APPENDIX 



got rid of by doing away temporarily or permanently with the 

 individual who originates or practices them. Sometimes the 

 method of physical ehastixement and corporal pnnislnnei 

 used to coerce delinquents. Finally, dinvt s-l ction of ideas may 

 proceed witli great deliberation, as in formal discussion by a 

 legislative body of the merits of SOUK- resolution. IVrhaps tin- 

 highest type of this selective process is seen m those forms of 

 popular legislation known as the initiative, the referendum, ami 

 the recall <>t' e|e,-ted officials, as well as in popular voting under 

 universal suffrage. 



Ross 40 in speaking of social seleet ion and Keller" in describing 

 the process of societal selection have called attention to the differ- 

 ence between selection that takes place upon the physical plane 

 and that which takes place upon the psychic plane. Vet even 

 these authors have left the matter somewhat indefinite. I would 

 therefore suggest the following distinctions in an endeavor to 

 attain a sound basis for clear thinking- about this import ant 

 phenomenon of social life. The terminology has been worked out 

 in consideration of the foregoing analysis. m the belief that it 

 may help to correct a confusion in thought that is so clearly in- 

 dicated by confusion in prevailing terminoloL 1 . 



When the pressure of social ascendancy or the slow crowding 

 of social conditions, customs, and conventions causes the death of 

 any individual or the termination of his family line, the phe- 

 nomenon is social selection. Now this social selection not only 

 takes the form of conscious group action to exterminate offenders 

 or obnoxious persons, but there is also the Mind and mm 

 purposive crowding of technique conditions and social in 

 tions which often establishes a selective death-rate or a selective 

 birth-rate. Hence, borrowing a distinction from Keller. 43 we 

 may say that social selection is sometimes rational and sometini'-s 

 automatic. It is automatic whenever the victim has met hi 



*o Social Control, pp. .".. foundations of Sociology, pp. 343-48. 



*i Sftriftal Ernlutf.n. pp. 71-72, 89. 



2 I proposed tTiniiM.l..i:y for these types of 



ii in an article, "The Experinu-nt:il Method and Sociology," Scien- 

 tific Monthly, i \l:mli, 1917. 

 43 Op. cit. f chaps, iii, iv, and v. 



