lic opinion and the mores, however, representing as they do the
responses of the community to changing situations, are themselves
subject to change and variation. They are based, however, upon what we
have called fundamental human nature, that is, certain traits which in
some form or other are reproduced in every form of society.

During the past seventy years the various tribes, races, and
nationalities of mankind have been examined in detail by the
students of ethnology, and a comparison of the results shows
that the fundamental patterns of life and behavior are
everywhere the same, whether among the ancient Greeks, the
modern Italians, the Asiatic Mongols, the Australian blacks, or
the African Hottentots. All have a form of family life, moral
and legal regulations, a religious system, a form of
government, artistic practices, and so forth. An examination
of the moral code of any given group, say the African Kaffirs,
will disclose many identities with that of any other given
group, say the Hebrews. All groups have such "commandments" as
"Honor thy father and mother," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou
shalt not steal." Formerly it was assumed that this similarity
was the result of borrowing between groups. When Bastian
recorded a Hawaiian myth resembling the one of Orpheus and
Eurydice, there was speculation as to how this story had been
carried so far from Greece. But it is now recognized that
similarities of culture are due, in the main, not to imitation,
but to parallel development. The nature of man is everywhere
essentially the same and tends to express itself everywhere in
similar sentiments and institutions.[251]

There are factors in social control more fundamental than the mores.
Herbert Spencer, in his chapter on "Ceremonial Government," has defined
social control from this more fundamental point of view. In that chapter
he refers to "the modified forms of action caused in men by the presence
of their fellows" as a form of control "out of which other more definite
controls are evolved." The spontaneous responses of one individual to
the presence of another which are finally fixed, conventionalized, and
transmitted as social ritual constitute that "primitive undifferentiated
kind of government from which political and religious government are
differentiated, and in which they continue immersed."

In putt