230 THE PATH OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



In ceasing to be legal, however, polygamy has 

 by no means ceased to exist, even in the present 

 day, and the Mormons in instituting polygamy 

 have only given official recognition to what had 

 never really disappeared. 



In the process of social transformation, periods of 

 transition are frequently characterized by reactions 

 in favour of bygone institutions, which reappear 

 although apparently permanently abolished. This 

 has been the case with certain corporations, and 

 with numerous other institutions of the old regime 

 which reappeared after the revolutionary crisis. 

 Some years ago a large landed proprietor in the 

 domain of Peterhoff, in Eussia, attempted, in the 

 interests of his serfs, to introduce the rural system 

 of European countries. He divided up the land 

 into independent allotments, and built at his own 

 expense a separate house for each family ; but no 

 sooner was the abolition of serfdom declared than 

 the peasants proceeded to re-establish the primitive 

 community, and to rebuild their houses on the old 

 sites in spite of the considerable labour which this 

 entailed. 1 



3. Instances of convergence. It sometimes happens 



that town and the East. It was never, however, established there 

 officially as was the massipia in Bigorre. The municipality 

 promptly suppressed it by issuing the following mandate : ' ' Quod 

 (vir) non habeat duas uxores, vel mulier duos viros." (Viollet, 

 Histoire du droit civil, fr. p. 388.) 



1 De Laveleye, De la ProprUtt et ses Formes primitives. Paris, 

 F. Alcan, 1882, p. 23. 



