We have now seen the structure of the moral life and its relation to human nature and the social order. We have also seen that the detailed nature and requirements of the moral and social ideal become clear only in the light of the efforts which men have made to embody them in concrete forms of living or systems of institutions. No doubt there may be conditions which any form of life which is a reasonably adequate expression of the ideal must satisfy, but there is no evidence that these conditions can be fulfilled only in one way or through one system of institutions. At any rate, the ways of life of every people, their operative ideals which are partially embodied in their institutions and yet point beyond them, are attempts, more or less successful, to give concrete expression to the formal ideal of the moral and social life. They are attempts to reconcile and satisfy the claims of the different desires and interests of different individuals, and to indicate in detail the conditions which must be fulfilled, if the individuals are to get what they value most, to realise themselves, to find satisfaction or happiness or whatever else we take to be the moral ideal or the good for man. The moral end or ideal conceived in general terms is absolute, but formal and abstract. The embodiments of it in ways of life are relative but concrete. It is the latter which give men detailed guidance about their particular duties and obligations,1 and all duties and obligations are particular.

Now if the account which I have given in my last lecture of these operative or embodied ideals is sound, we cannot understand any part of the morality of a people, any of their judgements of value, whether on acts or ends or rules or states of affairs, except in the context of their way of life as a whole. This does not, of course, mean that the moral agent who makes a judgement of value normally has this context consciously before his mind. When habits have been formed, a personality built up, rules formulated and institutions developed, the individual who is passing moral judgement does not usually need to look beyond the immediate situation with which he is faced. His judgement is the result of applying his total state of mind as so far formed to this situation, and the resulting judgement is immediate or intuitive though not infallible. But the context of the way of life is there as the background of the immediate situation, and it has played its part in building up the total state of mind that results in the judgement. We cannot, therefore, understand the judgement without reference to it; and, in our original and considered moral thinking, the immediate situation is considered in its relation to this wider context, and the judgement of value passed on it accordingly. And, as we have seen, the context of the way of life, in relation to which alone moral judgements can be understood, includes not merely the whole network of institutions but also beliefs about non-ethical matters of fact. It includes, in fact, all the beliefs, convictions and value-judgements of the people concerned about their natural and social and supernatural environment. As far at any rate as the ways of life of primitive peoples are concerned, this, as we have already partly seen and shall see in more detail later, is the considered and unanimous and oftrepeated contention of contemporary social anthropologists.

Now this makes our task in considering the morality of primitive peoples very onerous. Even if the facts were available and I had mastered them, it would be impossible within reasonable limits, and certainly within the limits of these lectures, to give an account which would enable us to understand the whole way of life of every primitive people to whose ideas and beliefs and value judgements I shall have occasion to refer by way of illustrating and supporting the conclusions which I propose to submit for your consideration—much less all that have led me to arrive at these conclusions. On the other hand, the easier alternative, which has been more commonly followed, of taking a number of isolated moral convictions and judgements from a considerable number of primitive peoples must be ruled out as not only valueless but misleading. It would omit, in the case of each people, the context of which the particular facts considered form part, and in relation to which alone we can understand either themselves or the judgements passed on them. What I propose to do, therefore, is first to describe the way of life of one primitive people in sufficient detail to enable us both to understand their moral ideas and the way in which they are related to the rest of their way of life, and to appreciate the conclusions at which recent and contemporary social anthropologists have arrived about the ways of life of such peoples, and especially about the intimate manner in which the different parts of their cultures are related to one another. I shall then give a briefer account of the moral ideas and ways of life of three other peoples; and in doing so I shall emphasise particularly those features in which they differ from the way of life which I have chosen for more detailed description. This will prevent us from regarding the latter as typical in respects in which it is not so. In order to make my account as representative as possible I have chosen people from different continents, and I have included among them some of the less advanced and some of the more advanced of primitive peoples.2 In this account I shall not be concerned with the origin or development of their ideas, beliefs and institutions, moral or other. I shall try rather to describe them as an interconnected whole as they were at the time when they were observed by our authorities. I shall, therefore, be concerned mainly not with isolated beliefs or institutions much less with quaint and sensational customs, though these undoubtedly exist among them, nor with acts of romantic idealism or sublime heroism, though these also are to be found among primitives, but with the interconnected series of ideas and ideals, judgements and actions, which make up the way of life of the ordinary man and the typical citizen. For the moral life, whether among primitives or civilised peoples, consists mainly of unexciting events and humdrum activities like the neighbourly kindness of the Good Samaritan, or the giving of a cup of water in the spirit of service.

Even this programme, however, presents sufficient difficulties. In describing the way of life of a people, especially a people whose culture differs radically from our own, it is relatively easy to describe its different aspects one by one. It is more difficult to convey an accurate impression of the way in which the different aspects are interwoven to constitute a more or less integrated whole. It is still more difficult so to present it that we can see it as the native sees it from the inside, and appreciate what we may call the spirit of the way of life, the attitude of mind, the sentiments, the scale of values which find expression in it, and which give both to the parts and to the whole their significance. None of the aspects, whether institutions, magico-religious beliefs and practices or principles of social organisation, can really be understood by itself, in separation from the others. They all interpenetrate and modify and support one another. Even within each of these aspects we are met by the same difficulty of presentation. Thus, for example, in considering the social organisation of a particular people, we have to describe the principles which find expression in it one at a time and in general terms; but as they actually operate in practice they limit and restrict as well as support one another in all sorts of intricate ways. Thus we cannot really understand any of them until we have seen them all in relation and realised the modifications and exceptions to which each is subject in practice as it functions in relation to the others.

