societies or institutions, and not in the disappearance of complete classes of institutions.

These reservations being understood, we will mention a few more or less obvious cases in which degeneration does retrace the footsteps of progressive evolution.

1. Tithings, hundreds and counties in England.In the chapter dealing with the pathway of degeneration in Transformisme social, G. Degreef mentions the following interesting facts:-

"Mr Herbert Spencer, after describing the formation of tithings, hundreds and counties in England under the Anglo-Saxon regime, observes that the tithings along with their courts of justice were the first to disappear, then the hundreds followed, though some vestiges of their old courts of justice remained, and only the counties and the county courts were left intact. Now we have historical proofs that English counties along with their courts of justice were created before the hundreds, and the hundreds before the tithings." 1

2. Order of elimination of various racial elements in a country.In his interesting work Civilization et dépopulation,2 Dumont mentions certain facts which go to show that the inhabitants of poor districts, who are nevertheless of pure racial descent, have a birth-rate higher than that of the members of the population who are not aboriginal, and who 1 Degreef, Le transformisme social, p. 450.

2 P. 156.

for the most part dwell in the towns and fertile plains. From this he concludes that the various racial elements of a nation are eliminated in inverse order to that in which they were introduced. In France, for instance, the Frank has been completely absorbed in the Gaul.

3. The degenerative evolution of political organizations. The progressive and degenerative evolution of political organizations has been described by Herbert Spencer as follows1:—

"Political integration, as it advances, obliterates the original divisions among the united parts. In the first there is the slow disappearance of those non-topographical divisions arising from relationship, as seen in separate gentes and tribesgradual intermingling destroys them. In the second place, the smaller local societies united into a larger one, which at first retains their separate organizations, lose them by long cooperation; a common organization begins to ramify through them. And, in the third place, there simultaneously results a fading of their topographical bounds, and a replacing of them by the new administrative bounds of the common organization.

"Hence, naturally, results the converse truth that in the course of social dissolution the great groups separate first, and afterwards, if dissolution con

1 Herbert Spencer, "Political Institutions," Part iv. of Principles of Sociology, p. 286.

tinues, these separate into their component smaller groups. Instance the ancient empires successively formed in the East, the united kingdoms of which severally resumed their autonomies when the coercion of keeping them together ceased. Instance again the Carlovingian Empire which, first parting into its large divisions, became, in course of time, further disintegrated by subdivisions of these. And when, as in this last case, the process of dissolution goes very far, there is a return to something like the primitive condition, under which small predatory societies are engaged in continuous warfare with like small societies around them."

We may conclude then that political integration is attended by degeneration; primitive institutions disappear and make way for fresh institutions, and their disappearance is permanent. In the course of the dissolution of the Carlovingian Empire there was no reappearance either of the gentes or of the primitive tribal system; but when this vast organization broke down, it was natural that the more recently formed social bonds, having had the least opportunity of becoming consolidated, should be the first to be sundered.

4. Degeneration in monetary systems.—The principle that degeneration retraces the steps of progress applies equally to a very different range of ideas, the evolution of monetary systems. Stanley Jevons says that there is little doubt that every system of coinage was originally identical with a

system of weights. A survival of this primitive condition existed in Roman law, and even when no use was made of them, the custom of bringing a pair of scales survived as a legal formality in the sale of slaves at Rome.

After the time of the Punic wars, the æs, which originally equalled a Roman pound in weight, diminished rapidly, until it became reduced to the weight of an ounce. The Romans had naturally reverted to weighing the metal, and the as grave was money reckoned by weight, and not by tale. Generally speaking, whatever be the inconveniences of the method, currency by weight is yet the natural and necessary system to which people revert whenever the abrasion of coins, the intermixture of currencies, the downfall of a State, or other causes, destroy the public confidence in a more highly organized system.1

It is plain then that the more recent developments in the coinage system are the first to disappear.2

The disappearance of money altogether and the return to a system of exchange would represent a much farther advanced stage in degeneration.

1 See Stanley Jevons in Money, International Scientific Series. 2 There is no silver money and only a little copper in China. Nowadays, Mexican piastres, on reaching the country in payment of commercial transactions, are melted down into bars as soon as they fall into the hands of the merchants, and these bars are then imprinted with the Chinese stamp. This was the usual system employed amongst civilized peoples before the invention of money. See Thorold Rogers in "The Economic Interpretation of History."

5. Degenerative adaptation in colonial legislation. -In his treatise (Annalisi della proprieta capitalista), Loria furnishes another striking example of the law of degeneration: "When English colonies were first formed in America, the colonists hesitated to establish any legislation other than that of the mother-country. They were habituated to it; it was written in their own language, and therefore seemed best to correspond with their national characteristics. But, from the outset, the greatest difficulties were met with in the application of this legislation to the colonies.

"In the first place the Statute law of England, the most recent addition to the legislation, was found to be quite unsuited to the economic condition of a colony, and so common law alone came to be established, which, being the more ancient, was better suited to the social organization of a newlyformed society. But even this form of legislation did not remain permanent under social conditions profoundly different to those in which it had been originally established, and the construction of a special legislation was found to be necessary. In this way the common law of England came to be regarded as unsuited to her colonies, excepting in such cases as were unprovided for in the new colonial law."1

Loria then proceeds to give numerous examples of how these colonial statutes-owing to the simi

1 Loria, Annalisi della proprieta capitalista, ii. 48.