wealth and value, their importance for the main theme becomes obvious. The Kula is the highest and the most dramatic expression of the native’s conception of value, and if we want to understand all the customs and actions of the Kula in their real bearings we must, first and foremost, grasp the psychology that lies at its basis.
VI
I have on purpose spoken of forms of exchange, of gifts and counter-gifts, rather than of barter or trade, because, although there exist forms of barter pure and simple, there are so many transitions and gradations between that and simple gift, that it is impossible to draw any fixed line between trade on the one hand, and exchange of gifts on the other.
Indeed, the drawing of any lines to suit our own terminology and our own distinctions is contrary to sound method.
In order to deal with these facts correctly it is necessary to give a complete survey of all forms of payment or present.
In this survey there will be at one end the extreme case of pure gift, that is an offering for which nothing is given in return.
Then, through many customary forms of gift or payment, partially or conditionally returned, which shade into each other, there come forms of exchange, where more or less strict equivalence is observed, arriving finally at real barter.
In the following survey I shall roughly classify each transaction according to the principle of its equivalence.
Such tabularised accounts cannot give the same clear vision of facts as a concrete description might do, and they even produce the impression of artificiality, but, and this must be emphatically stated, I