We might compare our method of approach to these ways of life with that of a person who is learning a foreign language and begins with the rules of grammar stated in general terms. He does not really grasp the rules till he sees how they operate in the living language in which they are related to one another and in which they are subject to all sorts of exceptions and limitations. The method of approach of the field worker, on the other hand, is more like that of the child learning his mother tongue. He finds people behaving in certain ways in particular situations and passing judgement on their own and other people's actions. From these actions and judgements and the reasons given for them he has to formulate for himself their moral and social rules and principles and the exceptions to them. But however we approach a way of life, we can understand the moral and social principles embodied in it only when we discover how they operate in particular actions and situations, and see how they illumine and interconnect the details of the way of life. Much discussion of moral rules and principles seems to me too abstract and general. It takes too little account of the way in which they operate in practice in the context of ordinary life and concrete circumstances. And if greater concreteness is desirable even when we are discussing our own moral rules, which we see against the background of a common way of life, it is essential when we are dealing with those of primitive peoples, where the background is so different from our own. If we are to understand any of their rules or principles, their institutions or their value judgements, we must consider them in their relation to one another within the context of their way of life, and not against the background of our own beliefs and scales of value. I fully realise the difficulty of conveying in one lecture the nature of a way of life very different from our own in such a manner as to enable you to see its different aspects and principles in their relation to one another and to the whole, and to enter into its spirit with real appreciation of what either the parts or the whole mean to those who live the life and find it worth while. But I must make the effort.

The people whose way of life I have chosen for detailed analysis and description is the Trobriand Islanders.3 I suspect, however, that his failure to give us a fuller account of Trobriand morality is in part due to a certain lack of clearness in his own view of the nature of morality which led him to regard it as either a part or an effect of religion. But it is also partly due to the fact that he was interested, not so much in why the Trobrianders regard their rules of conduct as right and their institutions and ideals as good, as in the sanctions and social machinery which provide them with incentives to do what they believe to be right, even when it proves irksome and difficult to do it. In other words, he was interested in the legal rather than in the moral aspect of their institutions and way of living. At times, indeed, he does not seem to distinguish clearly between the two; he writes as if the sanctions which enforced their rules also provided their justification, the ground of their rightness. Despite this lack of clearness in his own conception of morality, a subject to which I shall have to return later,4 Malinowski provides us with the data from which we can construct the main outlines of the Trobriand morality for ourselves. For in his description we can see the virtues they approve, the vices they condemn, and the characters they admire, their principles of distributive and corrective justice, and their rules of conduct which govern the relations of individuals and groups to one another and which determine the rights they recognise and the duties they regard as binding. Let us address ourselves then to his account of them.

The Trobrianders inhabit an archipelago of coral islands about 120 miles north of Eastern New Guinea. The islands are flat and fertile and densely populated. The natives live by agriculture and fishing and the fruit of certain trees. Among them there are good craftsmen and expert sailors, and they have developed an extensive system of trading not only among themselves but also with neighbouring islands; but everybody—chief and commoner, men and women, old and young—takes part in agriculture. So that they are, first and foremost, gardeners, and all their other activities take place in the intervals during which work in the gardens is not necessary.

The population is divided into four clans, each of which has numerous subclans.5 According to their traditional mythology, each subclan is descended from a woman who emerged from the ground at a point in the territory which the subclan occupies. A sacred grove, a hole in the ground, a creek or a crevice can still be pointed out as the spot from which the original ancestress emerged. The myths give significance to these spots, while the existence of the spots and the efficacy of the magic which the original ancestress brought with her and handed on to her descendants tend, to the native mind, to confirm the myths. Each member of each subclan can claim the right of residence in the district from which his ancestress emerged and he is entitled to part of the produce of its soil. There also he must be buried, and thither he will from time to time return after death still to partake of the fruits of its soil. Thus the relation of the Trobriander to the soil of his district is very close and intimate, and he sees it in the light of the halo which has been cast over it by the myths and legends which constitute the sacred tradition of his people.

The structure of Trobriand society is based on four main principles, kinship by blood and by marriage, rank and neighbourhood. (1) Kinship by blood, on which the unity of the clan is based, is reckoned in the female line. This means that a child belongs to his mother's clan and inherits her rank and social status, while the inheritance of goods and other privileges such as the knowledge of myths and magical lore is from the mother's brother to her son, that is, his nephew. But while privileges, status and authority are transmitted through the mother, she herself does not directly exercise them. This is done by the senior male member of her family, that is, her maternal uncle, her brother and her son in turn, but not by her husband who belongs to another clan and is, therefore, treated as an outsider.

This emphasis on the matrilineal principle and on the intimate connection between children and their maternal kinsfolk is all the more natural for the Trobrianders, for they are entirely ignorant of the part which the father plays in the coming into being of children. For them fatherhood is a social, not a biological relationship. Children, they believe, enter the mother's womb as the result of the activities of some of their female ancestors. The father, therefore, is merely the mother's husband and has nothing to do with the procreation of the children. Nevertheless, the ties of friendship and affection which bind Trobriand fathers and children are very strong—stronger than is usual among many or even most other peoples. The father assists in nursing the children in their early years, takes part in their early play, helps to carry them when their mother is tired, apprentices the boys to gardening and fishing and the other activities which they will have to undertake, and remains throughout life their close companion and friend. But “he is not the head of the family; he does not transmit his lineage to the children; nor is he the main provider of their food”.6 These are the privileges and responsibilities of their maternal uncle or their nearest male relative on their mother's side. For it is not only at death that a man's wealth passes to his sister's family. He has to provide for their maintenance during his lifetime. Each year the greater part and the choicest products of the fruits of his agricultural labours must be handed over to her and her family, or rather to her husband on their behalf, while her brother and his family themselves look to his relatives-in-law for similar provision for their own needs.

The reasons which make this state of affairs appear to them right and reasonable we shall see later. But I want to call attention here to one of its implications. It is that in his main economic activities the Trobriander's incentive is not his own self-interest or that of his wife and family, but the welfare of his sister and her family and the prestige that comes to him as a good gardener and a dutiful brother. The principle which we find operating here is very important for our understanding of the outlook and institutions of the Trobrianders, and we shall meet it again and again in their so-called economic activities. The motives which induce them to undertake such activities and which sustain them in their performance are, like those of the rest of mankind, complex and many-sided, but the interesting point about them is that they are mostly non-utilitarian. Indeed, Malinowski goes so far as to say that with the Trobri-ander personal economic gain is never the stimulus to work.7 And if, under the influence of nineteenth-century economic individualism, we imagine that under such circumstances the native will not put forth his best efforts, we are greatly mistaken. “The truth is”, Malinowski writes,8 “that the native can and. . . does work hard and work systematically, with endurance and purpose, nor does he wait till he is forced to work by his immediate needs.” Nor can we infer from this that the acquisitive instinct or the desire to possess, which is at the basis of the sense of ownership and the institution of property, is less strong among the Trobrianders than among other peoples. It shows only the powerful influence of the institutions and cultural pattern of a people in moulding even the strongest impulses of human nature.

