They represent the
stock of meanings which have been precipitated out of previous
experience, which are so prized by the group as to be identified
with their conception of their own collective life. Not being
obviously a part of the skill exhibited in the daily occupations
of eating, hunting, making war and peace, constructing rugs,
pottery, and baskets, etc., they are consciously impressed upon
the young; often, as in the initiation ceremonies, with intense
emotional fervor. Even more pains are consciously taken to
perpetuate the myths, legends, and sacred verbal formulae of the
group than to transmit the directly useful customs of the group
just because they cannot be picked up, as the latter can be in
the ordinary processes of association.
As the social group grows more complex, involving a greater
number of acquired skills which are dependent, either in fact or
in the belief of the group, upon standard ideas deposited from
past experience, the content of social life gets more definitely
formulated for purposes of instruction. As we have previously
noted, probably the chief motive for consciously dwelling upon
the group life, extracting the meanings which are regarded as
most important and systematizing them in a coherent arrangement,
is just the need of instructing the young so as to perpetuate
group life. Once started on this road of selection, formulation,
and organization, no definite limit exists.
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