In my last lecture I explained the principles which are embodied in the Trobriand social structure, the magico-religious beliefs in the light of which they interpret their environment, and some of the institutions in which these beliefs and principles find concrete expression. These institutions are adjusted to one another and in their interrelation constitute the framework of their way of life. That framework moulds the thoughts and feelings of the native, and prescribes for him the conditions under which he can satisfy his needs and realise his ideals. I have already illustrated the effects of this process of conditioning by reference to their attitude to wealth, but the subject is so important for our understanding of the nature of man and morality that it is desirable to give another illustration of it. We can find no better example of it than the Trobriand pattern of sexual morality which is closely interwoven with their economic arrangements. I want, therefore, to describe briefly some of the closely related network of institutions which are concerned with the relations between the sexes and the laws of marriage. These show us how they deal with another of the basic urges of human nature; and, as we shall see, their attitude to sex is as different from ours as is their attitude to wealth. We have already seen some aspects of their marriage arrangements, such as clan exogamy, patrilocal marriage, brother-sister taboo, and the intricate economic relations between the husband and his brother-in-law. There are other aspects which I have no time to describe, such as the division of labour between the parents in caring for the children and in the work of the house and the gardens; and their educational arrangements, according to which father and mother and maternal uncle have well-defined duties in the instruction of the young.

The Trobrianders, even as adults, go about almost naked. They have no reticence about the physiological facts of sex, nor do they feel any sense of guilt in connection with them. Accordingly they do not in any way discourage children's interest in them. As a result, in the playful activities of boys and girls, sexual practices begin to play a part at a very early age, and premarital chastity in either sex is practically unknown. Out of ‘this promiscuous free love of early youth’ there gradually grow more permanent attachments, and marriage follows. From the time of marriage the partners are expected to be faithful to one another, but our authority reports that even this rule is not very strictly enforced.

Unlike most primitive peoples, the Trobrianders do not mark the crises of puberty by any initiatory rites. Nor is marriage among them accompanied by any special ceremony public or private. The wife just goes to live with her husband's people, but she must get her parents' consent. Later an exchange of gifts takes place between the families of the bride and bridegroom and more permanent semi-economic arrangements are established between them. The most important of these is the obligation, to which I have already referred, on the part of the bride's brother or brothers to supply the main provision not only for herself but also for her husband and children. None of these economic arrangements can be regarded as a purchase of or a dowry for the bride. But they tend to strengthen the family bond and give it greater permanence. They also make marriage a bond of connection not only between bride and bridegroom but also between their respective families.

In thinking of their marriage arrangements we must also remember the peculiar position of the father, which, as we saw, is partly at least due to their ignorance of the part which he plays in the coming into being of the children. This tends to give the mother a higher status and a greater measure of independence. Her husband, we are told, “will seldom quarrel with her, hardly ever attempt to brutalise her, and he will never be able to exercise a permanent tyranny” over her.1 Nevertheless she needs a husband as much as he needs a wife, and not just for sexual satisfaction, nor even for his services to herself and the children, but to give herself and her children approved social status. For despite the sexual freedom of the unmarried girl, pregnancy and childbirth on her part “are invariably regarded as a disgrace”.2 This ‘postulate of legitimacy’, as it has been called, seems to be universal in all human societies, however much their ideas about sexual morality may differ in other respects. “I know of no single instance, in the whole of anthropological literature,” Malinowski writes, “of a community where illegitimate children, that is, children of unmarried girls, would enjoy the same social treatment and have the same social status as legitimate ones.”3 To this rule the Trobriand Islanders are no exception.

Some people might imagine that, however their pattern of sexual morality originated, the Trobrianders now accept it only because they have no knowledge of any other. But this is far from being the case. They are well acquainted with the ways of life of the natives of neighbouring islands with whom they take part in Kula and other exchanges; and some of these, like the natives of the Amphletts and Dobu, have as strict a code of sexual morals as the mid-Victorians. What their approval of their own code of sexual morals shows is the influence of cultural conditions in moulding even the most powerful urges of man. For their attitude to sex is so intimately connected with many of their other institutions that it could not be altered without changing these institutions as well, and so revolutionising their whole way of life.

In order to bring out the influence of this cultural conditioning we have only to compare their pattern of sexual morality with our own, from which it differs so radically. In their way of life and in ours there are both opportunities for the satisfaction of the sexual urge and regulations which forbid its expression under other conditions. But the conditions for its expression and for its repression differ in the two ways of life. In their case there is free expression before marriage though no children may result, and there are rules not only of incest but also of exogamy which forbid either sexual relations or marriage between certain people, and the group to which these refer is much larger in their case than in ours. Moreover, they have many rules which forbid sexual relations even between husbands and wives under certain conditions; for example, before or during important expeditions such as the Kula or war parties, or in or near gardens and so on. The fact is that no society can afford to allow its members unlimited scope for the exercise of their most powerful impulses, while no society can completely repress them. All societies therefore have rules governing the conditions in which they may find expression, and these rules differ from people to people. Yet within wide limits which are not easily ascertainable, human nature seems to be so plastic, so easily moulded by cultural conditions, that it settles down not unhappily under many different kinds of regulations. What we find, therefore, in any of the different ways of life is the expression not of pure or bare human nature, but of human nature as moulded or conditioned by different cultural environments. Accordingly, it is difficult to say what the sex impulse or any other impulse requires for its satisfaction. We are apt to assume that it requires what it seems to require under our own system of institutions, but the Trobrianders are satisfied that it requires what their system of institutions provides.

