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

20 are the recipients of offerings and prayer, and are thought of constantly as taking part in the shaping of the careers of their descendants. It is evident that this belief must greatly strengthen the ideal which among the Melanesians corresponds with the father-ideal of our own society. The obstacles in the way of change must be especially great when the sentiment which corresponds to our father-ideal has come to be clothed in the ritual and beliefs of a religion as real and influential as is the ancestor-cult of the Melanesian. Moreover, the close association of this cult with death and the ceremonial of death would seem to make it peculiarly difficult to produce modifications in just that branch of culture which nevertheless, as we have seen, provides such evidence of plasticity.

According to the view here put forward, the differences between the social environment of a Melanesian and that of a civilised person are such as would naturally tend to produce a degree of conservatism greater than our own. The complex influences which correspond with that of the father-ideal among ourselves provide an all-sufficient foundation for the conservatism of the Melanesian. In dealing with the father-ideal of our own culture, I have suggested that the father is the embodiment of the opinion of the group, that he is the exponent of what may be called the "group-ideal." In Melanesian society, on the other hand, the group-ideal would seem to be more directly brought to bear upon the child, or in so far as it has special representatives, these are the old men of the community, reinforced by the power of the ancestral ghosts. When dealing with Melanesia, it will be convenient to speak of the ancestor-ideal as taking the place occupied by the father-ideal of our own culture.

The result of our inquiry into the nature of the substitute for the father-ideal has been to provide a psychological basis for the great conservatism of the Melanesian. In proceeding to inquire how there has come about the readi-