144 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



Durkheim recognizes that society by reglementation must 

 furnish equality of opportunity for all and prevent that injustice 

 which is the result of external restraint based on any other 

 principle than that of ability. But society must go further than 

 he suggests. It must train its members to perform those func- 

 tions most needed by society, and when the need of the group is 

 made the standard of the value of the individual to the group we 

 will have to change the current conception of natural capacity 

 and ability. 



While indebted to Durkheim for his elaboration of the concept 

 of social solidarity based on consciousness of kind and expressed 

 in repressive right, we are more indebted to him for his insistence 

 that consciousness of supplementary difference is both a cause 

 and a result of division of labor, and that division of labor is both 

 a cause and result of social solidarity.^ Though he holds that this 

 social soHdarity and social consciousness are objective and real 

 with laws different from those of biology or individual-psychology, 

 yet he recognizes that it has no organic substratiun corresponding 

 to that of individual consciousness. 



Fouillee and Le Bon have been, perhaps, among the ablest 

 critics of this social reaHsm, as it has been called,^ but out of the 

 controversy has come the truth now generally recognized that 

 there is a psychical somewhat over against the individual which 

 determines his life at least in general outHne. This " somewhat " 

 may be organized as a fraternity, church, or state, but in any case 

 it is the great moulding and assimilating force in society. As in 

 each organization there is need of division of labor, and as along 

 with consciousness of kind man has a consciousness of supple- 

 mentary difference, so in each organization we find diversity of 

 capacity and temperament yet fused into one whole, made the 

 stronger, usually, by the very fact of these differences. 



Now every such " unity " is subject to the general law of 

 adaptation. Not only does it react passively to its social environ- 

 ment, but to succeed in the highest degree it must take thought. 



1 For an opposite view, see Taussig, Principles of Economics, i, p. 38. 

 * Yet there is practically no difference between the fundamental conception of 

 Durkheim and his critics. Cf. Fouillee, Psychologic du peuplefranqais, pp. 10 f. 



