COMPLEXITY OF SOCIAL LIFE 313 



go in the scale of culture, and it is largely through 

 the greater interdependence of the different aspects 

 of social life that this effect is produced. The 

 administrator who prohibits head-hunting, regard- 

 ing it merely as a special kind of warfare, will 

 produce effects far greater than he anticipates if, 

 as is usually the case, head-hunting is closely 

 connected with the most sacred religious beliefs of 

 the people and acts as the chief stimulus to the 

 practice of many of their material arts. Similarly, 

 one who abolishes secret societies because he holds 

 them to be "hot-beds of superstition" will produce 

 effects he had never anticipated if, as is often the 

 case, these societies provide the basis of the whole 

 economic system of the people and embody religious 

 practices of the utmost importance to their material 

 and moral welfare. There is probably no part of 

 the world where such customs as head-hunting or 

 such institutions as secret societies do not need 

 suppression or modification. But it is one thing 

 to destroy or modify in ignorance, and it is quite 

 another thing to do so with a knowledge of the 

 consequences which must inevitably follow these 

 courses of action. In the one case there is arbitrarily 

 swept out of existence all perhaps which makes the 

 lives of the people worth living, and they rapidly 

 sink into the apathy which is the sure precursor of 

 their end, or their economical and moral system is 

 so shattered that they are only too ready to adopt 

 the worst features of the "civilisation" to which 



