individual or group; . . to give something is to give a part of oneself. . . while to receive something is to receive a part of someone's spiritual essence" (1967:10). "[Spiritual bond[s]" are developed "between things which are to some extent parts of persons, and persons and groups that behave in some measure as if they were things" (1967:11). Therefore, it is not just things being given away and repaid, but persons (and cultures) that circulate as well. Gifts are inalienable from givers. This is why the hau must be returned to the giver, not just because it is dangerous, but because "[i]t is alive and often personified, and strives to bring to its original clan and homeland some equivalent to take its place" (Mauss 1967:10). Mauss viewed exchange as passing through stages, beginning with "total prestations" found in pre-capitalist societies, where gift exchange between clans, tribes, and families was obligatory, to modern societies where exchange is one of contracts and property rights. Modern society is characterized by a "marked distinction . . . between things and persons" and "[t]his distinction is funda? mental; it is the very condition of part of our system of property, alienation, and exchange" (Mauss 1967:46). The economy and social institutions in modern societies are no longer a whole, but separate parts. Mauss argued for a return of economic man as a "calculating machine" back through the stages of exchange from whence we have passed, where moral obligations exist among transactors, because "[t]he mere pursuit of individual ends is harmful to the ends and peace of the whole, to the rhythm of its work and pleasures, and hence in the end to the individual" (Mauss 1967:74-75).