(2) The principle of kinship by marriage on which the unity of the individual family, father, mother and children, is based cuts right across that of kinship by blood which underlies the unity of the clan. For among the Trobrianders no person may marry anyone within his own clan. He must find his consort within one of the other three. Along with this clan exogamy goes a strict brother-sister taboo. From their earliest years, the relations between brother and sister are stiff and formal, devoid of the intimate friendship and confidence which we associate with the relationship. In particular, neither may speak to the other about his or her relations to the opposite sex. Nor may either mention the sexual affairs, whether matrimonial or illicit, of the other to anyone else or show any interest in them.

It is true that none of their principles of social organisation is strictly universal; and, therefore, though clan exogamy is the theoretical ideal, the strict requirement of tribal law, we shall see that, in practice, marriage within the clan, provided the degree of consanguinity is not too close, is tolerated. It is not even regarded as wrong. It has the authority of what Mali-nowski calls legalised usage. But at present we are concerned with the full demands of the ideal, and according to that sexual relations within the clan are forbidden.

The normal Trobriand family is almost invariably monogamous, except among the chiefs, in whose case polygamy performs important social and political functions. Their marriages are patrilocal, that is, the wife goes to live in her husband's village, among his people; but the children belong to their mother's village as well as clan; and their maternal uncle, who is the real head of their family, is responsible for their education in all ceremonial and traditional matters connected with the clan.

The matrilineal principle, based on kinship in the female line, and the unity of the individual family, based on mutual affection, give rise to opposing interests and conflicting loyalties. Thus the loyalties of the child are divided between his father and his mother's brother. To the former he is united by ties of affection based on mutual service and a common life lived together during his formative years. To the latter he is bound by ties of blood and kinship and mutual duties and privileges based on tribal law and custom. The loyalties of a husband are divided between his own children, or rather as he believes his wife's children, for whom he feels the tender regard and affection which the helpless young with whom he has lived and whom he has nursed and nurtured evoke in the normal human being, and his sister's children, his relatives and heirs by blood, for whose welfare he is according to tribal law in duty bound to labour while he lives, and to whom he leaves his name and possessions when he dies. The mother's loyalties are divided between her husband, whom she loves with an affection which normally increases and ripens with the passage of the years, and her brother, with whom her relations are always strictly formal and her contacts few and far from intimate, but who is by traditional custom the head of her family, who provides for their sustenance and to whom and to whose family she is expected to turn in adversity and in all the major crises of life.

But while the two principles stated absolutely would give rise to clashes of interests and while conflicts of loyalties do in practice sometimes arise, the natives do not think of the principles or their requirements in abstract and general terms. Their institutions lay down in detail and quite explicitly what the duties of children and parents, husbands and wives and paternal and maternal kin are to one another. They think of their duties not in terms of general principles but in relation to particular situations and the requirements of their institutions; and in the detailed working of their institutions the demands of the principles are adjusted and reconciled. Thus a compromise is arrived at which works with reasonable smoothness. It is true that, in strict legal theory, kinship in the mother's line should prevail, but in the operative ideal, what Malinowski calls legalised usage, which finds expression in their network of detailed institutions, the requirements of this principle are curbed and modified by other principles. The result is a scheme which taken as a whole is workable, intelligible and not unreasonable. To make the position clearer it should be added that among these people marriage is a contract, not merely between the two individuals primarily concerned, but also between their families and kinsfolk. It brings into existence a whole system of new rights and duties and mutual obligations. These find expression not only in periodic exchanges of gifts, but in specific duties in connection with their agricultural and fishing and economic activities, their constructing and sailing of canoes, their arrangements for dealing with the education of children, with ill health, with death and so on.

(3) The third principle which underlies their social organisation and modifies further the operation of the principles we have been considering is rank and status. Rank is determined by the subclan to which an individual belongs, the subclans being graded in rank according to immemorial custom; and, being a clan privilege, rank is transmitted in the female line. Rank “consists in personal prestige and titles”.9 A person of rank is entitled to wear certain ornaments, varying with his rank; he has to be addressed in certain specified ways; he is subject to certain taboos—for example, there are certain foods that he must not eat; and in his presence people have to behave in a prescribed manner. But rank not only confers privileges; it also imposes duties, some of them quite onerous. Most of these duties and privileges, however, belong to the person of rank, not as such, but as the holder of specific offices which he is entitled, and even bound, to hold in virtue of his rank. The nature of these and the way in which rank acts as a determining principle of social organisation, we shall see in the light of the fourth principle of their social structure, namely neighbourhood, on which their local, territorial or political organisation is based.

(4) For many purposes the unit of territorial organisation is the village. This consists of a number of houses, some for dwelling, some for storing produce, ranged round an open space which is used for meetings and ceremonial and festive purposes. The inhabitants of a village consist sometimes of members of one, at other times of members of two or more subclans, in addition of course to women from other clans who have married into it. Each village has its headman who usually belongs to a family of rank. He is, in fact, the senior member of the subclan of highest rank in the village. His authority merely as headman is not great. He is just primus inter pares among the village elders. But when he is a man of substantial rank he may be, as well as headman of his own village, the chief of a wider district, all the villages in which owe him allegiance.

