taphysical
concepts are supposed to realize themselves, or are assumed to be real.

+73. Status in the folkways.+ If now we form a conception of the
folkways as a great mass of usages, of all degrees of importance,
covering all the interests of life, constituting an outfit of
instruction for the young, embodying a life policy, forming character,
containing a world philosophy, albeit most vague and unformulated, and
sanctioned by ghost fear so that variation is impossible, we see with
what coercive and inhibitive force the folkways have always grasped the
members of a society. The folkways create status. Membership in the
group, kin, family, neighborhood, rank, or class are cases of status.
The rights and duties of every man and woman were defined by status. No
one could choose whether he would enter into the status or not. For
instance, at puberty every one was married. What marriage meant, and
what a husband or wife was (the rights and duties of each), were fixed
by status. No one could alter the customary relations. Status, as
distinguished from institutions and contract, is a direct product of the
mores. Each case of status is a nucleus of leading interest with the
folkways which cluster around it. Status is determined by birth.
Therefore it is a help and a hindrance, but it is not liberty. In modern
times status has become unpopular and our mores have grown into the
forms of contract under liberty. The conception of status has been lost
by the masses in modern civilized states. Nevertheless we live under
status which has been defined and guaranteed by law and institutions,
and it would be a great gain to recognize and appreciate the element of
status which historically underlies the positive institutions and which
is still subject to the action of the mores. Marriage (matrimony or
wedlock) is a status. It is really controlled by the mores. The law
defines it and gives sanctions to it, but the law always expresses the
mores. A man and a woman make a contract to enter into it. The mode of
entering into it (wedding) is fixed by custom. The law only ratifies it.
No man and woman can by contract make wedlock different for themselves
from the status defined by law, so far as social rights and duties are
concerned. The same conception of marriage as a status in the mores is
injured by the intervention of the ecclesiastical and civil formalities
connected with it. An individual is born into a kin group, a tribe, a
nation, o