We have, however, to remember that what has to be satisfied is not particular impulses or urges or desires, but persons, and persons who are members of societies, and that what they require is a way of life in which their different impulses find expression and satisfactions in ways which are compatible with one another and with similar satisfactions by other people. This is what the systems of institutions of different peoples are trying to provide. As we have repeatedly pointed out, the institutions in these systems are so interdependent that we cannot alter one which seems to us undesirable without also affecting others which we would be glad to leave as they are; for no custom or institution is self-contained or intelligible by itself alone. To appreciate its form or its function or the judgement of value passed on it by those who live under it, we have to see it as part of a complex pattern which includes many, and it may be all, of the other institutions of the people concerned; for other institutions help to determine its form and to provide the incentives which keep it going. Accordingly, if we take the institution by itself or against the background of our way of life, it may appear to us stupid or wasteful or even absurd. But if we take it in its relations to the other institutions and beliefs of the people who approve of it, it becomes intelligible even if we still refuse to regard it as right.

We have already met with examples of the way in which the institutions of the Trobrianders are interrelated and the light which their interrelation throws on their nature. We have seen, for example, how marriage regulations and agricultural arrangements, agriculture and magic, magic and canoe-building, canoe-building and Kula expeditions dovetail into and mutually support each other. I want to give one more illustration of the way in which their institutions interpenetrate and to show how their interpenetration renders intelligible a custom which on the surface is apt to seem to us the most absurd of all their institutions—the arrangement whereby a man is obliged to work for his sister's household while his brother-in-law provides for the man's own family. This arrangement seems to us not only wasteful of effort but grossly unfair. To realise how wasteful it is we have to remember that, owing to clan exogamy and patrilocal marriage, a man and his married sister live in different villages and so do a man and his wife's brother. Therefore, under this arrangement, every man's storehouse is filled from the gardens of a village other than his own. As a result, produce has to be carried at harvest time longish distances from village to village in a strange criss-cross kind of pattern. Nor is this all. The arrangements are carried out with great public display and ceremony which might seem mere waste of time and effort. The produce is first erected into neat conical heaps in the original garden where it is exposed to the criticism and appreciation of the whole community. It is then carried ceremonially to the other village, there to be again displayed for some days in front of the storehouse. Finally those who grew it, harvested it and carried it to the village return to store it away for safe-keeping, while those for whose benefit all this is done look on with apparent indifference. Could any arrangement be more wasteful or absurd from the point of view of those who tend to think of work as an evil performed only for economic advantage? And the arrangement seems as unfair as it is nonsensical. For when a person works hard and reaps a good harvest the best fruits of his labour go to others, while he and his family may suffer because their welfare is at the mercy of someone else who may be lazy or inefficient or in indifferent health.

That is how the situation appears to us. But when we consider these arrangements not in the context of our ideas and values, but as they appear to the natives in the context of their beliefs and cultural conditions, we not only understand them; we see why they approve of them as right and reasonable and accept as binding obligations the duties they impose.

To appreciate the situation as they see it, we have to take account of the following among other factors: (1) The woman to whom and to whose family the produce is sent has a claim on the land in which it was grown. The village in the gardens of which it was grown is her village, though for the present, as the result of patrilocal marriage, she lives elsewhere; and the magic by which it was blessed is that of her people—her subclan. (2) Her children also belong to that subclan, and when her sons reach maturity they will go to live in her village and help her brothers to grow the produce which is sent to their parents. (3) The man who sends the produce is sending it to his kin, those who are according to tribal law his heirs, those who will associate with him and be on his side in all the important crises of life, at mortuary ceremonies, during ritual performances, in a fight or in war. (4) According to the native theory of procreation, a man's wife's children are not his flesh and blood. To the land and produce of their father's village, therefore, they have no claim. (5) Though the father is, from the point of view of his wife's clan, an outsider and as such not entitled to any part of the produce, he receives his share in recognition of his services to his wife and children and through them to their clan. (6) Not all the produce of a man's gardens goes to his sister's family, but rather more than half. The part which is thus sent, however, contains the choicest produce, the only part which is ceremonially displayed, made the subject of public comment and used for special festive occasions. The remainder, less what goes as tribute to the chief under the polygamous arrangement which we already noticed, is taken quietly and without ostentation to the man's own subsidiary storehouse to be used partly as seed and partly to meet the day-to-day requirements of his family. (7) The ceremonial display of the part which is sent to his sister's family earns for a man renown and public approval if he is a good gardener and a generous giver, and contempt and loss of caste if he is inefficient or niggardly. The social prestige which comes as the result of the public recognition of his generosity, his efficiency as a gardener and his dutifulness as a member of his clan, is to the Trobriander one of the highest values which life can offer. It therefore provides him with a further incentive, in addition to clan loyalty and respect for tribal law, to do his duty in a generous way. Moreover he receives from his brother-in-law a return gift, but its economic value is insignificant compared to that of the original gift. Its main value is as an acknowledgement of services rendered and an expression of friendly feeling. Whether or not such a return gift is made, makes no difference, in the view of the natives, to the stringency of a man's obligation to continue his annual gifts to his sister's family.

Taking all these considerations together, we see that, to understand the attitude of the Trobrianders to the final disposal of the produce of their gardens, we have to take account not merely of economic considerations but of their relation to the soil as determined by their magico-religious beliefs, the matrilineal principle on which clan unity is based, the principle of legitimacy, the position of the father, the laws of marriage such as clan exogamy and patrilocal marriage, and the status of all the individuals concerned. In fact these arrangements are largely an expression in economic terms of the principles of social organisation and magico-religious beliefs which I described in the last lecture; and the economic arrangements cannot be understood without taking account of these principles and beliefs. Into a man's motives for carrying out his duties to his sister's family there enter, no doubt in varying proportions in the case of different individuals, sense of duty, devotion to his clan, sentiments of affection to his sister, regard for the rights of his brother-in-law, vanity and ambition, a desire to win the applause of the public and the commendation of the magician, rather than economic self-interest. But whatever be his motives for performing his duties, it is the factors which I have mentioned, not in isolation but conjointly, which make him regard the whole arrangement as good and the duties which it imposes as binding obligations.