The village is normally the agricultural unit. Its members form the gardening team.10 Their gardens are together. They do some of the agricultural work communally under the direction, as we shall see, of the magician, who is either the headman himself or one of his relatives whom he delegates to act in his place and who performs the main magical rites, which in their opinion are essential to the growth of the crops, on behalf of the village as a whole. For many ceremonial and festive purposes, for mortuary ritual and for purposes of waging war, the unit is usually a wider district consisting of several villages under a chief. The chief, one of whose privileges, as we have seen, is the right of polygamy, marries a woman from each of the villages under his jurisdiction; so that the number of his wives varies with his rank. From the relatives of each of his wives he receives, according to the ordinary marriage custom, annual gifts of produce, to which not merely his brothers-in-law but all the members of their villages contribute. This is the main source of the chief's wealth, and he uses and is obliged to use this wealth mostly for communal purposes, such as the payment for services which in virtue of his position he organises on behalf of the community of which he is the leader and representative. Thus the polygamy of the chief binds the villages more closely to one another and to the chief, and acts not only as the medium through which what we would call taxes are collected but also as a justification for levying them. It is true that the chief or headman is entitled to call on those under his jurisdiction to perform specific services, either on all of them or on specific individuals according to the nature of the task, and they are in duty bound to comply with his request. But for every such service, whether to himself or the community, he is expected to pay them either by distributions of food or presents or both; so that the relations between chief and commoner are, like most of their other institutions, based on the principle of reciprocity or mutuality of services, a principle which, as we shall see, is at once moral, legal and economic.

These, then, are the main principles on which the organisation of Trobriand society rests—clan unity based on kinship reckoned through the mother, patrilocal marriage, brother-sister taboo, clan exogamy and political power based on a hierarchy of rank determined by birth. Before considering the system of institutions which they have built within this structure, institutions in the working of which we see how the principles we have discussed mutually modify one another and help to determine the rights and duties of individuals, I want to look at their magico-religious beliefs which not only provide the background against which their life is lived, but interpenetrate all their institutions and help to explain many of their features.

The most fundamental feature of their view of the supernatural and the most illuminating for our understanding of their views about themselves and their environment is their belief in magic. This belief plays an essential part in all their major undertakings such as gardening, fishing, overseas expeditions and the construction and sailing of canoes, and in their attitude to all the important crises of life such as illness and death, love and war.

Let me give one or two illustrations. Agriculture, as we have seen, is their most vital interest. Most of their time is occupied in it and much of their thought and many of their ambitions centre round it. Now every stage in the agricultural process, from the first consecration of the garden site to what we might call the final harvest thanksgiving, is accompanied by and, from the native point of view, dependent for its success on its appropriate rites and spells. These magical activities contribute to the success of the gardening work in two ways. They inspire the workers with confidence that their efforts will succeed, that the rain will fall in due season, that vermin and pests will not destroy the crops and so on; and this confidence is an important factor in maintaining morale on which in part at least depend the efforts which a man will put forth in any of his activities.11 Moreover, the magical ceremonies initiate the different stages of the agricultural process and so help to organise and direct the work of those who engage in it; for at each stage in the proceedings the magician takes the lead, announces during which periods the workers should rest and when the next stage will begin—the allocation of the plots, the cutting and burning of the scrub, the building of the fence, the planting of the crops and so on right up to the final gathering of the harvest. In this work of leadership and organisation of work, the magician performs an important economic function; but he does more. When he publicly announces that the time has come to go on to the next stage he will, if circumstances require it, call attention publicly and by name to any who have been lazy and are lagging behind either with the work of their own gardens or with their share of a common task, such as the building of the fence round the plots. He thus brings moral and social pressure to bear on the defaulters. It should be added that the gardening arrangements are relatively flexible, and that the organising activities of the magician still leave scope for individual and group initiative. Some parts of the work, such as the cutting of the scrub, are done communally. Other parts, like the planting of the crops, are normally done individually, or rather by the family working as a unit. But for almost any part of the work a number of individuals or families may organise themselves into a team and do the work on different plots in turn.

In the same way every stage in the process of constructing a deep-sea canoe, from the felling of the tree to the final launching, is punctuated by rites and ceremonies designed to make it safe and speedy and seaworthy, and this helps to organise the work and to inspire confidence in those who will sail the vessel; and so on, with their other major activities.

Magic plays so important a part in the life and thought not only of the Trobrianders but of many other primitive people that it is essential to have a clear idea of their attitude to it and of their belief as to what it can and cannot do. However necessary magical operations may be to the success of their gardening or canoe-building or other activities, the natives do not regard them as a substitute for hard work and technical skill. No magic will cut the scrub or build the fence or make crops grow on unprepared or unsuitable soil. Of this the Trobriander is as well aware as we are. He recognises that accurate knowledge and honest toil are necessary, and that all that they can do must be done to ensure success. But experience has taught him that even this may not suffice. Periods of drought which he cannot control, the onset of diseases and the ravages of pests, the causes of which he does not understand, may destroy the best crop in what may seem the most favourable season. Or again the best native expert may build a canoe of the best wood, according to the best design, and the most experienced sailor may navigate it in strict accord with accepted principles of seamanship, but a sudden storm may mean shipwreck and death to its crew. Similarly, a man is felling a tree when, for no reason that he can discover, his axe slips and cuts his leg or kills his neighbour. Now it is to guard against such unseen evils due to causes which he does not understand and cannot control that the Trobriander relies on magic. It is a supplement to, not a substitute for, skill and energy.

For the Trobriander, magic is a power exercised entirely by human agents. Its use does not, except in very rare instances and indirect ways, involve any appeal to non-human agents; and when he does appeal to such agents the native asks not for assistance to make the magic effective but only to enable himself to do his part correctly. The appropriate spell and the prescribed rite, which have been handed down from his original ancestors, will, when duly performed by the human agent, automatically and directly produce the desired effect. Why, then, do we call this power supernatural? How does its exercise differ from that of any technical skill? The answer is to be found in the way in which it acts and in the emotional attitude of the native, who according to our authority never confuses the natural and the supernatural.12 The exercise of magic is accompanied by the sense of the uncanny, the sense that mysterious forces are in operation. It evokes a profound and peculiar emotional thrill. Therefore the power involved, though it is controlled by human agents, is itself supernatural.

