without law there is no order; and without order men are lost, not knowing where they go, not knowing what they do. A system of ordered relationships is a primary condition of human life at every level.
More than anything else, it is what society means. Even an outlaw group, a private ship, a robber gang, a band of brigands, has its own code of law without which it could not exist.
The picture of the lawless savage, running wild in the woods, is wholly fictitious. The "savage" is never lawless; he clings to his own law more tenaciously, more blindly, than does the civilized man. Only the completely defacing, the man torn from his social environment, or the extreme sophisticate, or the tyrant who emerge in a time of confusion, can be described approximately as lawless. The law of the "savage" is not our law and there is no law between him and outsider - a situation that still exists, in time of war, for civilized peoples.
The world has been, and up to the present has remained, a collection of areas of lawfulness, communities with no law binding the one to the other.
To the primitive, law is scared. It is unchallengeable. For him the the law is not something made by chief of legislature or judge. It is timelessly ordained. He can no more disown it than he can disown his tribe. No chief can interfered with it, or he will become lawless himself. It does not indeed follow that, the primitive never disobeys his law only that he rarely doubts and practically never disbelieve its rightfulness. A man may firmly believe in God, and still break under temptation what he believes to the God commandments.
The primitive finds ways of evading the law and under strong impulsion will directly violet it. But it is still die law of his life. It is not like our civilized law, a specialized body of legal rules. It is one with custom; it is the way of die folk, hallowed by tradition, breathing the very spirit of the folk. It is unwritten law, and that sometimes raises troubles, for on particular points the interpreter may differ, it has little or on legal form, and than sometimes causes difficulties, this shows again and again in smoldering irritations over points-of fart "but it firmament of order in society.