ABSTRACT
In modern anthropological jurisprudence, it is universally assumed that all custom is law to the savage and that he has no law but his custom. According to Mr. Sidney Hartland and all the other authorities, religious sanctions, super-natural penalties, group responsibility and solidarity, taboo and magic are the main elements of jurisprudence in savagery. The fundamental function of law is to curb certain natural propensities, to hem in and control human instincts and to impose a non-spontaneous, compulsory behaviour—in other words, to ensure a type of co-operation which is based on mutual concessions and sacrifices for a common end. The binding forces of Melanesian civil law are to be found in the concatenation of the obligations, in the fact that they are arranged into chains of mutual services, a give and take extending over long periods of time and covering wide aspects of interest and activity.
