THE FACTOKS OF ATROPHY 259 



of social development, of the popular assemblies 

 in which lay the origin of future societies, i.e. 

 the comitia, assemblies at the market-place, the 

 witenagemot, May Day games, rustic assemblies, 

 the Landsgemeinde of the Swiss cantons, the 

 parochial assemblies of the Andora Valley, and the 

 town meetings of New England, etc. Some of 

 these were suppressed, but some of them merely 

 fell into disuse as other institutions arose which 

 were better adapted to more modern conditions of 

 society. This happened with regard to the comitia 

 curiata of the Eomans during the period of the 

 Empire, which were gradually supplanted by the 

 comitia centuriata and tribunal comitia. At the 

 time when they are first mentioned in history, they 

 fulfilled only one function : that of ridding the 

 laws of all traces of extrinsic customs. 1 



To sum up then, it is plain that although social 

 degeneration is brought about by the same general 

 causes as organic degeneration, the comparative 

 importance of the factors in degenerative evolution 

 is far from being identical in the two cases. The 

 autotomy of organs, a protective self-mutilation, 

 exhibits only a far-fetched analogy with the 

 conscious and voluntary suppression of social 

 structures which have become either useless or 

 prejudicial. 



Direct individual adaptation, which plays a part 



1 Mommsen, Droit public romain. Le peuple et le Sdnat, vol. i. , 

 p. 364. 



