PSYCHICAL EVOLUTION 135 



take plenty of time to get anywhere. Civilisation 

 is lazy, deliberate, unimpassioned. It loafs and 

 hesitates. It holds on to the past. Living civilisa- 

 tions always drag behind them a trail of traditions 

 from dead civilisations. Religions and philosophies 

 change, and creeds and governments flow into 

 strange and undreamed-of forms ; but their person- 

 alities survive, their souls live on, their remnants, 

 transmitted as traditions from generation to 

 generation, defy the meddlings of innovators. 

 Hence in every society there are forms and cere- 

 monies, laws and customs, games and symbols, 

 etc., which have been completely diverted from 

 their original purposes, or which have become 

 so reduced in importance as to be of no use. 

 Spencer has shown that the forms of salutation in 

 vogue among civilised societies are the vestiges of 

 primitive ceremonial used to denote submission. 

 The May Day festivals with which the opening 

 spring is usually hailed are the much-modified 

 survivals of pagan festivals in honour of plant and 

 animal fecundity. Superstition and folklore are 

 vestigial opinions. The gorgeous Easter egg is a 

 survival of a dawn myth older than the Pyramids, 

 and our Christmas dinner is a reminiscence of a 

 cannibal carnival celebrating the turning back 

 of the sun at the winter solstice (Brinton). In 

 the English government, where democracy has 

 in recent centuries made such inroads on the 

 monarchy, there are numerous examples of vesti- 

 gial institutions — institutions which continue to 

 exist purely because they have existed in the past, 



