Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/38

26 dead in the sitting position come into conflict with an introduced practice according to which the head should be preserved in a shrine, we have a motive for the practice of the island of Ysabel in which the body is interred in the sitting position but with the head above the ground so that it can be easily removed. These modes of disposing of the bodies of the dead may be regarded as compromise-formations of a more or less symbolic kind, comparable with those which spring out of conflict between early ideals and later influences in the life of the individual.

I have in this address sought to show that while the special constitution of savage society, when isolated, makes it peculiarly difficult to account for any profound modification of custom by means of transference, external influence provides an occasion for the occurrence of this process. Moreover, the concept of compromise-formation as the result of conflict serves to explain the vast variety of custom with which we are presented by the comparative study of human culture. The burden of my argument is that in rude society external influence is the chief, if not the only, condition which can set up a process of social transference similar to that which among ourselves falls to the lot of a great social or religious reformer. The feature of my argument which I should like especially to stress is that, whereas among ourselves the group-ideal is exerted through the intermediation of an individual person or the small group of persons making up the family, this ideal is brought to bear upon the child of savage culture more directly, but in a more generalised manner, through the community as a whole, and especially through its elders. This more generalised character, combined with the low degree of specialisation of social function, makes it peculiarly difficult to produce modification of custom or belief so long as the community is isolated. Some new condition fundamentally different from those of ordinary times is needed to set up the process of transference which, among our-