From this account we can see the important functions which the arrangement fulfils in the life of the Trobrianders. It not only provides for the satisfaction of economic and other needs, but it helps to give greater stability to marriage, and it provides the mechanism whereby the chief collects tribute and his justification for exacting it. We see, in fact, how intimately interrelated their different institutions and beliefs and customs are, and how they interpenetrate and support one another. For example, the arrangement which I have been describing not only receives support from the magico-religious beliefs of the natives and from the principle of inheritance through the mother, but it also supports them. Or again, Kula expeditions provide the incentive to construct and repair canoes, which are used for many other purposes, and an additional incentive to internal trade and agriculture, while the desire for other forms of trade and for the exchange of agricultural produce with their overseas neighbours is part of the incentive to undertake Kula expeditions. Thus if we interfere with one institution, we take away, or at least decrease, the incentives which keep others going.

It is this interdependence of its institutions, whereby they mutually support one another, to which functional anthropologists refer when they speak of the pattern of the culture of a particular people. It does not mean that the institutions are logically connected or rationally coherent, but only that they are so connected in the minds and motives and purposes of the people that the satisfactions provided by one act as incentives to perform the duties required by another. When we say that they are consistent, all that is meant is that they are not inconsistent: that they are so adjusted that the duties required by one do not conflict with those required by another, but rather act as incentives for performing them. It is a long road from such functional interdependence to rational coherence, and there are many intermediate stages on the way.

We have now seen the way in which some of the institutions of the Trobrianders are related within the framework of their way of life. This framework, the institutions which constitute it, the principles which are embodied in them and the behaviour patterns which they prescribe, are to be found not in written laws or codes but in the attitudes and beliefs and mental habits of the natives, in their habits of thinking and feeling, in the attitudes they adopt to one another, in the judgements which they pass on their own and other people's conduct, and in the reasons which they give for these judgements. The natives do not normally formulate in abstract terms even the rules and principles which are embodied in particular institutions, let alone the interrelation of principles which finds expression in the whole pattern of their way of life. They are too near and familiar to be held at arm's length and reflected on objectively as they are by us when we describe the cultural pattern of the Trobrianders—if not usually when we think of our own. Like most members of most communities, primitive and advanced, they realise what the operation of a principle, or an institution in which it operates, requires of them in particular concrete situations, and they. see how their rights and duties dovetail into those of their neighbours. But most of them do not see beyond this. Among them, as among ourselves, there are individual differences. Some minds have a wider, some a narrower range. Some individuals enter more deeply into the spirit of their institutions and have a firmer grasp of their structure and purpose. Malinowski tells us of native sociologists who not only understand the nature and functions of some of their institutions but can explain them to the anthropologist.4 But they are rare exceptions, though, we are told,5 some are to be found among all primitive peoples.

Before considering the attitude of the natives to the principles and rules and behaviour patterns which are embodied in their institutions to see how far and in what ways they appreciate their interrelations and the reasons which for them are the grounds of their rightness, I want to illustrate from their moral ideas and way of life a point which I made earlier in general terms and which seems to me important for our understanding of morality, Trobriand or other. It concerns the distinction between different kinds or levels of ideals entertained by the same individual or people, and especially the distinction between a theoretical ideal, that is a principle or set of principles or ideal accepted in abstract and general terms and an operative ideal, that is a principle or set of principles embodied in working institutions. A consideration of this distinction will enable us to see how different institutions and principles interact and mutually modify one another, and how progress in moral ideas or moral enlightenment takes place even among primitives.

Malinowski repeatedly calls attention to the difference between the strict letter of tribal law, as a native will explain it—that is, the theoretical ideal—and what he calls legalised usage, that is, the operative ideal embodied in their interrelated institutions. The theoretical ideal insists on the consistent application of one principle or set of principles. In the operative ideal, principles are so adjusted to one another and the needs of human nature as to admit of many exceptions which are not only tolerated but regarded as right by the ordinary member of the society. For example, according to the letter of tribal law a man should leave all his possessions to his nephew, but in practice many men give to their sons during their lifetime things which should according to the strict ideal go to their nephews. Now this, though resented by the legitimate heirs, is regarded by their fellows as right and reasonable. It has, therefore, become part of the tradition which Malinowski calls legalised usage, and social institutions have been established which embody this legalised usage. These institutions, such as cross-cousin marriage and the keeping of a chiefs son after maturity in his father's village, are traditional and institutionalised ways of evading the requirements of clan unity based on matrilineal descent. And Malinowski reports that the natives understand and can explain the reasons for such institutions.6 The institutions have been established and continue to flourish because the natives regard the purposes which they serve as right and reasonable. As long as this is the case, the Trobrianders are not over-much troubled about their abstract consistency with some of the principles embodied in their other institutions. They are fitted into the pattern and the other institutions are adjusted accordingly. During the period of adjustment, before the new institution is fully established, acute clashes sometimes take place. They involve conflicts of loyalties and perplexity as to what is right. Malinowski reports several of them from the Trobriands.7

Take another example. The tribal law requires strict exogamy, that is, no marriage within the clan. And this law has a supernatural sanction. A breach of it is not only regarded as shameful, it is believed to cause illness and perhaps even death. Yet when the relation between the spouses is not one of near consanguinity, public opinion tolerates such marriages and regards them as reasonable. There is even a series of traditional magical rites and spells which are believed to counteract the harmful consequences which would otherwise follow. Here we have a traditional and legalised way—supported by magico-religious ceremonies—of evading one of the most stringent of tribal laws. Or again when an individual is killed by a member of another subclan, tribal law demands that his kin should undertake a vendetta against the murderer and his kin, but when it is recognised that the murdered man was clearly in the wrong it is not thought necessary nor even right to undertake the vendetta.8

