"Why should I do this ?" is answered well-nigh sufficiently by saying, "Because it is the custom, because it is right." It seems hardly necessary to add, "Because it will bring luck." But "Why should I not do something else instead ?" meets, in the primitive society, with the invariable answer, "Because, if you do, something awful will happen to us all." What precise shape the ill-luck will take need not be specified.

The suggestion rather gains than loses by the indefiniteness of its appeal to the imagination.
* * * * * To understand more clearly the difference between negative and positive types of custom as associated with religion, let us examine in some detail an example of each.

It will be well to select our cases from amongst those that show the custom and the religion to be quite inseparable--to be, in short, but two aspects of one and the same fact.
Now nothing could be more commonplace and secular a custom than that of providing for one's dinner.

Yet for primitive society this custom tends to be likewise a rite--a rite which may, however, be mainly negative and precautionary, or mainly positive and practical in character, as we shall now see.
The Todas, so well described by Dr.Rivers, are a small community, less than a thousand all told, who have retired out of the stress of the world into the fastnesses of the Nilgiri Hills, in southern India, where they spend a safe but decidedly listless life.

They are in a backwater, and are likely to remain there.