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2. The Patriarchy.-The Patriarchy, which was a system of family community, is still exhibited in the participanze of Italy, the companias de Galicia of Spain, the parsonneries of France, the Hausgenossenschaften of Germany, and the zadrugas of the Balkan peninsular. Besides these, the family system of to-day, according to Sumner-Maine, affords constant evidences of a patria protestas in process of decay and of declining male property rights.

Survivals from the old patriarchal system abound in modern legislation. Take the following examples: (a) The limitations imposed on a testator with

regard to leaving his property away from his family (Civ. Code, 213 and following). (b) The legal opposition to a woman's equality in succession.

The more barbarous laws, if not actually
excluding women from succession, at least
excluded their succession to landed estate,
in order to keep the family property intact.
In France the privilege of sex was main-
tained in some respects, even among the
peasants, up to the
the close of the old
regime, and it still exists in the present
day in different degrees in Scandinavia,
Russia, Servia, and some of the Swiss
Cantons.

c) The inequality of the sexes as regards con-
jugal fidelity.

The privileges of the husband over the wife in this matter are survivals from the time when these obligations were wholly on one. side.

(d) Affiliation following on a double marriage.— In some countries, under the old system, a child could only succeed to the property of his parents if he resided with them (excepting in quite exceptional cases). Hence there arose marriages by exchange. In order to compensate the children, the two families, if each had a son and daughter, exchanged them, and bestowed the rights. of one upon the other. Under the new law these rights could not be legally claimed, and yet even in the present century they are not wholly unknown. The last marriage by exchange was probably that mentioned by Dupin1 which took place at Gacogne (Niévre) in 1839.

In conclusion then, we have found that while. the legislative systems of modern races tend to become more and more alike in main principle, we can yet find vestiges, more or less faint and distorted, but quite recognizable, of the different institutions which dominated the earlier conditions of the different races.

1 Viollet, Histoire du droit civil français, p. 491.

PART III

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

THE examples we have been able to give in the first part of this volume make it plain that degenerative evolution exists everywhere. It must be noticed, however, that biological investigation shows that in the evolution of organs certain parts may disappear completely, but also that in the evolution of organisms certain organs may also disappear. This last phenomenon is most common in embryological development, when it is known as ontological abbreviation. Sometimes it is the adult stage that is suppressed, this being possible by what is called pædogenesis a precocious appearance and ripening of the sexual organs.2

1 In Scalpellum Stroïni, a deep sea Cirripede, the nauplius stage of the larval life is suppressed at least so far as that is a free swimming larva. Here is at least a physiologically complete suppression of a whole larval stage.

2 Axolotl. Most salamanders pass through a larval stage in which they are aquatic and perform their respiration by means of external gills. In this condition they are incapable of reproduction, and must undergo metamorphosis to secure propagation of the species. In the case of Amblystoma, however, a Mexican salamander, the larval form of which is called the Axolotl, reproduction is possible in the larval stage. Thus most individuals of

Sometimes a degenerative transformation becomes still more complete and wonderful; not only may a larval stage or an adult stage be completely suppressed, but a multicellular organism may even lose its power of dying. It is known that the simplest forms of life are practically immortal : when a microbe like micrococcus divides nothing dies, and throughout the whole series of successive divisions the primitive life is preserved. On the other hand, in the case of higher animals such as man there are both mortal somatic cells and reproductive cells which by means of conjugation become practically immortal. The mortality of the somatic cells is evidently an acquisition, an advantage fixed by natural selection; but there exist multicellular organisms evidently derived from creatures which had acquired the division into mortal somatic and immortal reproductive cells and which have lost it since. All the cells of their body are able to avoid death by conjugation. This occurs in many conjugate algæ like spirogyra this species do not actually reach the adult stage. According to Boas writing on Neotenie in Gegenbaur's Festschrift, 1896, this probably happens in the case of all the perennibranchiate urodeles. Ranunculaceӕ. On page 85 we showed that in Ranunculus aquatilis there are produced first submerged leaves, and afterwards floating lobed leaves, and that the flowers are produced in the axils of the floating leaves. Some forms of the plant living in deep water produce only lacinated leaves, in the axils of which by a kind of pædogenesis the flowers are produced. In other species (Ranunculus fluitans and R. divaricatus) the pædogenesis has become definitely established and no floating leaves are formed.

and in some of the Volvocineæ (Stephanosphæra, Eudorina).

Plainly then, the further one examines the facts, the more enlarged becomes the conception of degenerative evolution. It is not confined to unusual, abnormal or pathological cases. Degeneration is

not an accident in evolution: it is the obverse of progressive evolution and the necessary complement of every transformation whether anatomical or social.

Whatever transformation may be studied, it will be found that change is always accompanied by an elimination of some parts and that in the interests of the organism as a whole these useless parts gradually degenerate. When a whole organization begins to undergo retrogressive evolution and to decay, it is frequently in the interests of some still larger organization. Individuals or species out of harmony with their surroundings disappear to make room for others. August Comte has shown how death is a progressive agency in the social organization removing the worn-out tissues and leaving room for new and more plastic intelligences. All progress implies necessary eliminations. In the domain of society, those who are victims and who from birth, education, or interests, attach themselves to the decaying institutions naturally see only the degenerative side of the change; but those who regard the process as a whole and do not concentrate their attention upon the injured interests and

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