In this way even the most rigid rules, those which have a supernatural sanction, can be evaded or circumvented not only with the connivance but with the backing of public opinion and legalised usage, when the exceptions are in conformity with the people's sense of what is right. The fact is that none of their principles of social organisation and none of the rules embodied in their institutions is strictly universal. But the exceptions to them which are recognised as right are not usually thought of as exceptions, because they are normally not thought of in relation to the rules at all, but in relation to the institutions, such, for example, as cross-cousin marriage, which have been established to embody the behaviour pattern which constitutes the exception. In the same way, among ourselves we do not think of killing an enemy in war-time as a breach of the sixth commandment, because we do not think of such killing in relation to that commandment at all, but in relation to the behaviour pattern prescribed by the institution of war. Thus we see how the institutions of a people determine the interpretation which they put on rules which they in general accept, and how they justify the exceptions to them which they regard as right.

Accordingly, the operative ideal of the Trobriander is not the coherent expression of one principle, but rather the result of the joint operation of several principles which are liable to conflict both with one another and with the requirements of human nature. The operative ideal is thus a balance or equilibrium in which different rules or principles mutually modify one another; and this equilibrium is not static but dynamic. Progress in moral enlightenment consists largely in adjusting the requirements of different rules and principles in the interests both of greater consistency and greater adequacy to the needs of human nature. We see evidence of this progress among the Trobrianders in the growth of institutions embodying legalised usage and the consequent modifications of tribal law.

Now this phenomenon of professing allegiance to a principle or theoretical ideal conceived in general terms—an ideal which we keep, as it were, for Sunday use—while determining our particular duties and passing judgement on our own and other people's conduct in the light of a nearer and less consistent operative ideal which makes many concessions to other principles and considerations, is by no means confined to primitives. Among ourselves, for example, the code of conduct of even the best Christians is perhaps a compromise between the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the operative ideal embodied in our moral and social institutions; while the latter itself, the operative ideal of the average member of a Christian community, is a compromise between the code of conduct of the best Christians and the natural desires and inclinations of human nature. To note this contrast between the theoretical ideal, to which we pay a homage which is more than lip service, and the operative ideal of our average moments, is easier for the outsider, whether primitive or advanced, than for the person who entertains both and does not usually pay much attention to the conflict between them. The result of failure to recognise this conflict for what it is in the case of primitives is that we often accuse them of inconsistency or hypocrisy; and they, seeing the same conflict in our own case, pass on us exactly the same judgement as we pass on them. Malinowski gives an interesting illustration from his own experience among the Trobrianders during World War I, which shows that they see us in much the same light as we see them. “Many of my Melanesian friends,” he writes,9 “taking at its face value the doctrine of ‘brotherly love’ preached by Christian missionaries and the taboo on warfare and killing preached and promulgated by Government officials, were unable to reconcile the stories about the Great War, reaching the remotest Melanesian or Papuan village. They were really puzzled at hearing that in one day white men were wiping out as many of their own kind as would make up several of the biggest Melanesian tribes. They forcibly concluded that the white man was a tremendous liar, but they were not certain at which end the lie lay—whether in the moral pretence or in his bragging about war achievements.”

Thus, whether among savages or civilised, it is one thing to accept an ideal or principle in a vague general way as worthy of our allegiance. It is quite another thing to embody it in our moral and social institutions. But we do not really grasp the nature of a moral ideal or principle till we see how it is going to operate in practice and what it requires, and what exceptions will have to be made to it, in particular concrete situations, that is, till we have so worked out its detailed requirements in terms of our actual life and institutions that it becomes what I have called an operative ideal. In our accounts of the ways of life of other primitive peoples we shall come across further illustrations of this difference between a theoretical and an operative ideal, between accepting principles or rules in general terms and embodying them in a way of life in which they are adjusted to other principles and rules and admit of many exceptions, though the exceptions are not usually thought of in relation to the rules and therefore not as exceptions to them. I shall consider the implications of this for ethics later when we have before us more evidence about its detailed working.

So far we have been considering characteristics common to all the Trobriand institutions and all the rules of conduct which find expression in them. But the rules and the forms of conduct which they prescribe are of different kinds, not all of which are moral. Some are merely economic or ritual or legal or technical. The acts which are supernaturally prescribed or demanded by law or economically advantageous or technically correct may also be morally right, but they need not be; and even if they are, it is only when they are recognised as morally right and done for that reason that the doing of them has moral value. The distinguishing characteristic of moral rules and conduct is their categorical or final character, whereas other rules and forms of conduct have as such only a hypothetical rightness. They are the means to certain ends or the conditions of certain states of affairs, and their rightness is conditional on the obligation to realise the latter. Moral rules directly evoke the sense of duty or unconditional obligation, the other rules as such do not. We have now to consider to what extent, if at all, the Trobriander distinguishes between different rules and forms of conduct, to see his attitude to each and the reasons why he regards it as right; or, if the same form of conduct is both morally right and ritually prescribed or economically advantageous or demanded by law, how far he distinguishes between its different characteristics. We have, in particular, to consider how far, if at all, his attitude to moral rules or the moral aspect of conduct differs from that which he adopts towards other rules and other aspects.

