SOCIAL HEEEDITY 185 



From earliest times mores have been inculcated and 

 taught. It has ever been one of the chief functions of 

 education of the young to perpetuate the mores of the 

 group. 19 The mores were familiar forms associated with 

 group safety. The chief object of the brutally conducted 

 initiation ceremonies of the natives of southeast Aus- 

 tralia is to impress upon the boy the importance of the 

 tribal traditions. 20 In primitive society children are con- 

 stantly exhorted to follow the example of their parents 

 in following the usages of the group. 21 Indeed, we must 

 "not forget that the immemorial device of stationary 

 societies to preserve their ancient order has been to steep 

 the young in certain traditional wisdom/' 22 The Insti- 

 tutes of Manu preserve the religious mores of the Hindoo. 

 The Chinese Li-Ki, or Book of Bites, of the Confucian 

 text, illustrates the effort to preserve mores. Here, 

 from the rinsing of the mouth to the adjustment of one's 

 leggings and shoe-strings, all acts are to be regulated 

 in strict accordance with usage. Suetonius writes of the 

 customary education of the Roman youth and finds fault 

 with the new discipline of the Latin Rhetoricians which 

 interfered with the customary instruction approved by 

 "our ancestors." 23 Narrow and restricted religious 

 mores were inculcated by the educational systems of the 

 Middle Ages. 24 At the present time the content of the 

 elementary school curricula of modern nations is largely 

 one of traditional subjects. 25 



The perpetuation of this social heritage of folkways 



i" Chapin, op. dt., ch. iii. 



20 Howitt, A. W. The Native Tribes of Southeast Australia, pp. 530-542. 



21 Boas, op. oil., p. 224. 



22 Ross, E. A. Social Control, p. 165. 



23 Suetonius, The Lives of Eminent Rhetoricians, pp. 524-525, Thomson 

 trans. 24 Chapin, op. cit., p. 56. 25 ibid., ch. v. 



