522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and commandments — whicli, liowever necessary as expedients, 

 touch the truth only most symbolically. 



The hint has already been several times offered that holidays, 

 starting in the psychological way of reflex action, have had their 

 growth according to the law of all growth — evolution, by which 

 they have progressed from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity 

 to a definite, coherent heterogeneity. A caution must be inter- 

 posed here, however, before the completion of the law is pointed 

 out. It must not be supposed for an instant that the development 

 took place in such distinct stej^s as might be inferred from the 

 grouping of our historical references : that domestic festivals were 

 comjjletely or at all generally in custom before tribal or national 

 demonstrations came into vogue ; that only after these were cur- 

 rent in an occasional way were harvest festivals held ; and that not 

 until the moon's cycle had been quartered did the recurring solar 

 periods become associated with regular emotions. On the con- 

 trary, each of these logical periods largely overlapped the next, so 

 that nearly or quite all of them have been contemporaneous in 

 various degrees of advancement. We can only hold that, on the 

 whole, the growth of holidays has been according to some coher- 

 ent method whose outline is found to be the law of evolution. 



The comjDletion of the law is that with the increase and spe- 

 cialization of holidays there has been a concomitant loss of emo- 

 tion, but that the retained emotion has undergone a like process 

 from homogeneity to heterogeneity. This is seen in the fact that 

 though the Africans and Polynesians show that holidays began 

 as overflows of emotion, yet on ascending through the history of 

 the Indians, Asiatics, Americans, and Europeans, festivals have 

 become less demonstrative and more varied and restricted in 

 their meaning. This fact gives us the key to the radical change 

 which has taken place in the character of our modern holidays 

 as compared with those of primitive man. As man became ca- 

 pable of quiet feeling and reflective thought, the various internal 

 and external stimuli were less and less forced into reflex demon- 

 strative action. He could experience joy and sorrow, bravery 

 and hospitality, reverence and worship, with an ever-lessening 

 muscular action. Most of all, perhaps, is the change due to the 

 share of stimulus which went to thought. This is first seen in the 

 difference between occasional and periodic holidays. The periodic 

 days added to the pure spontaneity of occasional days the new 

 intellectual element of association of ideas. Certain feelings came 

 to be associated with certain phases of the moon or seasons of the 

 year, the periodic recurrence of which revived with lessening 

 intensity the emotions and reflex actions of the original event. 

 The calendar festivals came to mean more ; though they lost in 

 demonstration, they gained in thought : free gladsomeness grew 