This power is in itself morally neutral, neither good nor bad. It can be used either for good or for evil ends according to the purposes of the agent who uses it. So far we have illustrated its use for good purposes only. But, to take just one of the principal uses of black magic, the Trobrianders believe that all serious illness and all deaths, except perhaps those due to suicide and murder, and death in battle, are due to magic; and only magic can cure illness. Thus in the Trobriands magical power is believed to be used for both good and evil purposes; for the common good, as in the ritual of rain-making and gardening and canoe-building; for the support of law and order, as in bringing disease or death on those who break the laws or endanger the public welfare; for evil and wicked purposes, as in killing an innocent fellow-citizen or in enticing a neighbour's wife away from her husband.

To the question, Why does the native continue to believe in the efficacy of magic in the light of the mass of empirical evidence that the desired results do not follow from its application? I shall return later.13 For the answer to it is not peculiar to the Trobrianders, but applies equally to all who practise it. Meantime we just note that in the Trobriands magic performs useful social functions, though it has also serious disadvantages for those who practise it. The useful function which it serves is, as we have seen, twofold. (1) It gives confidence to the natives in the face of difficulties and obstacles and unknown dangers. In the strength which it gives him the Trobriander will brave the perils of a long overseas expedition, through stormy, shark-infested seas where strong currents run, in a relatively frail canoe which can sail only with and not against the wind. (2) The magician who wields this power often acts, through the exercise of it, as the leader, director and organiser of important enterprises vital to the welfare of the community. If we accept, as I think we may, the principle laid down by Frazer14 and endorsed by Malinowski and other anthropologists, that no institution will continue to survive unless it performs some useful function,15 these advantages might be regarded as sufficient to account for the continued practice of magic. But obviously they are not the reasons why the natives continue to believe in it; for they apply only in the case of a people who independently believe in its efficacy.

But though magic has its uses, it has also grave disadvantages. Apart from the fact that the belief in it is unfounded, the practices which it enjoins, as for example in canoe-building, involve a considerable waste of time and energy. More serious is the fact that the belief in its efficacy at times prevents the natives from trying to discover and control the real operative causes, as we see, for example, in their attitude to human diseases or in the way in which their belief in rain-magic discourages them from undertaking schemes of irrigation. Still more serious is the fact that the belief in black magic or sorcery, especially when it is pronounced as we find it, for example, among the natives of Dobu or in some African tribes, has a peculiarly disturbing and unsettling effect on the minds of those who believe in it and introduces an element of fear and suspicion and sometimes of hatred into the relations between individuals and families and clans.

Compared with the fundamental importance of his belief in magic the Trobriander's belief in personal supernatural agents is relatively insignificant. He believes that the spirits of the dead go to the island of Tuma, north-west of the Trobriands. There they carry on a life not unlike that which they lived before they died. From Tuma they return once a year to partake of the food offered to them at a great festival held in their honour. Apart from this annual visit they play little part for better or for worse in the lives of the natives. They are objects neither of fear nor of worship. They neither reward virtue nor punish vice, though there seem to be traces of a vague belief that they will be displeased at breaches of tribal custom and that disasters may result from their displeasure.16 The Trobrianders believe in the existence of one or two non-human spirits, one of whom causes minor ailments and another of whom is responsible for epidemic diseases; but the part which they play in the life and thought of the natives is relatively insignificant. “The Trobriander worships nothing”,17 and he has no conception of any supernatural agent or power whose favour he could win by doing right or whose displeasure he would incur by doing wrong.

There is another consideration which may be mentioned here. It is the high value the Trobrianders attach, and the time and energy they devote, to aesthetic considerations. The keenness of their aesthetic sense might be illustrated from almost any aspect of their life such, for example, as the beauty of some of the products of their craftsmanship, but here I need only quote what Malinowski has to say about their gardening. “Much time and labour”, he tells us,18 “is given up to aesthetic purposes, to making the gardens tidy, clean, cleared of all debris; to building fine solid fences; to providing specially big and strong yam-poles. All these things are to some extent required for the growth of the plants; but there can be no doubt that the natives push their conscientiousness far beyond the limit of the purely necessary. . . . Various tasks they carry out entirely for the sake of ornamentation. . . in order to make the gardens look neat. No self-respecting man would dream of omitting this.”

We have now before us in bare outline the framework of the social structure of the Trobrianders and their view of the world as determined by magico-religious beliefs. That framework and those beliefs are inextricably intertwined with the network of other institutions which in their interrelation constitute their way of life and determine their particular duties and obligations. I want now to consider some of their typical moral and social institutions, the ways in which they are related to one another and the ways in which the principles and beliefs we have been considering enter into them, and in their actual operation determine and are determined by them. We shall thus be able to appreciate the parts which they play in the native's ideas of individual and social well-being, the rights which their operation establishes and the duties it imposes, and the justification for claiming the rights and accepting the duties as binding.

An institution, as we have seen in my last lecture and as Malinowski is continually reminding us, is a framework or structural pattern of relationships between a group of individuals, determining the ways in which they should behave towards one another. The structure of the institution remains more or less permanent while the individuals who enter into it and play the different parts required by it come and go. Its purpose is to realise certain values or achieve certain ends of the individuals concerned. In the institutions of primitive people, at least, each individual sees the part which he must play, and recognises that it is essential if the institutions are to run smoothly. He also sees the values which he will realise or at least can claim, if he fulfils his duties. It is because individuals recognise these values as worth while at the price that they regard the pattern of behaviour as good and the duties it requires as binding. But the different institutions are not independent or self-contained. They are interconnected not only in the structural pattern of the society as seen by the outside observer, but also in the minds of the individual participants; for the values realised in one may be the justification of and the incentive to the performance of the duties required by another. These values are complex. They are always in part and often wholly non-utilitarian; and if they were not there, or if they ceased to appeal, the institutions would cease to function. One or two illustrations will enable us to see more clearly the nature of Trobriand institutions, the general principle of reciprocity on which they are based as well as the particular rules which find expression in them, the way in which they operate in practice in moulding as well as satisfying even the strongest impulses of human nature, the way in which they are related to one another, and the natives' scale of values which in their interrelation embody the things which for them make life worth while.