Primitive man has a profound respect for custom in which is embodied the accumulated wisdom of his ancestors; and he accepts all rules as right in the first instance because they are the customs of his people. Until the ways of life of primitive peoples had been intensively studied by trained experts, it was generally believed that their attitude to all rules was the same, that they accepted them as right merely out of respect for custom. The group was thought so to dominate the individual that he more or less spontaneously or automatically obeyed all the traditional rules of his people—the operative causes or motives being partly mental inertia and partly a superstitious fear of supernatural agencies which would punish him if he did not. But careful observation has shown this view to be entirely without foundation; and no one has done more to discredit it than Malinowski.10 The position as he found it among the Trobrianders is this: (1) Under normal conditions (when they are obeyed and not defied) the observance of their rules is “at best partial, conditional and subject to evasion”.11 (2) Few of their rules of conduct have supernatural sanctions of any kind. And (3) their attitude to different kinds of rules is quite different both as regards their reasons for regarding them as right and their motives for complying with them when they do so.

In considering Malinowski's attempt to distinguish the different kinds or classes of rules of conduct to be found among the Trobrianders and the attitude which they adopt towards each, it is desirable to distinguish carefully between two questions: (1) Why do they believe that certain rules are right, that is, what do they regard as the moral authority of the rules, the grounds of their rightness? (2) What motives and incentives does their society provide to individuals to obey the rules which they recognise as right, in addition to the fact that they are regarded as right, and what happens to them if they do not obey them, that is, what are the sanctions attached to the different rules? No doubt the two questions are very closely connected and Malinowski does not explicitly distinguish them; nor was it necessary for his purpose to do so. Indeed some of his statements suggest that he confused them; for he sometimes speaks of sanctions as not merely enforcing rules, but as making them valid. This confusion, which is not confined to Malinowski, seems to be in part due to an ambiguity in the term ‘sanctions’. Sometimes it seems to mean non-moral or extra-moral, e.g. legal, supernatural or economic, sanctions. At other times it seems to include the strictly moral sanction of moral approval and disapproval, whether by the individual himself or by his fellows who usually share his judgement. But the confusion seems to be partly due to the fact that in the case of the rules with which Malinowski is specially concerned the main incentives for obedience are provided by the operation of the form of life, whose goodness is also the ground of their rightness. Be this as it may, in his most explicit and detailed treatment of the Trobriand rules of conduct Malinowski is mainly concerned with extra-moral sanctions and incentives, with the social machinery which ensures that what he calls legal rules are normally obeyed, with what he elsewhere calls “stimuli to moral steadfastness”. We, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with what the Trobrianders regard as the moral authority of their rules, the grounds of their rightness; for this is what brings to light the foundations of their morality.

In distinguishing the different kinds or classes of rules of conduct recognised as right by the Trobrianders, Malinowski takes as his principle of classification the sanctions which are attached to them. This is in fact the principle of division used by practically all anthropologists who deal with the subject. But however useful it may be for Malinowski's purpose, and though it serves to bring out certain facts which have a bearing on our problem, this principle of division is from our point of view very unsatisfactory, for the different classes of rules at which we arrive by the use of it are not mutually exclusive. The same rule of conduct may have several different sanctions. Among ourselves murder, e.g., is morally wrong, legally a crime, and from the religious point of view a sin. In other words, among us the rule against killing has moral, legal and religious sanctions. Therefore from the point of view of a classification based on sanctions it is at once a moral, a legal and a religious rule. But if a rule is morally right, the fact that non-moral sanctions are attached to it does not make it cease to be a moral rule; nor, of course, does the fact that any or all of the non-moral sanctions are given to it make it morally right, if it is not so independently. Accordingly, the treatment of moral rules by those who use sanctions as a principle of classification of rules tends to be very unsatisfactory. Some of them do not include moral rules at all as a separate item on their lists, no doubt because they are to be found in more than one class. Others arrive at their list of moral rules by a process of elimination. Thus Diamond,12 using Austin's definition, describes moral rules as “rules prescribing conduct between man and man, not being rules of law or of religion”; a description according to which the sixth commandment cannot be regarded as a moral rule, because it was promulgated in the name of God and legal penalties are attached to breaches of it.

Thus whatever value such classifications may have from the point of view of those interested in non-moral rules, their treatment of moral rules is not only unhelpful but misleading. What is more important from our point of view, however, is that a classification of rules based on sanctions ignores the characteristics which make right rules right, and which explain and justify the exceptions to them which are regarded as right, and which determine the relative urgency of different rules when their requirements clash. It ignores the functional analysis of ways of life into systems of interdependent institutions and the relation of rules to institutions and ways of life. It suggests that rules which are regarded as right are regarded as right in general, that is, as applicable to all relations or situations of a certain sort; whereas, as we shall see, among primitives no rules are regarded as binding in their relations to all men; and even those rules which are generally accepted as binding between the members of the group are often differently interpreted within different institutions or in relation to different people. Nor is this confined to primitives. We ourselves interpret the rule of truth-telling differently, e.g. in the family in relation to our friends, in business in relation to our competitors, and in war in relation to our enemies. The requirements of this rule, the extent to which it is considered obligatory to tell the whole truth, varies from one institution to another, and in some institutions, such as war, deliberately to mislead others may be considered morally indifferent, if not even praiseworthy. Now such differences of interpretation of what may seem in abstract terms the same rule, and such limitations of, and approved exceptions to rules, which in some connections they regard as right, are more common among primitives; and we cannot understand the reasons for them without taking account of their institutions and the ways of life which these institutions constitute.

