POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



is the gradually-formed opinion of countless preceding gene 

 rations ; or rather, not the opinion, which, strictly speaking, 

 is an intellectual product wholly impotent, but the emotion 

 associated with the opinion. This we everywhere find to bo 

 at the outset the chief controlling power. 



The notion of the Tupis that &quot; if they departed from the 

 customs of their forefathers they should be destroyed,&quot; may 

 l&amp;gt;e named as a definite manifestation of the force with which 

 this transmitted opinion acts. In one of the rudest tribes of 

 the Indian hills, the Juangs, less clothed than even Adam 

 and Eve are said to have been, the women long adhered to 

 their bunches of leaves in the belief that change was wrong. 

 Of the Koranna Hottentots we read that &quot; when ancient 

 usages are not in the way, every man seems to act as is right 

 in his own eyes.&quot; Though the Damara chiefs &quot;have the 

 power of governing arbitrarily, yet they venerate the tradi 

 tions and customs of their ancestors.&quot; Smith says, &quot;laws 

 the Araucanians can scarcely be said to have, though there 

 are many ancient usages which they hold sacred and strictly 

 observe.&quot; According to Brooke, among the Dyaks custom 

 simply seems to have become law, and breaking the custom 

 leads to a fine. In the minds of some clans of the Malagasy, 

 &quot; innovation and injury are .... inseparable, and the idea 

 of improvement altogether inadmissible.&quot; 



This control by inherited usages is not simply as strong 

 in groups of men who are politically unorganized, or but 

 little organized, as it is in advanced tribes and nations, but it 

 is stronger. As Sir John Lubbock remarks &quot;Iso savage is 

 free. All over the world his daily life is regulated by a 

 complicated and apparently most inconvenient set of customs 

 (as forcible as laws), of quaint prohibitions and privileges.&quot; 

 Though one of these rude societies appears structureless, 

 yet its ideas and usages form a kind of invisible framework 

 for it, serving rigorously to restrain certain classes of its 

 actions. And this invisible framework has been slowly and 

 unconsciously shaped, during daily activities impelled by pre- 



