“We are likely to think of the savage as afreakish creature, all moods—at one moment a friend, at the nextmoment a fiend. So he might be were it not for the social drill imposedby his customs. So he is, if you destroy his customs, and expect himnevertheless to behave as an educated and reasonable being. Given,then, a primitive society in a healthy and uncontaminated condition,its members will invariably be found to be on the average morelaw-abiding, as judged from the stand-point of their own law, than isthe case in any civilized state.

“Of course, if we have to do with a primitive society onthe down-grade—and very few that have been‘civilizaded,’ as John Stuart Mill terms it, at the handsof the white man are not on the down-grade—its disorganized anddebased custom no longer serves a vital function. But a healthy societyis bound, in a wholesale way, to have a healthy custom.”

R. R. Marrett, inAnthropology.