Survival in Sociology

IN a paper recently published ^ I have dealt with the disappearance of the useful in the history of human culture. I have shown that arts which must have been of the highest utility to those Who practised them have nevertheless t>een allowed to disappear, and I have shown reason to t}etieve that this disa{^>earance of the useful has been due to the great part which is taken in the lives of people of rude cutture by magical and religious practices. The most useful arts have been allowed to disappear if for any reason it t>ecame impossible to carry them out with the magico-religious formalities associated with them. The aim of the present paper is to deal with the converse phenomenon—the persistence of the useless. Side by side with the disappearance of ttie useful we find numberless examples in human culture of the persistence of customs which seem either to be wholly useless or whose nature cannot be fully explained by their utility; indeed, in some cases it might almost seem as if customs tiad persisted in spite of their being prejudicial to the best interests of the community which practise them. The idea of survival in culture is far from being new. As J. F. McLennan has pointed out,' it is at least as old as Thucydides, but it naturally came to occupy a far more important place in sociological speculation as soon as the evolution of human culture became the main working hypothesis of the sociologist. McLennan did not himself use the term " survival," but r^farded such customs as I shall consider in this paper as examples of symbolism, as symbols of past history. The idea of survival was brought into especial prominence by the work of Tylor and for some time held Undisputed sway, and, as seems always to happen when the valkiity of kn idea goes unquestioned, it was used loosely and unctritioitty, s« that after a time there came the inevitable reaction, and ai the present moment the idea of survival in sociology is somewhat u i ^ r a cloud even with those who still trust and believe in It. The attack on the idea of survival in human culture has oome