[Anthropology by Robert Marett]@TWC D-Link book
Anthropology

CHAPTER VII
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And yet so well aware were they that this method was an improvement on their own that, when they could trust each other not to tell, they would surreptitiously use it.

These same Dyaks, it may be added, are, according to Mr.A.R.Wallace, the best of observers, "among the most pleasing of savages." They are good-natured, mild, and by no means bloodthirsty in the ordinary relations of life.

Yet they are well known to be addicted to the horrid practice of head-hunting.

"It was a custom," Mr.Wallace explains, "and as a custom was observed, but it did not imply any extraordinary barbarism or moral delinquency." The drawback, then, to a reign of pure custom is this: Meaningless injunctions abound, since the value of a traditional practice does not depend on its consequences, but simply on the fact that it is the practice; and this element of irrationality is enough to perplex, till it utterly confounds, the mind capable of rising above routine and reflecting on the true aims and ends of the social life.

How to break through "the cake of custom," as Bagehot has called it, is the hardest lesson that humanity has ever had to learn.


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