POLITICAL FORMS AND FORCES. 321 



perty ; but his authority is extremely limited, and only obeyed 

 so far as it meets the general approbation.&quot; And even among 

 the more politically-organized Kaffirs, there is a kindred 

 restraint. The king &quot; makes laws and executes them according 

 to his sole will. Yet there is a power to balance his in the 

 people : he governs only so long as they choose to obey.&quot; 

 They leave him if he governs ill. 



In its primitive form, then, political power is the feeling of 

 the community, acting through an agency which it has either 

 informally or formally established. Doubtless, from the 

 beginning, the power of the chief is in part personal : his 

 greater strength, courage, or cunning, enables him in some 

 degree to enforce his individual will. But, as the evidence 

 shows, his individual will is but a small factor ; and the autho 

 rity he wields is proportionate to the degree in which he 

 expresses the wills of the rest. 



467. While this public feeling, which first acts by itself 

 and then partly through an agent, is to some extent the feeling 

 spontaneously formed by those concerned, it is to a much 

 larger extent the opinion imposed on them or prescribed for 

 them. In the first place, the emotional nature prompting 

 the general mode of conduct is derived from ancestors is a 

 product of all ancestral activities ; and in the second place, 

 the special desires which, directly or indirectly, determine 

 the courses pursued, are induced during early life by seniors, 

 and enlisted on behalf of beliefs and usages which the tribe 

 inherits. The governing sentiment is, in short, mainly the 

 accumulated and organized sentiment of the past. 



It needs but to remember the painful initiation which, at a 

 prescribed age, each member of a tribe undergoes (submitting 

 to circumcision, or knocking out of teeth, or gashing of the 

 flesh, or tatooing) it needs but to remember that from these 

 imperative customs there is no escape; to see that the 

 directive force which exists before a political agency arises, 

 and which afterwards makes the political agency its organ, 



