lOO ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



In discussing the stages of growth and decay in a civilization, 

 which he likens to a biological organism/ he says: — 



The birth of a historic people requires the presence in a social environment 

 of superior ethnic elements capable of directing and drawing along (en- 

 trainer) the masses. These elements ... are regularly provided by a 

 conquering people but they can come by pacific immigration and even, 

 theoretically, by internal selection. . . . The period of development is that 

 where superior elements multiply, take the direction of affairs and put on 

 them the stamp of their personal genius. . . . The golden age is the cul- 

 mination of eugenics. . . . The period of decadence follows the weakening 

 of the superior elements and condemns itself by the division of power with 

 inferior elements. The end comes with the complete exhaustion of eugenic 

 capital, but a nation may still survive in this state so long as a shock from 

 outside does not overthrow the decayed structure (edifice vermoulu).^ 



Lapouge believes that civilization leads inevitably to cerebral 

 regression just as in the case with animals under domestication,^ 

 and that education can affect only the individual, so is limited in 

 influence and nil in race-stock improvement.^ 



He follows Darwin and Broca in recognizing the change in the 

 evolutionary process with the development of man's intelligence 

 and holds with reason that " in man, social selection overrides 

 natural selection." ^ Among the institutions which make for 

 social selection, he discusses at length the military, political, 

 religious, moral, legal and economic. Under the last he mentions 

 age of marriage, occupational mortality, migration and urbaniza- 

 tion.^ 



His conclusion is pessimistic in the extreme: " The future is not 

 to the best, at most to the mediocre. To the degree that civiliza- 

 tion develops, the advantages of natural selection change to a 

 bitter scourge upon humanity. All apparent progress is at the 

 expense of capital drawn from the force and energy, from the will 

 and intelligence, and this capital becomes dissipated.^ He holds 

 that the testimony of paleontology is to the effect that the most 

 perfect forms are the least stable; that the lower forms are better 

 adapted to their environment as in the case of parasites, mi- 



1 Silectiones Sociales, p. 49. ^ Ibid., pp. 187 f. 



2 Ibid., pp. 77 f. « Ibid., pp. 207-387. 

 ' Ibid., p. 118. ' Ibid., p. 406. 



* Ibid., pp. 100 f. 



