FORMULAE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 1 93 



As we noted in our discussion of biological evolution, Baldwin, 

 with Osborn and Lloyd Morgan, formulated the doctrine of 

 " Organic Selection " according to which acquired characters are 

 considered to affect the evolutionary process either by working 

 through the central nervous system or by the preservation of 

 these characters through habit and social heredity until they 

 eventuate in an inborn variation which is transmitted by physical 

 heredity.^ 



Baldwin is a firm beHever in the doctrine of natural selection 

 and makes large use of it in his psychology and social philosophy, 

 but he brings the social process into strong contrast to the 

 biological, laying chief stress on invention, imitation, and " social 

 heredity," and pointing out several ways in which the doctrine of 

 natural selection fails when applied to social evolution.^ 



The socio-psychical process or the " modes of social or collective 

 life " are divided into three classes: (i) the instinctive or grega- 

 rious; (2) the spontaneous or plastic; and (3) the reflective or 

 social proper.^ The instinctive or gregarious group of collec- 

 tive reactions are physically inherited by individual animals. 

 Such modes of action, moreover, are fixed and unprogressive and 

 are the product of biological laws. The spontaneous or plastic 

 group of collective actions are " due to experience, habits of 

 common or joint behavior which are not inherited, but learned. . . . 

 These acquired modes of collective action illustrate social trans- 

 mission rather than physical heredity. . . . The individual does 

 not go by this method beyond what the group Hfe has already 

 acquired. . . All the individuals of the group learn the same things; 

 and what they learn is the body of useful actions already estab- 

 lished in the collective Hfe of the group. The laws of this mode of 

 collective action are, accordingly, psychological, not merely 

 biological." He calls this a " mode of psychological solidarity J ^ 



* Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 545 ff. 



2 Ibid., pp. 57 f., 459, 462 f. " This is the great essential thing about social 

 truth as opposed to biological fact: it leaps the bounds of physical heredity," ibid., 

 p. 462, 



' The Individual and Society, p. 36. Baldwin quotes with approval Tonnies' 

 distinction between " Gemeinschaft " and " Gesellschaft," Social and Ethical 

 Interpretations, p. 486. 