Despite the defects of a classification of rules of conduct by reference to the sanctions attached to them, I propose to begin with it, partly because it brings out certain facts which are important for our understanding of primitive morality, and partly because it is used not only by Malinowski but also by the field workers who describe the other primitive peoples with whom I shall be concerned; and I want at present to keep as near my authorities as possible. Using this principle of division, Malinowski distinguishes the following main classes of rules of conduct among the Trobrianders:

(1) Rules with a magico-religious or supernatural sanction. These include all magical and ritual rules, rules regarding incest and exogamy and perhaps some of the principles at the basis of the constitution of their society, such as matrilineal descent and chieftainship. These rules rest merely on tradition or authority. The Trobriander does not understand and does not profess to understand why they should be as they are. But they are not merely customs, they are sacred customs. Justified by mythology and backed by supernatural sanctions, they are part of the sacred tradition of his people. They give rise to the religious thrill, the sense of the supernatural. The native obeys them partly out of respect for custom, partly because he regards them as sacred and partly because of fear of the consequences for himself and his people which he believes would follow any violation of them. These motives are no doubt at times reinforced by others, such as spontaneous horror of incest or the piety and love of parents that enter into mortuary rites. The observance of these magico-religious rules is, however, also a moral duty. Even if there is no idea of a supernatural agent to whom they are owed as sacred duties, they are social obligations to one's fellows. For the good of the community, including one's own as well as one's neighbour's, is believed to depend on their performance. Any breach of them, therefore, arouses strong social disapproval as well as, or because of, fear of supernatural consequences.

(2) Rules of manners and conventions. These rest entirely on tradition and the conservatism of custom. They are followed more or less automatically because there is no inducement to depart from them. They do not involve any sacrifice or concession that runs counter to the desires or self-interest of the natives. On the other hand, they have a strong inducement to comply with them; for any deviation from them would make “a man feel and look in the eyes of others ridiculous, clumsy, socially uncouth”.13

(3) Technical rules, rules of skill and craftsmanship. To these the same considerations apply as to the last class, but there is an important difference: “their practical utility”, as Malinowski puts it, “is recognised by reason and testified by experience”.14 Accordingly, while the natives adhere very closely to the traditional technical rules, whether in agriculture or fishing or craftsmanship, they understand and can explain why it is necessary to do so. They recognise them as the natural means to certain ends which they desire.

(4) Rules of secular morality, individual and social. These include almost all rules governing the relations of a man to his neighbours, rules of social justice, distributive and corrective, rules regarding respect for person and property, rules about truth-telling and promise-keeping and so on. They are, therefore, the rules with which we are specially concerned. These rules differ from magico-religious rules on the one hand and rules of manners on the other. Unlike the former “they have in no way the character of religious commandments”,15 they “are not endowed with any mystical character, not set forth in the name of God, not enforced by any supernatural sanction but provided with a purely social binding force”.16 Unlike the latter, many of them are felt to be burdensome and irksome restraints. Their requirements, positive and negative, are often opposed to man's natural inclinations and his immediate self-interest.

What, then, gives these rules their moral authority? Why do the natives regard them as right? Or, as Malinowski puts it, what are “the forces which make them binding”?17 The natives regard them as right because they recognise them as the conditions on which the smooth working of their institutions and the effective functioning of the common life of the group depend. These institutions and that life they find good, good not only for the group but also for themselves. They provide for the satisfaction of their needs, material and spiritual. The natives therefore regard compliance with the conditions which are necessary for their maintenance and functioning as right and reasonable. They regard the duties which they impose as binding, not out of respect for custom or tradition but because they recognise them as the conditions of individual and social well-being.

No doubt the extent to which the Trobrianders recognise the way in which the rules of their moral code are conditions on which the smooth working of their way of life depends varies considerably from one individual to another. Few, if any, of them think of these rules and their functions in the abstract or in relation to their way of life as a whole, as the social anthropologist or the moral philosopher does. But they recognise quite clearly in particular circumstances what benefits will accrue to themselves and to others if the rules are observed, and what consequences to themselves and to others will result from breaches of them. There is among them, as there is among the ordinary members of most communities, a great deal of uncritical and unquestioning acceptance of customs, the reasons for which they do not clearly understand. But Malinowski assures us that the Trobrianders recognise the need for and the conditions of co-operation as clearly as we do. As their rules are embodied in concrete institutions with their systems of rights and duties, the individual not only realises what is required of him in a particular situation, and that what is required of him is essential for the working of the system; he also realises that it is good for him as well as for others that he should perform it. Thus Malinowski writes of “the rational appreciation by the native”18 of the requirements of the system, and of his “understanding” of “the social forces which maintain it as rational and necessary”.19 In case these statements should leave the impression that Malinowski represents the moral beliefs or the way of life of the Trobrianders as a more coherent whole, or the attitude of the natives towards them as more rational, than in fact he does, I should explain that, when we take his account as a whole into consideration, what he seems to be trying to convey by them is that to the natives their different institutions or the different parts of their way of life belong together or are intelligible, in the sense that they understand how the values and satisfactions which they give are connected with the duties and obligations which they impose.20 Elsewhere Malinowski himself puts the matter thus: “Though no native. . . can formulate this state of affairs (i.e. the detailed and elaborate working of the whole system of mutual rights and duties which constitutes their way of life) in a general abstract manner. . . yet everyone is well aware of its existence and in any concrete case he can foresee its consequences”.21 And he sees that, taken as a whole, it is good, good for himself as well as for the community with which his welfare is so closely bound up.

