SOCIAL HEREDITY 199 



after their original significance has been forgotten. In 

 many cases the usages which have survived the memory 

 of their significance, have been interpreted and given 

 new meaning by generations that found themselves per- 

 forming them in blind obedience to tradition. An inter- 

 esting illustration of vestigial remnants of an earlier cul- 

 ture is afforded by surviving forms of marriage by cap- 

 ture among -the peasantry of various European coun- 

 tries. 52 In parts of Europe there survives a reminis- 

 cence of another form of marriage, namely, marriage by 

 purchase. In this, the bridegroom gives to the parents 

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

 fiction of purchase. Most of the old-fashioned village 

 festivals are survivals of pagan rites and ceremonies, by 

 means of which our ancestors honored or propitiated the . 

 spirits and divinities who were thought to preside over 

 the processes of nature most directly connected with their 

 well-being. The May Day festival is probably a survival 

 from the rites by which the people sought to propitiate 

 the spirit of the crop. 53 



When means are converted into ends, and usages are 

 performed in blind obedience 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 vitally connected, the symbol becom- 

 ing an empty shell which supplants rather than conveys 

 reality; when customs become rigid; we reach a state of 

 social organization which Professor Cooley has called 

 "formalism." Religion becomes formal as soon as 

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



S 2 Marriage by capture was an early marriage system among primitive 

 peoples in which the male went outside of his own local group and cap- 

 tured a woman from some other group, who thereby became his wife. 



63 Frazer, J. F. The Golden Dough. 



