SOCIAL HKKKhm 



>rigiiml significance has been forgott u hi 

 many oases the usages which have survived the memory 

 !' th'-ir significance, have been "interpreted and v 

 new meaning hy g us that i'mmd i rnselve> 



forming th-m in Mind obedience to tradition." An inter- 

 it ion of vestigial remnants of an earlier cul- 

 ture is afforded by surviving forms of marriage by cap- 

 ture among the peasantry of various Kuropean coun- 

 tries.* 1 In parts of Kurope then* survives a reminU- 

 cenoe of another form of n um-lv, marriage by 



tin lirid.-irroom gives to the pai 



of his liride a few grains of corn, thus carrying out the 



irdiase. Host of the ol <>ned village 



vals are -ur\ ivals of pagan rites and ceremonies, by 



means of which our ancestors honored or propitiated the 



spirits an<l divinities who were thought to preside over 



the processes of nature most din-<-tly connected with their 



well In-ing. The May Day festival is probably a survival 



from the rites by which the people sought to propitiate 



the spirit of the crop." 



When means are con into ends, and usages are 



performed in blind obetli<-n> to tradition long after their 

 usefulness is past; when there is a mass of mechanism, 

 conventionalism and ritualism; when the spirit and the 

 symbol are no more vital 1> .the symbol becom- 



ing an empty shell which supplants rather than conveys 

 reality ; wii.-n customs become riirid; we reach a state of 

 social organ! /at:.- ii which Professor Cooley has called 

 inalism igion becomes formal as soon as 



ritual ceases to be a means to the end of purity and sin- 



"Marriage by capture waj an rarlr marriage 



la which the Malt rat ouUid* of hU own local 



from raw other group, who thereby btcaaM ate wife, 

 M Frairr. J. Y.-Tk* 



