PART III 



RESUME AND CONCLUSIONS 



WHEN an institution or an organ ceases to be 

 functional or in any way useful, it very soon 

 disappears altogether. If, as happens in some 

 exceptional cases, it persists, it is because neither 

 of the chief factors in causing atrophy, variability 

 or selection, have intervened. 



Sometimes the vestiges are of too insignificant 

 a nature to call for their removal by either 

 artificial or natural selection, and sometimes their 

 existence is ensured by the lack of variability, as 

 in the case of the persistence of flowers in plants 

 which multiply asexually. This absence of varia- 

 tion occurs equally in the social domain, especially 

 in matters connected with religion, wherein ancient 

 customs are credited with a divine origin. Eeligions 

 may pass away, philosophies may be transformed, 

 and old beliefs cease to prevail, but the remnants 

 of old creeds, conveyed by popular tradition 

 through the centuries, defy destruction by modern 

 innovations. 



The ancient winter festival, on which day the 



317 



