512 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL RESULTS 



affairs, from which it emanated as a suggestion to biology, it 

 must be re- verified and precisely tested. Its biological form is 

 one thing, its sociological form may be another. Perhaps it 

 requires to be corrected by other laws of social life which have 

 meanwhile been recognised. Perhaps there may be other 

 hints from human social life as to the factors in evolution, whose 

 importance we shall not recognise until they have been projected 

 upon the world of plants and animals and verified there. In 

 any case, a formula borrowed from another science and applied 

 to a new order of facts — even to those in regard to which it first 

 arose as a suggestion — must be rigorously tested. Otherwise, 

 both organic and social sciences resolve themselves into socio- 

 morphic illusions. 



§ 2. The Chief Value of the Sociological Appeal to Biology. 



As it seems to us, the chief value of " the Appeal to Biology " 

 on the part of students of sociology is threefold : 



(i) The analysis of biological factors operative in social 

 sequences may serve to bring into stronger relief what is dis- 

 tinctively social. Thus when we analyse out what is due to 

 natural inheritance, we see more clearly what social heredity 

 really is. When we analyse out the various forms of natural 

 selection operative in mankind, we see how much or how little 

 selection there is which cannot be expressed in that formula. 



(2) The biological analysis may serve to show that certain 

 features of social life have what we may call organismal main- 

 springs, and become more intelligible when traced back to these. 

 Thus the relative lack of fertility in fine human stocks requires 

 biological as well as sociological interpretation. Again, no 

 one can do justice to the social significance of sex or of play 

 who does not know the biology of these. Or again, looking at 

 this value from another side, the relatively simpler biological 

 ideals, which must remain fundamental, e.g. of physical culture 



