies, and wherever they seem to be correlated with certain ages, he concludes that they are vestiges of former age groups. However, he seems to have overlooked one fact,—that the same social and individual forces that would tend toward the formation of societies would necessarily tend toward the development of distinctions within them. It will depend entirely upon the nature of the people and the individual history of the organization, in what manner these distinctions will be emphasized. One of the possible methods of emphasizing them is marking off those with common possessions in some definite manner. Here, again, much will depend upon the kind of group into which the individual is initiated. If, when he enters the society, he is initiated into all that pertains to it, gradations will not be likely to arise. Generally, however, there is certainly a marked tendency for some sort of gradation, be it due to length of membership, insistence upon separate payments, unwillingness of the older members to impart all to a new member who may withal be quite young, a desire to impart piecemeal in order to enhance the value of the teachings, etc. Whether these possible lines of cleavage will associate themselves with definite markings or rites, is a question of individual cultural development. They may or they may not. In Melanesia, for instance, they did not. In the Ruku-Ruku[40] of the Fiji Islanders we find three gradations,—those of uninitiated youths, grown-up men, and old men. In the Purrah[41] there were two gradations, consisting respectively of those over thirty and of those over fifty years. In the Egbo[42] Society there are eleven degrees, into which membership may be purchased one after the other in an ascending scale. In Old Calabar[43] there are five classes.