POLITICAL FORMS AND FOLCES. 323 



vailing feelings and guided by prevailing thoughts, through 

 generations stretching back into the far past. 



In brief, then, before any definite agency for social control 

 is developed, there exists a control arising partly from the 

 public opinion of the living, and more largely from the public 

 opinion of the dead. 



468 But now let us note definitely a truth implied in 

 some of the illustrations above given the truth that when a 

 political agency has been evolved, its power, largely de 

 pendent on present public opinion, is otherwise almost wholly 

 dependent on past public opinion. The ruler, in part the 

 organ of the wills of those around, is in a still greater degree 

 the organ of the wills of those who have passed away ; and 

 his own will, much restrained by the first, is still more 

 restrained by the last. 



For his function as regulator is mainly that of enforcing 

 the inherited rules of conduct which embody ancestral senti 

 ments and ideas. Everywhere we are shown this. Among 

 the Arafuras such decisions as are given by their elders, are 

 &quot;according to the customs of their forefathers, which are held 

 in the highest regard.&quot; So is it with the Khirgiz : &quot; the judg 

 ments of the Bis, or esteemed elders, are based on the known 

 and universally-recognized customs.&quot; And in Sumatra &quot; they 

 are governed, in their various disputes, by a set of long- 

 established customs (adaf), handed down to them from their 

 ancestors. . . . The chiefs, in pronouncing their decisions, are 

 not heard to say, so the law directs/ but such is the 

 custom. &quot; 



As fast as custom passes into law, the political head be 

 comes still more clearly an agent through whom the feelings of 

 the dead control the actions of the living, That the power 

 he exercises is mainly a power which acts through him, we 

 see on noting how little ability he has to resist it if he 

 wishes to do so. His individual will is practically in 

 operative save where the overt or tacit injunctions of departed 



