Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/799

 SEX IN PRIMITIVE MORALITY 779

that position, and walk with his hams upon his heels until he is out of his superior's sight."" Drury says that a Malagasy chief, on his return from war, " had scarcely seated himself at his door, when his wife came out crawling on her hands and knees until she came to him, and then licked his feet; when she had done, his mother did the same, and all the women in the town saluted their husbands in the same manner." °

An examination of the causes of the approval of conduct in early times thus discloses that approvals were based to a large degree on violent and socially advantageous conduct, that the training and rewards of early society were calculated to develop the skill and fortitude essential to such conduct, and that the men were particularly the representatives of conduct of this type. In the past, at any rate, there has been no glory like military glory, and no adulation like military adulation, and in the vulgar estimation still no quality in the individual ranks with the fighting quality.'

But checks upon conduct are even more definitely expressed, and more definitely expressible, than approvals of conduct. Approval is expressed in a more general expansive feeling toward the deserving individual, and this may be accompanied with medals for bravery, promotions, and other rewards, but in general the moral side of life gets no such definite notice as the immoral side. Practices which are disliked by all may be for- bidden, while there is no equally summary way of dealing with practices approved by all. In consequence, practices which interfere with the activities of others are inhibited, and to the violation of the inhibition is attached a penalty, resulting in a body of law and a system of punishment. An analysis of the following crimes and punishments among the Kaffirs, for instance, indicates that a definite relation between offensive forms of activity and punishments is present at a comparatively

■ T. S. Raffles, History of Java, Vol. I, p. 309,

» R. Drury, Madagascar, p. 77.

3 No notice is here taken of the moral content of forms of worship, since forms of worship are to be regarded as reflections of social states of mind, and behavior to gods is of a piece with behavior to men.