SECTION II. Rudimentary institutions. It seems, at first sight, as if some societies of the present day furnished instances of a return to primitive conditions. Modern developments in finance seemed to tend towards a return to the exchange system. cal institutions, after a period of absolutism, point anew towards democratic equality. Corporations reappear in the form of syndicates or Politi FIG. 74.-Veronica cupressoides (after Goebel, religious societies. End of a branch grown under a bell-jar in a Landed property, formerly collective saturated atmosphere. In the older parts (B), the leaves are small and applied to the stem; in the younger parts (A), the leaves are larger and protrude from the s.em. and now individual, seems to be again tending towards collectivism. The same phenomenon occurs in the evolution of matters relating to maritime rights. The sea, according to Roman law, was equally open to all maritime nations. Later on it has been from time to time practically in the hands of a few nations, and we have now returned to a condition in which it is equally open to all.1 1 Tarde, Transformation du droit, pp. 161-162. Paris, F. Alcan, 1890. These, however, are not cases of true revival. The resemblance goes little farther than the name. A comparison of modern institutions with such survivals of primitive institutions as continue to exist will demonstrate this point. The difference between them is so wide that it would be hardly possible to utilize the old as a basis upon which to form the new.1 1 Cf. Durckheim, Les Règles de la méthode sociologique. Paris, F. Alcan, 1895. In sociology, dealing as it does with things familiar to us all, such as the family, property, crime, etc., it is useless to attempt to adhere to exact definitions. The exact meaning of some words in common use in conversation cannot be defined with any precision; the common acceptation of these words cannot be avoided. Now this common acceptation is frequently very ambiguous, so that two totally different things are often referred to under the same name, causing hopeless confusion. There are, for instance, two different kinds of monogamous unions-those so only in point of fact, and those which are legally so. In the first case, a man has only one wife, though legally entitled to several; in the second he is only legally entitled to one. These two kinds of conjugal conditions are quite different, and yet the same word serves to express both; it is commonly said of some animals that they are monogamous, although there can be nothing approaching to a legal contract between them. Spencer, when dealing with the subject of marriage, makes use of the term monogamy without defining it in its common and equivocal sense. The result of this is that the evolution of marriage seems to him to represent an incomprehensible anomaly. It seems, according to him, that the superior or monogamous form of union was prevalent during the primitive phases of historic development; that it then disappeared during an intermediate period, to subsequently reappear. From this he concludes that there is no regular connection between It may be definitely asserted then that a reduced, but still persistent, institution never again becomes actively functional. The following are a few examples which will serve to illustrate this point: 1. The truck system and clearing-house.-Some forms of the primitive system of exchange survive, not only in countries where money is unknown, but in certain industries where the workers continue to be paid in kind (the truck system). On the other hand, there seems to be a modern tendency towards the elimination of money as an instrument of exchange. The clearing-house system is singularly analogous to the old exchange system. "The truck system," says Stanley Jevons, "represents the first and the last stage; but it appears for the second time in a very different form. Gold and silver money continue theoretically to be the instrument for buying and selling, but practically metal no longer constitutes the real medium of exchange, and has ceased to pass from the hands of the purchaser into those of the vendor." In this transformation there is obviously no return to primitive systems, the last vestiges of which, far from being revived, are rapidly disappearing. social development in general and a progressive advance towards an improved system of family life. A more exact definition would have prevented this erroneous conclusion. The suppression of the truck system coincides with the development of the clearing-house system. 2. Corporations and syndicates.-The radical differences existing between the corporations of former days and the greater part of modern professional associations has already been pointed out. The ecclesiastical associations, however, of the present day are modelled as closely as possible upon mediæval institutions. It does not follow that the last remaining vestiges of the latter have been revived. There seems to be evidence that quite the contrary has taken place. At Bruges no attempt was made by the founders of the guild of ambachten to resuscitate such mediæval corporations as continue to exist in a state of decline. At Iseghem, a small town in the west of Flanders, we have already seen that the corporation of shoemakers was divided up into six or seven guilds at the time of the Revolution. An attempt was made a few years ago to reconstruct and modernize these guilds, but the scheme fell through. A new corporation—wholly disconnected with the guilds of Saint Crispin, and with no structural resemblance to them-was established instead.1 3. Archaic collectivism and modern collectivism.Societies of the present day exhibit numerous 1 Emile Vandervelde, Enquête sur les Associations professionelles d'ouvriers et d'artisans en Belgique, i., p. 17, Bruxelles, 1891. vestiges of archaic collectivism. The question arises as to whether there is a tendency in the modern school of collectivism to resuscitate such vestiges as remain of the old archaic form of collectivism. Far from this being the case, collective property, as conceived by the modern socialist, implies the suppression of the few existing remnants of archaic collectivism. Inheritance, ab intestat, for instance, is a survival from the days of the family community, which itself arose, as we have already seen, from the primitive community. If the modern collectivist school had any desire for a return to the old primitive community, it would make for the reconstruction of the family community by re-establishing the law of collateral succession. Now it is just the opposite with the collectivists. In order to establish a universal system of collective property they demand among other things, the suppression of inherited succession, ab intestat, at least as regards the collateral line of descent. 4. The survival of elective sovereignty in England. The above examples apply to institutions which have degenerated without having completely ceased to be functional. It very rarely happens, however, that having arrived at that condition, they renew their vitality and all their former functions, and this still more rarely occurs in cases of genuine survival. In the English coronation ceremony vestiges |