le stoned in effigy and
cursed.[200] Sending a man to Coventry is in vogue among the Fejir
Beduins: one who kills a friend is so despised that he is never
spoken to again, nor allowed to sit in the tent of any member of the
tribe.[201]

The formulation of sentiment about an act depends also on the
repetition of the act. The act is more irritating, and the irritation
more widespread, with each repetition, and there is an increase of
the penalty for a second offense, and death for a slight offense when
frequently repeated: in the Netherlands stealing of linen left in the
fields to be bleached led to the death penalty for stealing a pocket
handkerchief. And with increasing definiteness of authority there
follows increasing definiteness of punishment; and when finally
the habit becomes fixed, conformity with it becomes a paramount
consideration, and a deed is no longer viewed with reference to its
intrinsic import so much as to its conformity or nonconformity with a
standard in the law: _summum jus, summa injuria_.

Morality, involving the modification of the conduct of the individual
in view of the presence of others, is already highly developed in
the tribal stage, since the exigencies of life have demanded the most
rigorous regulation of behavior in order to secure the organization
and the prowess essential to success against all comers. But the tribe
is a unit in hostile coexistence with other similar units, and its
morality stops within itself, and applies in no sense to strangers and
outsiders. The North American Indians were theoretically at war with
all with whom they had not concluded a treaty of peace. In Africa
the traveler is safe and at an advantage if by a fiction (the rite of
blood-brotherhood) he is made a member of the group; and similarly
in Arabia and elsewhere. The old epics and histories are full of the
praises of the man who is gentle within the group and furious without
it. The earliest commandments doubtless did not originally apply to
mankind at large. They meant, "Thou shalt not kill within the tribe,"
"Thou shalt not commit adultery within the tribe," etc. Cannibalism
furnishes a most interesting example of the prohibition of a practice
as applied to the members of the group, while extra-tribal cannibalism
continued unabated. And within the tribe there is a continuance of
this practice in the forms which do not interfere with the efficiency
and cripple the activity of the group. That is, while c