SOCIETAL EVOLUTION 143 



soon as, or shortly after, they appear as Mormonism was 

 tested up on the American national code and the process of 

 selection is the more imposing when it comes. We turn now to 

 a survey of the essentials of the selective process. 



It is about the factor of selection and its operation that the 

 students and experts, genuine or alleged, in the social sciences, 

 are at considerable variance. Few would dispute the opera- 

 tion of variation and transmission; hence I have reserved the 

 contentious topic of selection for special consideration. And 

 first let us be clear as to what "selection" means. The ordi- 

 nary use of the word conveys the idea of picking out some- 

 thing desirable or good from a collection of things not so good 

 or not so desirable. Such a conception of selection is a posi- 

 tive one. But that conception ought not to be carried over to 

 color either natural selection or societal selection. The truth 

 of it is that it is the unfit animals and plants which are selected 

 for death and it is incidental to that process that we have 

 a "survival of the fittest." It is the inexpedient custom that is 

 selected for disappearance and it is incidental to that even- 

 tuality that the more expedient custom or institution survives. 

 The useful conception of selection is therefore a negative one. 

 If one does not get this firmly into his head, he is likely to be 

 looking, in the primitive way, for some benign or malign 

 agency where only impersonal natural or societal law prevails. 



To attain to selection there is need of struggle and competi- 

 tion. It is not by discussion nor by guesswork nor by soulful 

 yearning that the relative speed of several runners is settled; 

 it is by a race. In nature there is the struggle for existence, 

 and plant or animal forms succumb under it. Well, the life 

 of societies also has been characterized by perennial struggle. 

 It is sometimes to the death, and under such circumstances 

 the selection is sharp and decisive, as it is in nature. Again, 

 however, failure in the societal struggle is not visited by such 

 dire penalties. Competition between societies runs all the way 



