Our society is not uniform. Among us even the best educated cannot participate in our whole civilization. Among primitive tribes the differences in occupations, interests, and knowledge are comparatively slight. Every individual is to a great extent familiar with all the thoughts, emotions, and activities of the community. The uniformity of behavior is similar to that expected among ourselves of a member of a social "set." A person who does not conform to the habits of thought and actions of his "set" loses standing and must leave. In our modern civilization he is likely to find another congenial "set" to the habits of which he can conform. In primitive society such sets are absent. With us the presence of many groups of different standards of interest and behavior is a stimulus for critical self-examination, for conflicts of group interests and other forms of intimate contact are ever present. Among primitive people this stimulus does not occur within the tribal unit. For these reasons individual independence is attained with much greater difficulty and tribal standards have much greater force.