the laws of the radiation of heat, but his instinctive action conforms
to that law as if he did know it. If he wants to catch an animal for
food, he must study its habits and prepare a device adjusted to those
habits. If it fails, he must try again, until his observation is "true"
and his device is "right." All the practical and direct element in the
folkways seems to be due to common sense, natural reason, intuition, or
some other original mental endowment. It seems rational (or
rationalistic) and utilitarian. Often in the mythologies this ultimate
rational element was ascribed to the teaching of a god or a culture
hero. In modern mythology it is accounted for as "natural."

Although the ways adopted must always be really "true" and "right" in
relation to facts, for otherwise they could not answer their purpose,
such is not the primitive notion of true and right.

+31. The folkways are "right." Rights. Morals.+ The folkways are the
"right" ways to satisfy all interests, because they are traditional, and
exist in fact. They extend over the whole of life. There is a right way
to catch game, to win a wife, to make one's self appear, to cure
disease, to honor ghosts, to treat comrades or strangers, to behave when
a child is born, on the warpath, in council, and so on in all cases
which can arise. The ways are defined on the negative side, that is, by
taboos. The "right" way is the way which the ancestors used and which
has been handed down. The tradition is its own warrant. It is not held
subject to verification by experience. The notion of right is in the
folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought
to them to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is
because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves the
authority of the ancestral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are
at the end of our analysis. The notion of right and ought is the same in
regard to all the folkways, but the degree of it varies with the
importance of the interest at stake. The obligation of conformable and
cooperative action is far greater under ghost fear and war than in other
matters, and the social sanctions are severer, because group interests
are supposed to be at stake. Some usages contain only a slight element
of right and ought. It may well be believed that notions of right and
duty, and of social welfare, were first developed in connection with
ghost fear and other-worldliness, an