CHAPTER XIV. 

 LAWS. 



f&amp;gt;29. If, going back once more to the primitive horde, -v/o 

 ask what happens when increase of numbers necessitates 

 migration if we ask what it is which causes the migrating 

 part to fall into social arrangements like those of the parent 

 part, and to behave in the same way; the obvious reply is 

 that the inherited natures of its members, regulated by the 

 ideas transmitted from the past, cause these results. That 

 guidance by custom which we everywhere find among rude 

 peoples, is the sole conceivable guidance at the outset. 



To recall vividly the truth set forth in 467, that the rudest 

 men conform their lives to ancestral usages, I may name such 

 further illustrations as that the Sandwich Islanders had 

 &quot; a kind of traditionary code . . . followed by general con 

 sent ; &quot; and that by the Bechuanas, government is carried on 

 according to &quot; long-acknowledged customs.&quot; A more specific 

 statement is that made by Mason concerning the Karens, 

 among whom &quot; the elders are the depositaries of the laws, both 

 moral and political, both civil and criminal, and they give 

 them as they receive them, and as they have been brought 

 down from past generations&quot; orally. Here, however, we 

 have chiefly to note that this government by custom, persists 

 through long stages of progress, and even still largely in 

 fluences judicial administration. Instance the fact that as 

 late as the 14th century in France, an ordinance declared that 

 &quot; the whole kingdom is regulated by custom/ and it is as 



