1 68 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



out of a social movement, is a psychical deposit of the social life of 

 the group and a result of the manifold adaptations of the indi- 

 vidual to it.^ Arbitrary freedom is an illusion.^ Morality is 

 nothing but the reflection in the individual mind of what has been 

 considered useful for the group.^ There is no right or justice 

 apart from the might of the ruling class in the sovereign state, or 

 as an abstract ideal formed by the oppressed classes as a means of 

 securing liberation." * 



Nowhere is the passive, purely mechanical character of social 

 evolution better expressed than in these words: " Out of frictions 

 and struggles, out of separations and unions of opposing ele- 

 ments, finally come forth as new adaptation products the higher 

 socio-psychical phenomena, the higher cultural forms, the new 

 civilizations, the new state and national unities . . . and this 

 merely through social action and reaction, entirely independent 

 of the initiative and will of individuals, contrary to their ideas 

 and wishes and social striving." ^ 



To Gimiplowicz is to be given credit for a clean-cut demarca- 

 tion and study of the sociological field, — the field consisting of 

 the two-fold mechanical process by which all the modern races 

 and social groups with their socio-psychical products have been 

 evolved, on the one hand by inter-group conflict, and on the other 

 by intra-group differentiation and struggle. His power of keen 

 analysis is revealed in his discussion of the meaning of the term 

 "society" which with him is always either a concrete natural, or 

 interest group, or else a class term including all such groups.^ 

 He is worthy of commendation, also, for his consistency, on the 

 whole, in carrying to a logical conclusion his fatalistic determin- 

 ism, issuing in atheistic free-thought and stoical resignation to the 

 inevitable. He is open to criticism along the following Unes: — 



I. He makes large use of biological analogies but as his biol- 

 ogical interpretations are unsatisfactory his analogies fail to be 



1 Soziologie und Politik, p. 94. Cf. Grundriss, pp. 174 f. 

 ' Grundriss, pp. 167, 215. 

 ' Ibid., pp. 179 f. 



* Ibid., pp. 114 f., 189 f., 237. 

 ' Soziologie und Politik, p. 94. 



• Grundriss, pp. 139 f.; Soziologie und Politik, pp. 49 f. 



