In an old and stable society, there is a relatively perfect adjustment between the cultural organization and the character of the natural area. Whether by lucky chance, a disposition to profit by the suggestions of competent men, or some more or less laborious process of trial and error, approximately adequate means for supporting the population have been discovered and perfected. An industrial system and economic structure, adapted to the climatic conditions and the productive character of the area, is in operation. Ways have been found to keep the numbers within the available means of life, to maintain a tolerable man-land ratio. A class order, adequate to guarantee the smooth operation of the economic machinery, has been established. A system of social rules, openly and frankly coercive or implicit and customary, determines personal status and economic specialization, specifies the incidence of social honors, provides for the unequal distribution of industrial product, maintains working relations among the diverse elements of the population, guarantees individual conformity to the group standards, and otherwise functions to perpetuate the traditional order. In the smoothly-working social order, a harmonizing body of sentiments supports the formal and external arrangements. The habitudinal adjustment of individuals to the existing rules and institutions gives a comforting sense of security, a feeling that the familiar arrangements are right, that they are somehow a part of the natural universe. This spontaneous loyalty to the established order may be consciously fostered and systematically inculcated. But even without formal propagation, in the stable society, the sentiments and attitudes of the victims as well as of the beneficiaries of the system support the existing institutions. There is a general consensus that the familiar economic plan, the political system, the class hierarchy, and other elements of the social order are much as they should be. In the situation there are no social or racial problems. There may be disgruntled individuals, there may be gross inequalities in opportunities and rewards, and there may be ruthless exploitation of class by class. But there is an established system of social relationships to which all are accommodated and in which each accepts his status as just or inevitable. Any event that disturbes the natural basis of life or the traditional institutional arrangements results in a period of greater or less social and personal disorder. Some natural catastrophe, a drought, a flight of insects, a disease epidemic, the exhaustion of resources, by destroying the basis of group life, may force profound changes in the institutional system and the moral order builded upon it. Other events