instrument for all the purposes of clear thinking, starts at an immense advantage, as compared with a savage whose traditional speech is holophrastic.  Whatever be his mental power, the former has a much better chance of making the most of it under the given circumstances.  “Give them the words so that the ideas may come,” is a maxim that will carry us far, alike in the education of children, and in that of the peoples of lower culture, of whom we have charge.

CHAPTER VI SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

If an explorer visits a savage tribe with intent to get at the true meaning of their life, his first duty, as every anthropologist will tell him, is to acquaint himself thoroughly with the social organization in all its forms.  The reason for this is simply that only by studying the outsides of other people can we hope to arrive at what is going on inside them.  “Institutions” will be found a convenient word to express all the externals of the life of man in society, so far as they reflect intelligence and purpose.  Similarly, the internal or subjective states thereto corresponding may be collectively described as “beliefs.”  Thus, the field-worker’s cardinal maxim can be phrased as follows:  Work up to the beliefs by way of the institutions.

Further, there are two ways in which a given set of institutions can be investigated, and of these one, so far as it is practicable, should precede the other.  First, the institutions should be examined as so many wheels in a social machine that is taken as if it were standing still.  You simply note the characteristic make of each, and how it is placed in relation to the rest.  Regarded in this static way, the institutions appear as “forms of social organization.”  Afterwards, the machine is supposed to be set going, and you contemplate the parts in movement.  Regarded thus dynamically, the institutions appear as “customs.”

In this chapter, then, something will be said about the forms of social organization prevailing amongst peoples of the lower culture.  Our interest will be confined to the social morphology.  In subsequent chapters we shall go on to what might be called, by way of contrast, the physiology of social life.  In other words, we shall briefly consider the legal and religious customs, together with the associated beliefs.

How do the forms of social organization come into being?  Does some one invent them?  Does the very notion of organization imply an organizer?  Or, like Topsy, do they simply grow?  Are they natural crystallizations that take place when people are thrown together?  For my own part, I think that, so long as we are pursuing anthropology and not philosophy—­in other words, are piecing together events historically according as they appear to follow one another, and are not discussing the ultimate question of the relation of mind to matter, and which of the two in the long run governs which—­we must be prepared to recognize both physical necessity and spiritual freedom as interpenetrating factors in human life.  In the meantime, when considering the subject of social organization, we shall do well, I think, to keep asking ourselves all along, How far does force of circumstances, and how far does the force of intelligent purpose, account for such and such a net result?