306 CAUSES OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



charge and keeping of the county." This ceremony 

 is known as the " Pricking of Sheriffs." 



2. THE SURVIVAL OF INSTITUTIONS IN A REDUCED 

 STATE. 



It has been shown that a number of institutions 

 in a state of decline continue to be maintained, 

 because they are still useful in spite of their reduced 

 condition. 



This is the case with the symbolic ceremonies 

 which in former days accompanied the drawing up 

 of solemn contracts. 1 



We now come to institutions which persist in a 

 reduced condition, but which are not directly use- 

 ful to any one. In this case their persistence 

 may be attributed to one of two causes: either to 

 respect for tradition or to the insignificance of the 

 vestiges which remain. 



1 According to Viollet in Histoire du droit civil fr., p. 607, the 

 primitive assembly of the people still survives, though in a reduced 

 condition, in the Roman mancipatio, and in Scandinavia in a solemn 

 form of sale called the scotatio. 



" I believe," he says, " that it was the primitive sale of German 

 law a sale concluded and ratified in a popular assembly, that gave 

 rise, in the middle ages, to the Scandinavian scotatio. So also in 

 the case of the Roman mancipatio there has long been believed to 

 exist the remnants of a popular assembly. The dumb witnesses in 

 the scotatio appear to me the petrified representatives of the 

 German tribe or village ; and, in the opinion of good judges, the 

 witnesses in mancipatio are no other than symbolic statues of the 

 five classes of the Roman people. However, this is mere 

 hypothesis. 



