Social Environment and Eugenics 119 



natural selection as the natural social forces are 

 brought under control. The peace, order, and 

 improvement that come to domesticated animal 

 and plant life on a well-ordered farm will yet 

 be gained by humanity as gradually, with a 

 widening intelligence, a social consciousness 

 achieves rational freedom. 



4. Social Standards for Eugenics 



Sociology, then, does not attack eugenics, 

 but only insists on the erection of social stand- 

 ards in connection with the definition of the 

 fittest. And in so doing it merely continues the 

 demand that the social spirit has asserted from 

 the first; namely, that a person shall be re- 

 garded as good not in accordance with his 

 ability to further his own interests, but in ac- 

 cordance with his willingness and ability to 

 cooperate in group life. Measured by social 

 standards many of the world's successful must 

 give place to the humble, and the last may again 

 be first. In the rush of militarism and com- 

 mercialism social standards have been sub- 

 merged, and the worldly-minded revert to the 

 natural standards of success. This tendency is 

 often reflected among the eugenists, as, for 

 example, when a recent writer in a popular 



