THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF SOCIOLOGY 



Biology, therefore, can contribute greatly to sociological study and 

 social control, but its word can never be the last one. Sociologists 

 and social engineers may neglect it at their peril but equally they 

 must master it and never let it master them. 



The Denial of the Sociological Level; ''Biologism."" 



It may be advisable to give a few illustrations of the melancholy 

 consequences which follow abandonment of this philosophic principle. 

 Recent articles by E. W. McBride will do. In' a letter to Nature,^ 

 this writer (a professional biologist) opened the question of the 

 cultivation of the unfit. Describing a certain physical deterioration 

 which followed the isolation of chamois and red deer in special parks 

 separated from their natural enemies, he went on to speak of the 

 "elaborate and costly social services" which keep alive the "morally, 

 mentally, and physically" human unfit. In his opinion, sterilisation to 

 prevent further reproduction should be applied to all those who 

 "have to resort to public assistance in order to support their children,'* 

 although at the same time he was at pains to point out that sterilisation 

 must be regarded as a trauma and hence as a punishment. "If the 

 deep-seated sub-conscious desire to perpetuate himself by producing 

 offspring is rendered impossible," he said, "however slight and 

 painless the operation may be, it leaves a psychic wound which will 

 never heal." Now the apparently guileless transition from the red 

 deer to the unemployed workmen of a civilised country covers 

 several non sequiturs. We are given no evidence that the deformed 

 specimens of deer were mentally or morally unfit, or if so, unfit for 

 what.'^ One would have thought that childhood fairy stories apart, 

 adult reasoning would not attribute mental and moral qualities to 

 animals. Fitness or unfitness in men or animals, says McBride, is 

 ability" or inability to maintain themselves in their normal environ- 

 ments. But what is a normal environment.^ Do not men differ from 

 animals precisely in that their environment is partly of their own 

 creating } Do they not have the power to alter their environment and 

 to make it anew, in nearer accordance with their wishes } We clearly 

 see that endless difficulties are created by the refusal to admit that 

 social phenomena are upon a different level from biological pheno- 

 mena, and that thinkers who will not admit the difference are the most 

 dangerous of guides. One must seek some further explanation of the 



^ E. W. McBride, Nature, 1935, 137, 44, further correspondence, p. 188. 



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