If we glance at the West African, the Melanesian, the Polynesian, North American, and our own societies, we see that their functions are legion. Now, it can be demonstrated that where the whole or a large part of the tribe is included in a society, that society will possess many of the functions of the tribe, because individuals are primarily carriers of their culture, and secondarily members of a society; or, it might be better said that these two functions of an individual are so inextricably connected that they cannot be thought of apart. It can also be demonstrated that specific societies have associated with them a variety of functions. In each case we are dealing with the same phenomenon. The number of possible combinations is practically infinite. It is, however, a suggestive fact that certain functions of a society are distributed over large areas. In Melanesia, for instance, the most constant functions of societies seem to be those connected with mortuary rites and ancestor worship. In Africa, again, they are primarily judicial and administrative. In the case of our five North American ceremonies, they are religious and magical. For the latter our explanation lay in assuming that we were dealing there with a common cultural background. The same explanation holds true for Melanesia and Africa. In other words, societies, like all other social units in which an individual takes part, must necessarily associate themselves with the cultural background in which they are set. 5. _Conclusion._—The study we have undertaken can only indirectly be considered an examination of Schurtz’s theories. What we have attempted is the analysis of a number of ceremonies, in order to discover what tendencies were operative in their growth. These examples, combined with others taken from the South Seas and Africa, have demonstrated clearly that there exist in the world certain general ideas that may associate themselves with any type of social and ceremonial organization. Ceremonies in origin historically distinct may thus come to possess general and often specific resemblances. It is consequently of extreme importance, in any scheme of social reconstruction, to determine first whether the common elements in the ethnological data compared are not due to such a convergent evolution. FOOTNOTES: [1] The description of the ritual is based on material collected by me, and now in the possession of the Bureau of American Ethnology. The full description will appear as a memoir of the Bureau. [2] X’okê′ means literally “root” or “ancestor.” “Ancestor-host” will be used as its equivalent. [3] This word means literally “he who puts himself in the place to benefit his relatives.” The reference is to the Rabbit, who, at the first performance of the ceremony, acted as host and initiated his relatives; i. e., the human beings.