One of the Trobrianders' most characteristic institutions is concerned with the interchange of fish and agricultural produce between the coastal and the inland villages. In all their main ceremonial and festive activities, distributions of food play a prominent part. For these the people of the inland villages use fish and those of the coastal villages use agricultural produce. This custom makes each dependent on the other. When such an occasion has been arranged, the people of the inland village inform their coastal partners of the fact. The latter put to sea as soon as the weather is favourable to get the necessary fish. On their return they find their inland partners waiting for them. The fish is handed over and immediately carried inland to be used in the ceremonies there. The reverse process takes place when the coastal villagers need additional agricultural produce for their festivities and ceremonies.

Though these exchanges are organised between villages they are really individual and not communal exchanges; for each man in the coastal village has his partner in the inland village, and all exchanges take place between these partners. In these exchanges there is no bargaining or barter. The amount and value of the gifts and counter-gifts are left to the giver. Not that these people cannot barter or haggle. They can do so as keenly as any in cases where it seems appropriate to do so. But in any of the major exchanges it would be thought unworthy of a Trobriander to bargain. The way to win prestige among them is to give more than one receives. They regard generosity as the highest virtue and meanness as the lowest vice. Nevertheless, they normally keep a careful eye on the exchanges and are disappointed, and find ways of expressing their disappointment, if in the long run gifts and counter-gifts do not even up. What concerns us at the moment, however, is that in these exchanges it is a recognised duty to give generously, and that the prestige and social standing of the giver as well as his relations to his partner depend on his so doing.

But to return to the exchanges of food and vegetable produce, the rules governing the exchanges are not rigid or inelastic. They make due allowance for motives and circumstances. If, for example, the sea is rough or the catch small or if the harvest is poor, a lavish gift is not expected. As long as a man honestly does his best and shows a generous spirit in giving, he is credited with having done his duty. How seriously these duties are regarded by the natives and how much there enters into them in addition to mere hope of personal gain or economic advantage, can be gathered from the fact that as soon as they learn that their inland partners have sent word that they want fish, the coastal natives will immediately leave pearl-diving for a white trader, in which, with less exertion, they will earn ten to twenty times the value of their catch of fish, in order to comply with their obligations.

We might take as other illustrations of the operation of the principle of reciprocity what might seem to us more purely economic relations, such as the relations between the members of a canoe crew or a gardening team or between those who take part in constructing an overseas canoe—all of which Malinowski describes as typical Trobriand institutions. These are all systems of personal relations in which each individual has definite duties and specific rights. While they have an economic aspect, that aspect is just the expression in economic terms of the system of rights and duties which arise out of the personal relations of individuals, and the duties are regarded as duties which the individual owes to the other members.

Take, for example, the crew of a fishing canoe. One man is responsible for making and repairing it. He is the nearest approach to what we would call the owner. But even in this work he has a right to call on the other members for their co-operation in specific tasks. Similarly, they have their right to their place in the boat and their share of the catch. If the owner is unable to go to sea on a particular occasion, the others have a right to use the boat without him. In the boat each has his allotted task with its specific duties. Often the performance of these duties is a highly pleasurable activity, for the Trobrianders are fond of the sea, and sailing in the lagoon is often a pleasant activity. But whether they regard it as pleasurable or burdensome, they recognise the performance of their duties as something owed by them to and rightly expected of them by the others. Here again the rules are not rigid or based on merely economic considerations. Motives and circumstances are taken into consideration and exceptions made in the light of them. If, for example, a member fails to be in his place because he is unwell or his wife has developed fever, he is not only excused but given his share of the catch. But if he absents himself from laziness or disinclination the result is different. Thus their so-called economic relations are never merely a question of the cash nexus. They are one aspect of or element within a nexus of personal relations, a system in which the individuals are not so many hands or so much labour or productive power but human beings, men and women who recognise that they have duties and obligations towards one another.

Perhaps the most characteristic of Trobriand institutions, both in the light which it throws on their attitude to life and in the way in which it integrates so many of their other activities into an interdependent whole, is the system of semi-ceremonial and semi-economic exchanges called the Kula. This is one of the most remarkable systems of exchange known in the primitive world. It provides one of the main interests of the Tro-briander's life, and Malinowski describes it as “the highest and most dramatic expression of the native's conception of value”.19 In this system the main objects of exchange have only a sentimental and aesthetic, not a utilitarian value. They consist of armbands of white shell and necklaces of red shell exchanged against one another round a ring of islands several hundred miles in circumference. Each ‘valuable’ is exchanged in one direction only—the one travelling clockwise, the other counter-clockwise round the Kula ring. The exchanges take place both between individuals in one island and between the inhabitants of different islands, but I am going to confine my account to the overseas exchanges. They will illustrate sufficiently the principles involved. In these exchanges, though the overseas expeditions to carry them out are communally arranged, each individual who takes part has his partners in the neighbouring islands. From one partner or set of partners he receives the one type of article and he passes it on to the other, while in the case of the other article the process is reversed. But all exchanges are between individual partners, and these partners have other duties and obligations to each other in addition to taking part in the Kula exchanges. They act as hosts, patrons and allies to one another in a land of danger and insecurity, and this creates social ties and establishes a system of friendly relations both between individuals in different districts within an island and also between neighbouring islands.

The articles exchanged vary in size and value. They are carried from one island to another in large fleets of canoes at more or less regular intervals of which due notice is given. The exchanges are made publicly and with great ceremony. Both they and the expeditions are accompanied by the performance of much ritual and many magical rites. Round the exchanges has gathered much intertribal trading which is conducted on ordinary barter lines. But Kula partners have no purely commercial transactions with one another. Any exchanges that take place between them, even when the objects concerned are not Kula valuables, take the form of gifts.

