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being the same term that a man applies to his own elder sister) - 

 A man is not allowed to approach her, nor even to touch 

 any object belonging to her, and, especially, would a man avoid 

 touching her Rami, or grass petticoat, if it were lying about 

 the house. He may talk to her, but only from a distance, 

 and, of course, he does not address her by name, nor does 

 he pronounce it in her absence. A man can approach his 

 wife's younger sister (Ndhu), but her name is equally tabooed 

 to him. So are a man's wife's brothers' names. The sanc- 

 tion of Lia i consists in the first place of a general reluctance 

 to, and intense fear of, infringing the etiquette and doing the 

 thing in a way that is essentially wrong and unacceptable 

 by social rules and by the code of manners inherent in all 

 human beings. This fear is very pronounced among the 

 natives; they are extremely anxious to do the "right thing," 

 in which respect they do not differ essentially from the civi- 

 lized white man. In order to understand the psychological 

 background of such purely customary — I might say such 

 inondaine sanction — one ought to compare it with that of 

 our own rules of savoir fa/re, and I think that most men 

 would much more readily commit acts of extreme folly than 

 behave in an outrageously incorrect manner in a drawing- 

 room or ballroom. To transgress the Lid'i, or any kindred 

 rule, would be for the native an act as improper as for a 

 society man to appear in flannels at a ball or to omit his necktie 

 at a formal garden party. We very often press the native 

 for an explicit sanction or reason for some of his customary 

 rules. "What, for instance, would happen if a man broke 

 the Lid'i?" No wonder the native can give no answer, or 

 simply says, "Our fathers did so, and so do we." This will 

 appear much less obscure and specifically "savage" to us, if 

 we remember that the natives live in very small communi- 

 ties, and that in consequence the quality and intensity of 

 their public opinion or social censure is very much the same 

 as that of a social circle of mutual acquaintances in our own 

 society. The fear of being ridiculed, of being gauche, or 

 eccentric, the keen desire to be correct, to do always the right 

 thing, to be smart and dernier cri — all these feelings actuate 

 the natives as they do the white man in reference to his 

 social iuiJieu. A white man would be just as much puzzled 

 if he were asked to adduce the reason, origin, and sanction 

 of the rigidly observed custom of wearing a white necktie 

 with his full evening dress and a black one with his dinner 

 jacket. "Everybody does it; it is the right thing to do," 

 is alike the answer both of the brown and of the white man, 

 and neither can produce any other sanction than that it is 

 the rule of his social circle. When pressed, my informants. 



