SOCIETAL EVOLUTION 139 



mores," says Sumner, again, "can make anything right and 

 prevent condemnation of anything." They are the approved 

 ways of meeting the conditions of living, and are developed, 

 accepted, and practiced without much intervention of reasoned 

 purpose. 



They are to a society what, for example, density and color 

 of fur are to arctic animals; namely, automatic adaptations to 

 environment. Life-conditions are present and society has to 

 live under them. This is rendered possible, or easy, or easier, 

 by adjustments in the manner of life or ways of living. Thus 

 we have a societal code characteristic, for instance, of the 

 arctics or of the tropics, of isolation or accessibility, of over- 

 population or under-population, of the country or of the city, 

 of peace or of war. 



With this understanding as to the nature of custom, the 

 lowest terms of all of society's institutions, and knowing that 

 customs and institutions are adaptive to life-conditions, we are 

 now to inquire whether there are, acting upon the mores, 

 forces which are the counterparts of those productive of adap- 

 tation in the organic range. Are variation, selection, and 

 heredity, or factors which are their counterparts in the form 

 of evolution typical of human society, present and active in 

 the field? If so, what is their mode of operation? 



The factor that leads off in any evolutionary process is varia- 

 tion. Without it all would be uniformity, equality, and change- 

 lessness. The existence of variation in custom and in custom- 

 born institutions is evident to anyone; demonstration of its 

 presence would consist in an endless rehearsal of obvious 

 detail. 



Variation in the mores represents a series of tentatives, de- 

 parting more or less from the accepted code, that are struck 

 out upon by individuals in the pursuit of their interests. The 

 individual's function is that of an agency for variation. These 

 slight departures from the code are in evidence all the time; in 



