Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/630

 6l4 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

often creates it. In belief ^& have only to recall biblical inter- pretation, by means of which the Scriptures are made to teach whatever the age thinks, and citation from the Fathers, by which the way may be paved for any new dogma the church wants to set up. In ceremony we have the convenient discovery of the "real significance " of an impressive rite when the old theory of it breaks down. How often, for instance, such ancient rites as the mass, the eucharist, or the taking of the oath have been given fresh vitality by reinterpretation ! In moral ideas we have the constant teasing of a complete code for modern life out of the Decalogue, and the scourging of wholly new sins with the rods of the old prophets.

A third consequence of the superior restraining value of the old is that abundance of survivals which makes regulative insti- tutions the great fossil-bearing strata of the sociologist." In law we have the persistence of parchment, of Latin terms, of obsolete phrases, of seals, of criers, of wigs and gowns. In religion we may instance the '^omz.xi pontifices :

"Just as they adhered to wood for bridge-building after masonry had been discovered, to wooden nails and spears after iron, to scourging to death after decapitation had come in, to the assembly of the people by word of mouth after the bugle had long been known, so they adhered also to oral proclamation of the calendar and oral communication of legal suits long after the secular power had substituted writing for them.""

Government is almost as archaic as this, and as to ceremonial it has been well termed "the museum of history."

Finally there is the consequence that those in charge of the instruments of control — senates, ephors, magistrates, officials, judges, lawyers, priests, clergymen, masters of ceremonies, rabbis, Brahmins, Brehons, ulemas — develop the conservative habit of mind. Wanting a social science which might account for it, they feel rather than understand the prudence of guarding unbroken the hallowing spell of time. Hence they make a principle of that which is wise policy only for institutions of control. They come to resist innovation in the arts or sciences

■ See Spencer, Study of Sociology, pp. 106-10.

'VON Ihering, The Evolution of the \Aryan, p. 321 (translated by A. Drucker, 1897).

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