For the present, we may be content to regard custom from the outside, as the social habit of conserving all traditional practices for their own sake and regardless of consequences.

Of course, changes are bound to occur, and do occur.

But they are not supposed to occur.

In theory, the social rules of primitive society are like "the law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not." This absolute respect for custom has its good and its bad sides.

On the one hand, it supplies the element of discipline; without which any society is bound soon to fall to pieces.