116 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



the scale in favor of unity and coherence. Hence 

 group loyalty and adherence were traits which favored 

 the survival of those tribes which possessed them. The 

 efforts of these peoples were therefore bent to the at- 

 tainment of qualities upon which group safety and 

 solidarity seemed most obviously to depend. As cus- 

 toms and usages were often associated with past security 

 and success it became the function of the group to re- 

 .strain its younger members from any act of innovation. 

 It is probable that as primitive man began to observe 

 that the blows of nature fell without discrimination upon 

 all, he began to associate accidental change in the way of 

 performing a customary act, with disaster to the group. 

 He assumed that repetition of the innovation would be 

 followed by like disaster. Similarly, it may have hap- 

 pened, quite by chance, that the transgression of a rule 

 of conduct was followed by calamity to the group. 

 Thereafter any transgression would be safely guarded 

 against, in the belief that a like calamity would be the 

 inevitable consequence.^^ There was no "limited liabil- 

 ity" in their conception of human relations ; the life of in- 

 dividuals in society was regarded as a partnership on 

 which a rash member by a sudden impiety might bring 

 utter ruin. They were possessed with the notion that 

 ill-luck does not attach itself simply to the doer, but may 

 fall upon any member of the group.^'^ In Molembo a 

 pestilence broke out soon after a Portuguese had died 

 there. After that the natives took all possible measures 

 not to allow any white man to die in their country .^^ On 



22 Chapin, F. S. — Education and the Mores, Columbia Univ. Series in 

 Hist., Eco. and Pub. Laic, vol. xlii, no. 2, pp. 27-28. 



23 Bagehot, op. cit., p. 102. 



24 Bastian, Sati Halvador, p. 104. 