Here we see the main difference between the attitude of the native to magico-religious rules and to rules of secular morality. He understands the reasons for the latter in a way in which he does not understand the reasons for the former. In this respect his attitude to moral rules is like his attitude to technical rules. While both of them belong to the traditions of his people, they belong to the secular not the sacred part of that tradition, that part which is not merely accepted on authority, but “recognised by reason and testified by experience” to be right. But the Trobrianders do not think of their moral rules in abstract or general terms, nor do they recognise them as right in isolation but as they enter into and are required by the co-operative framework of personal relations which we find in their different institutions and, still more, in the interrelation of institutions which constitutes the pattern of their way of life. Malinowski reminds us again and again that “the real problem” for our understanding of the morality or the way of life of a primitive people is “not a bald enumeration of rules” but a recognition of the way in which they operate in practice; and he contends that “the study by direct observation of the rules. . . as they function in actual life. . . reveals that they are always organically connected and not isolated; that their very nature consists in the many tentacles which they throw out into the context of social life; that they only exist in the chain of social transactions in which they are but a link”.22

In discussing the moral rules of the Trobrianders I have been referring to all their rules of individual and social morality; but, as I have said, Malinowski is specially interested in those of their moral rules to which extra-moral, secular sanctions are attached, sanctions which encourage the native to do what he believes to be right. Some at least of these rules, Malinowski contends, are so important to the welfare of the community that conformity to them cannot be left to the mere goodwill of the individual. He calls them rules of law, and many of the statements which I have quoted from him refer specially to them. Whether they include all the secular moral rules of the Trobrianders is not clear from Malinowski's account; but if they do not, he draws no distinction between them and other moral rules. Nor would it be easy for him to do so. For as the Trobrianders have neither courts nor constables to enforce such rules, the sanctions, positive and negative, which are attached to them and which in their case serve the same purpose as legal sanctions among ourselves, are the results of the working of their system of institutions which, as we have seen, are based on the principle of reciprocity or exchanges of goods and services. These sanctions are both economic and non-economic. Among the latter we find, e.g., the satisfaction of social impulses, of vanity and ambition, of desires for the approval of their fellows and so on. These sanctions, whether economic or non-economic, provide additional incentives to the Trobrianders to comply with their rules when their sense of duty and regard for the rights of others are not by themselves strong enough. And for those for whom these positive incentives are not a sufficient inducement there is the fear of economic consequences to themselves to act as a deterrent against breaches of the rules. This fear is evoked by the economic aspect of the principle of reciprocity. That is why Malinowski lays so much emphasis on it. It is these positive extra-moral incentives to obey their rules and these deterrents against breaches of them which, among the Trobrianders, fulfil most of the functions which law fulfils in more advanced societies. They do not guarantee that rules are obeyed from moral motives, any more than our laws do, but they encourage people to fulfil obligations which they might otherwise feel inclined to disregard.

Now Malinowski is at considerable pains to distinguish these rules, the rules of primitive law, from the other three classes which he describes, i.e. ritual, conventional and technical rules. And the distinction applies both to the sanctions which attach to them and to the attitude of the natives towards them. But he does not try to distinguish those which he calls the rules of primitive law from other moral rules, if there are any others. The reason for this is, I think, that most of what he says about them applies to all secular moral rules. This seems to be so even as regards the extra-moral sanctions attached to them. For among all small closely knit groups of people who are dependent on one another for all goods and services, all moral and social approval and disapproval tend to find expression in ways which are apt to affect the satisfaction of the needs of the people concerned, i.e. in economic or semi-economic ways; and so the sanctions which Malinowski calls legal tend to be attached to all moral rules. It is of course true that when a man complies with a rule which he regards as right from non-moral motives, his action is not morally good. But Malinowski makes it plain that, even in the case of the rules which he calls legal, mere external conformity, which is all that non-moral sanctions can ensure, is not all that the Trobrianders expect from the good man or all that they normally get from one another. They often obey their rules, we are told, from sense of duty or regard for the rights of others as well as from more self-interested and less creditable motives. But a person's motives for complying with a rule, if he does comply with it, are irrelevant when we are considering the grounds on which he recognises it as right. And as regards the grounds on which they recognise them as right, Malinowski's account of the rules which he calls legal applies to all Trobriand moral rules.

It might be thought possible to distinguish what Malinowski calls rules of primitive law from other moral rules in a different way. But when we consider this way of distinguishing them we find that it is not so clear as it seems on the surface, and that it has little relevance either to the grounds on which the rules are considered right or to the sanctions which are attached to them. The rules with which Malinowski is specially concerned are mainly those of social justice, distributive and corrective. They find expression in the particular forms of co-operation which we find in the social institutions of the Trobrianders, such as Kula exchanges, marriage arrangements, the relations between the members of a canoe crew or a hunting expedition, and so on. About these particular forms of co-operation there is, as we have seen, something arbitrary. Though the principle of reciprocity which finds expression in them is not arbitrary, it might equally well find expression in other forms of co-operation based on other rules. But there are other moral rules such as those about respect for life and property, truth-telling and promise-keeping, which have nothing arbitrary about them. They are general conditions of any form of co-operation, even of the minimum of co-operation involved in being members of one community. We might, therefore, say that these more general conditions of co-operation, which apply to all communities and to the working of all institutions, are the strictly moral rules; but, among the Trobrianders at any rate, the distinction between them and the more specific rules which vary from institution to institution is not so important or so clear as it might at first appear.

