Such a law, according to the opinion of a savage, existed. His ancestors had devised it and had bestowed it upon him and it was his most sacred duty to keep that law intact and hand it over in its present and perfect form to his own children. This, of course, seems absurd to us. We firmly believe in progress, in growth, in constant and uninterrupted improvement. But “progress” is an expression that was coined only year before last, and it is typical of all low forms of society that the people see no possible reason why they should improve what (to them) is the best of all possible worlds because they never knew any other. * * * * * Granted that all this be true, then how does one prevent a change in the laws and in the established forms of society? The answer is simple. By the immediate punishment of those who refuse to regard common police regulations as an expression of the divine will, or in plain language, by a rigid system of intolerance. * * * * * If I hereby state that the savage was the most intolerant of human beings, I do not mean to insult him, for I hasten to add that given the circumstances under which he lived, it was his duty to be intolerant. Had he allowed any one to interfere with the thousand and one rules upon which his tribe depended for its continued safety and peace of mind, the life of the tribe would have been put in jeopardy and that would have been the greatest of all possible crimes. But (and the question is worth asking) how could a group of people, relatively limited in number, protect a most complex system of verbal regulations when we in our own day with millions of soldiers and thousands of policemen find it difficult to enforce a few plain laws? Again the answer is simple. The savage was a great deal cleverer than we are. He accomplished by shrewd calculation what he could not do by force. He invented the idea of “taboo.” Perhaps the word “invented” is not the right expression. Such things are rarely the product of a sudden inspiration. They are the result of long years of growth and experiment. Let that be as it may, the wild men of Africa and Polynesia devised the taboo, and thereby saved themselves a great deal of trouble. The word taboo is of Australian origin. We all know more or less what it means. Our own world is full of taboos, things we simply must not do or say, like mentioning our latest operation at the dinner table, or leaving our spoon in our cup of coffee. But our taboos are never of a very serious nature. They are part of the handbook of etiquette and rarely interfere with our own personal happiness. To primitive man, on the other hand, the taboo was of the utmost importance.