6o Social Environment 



upon militarism. Yet in spite of established 

 customs of exploitation through business and 

 destruction by war, it is evident at even a 

 glance that society normally is a principle 

 checking and controlling the selfish impulses 

 of the individual in the interests of a larger 

 unity. It is true that the biologic principles 

 of struggle, exploitation, and the elimination of 

 the weak persist. Society, the highest product 

 of the evolutionary scale, sums up in itself 

 what has gone before, but its essence is that 

 which controls and uses these elements for 

 more far-reaching purposes. Just as the well- 

 poised character is something more than the 

 sum of certain animal appetites, so is society 

 something more than a conflict of individuals 

 and groups contending for mastery. 



2. Creative Evolution 



Not only does the Darwinian conception of 

 life fail to explain society, but it even gives a 

 one-sided view of the lower orders of crea- 

 tion ; and since this view has been carried over 

 into sociology, it will be worth noting here. 

 The Darwinian theory is inadequate in that it 

 has elevated the principle of struggle and selec- 

 tion into the place of the creative principle. 