For one of these expeditions extensive preparations are made which affect many aspects of native life and extend over many months. Thus the Kula exchanges provide the incentive to many of their other activities and help to unify them into an ordered whole. For example, their main programme of building and overhauling deep-sea canoes takes place when one of these expeditions is in prospect; the activities of gardeners and craftsmen are intensified and much trading between coastal and inland villages takes place, in order to provide provisions for the voyage, and goods and produce to barter with their overseas neighbours under cover of the Kula exchanges; and their magico-religious beliefs are also closely bound up with the exchanges, which form the theme of many of their myths and much of their folk-lore. Nevertheless, the articles which form the core of this complex system of activities are without any utilitarian value. They are seldom worn even as ornaments, and no one can keep them for long without being accused of meanness—the most despised of all the vices. They are, however, very highly prized not only by the individuals who are their temporary possessors, but by the whole community of which they are members.

In the Kula exchanges, like the other major exchanges we have already considered, the equivalence of the return gift is left entirely to the recipient of the original gift. The original giver can neither barter nor even claim the return gift, much less can he enforce his claim. Moreover, the return gift is never made at the same time as the original gift, but on the return visit, usually many months later. If a gift is very valuable, it may be a year or two before a suitable return can be made. In such cases, however, a token gift is made as an earnest of good faith. But while an individual who feels himself aggrieved cannot directly complain to his partner of his negligence or niggardliness or of the value of the return gift, he may vent his feelings to others and thus bring indirect pressure on his partner. This sometimes results in bitterness and resentment. It may even lead to open quarrels and brawls.

But I am concerned not so much with the details of the working of the scheme as to call attention to certain features of it which seem highly significant for our understanding of the Trobriand way of life. These are: (1) the principle of reciprocity on which it is based and according to which it is the duty of a partner to make a return gift of equal value with no direct sanction to enforce the claim but public approval, a sense of duty to his partner and what Malinowski20 calls his sense of his own dignity; (2) the element of credit and commercial integrity involved in the transactions; (3) the way in which the Kula system intertwines with and helps to interconnect and encourage almost every aspect of their life from religion to economics, from canoe-building to agriculture, from magic to rank and social status; and the dependence is not one-sided but mutual; for one of the incentives to undertake the Kula expeditions is the desire to engage in the commercial transactions with their overseas neighbours which take place under the cover of the Kula exchanges; and (4) most significant, the native attitude to wealth and ownership which it reveals. Among the Trobrianders, as among other peoples, power and prestige are associated with wealth. But their ideas about wealth and the way in which it confers power and prestige are radically different from ours. They do not mean by wealth the ownership and accumulation of goods but rather the right to use them, and the use they make of them is mainly to give them away. Prestige is acquired by giving wealth away generously and with good grace; and the higher a person's status, the more rigid the obligation to give liberally. But though generosity is for them the greatest good, the highest value in their moral code, the Kula system provides that the recipient of a gift should make an appropriate return, and in its detailed working it indirectly provides a sanction which helps to enforce the claim. This sanction, however, is not what makes the claim just. It is rather, as Malinowski puts it, “a stimulus to moral steadfastness”21 which helps a man to do what he recognises as right when he has a strong temptation to do otherwise.

Malinowski repeatedly tells us that the institutions which I have been describing, and in fact all the relations between these people, are expressions of the principle of reciprocity, that indeed without the operation of this principle no primitive community could exist.22 What account, then, does he give of this principle, and why does he attach so much importance to it? What is its nature? What precisely does it determine? And what part does it play in the life and thought of the natives?

Malinowski describes the principle on different occasions as a moral, an economic or semi-economic, and a legal principle; but he does not make clear why the same principle should be regarded in these different ways or what the relations between its different aspects are. But taking his account as a whole into consideration, the illustrations he gives and the facts which he quotes, I think we may say that the principle may be looked at from three points of view, that it performs three functions in the life of the natives, and that its requirements may be complied with from three different sorts of motives. (1) The natives recognise the forms of life in which it operates as good, the principle itself as right and its requirements as morally obligatory. (2) The principle finds expression in a system of exchanges partly of goods and partly of services and satisfactions, and the individual recognises that, in the long run at least, it is to his own advantage or interest that he should comply with its requirements. Malinowski sometimes puts it that it is to his own ‘economic’ interest; but he uses the term ‘economic’ in a very wide sense to include not merely goods and services but anything which satisfies a desire, even a desire for prestige or security, for the recognition of his fellows or the good of others. (3) The individual recognises that, if he does not comply with its requirements, unpleasant consequences are likely to follow; and Malinowski holds that these are essentially of the nature of, or that they perform the same function as, legal sanctions.

Thus the Trobriander recognises the principle of reciprocity as morally right; he has positive extra-moral incentives to comply with its requirements; and its working brings home to him the consequences to himself of any neglect on his part to comply with it, and fear of these consequences acts as a deterrent against breaches of it. As the principle may be looked at from these different points of view and as people have these different incentives to comply with it, it is difficult, in the case of any particular act which complies with it, to be sure whether or how far it is the result of moral motives, such as sense of duty or regard for the rights of others, or of economic or semi-economic motives, such as hope of advantage, economic or other, to himself, or of fear of ‘legal’ consequences. Malinowski seems to describe the principle as moral, economic or legal, according as he is thinking of one or another of these motives as the main incentive for complying with its requirements. It is, however, with the third of these aspects that he is specially concerned, for in it he finds what among the Trobrianders fulfils the functions which law fulfils in more advanced societies; but the second, and to a less extent the first, also enters into his account; and he does not distinguish as clearly between them as one would wish; nor indeed is it easy to do so.

Now the principle of reciprocity does not itself determine all the details of the patterns of behaviour which the institutions of the Trobrianders prescribe, the particular rules which govern the relations of individuals within them, the detailed duties which they require and the rights which they confer. Most of these details are determined by their principles of social organisation, their beliefs about nature and man and super-nature, the past experience of their people and their own needs and purposes. Thus as far as the principle of reciprocity is concerned, there is a certain arbitrariness about many of these details. E.g. the exchanges of goods and services might equally well have been between different individuals or have taken different forms, and yet be in accordance with the requirements of the principle.

