Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/24

12 of past ages which are of a different order from, often even in direct contradiction with, those of the society as a whole in which the customs and beliefs persist. There is general agreement that this conservatism is even greater among savage and barbarous peoples than in civilised communities. It is now widely accepted that the savage, once supposed to be free and untrammelled, is far more the slave of custom than ourselves. Moreover, the whole doctrine of survival in culture which is one of the most firmly established of the conclusions of anthropology, and one of our most valuable instruments of inquiry, would be wholly unintelligible without such conservatism, without the presence of a character of human nature upon which this persistence depends. I do not propose, therefore, to consume time by giving evidence for conservatism. We may differ concerning its psychological or sociological bases, but no one can doubt its existence.

It is necessary to dwell at somewhat greater length upon man's plasticity, for though the immense variety of belief and custom makes it obvious that this plasticity exists, it has attracted less attention and is less often explicitly recognised than his conservatism. I must be content to illustrate this plasticity by reference to only one group of customs from one part of the earth, I choose as a means of illustrating social plasticity the modes of disposing of the bodies of the dead in Melanesia.

A survey of the funeral customs of Melanesia shows that the people of this region practise nearly every form of disposal of the bodies of the dead which is known throughout the world. They inter the body in various ways, in the contracted and extended positions, or in positions intermediate between the two. When in the extended position, the body may be lying on its back or standing upright; when contracted, it is usually placed in the