320 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



doctrine of adaptation, his teaching concerning the hierarchy of 

 struggles culminating in group rivalry for excellence carried on by 

 free assimilation, by provoking imitation, and by an organized 

 propaganda for the extension of its culture. We considered next 

 a group of writers who have exalted the place of the individual as 

 the instigator of social movements in the line of better adaptation 

 and welfare, as Carlyle with his Great Man theory and James with 

 his modification of this interpreted by his doctrine concerning the 

 " Energies of Men," also Ross with his analysis of social control, 

 concluding that natural sanctions must be supplemented by those 

 that are artificial, created by the elite. We turned then to the 

 function of idealization as set forth by Comte, Ross and Baldwin, 

 noting its expression in art, reflective morality and religion and 

 its culmination in reverence for ideal personality and religious 

 adaptation. We concluded that idealization especially when 

 reflective was one of the most potent factors in social progress. 



In the study of this process of active spiritual (including social) 

 adaptation, several concepts stand out with great clearness: 

 idealization, innovation, reflective imitation, rivalry in excel- 

 lence, and the provoking of imitation by the power of example, all 

 of these processes, though primarily individual, having a social 

 analogue. This analogy between the psychical activity of in- 

 dividuals and social unities, together with the fact that the 

 individual is a social product and should have a social goal, war- 

 rants the use of the term social-personalism to indicate the social 

 philosophy that has emerged in outline from our study of the 

 development of the doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social 

 progress. By this phrase is meant that the acme of cosmic 

 evolution is not the social group even in its collective activity 

 (unless it can be interpreted as a quasi-personality) , but the 

 individual person, for personality alone has power over the cosmic 

 process, the group always acting on the initiative of persons, 

 but this personality socially determined and with a social goal. 



To analyze this concept more in detail: Mind is superior to 

 matter for it knows, feels and controls it, within limits. Reflective 

 creation is the highest form of intellectual activity and personal 



