DO INSTITUTIONS OR ORGANS REAPPEAR ? 229 



ent similitude, however, were structures of an 

 essentially different nature. Just as the new rail- 

 way station at Bruges, in spite of its towers and its 

 pointed arches, is far more like any other railway 

 station than a Gothic cathedral, so the Christian 

 societies of to-day, in spite of the archaic caprices 

 of their founders, resemble more closely modern 

 associations than ancient associations. We see then 

 that it cannot be said in any of these cases that 

 the actual revival of a decayed institution took 

 place. The empty form reappeared, but the founda- 

 tions and the essential parts had become completely 

 transformed. 



2. The apparent disappearance of institutions. 

 There are other instances, however, showing the 

 opposite of this phenomenon. The essential parts 

 remain unchanged, but the form itself is modified ; 

 the institution persists, but its existence is dis- 

 sembled. Sometimes even when the dissolution 

 of an institution has been enforced, there has been 

 a reconstruction on the first opportunity. 



An instance of this is the reappearance of poly- 

 gamy among the Mormons, the last traces of 

 polygamy having disappeared during the middle 

 ages from the people of the West. 1 



1 In Bigorre there was maintained up to the fifteenth century, 

 a kind of system of concubinage called massipia, which, though 

 not actually polygamy, was the contraction of an inferior union in 

 conjunction with real marriage. 



In Marseilles, too, polygamy seems to have reappeared in the 

 middle ages, owing to the frequent intercommunication between 



