3l6 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



can be assured that the success of the winning group has been 

 merely on the basis of native ability rather than on opportunity 

 and training.^ This suggests as a definite criticism of the neo- 

 Darwinian sociologists that just as the severity of competition 

 among lower biological orders is in dispute, so among social 

 groups it is by no means certain that inter-group competition is 

 now or ever will be so acute as to eliminate all but the best 

 adapted. 



The biological sociologists make much of societal selection as a 

 method of improving native ability, — and well they may, — but 

 at present we have little knowledge of value as a guide. Before 

 agreement can be reached on many of the points involved we must 

 await further evidence concerning the correlation between physical 

 qualities on the one hand and intellectual and moral qualities on 

 the other, for societal selection in so far as it is non-mirposeful, like 

 natural selection, works only by death or sterility./^As to positive 

 eugenics, we need to know more concerning the native quaHties 

 which, when trained, will make for the most efficient group life.^ 

 We need to know more also concerning the various methods of 

 societal selection and " counter selection " ^ that we may en- 

 courage those that are favorable to the production and preserva- 

 tion of socially efficient individuals and prevent from operation 

 those that are unfavorable.^ The goal, of course, is to work out 



* If 1,000 babies bom from the aristocracy of America, 1,000 babies from the 

 proletariat class and 1,000 babies bom from some primitive group could be reared 

 xmder like conditions and at maturity brought into some kind of competition we 

 would have the conditions for a sociological test of value in determining race-stock 

 efficiency. But even in this case the test would not necessarily be physical vigor 

 or military prowess except in so far as necessary for self-preservation, nor yet in- 

 dustrial superiority except in so far as necessary for cultural achievement. While 

 these tests would be valid in proportion as existence and growth of the groups 

 were vitally involved, if the competition was no more severe than among civilized 

 groups today the test might well be the ability to work out a corporate life so 

 manifestly desirable that it would be copied, with variation, by the other groups 

 and not only in one instance but continually, for the supreme test is " in the long 

 run." The supremely desirable thing is not only the immortality of achievement 

 as the term is used by Ward, but the continuous achievement of an immortal 

 group, and immortal because it continues to achieve that which is worthy of 

 imitation. 



2 See A. G. Keller, Societal Evolution, ch. VI. 



» Cf. Walter, Genetics, ch. XI. 



