SOCIAL ORGANIZATION If an explorer visits a savage tribe with intent to get at the true meaning of their life, his first duty, as every anthropologist will tell him, is to acquaint himself thoroughly with the social organization in all its forms.

The reason for this is simply that only by studying the outsides of other people can we hope to arrive at what is going on inside them.

"Institutions" will be found a convenient word to express all the externals of the life of man in society, so far as they reflect intelligence and purpose.

Similarly, the internal or subjective states thereto corresponding may be collectively described as "beliefs." Thus, the field-worker's cardinal maxim can be phrased as follows: Work up to the beliefs by way of the institutions.
Further, there are two ways in which a given set of institutions can be investigated, and of these one, so far as it is practicable, should precede the other.

First, the institutions should be examined as so many wheels in a social machine that is taken as if it were standing still.