238 THE PATH OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



These, however, are not cases of true revival. 

 The resemblance goes little farther than the name. 



A comparison of modern institutions with such 

 survivals of primitive institutions as continue to 

 exist will demonstrate this point. The difference 

 between them is so wide that it would be hardly 

 possible to utilize the old as a basis upon which to 

 form the new. 1 



1 Cf. Durckheim, Les Regies de la mtthode sociologique. Paris, 

 F. Alcan, 1895. 



In sociology, dealing as it does with things familiar to us all, 

 such as the family, property, crime, etc., it is useless to attempt 

 to adhere to exact definitions. The exact meaning of some words 

 in common use in conversation cannot be defined with any pre- 

 cision ; the common acceptation of these words cannot be avoided. 

 Now this common acceptation is frequently very ambiguous, so 

 that two totally different things are often referred to under the 

 same name, causing hopeless confusion. 



There are, for instance, two different kinds of monogamous 

 unions those so only in point of fact, and those which are 

 legally so. In the first case, a man has only one wife, though 

 legally entitled to several ; in the second he is only legally 

 entitled to one. These two kinds of conjugal conditions are 

 quite different, and yet the same word serves to express both ; 

 it is commonly said of some animals that they are monogamous, 

 although there can be nothing approaching to a legal contract 

 between them. Spencer, when dealing with the subject of 

 marriage, makes use of the term monogamy without defining 

 it in its common and equivocal sense. The result of this is 

 that the evolution of marriage seems to him to represent an 

 incomprehensible anomaly. It seems, according to him, that 

 the superior or monogamous form of union was prevalent during 

 the primitive phases of historic development ; that it then dis- 

 appeared during an intermediate period, to subsequently reappear. 

 From this he concludes that there is no regular connection between 



