INVENTION AND PRODUCTION 255 



Self-control is a virtue, for only through it can social adjustment 

 be secured. This self-control must be extended to the procreative 

 impulse, for the bringing into the world of those who, because 

 of defect in the organism or deficiency in training, cannot be 

 socially efficient, is immoral. 



Each sovereign group is called upon to work out its own salva- 

 tion and to struggle for world-mastery, and in so doing every act 

 is justifiable and good which gives promise of securing this result. 

 Under this system of group ethics we may conceivably have a 

 double standard even as has prevailed from earliest times; 

 i. e., a code of conduct may be used in dealing with foreign 

 groups or representatives of these groups which would not be 

 used in intra-group relations. Such a group ethics is justified by 

 Professor Carver on the following grounds: 



1. Group success furnishes a test of the good and true. This 

 is a pragmatic test based on the neo-Darwinian theory of bio- 

 logical evolution applied to society. The good and the true are 

 not absolute, but relative to group success. What is right in one 

 age and nation may be wrong in another. 



2. By inter-group rivalry we have the only adequate method 

 of evolving the most efficient social organization. We have no 

 other test than just this of workability. That form of organiza- 

 tion is best which makes the group most efficient in competition 

 with other groups. 



3. By this method, also, the largest degree of individual well- 

 being is secured, for individual happiness is linked with group 

 success. In primitive struggles the losing group was annihilated 

 or enslaved. In the modern struggle for the markets of the world 

 the losing group will be thrown back ultimately on its own 

 resources and forced to remain a poverty-stricken agricultural 

 nation with limited population or accept the lowest wage for 

 manufacturing, except as location and resources give it monop- 

 olistic advantages. The group winning because of economic 

 efficiency can increase in population, power and wealth with 

 accompanying largeness of life. 



Finally, although the emphasis is on group success, Professor 

 Carver believes that this gospel of productivity provides the only 



