together. And individuals, once living
together, find some _modus vivendi_. Adjustments are, in
general, effected through established and authoritative "folkways."[1]
That is, certain acts come to be recognized as sanctioned
or as disapproved by the group. And these sanctions
or disapprovals are powerful in the control of human action.
The fact that individuals live and must live together is thus
the surest guarantee that they will not, once they have grown
old enough to communicate with other people, altogether follow
their immediate capricious desires.

[Footnote 1: Professor Sumner's convenient term.]

The reason for the power of social approvals and disapprovals
over individuals lies partly in the fact, already noted,
of the human being's extremely high sensitivity to the praise
and blame of others. But part of the explanation is social
rather than psychological. Even primitive tribes take special
pains to make public and pervasive the commands and prohibitions
which have become affixed to given acts. The mere
fact that an act _is_ customary is itself a sufficiently strong
guarantee that it will be practiced, since the human being
tends to perform, as he likes to perform, the habitual. But
in primitive life, the enforcement of custom is not left to the
influence of habit. The prohibitions and sanctions, both in
savage and in civilized society, are made into law. In the
former instance, there are most elaborate devices and institutions
for enforcing the traditional approvals and disapprovals.
Tabus are one important instrument of the enforcement
of social checks upon individual action; "tabus
are perhaps not so much a means for enforcing custom as they
are themselves customs invested with peculiar and awful
sanction. They prohibit or ban any contact with certain
persons or objects under penalty of danger from unseen
beings."

Through ritual certain acts come to be performed with
great regularity, thoroughness, detail, and solemnity. "In
primitive life it [ritual] is widely and effectively used to insure
for educational, political, and domestic customs obedience to
the group standards." In contemporary life, certain social
forms and observances, as well as certain religious ceremonies,
are examples of the enforcement of given acts, by ritual.

Praise and blame are equally effective enforcements of
certain types of action and of the avoidance of others. In
primitive life, praise is as likely as not to take th