156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Hence it results that succession to place and function by inheritance, 

 having as its necessary concomitant the monopoly of power by the 

 eldest, involves a prevailing conservatism ; and this further insures 

 maintenance of things as they are. 



Conversely, social change is facile in proportion as men's positions 

 and functions are determinable by personal qualities. If, not being pre- 

 vented by law or custom, members of one rank establish themselves in 

 another rank, they in so far directly break the division between the 

 ranks ; and they indirectly weaken the division by preserving their 

 family relations with the first, and forming new ones with the second ; 

 while, further, the ideas and sentiments prevailing in the two ranks, 

 previously more or less different, are made to qualify one another and 

 to modify the characters of their members. Similarly, if between sub- 

 divisions of the producing and distributing classes there are no bar- 

 riers to migration, then, in proportion as migrations are numerous, 

 influences physical and mental, following interfusion, tend to alter the 

 natures of their units ; at the same time that they perpetually check 

 the establishment of differences of nature, caused by differences of 

 function. Such transpositions of individuals between class and class, 

 or group and group, must, on the average, however, be determined by 

 the fitnesses of the individuals for their new places and duties. Intru- 

 sions will ordinarily succeed only where the intruding citizens have 

 more than usual aptitudes for the businesses they undertake. Those 

 who desert their original social positions and occupations are at a dis- 

 advantage in the competition with those whose positions and occupa- 

 tions they assume ; and they can overcome this disadvantage only by 

 force of some superiority in respect of the occupations in which they 

 compete. This leaving of men to have their careers determined by 

 their efficiencies we may therefore call the principle of change in social 

 organization. 



As we saw that succession by inheritance conduces in a secondary 

 way to stability, by keeping the places of authority in the hands of 

 those who by age are made most averse to new practices, so here, con- 

 versely, we may see that succession by efficiency conduces in a sec- 

 ondary way to change. Both positively and negatively the possession 

 of power by the young facilitates innovation. While the energies are 

 overflowing, little fear is felt of those obstacles to improvement and 

 evils it may bring, which, to those of flagging energies, look formi- 

 dable ; and at the same time the greater imaginativeness that goes 

 along with higher vitality, joined with a smaller strength of habit, 

 facilitates acceptance of fresh ideas and adoption of untried methods. 

 Since, then, where the various social positions come to be respectively 

 filled by those who are experimentally proved to be the fittest, the rela- 

 tively young are permitted to exercise authority, it results that suc- 

 cession by efficiency furthers change in social organization, indirectly 

 as well as directly. 