What, then, does the principle determine and what is its moral significance? It requires that the rights and duties which institutions based on it prescribe should be mutual, in the sense that each member has both rights and duties, instead of some having only rights and others only duties. This implies that the individuals whose relations are governed by it regard one another as persons, subjects of rights and objects of duties, self-governing individuals with desires and purposes of their own which are entitled to consideration, subjects to be persuaded and induced, not objects to be used or coerced. The natives find co-operation based on this principle good, they regard the principle as right, the institutions in which it finds expression as just, and the duties which they prescribe as binding. They find such co-operation good both as a means and in itself. In such co-operation they develop social sentiments, their natural interest in one another's welfare finds expression, and they recognise one another as persons. As this recognition takes place and this interest finds scope for exercise, the co-operation becomes more effective. It is difficult to assign any priority to one of these over the others: to say, e.g., that the natives recognise one another as persons and then develop an interest in one another's welfare or co-operate more effectively or vice versa. All three tend to develop pari passu, and the development of each is a condition of the fuller development of the others.

Thus the moral significance of the principle of reciprocity is that it is an expression of the principle of justice or equity based on a recognition of the moral equality as persons of those who co-operate in certain ways. However much the details of Trobriand institutions are determined by the experience of their people, it is the fact that they comply with this principle which makes them right or just; and it is the fact that the natives recognise them as expressions of this principle which makes them recognise the duties they impose as morally binding.

Malinowski is concerned not so much with the moral as with the legal and economic aspects of the principle of reciprocity. The reason for this is that, when he is discussing the principle,23 his main purpose is to expose certain misconceptions commonly entertained about primitive peoples, in particular the view that they obey the customs of their people spontaneously or automatically, and that there is nothing among them corresponding to law among ourselves. He is anxious to show, therefore, (1) that the Trobrianders perform their duties or conform to the requirements of the principle of reciprocity, so far as they do so, not merely from respect for custom or from fear of supernatural sanctions or from threat of force, but because they recognise the arrangements of which they form parts as good, and good not only for the community but for themselves individually; and (2) that no society can afford to leave the doing of irksome and unpleasant duties to the mere goodwill of its members; and that, though the Trobrianders have no ad hoc authority, such as courts and constables, to enforce the provisions which among them correspond to our civil and criminal law, the working of their social institutions based on the principle of reciprocity calls into operation psychological motives and a social mechanism which sanction and enforce their requirements on those who might feel inclined to ignore their obligations. This mechanism, he contends, enables the individual to see not only that his own good is bound up with the effective functioning of the institutions, but also that failure on his part to perform his duties will not only interfere with the working of the scheme, and so bring on him the disapproval of his partners, but that in the end it will be to his disadvantage in more material ways as well.

In his insistence that it pays the individual to do his duty, and that the native sees that this is so, Malinowski is apt to leave the impression that the Trobriander never does his duty except from considerations of enlightened self-interest or even of economic advantage. But, as we have seen, in other connections he is equally emphatic that, even in his so-called economic activities, the native is not moved merely or even mainly by purely utilitarian considerations. So that, despite the ambiguity of some of his expressions, his insistence on the economic aspect of the principle of reciprocity is intended merely to emphasise the fact that the performance of certain duties is so important for the smooth working of any way of life that they must normally be carried out, and that there exists among the Trobrianders a social machinery which ensures that this will normally happen. For the fact is—and Malinowski's account brings it out quite clearly—that it does not always, at least in the short run and in economic terms, necessarily pay the individual to respect his obligations; and it is certainly not always clear to him that it will. It will only do so if others also do their duties. What he does in fact see is that if everyone, including himself, did what the scheme requires of him, everyone, including himself, would benefit; and if other people did their duty he would benefit; but he cannot have a guarantee in advance that they will; and without such a guarantee he still recognises it as his duty to do his part. Without so much mutual trust and faith in other people, no institution or social order would be possible. On the other hand he sees that if he habitually abuses other people's trust, their faith in him will be undermined and they will cease to do their duties towards him. So that his failure to do his duty will not only interfere with the working of the scheme but it will tend in the end to bring unpleasant consequences on himself; and fear of such consequences, which the operation of the principle of reciprocity is likely to bring on him, may act as a deterrent against neglecting his duties, when he finds them burdensome and feels inclined to evade them.

It is true that such a sanction cannot guarantee that obligations are fulfilled from moral motives; but Malinowski insists that some rules are so important for the maintenance of the social order that it is better that they should be complied with from any motive than that they should not be complied with at all. The rules of which this is true are those which he calls legal. But the fact that they are legal in this sense does not prevent them from being moral rules as well, nor from being obeyed often from moral motives. Mere compliance is the minimum which can be enforced, but it is not the maximum which is morally required. Among primitive people, like the Trobrianders, who have no special authority or machinery for enforcing law, it is not easy to draw a clear distinction between law and morality; and Malinowski makes it specially difficult to do so by the very wide meaning which he gives to the term ‘law’. He defines it as “the forces which make for order, uniformity and cohesion” in a society.24 But he admits that the rules of social justice of the Trobrianders, what he calls their rules of law, are “not exclusively legal”.25

To some of these considerations we shall have to return. It is sufficient to note here that though Malinowski is mainly interested in the legal aspect of the principle of reciprocity, he does state explicitly that it is a moral principle;26 that among the motives for complying with its requirements he mentions “a sense of duty and the recognition of the need for co-operation. . . side by side with a realisation of self-interest, privilege, and benefit”;27 that he writes of “the sense of what is right. . . as a strong psychological incentive” to the native to do his duty to his sister's husband;28 of “regard for the rights of others” as “always prominent in the minds of the natives”;29 of the sense of duty as operative in connection with Kula exchanges;30 and so on. In other words, the requirements of the principle of reciprocity are regarded as morally right whatever other sanctions may be attached to them, and however mixed may be the motives of individuals who comply with them; and they are regarded as morally right because the native recognises the form of life in which they are complied with as good, good both for himself and for the community of which he is a member.