When Malinowski says that the Trobrianders realise that co-operation is necessary and desirable and that they therefore recognise as obligatory the conditions which make it effective, his account makes it clear that the conditions which they recognise as right include both the particular expressions of the principle of reciprocity which we find in their social institutions and also the more general conditions of any form of co-operation. So that the grounds on which they regard the rules as right apply equally to the two classes; they are both conditions of a form of life which they regard as good. But the main reason why the distinction between the two kinds of rules is not so clear as it might at first appear is that we cannot understand the interpretation which they put on the more general conditions of co-operation, the extent to which they regard them as right or the exceptions to them which they admit, without taking account of their particular institutions. We may say that any form of co-operation or of orderly social life requires that, in general, truth should be told, promises kept, theft condemned and life respected. Such rules, therefore, seem to be of general application to every form of life. But stated in such general terms these rules seem to mean only that the specific rules respecting life, property, truth-telling and promise-keeping, which are embodied in the institutions of the people concerned and necessary for their working, should be obeyed. For when we ask to whom should the truth be told, how much should be told, and in what circumstances it should be told, we cannot answer without taking account of the particular institutions which make up the way of life of the people concerned. Among the Trobrianders it is a condition of the working of some of their institutions that one should not tell the truth about certain things. E.g. they believe that no man should tell the truth about his contribution to his brother-in-law's family,23 or about the contents of his own storehouse;24 and there is no obligation at all to tell the truth to a foreigner. In the same way among ourselves whether the truth should be told, and if so how much should be told, depends on whether we are dealing with family and friends, with business competitors, or with an enemy in war-time. Similar considerations apply to any other rule we care to take, at least among the Trobrianders.

The fact is that as their rules are embodied in their institutions and operate in practice, none of them is strictly universal. They all admit of exceptions which are regarded as right. But as the rules are neither taught to them in their youth nor thought of by them as adults in abstract general terms, and as the exceptions as well as the rules are embodied in institutions, the exceptions are not usually thought of in relation to the rules but as the requirements of particular institutions. Therefore, they are not usually thought of as exceptions. What may seem to us the same rule, e.g. the rule to tell the truth, or not to steal or to kill, may be a condition of the working of one of their institutions but not of another. But as their institutions are adjusted to one another so that conflicts between their requirements do not normally arise, and as the rule is not thought of in the abstract, the conflict between the rule and the exception may not be recognised by them as such, any more than it always is by us when we are living our own way of life. The exceptions and the rules are regarded by them as right for the same reason, because they seem to them the conditions of a form of life which they find on the whole good.

The only rule which they regard as strictly universal is the rule that duties should be performed, obligations fulfilled, rights respected.25 Particular moral rules as to what are duties, obligations and rights are universal only in the sense that they are not respecters of persons or at least of personal identity; for, in some connections, the Trobrianders regard differences of rank and social status as morally relevant. Their moral rules are universal in the sense that what is right for me to do in a given situation would be right for anyone of my rank and status in similar circumstances. They are not universal in the sense that if it is not right for me in a particular situation to make a deliberately misleading statement, to kill a man or to take the property of another, it is never right either for myself or for anyone else to do these things in any circumstances.

There is still another sense in which their moral rules are not universal. They do not apply outside the group, whether this be a village, a district, a clan, a tribe or a group of tribes. There is always a limit beyond which the outsider has no rights. In other words, they do not recognise any rules which apply to men as such, or even to all men or all natives with whom they come in contact. What they recognise as good is the maintenance of the common life of the group whose members alone they regard as objects of duties and subjects of rights. It is the values embodied in the institutions which constitute this common life which for them make life worth while. They therefore accept as binding the rules and duties which the maintenance of this life and the realisation of its values seem to them to imply. But they regard them as binding only so far as they are thus implied. It is their conception of this form of life that for them gives validity and authority to their rules, in those cases in which they are recognised as binding, and that justifies the exceptions to them which are regarded as right. But as we have already seen, their conception of this life is not vague and nebulous. It is embodied in a system of concrete institutions. Through the working of these and the principle of reciprocity on which they are based, they recognise both what particular duties it requires of them and how their own good and the realisation of the values which they cherish are bound up with it and with the performance of their duties.

Three other comments remain to be made before we take leave of the Trobrianders:

(1) I have been mainly concerned in trying to discover what for them gives their rules moral authority, but needless to say the recognition of rules as right and duties as obligatory does not of itself ensure that the natives will fulfil them; and, when they do, they do not necessarily do it from moral motives. Their motives for obeying their rules, when they do obey them, are usually mixed and vary from individual to individual and from time to time in the life of the same individual: sense of duty, respect for the rights of others, loyalty and devotion to the group, desire of social approval or fear of disapproval and self-interest all enter.

(2) In his detailed treatment of their moral rules, Malinowski is primarily concerned with the extra-moral incentives and sanctions which help the Trobriander to do what he believes to be right. But he tells us that, in the moral judgements which they pass on one another, they take account not only of whether people do their duties but also of the spirit in which they do them. A man may comply with the requirements of their moral code from unworthy motives. He may do his duties in a mean and niggardly spirit, or again with ostentation and boast-fulness. Both these attitudes are condemned by the Trobrianders. They regard as the good man, the man who carries out his duties quietly and generously, without too much regard for his own selfish interests—he who resists temptation, has a proper regard for the rights of others, and gives more than he takes. What we are not told is how far they attain to the highest reaches of the moral life, where the individual not only struggles against his own weaker nature, but in a lonely venture of faith trusts his own moral insight against the accepted moral beliefs and code of his people, when his fellows, and perhaps many of us, might say that he was playing the fool. But we are told that they sometimes complain that some of the accepted customs of their people are not right,26 and we have already quoted instances of ways in which they change them.

(3) I have quoted from Malinowski statements to show that most of the moral rules of the Trobrianders have no supernatural sanctions in the sense either of being promulgated in the name of supernatural agents or of having supernatural rewards or punishments attached to them, but this does not mean that their magico-religious beliefs and practices have no influence on their morality. Malinowski is quite explicit and emphatic that their magico-religious beliefs, and especially the performance of the practices which they enjoin, exercise a profound influence both on the character of the individual and on his relations to his fellows. They help to produce in those who take part in them an unselfishness, a respect for the common good, and a spirit of goodwill and mutual trust which makes it more likely that they will perform their duties to one another. To this aspect of the relation between their morality and religion I shall have to return later.