Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. I. The chief danger in forming any social classification is that of over rigidity in definition. Customs and institutions vary continuously, and the lines of demarcation which any classification must draw are apt to be artificial and unreal. Moreover what is on the surface the same institu tion may have a different content at different stages of social development. A certain elasticity of interpretation must therefore be allowed in order to adapt any scheme of classification to the facts without forming them into unreal categories.