:!04 APPENDIX 



jj^ol rid of by (l()iii<;- away Icmpuraril.v or permanently wilh the 

 iiulividnal wlio oi-iginates or practices them. Sometimes the 

 method of physical chastisement and corporal punishment are 

 used to coerce deliiKiuents. Finally, direct selection of ideas may 

 proceed with great deliberation, as in formal discussion by a 

 legislative bod}' of the merits of some resolution. Perhaps the 

 highest type of this selective process is seen in those forms of 

 popular legislation known as the initiative, the referendum, and 

 the recall of elected officials, as well as in popular voting under 

 universal suffrage. 



Ross ■*" in speaking of social selection and Keller *^ in describing 

 the process of societal selection have called attention to the differ- 

 ence between selection that takes place upon the physical plane 

 and that which takes place upon the ps^'chic plane. Yet even 

 these authors have left the matter somewhat indefinite. I would 

 therefore suggest the following distinctions in an endeavor to 

 attain a sound basis for clear thinking about this important 

 phenomenon of social life. The terminology has been worked out 

 in consideration of the foregoing analysis, in the belief that it 

 may help to correct a confusion in thought that is so clearly in- 

 dicated by confusion in prevailing terminology. *- 



When the pressure of social ascendancy or the slow crowding 

 of social conditions, customs, and conventions causes the death of 

 any individual or tlie termination of his family line, the phe- 

 nf)menon is social, selection. Now this social selection not only 

 takes the form of conscious group action to exterminate otfenders 

 or obnoxious ])ers()ns, liut there is also the blind and non- 

 l)urposive crowding of techni(|ue conditions and social institu- 

 tions which often establislies a selective death-rate or a selective 

 birth-rate, lleuce. boi-rowiug a distinction from Keller,*'^ we 

 may say that social selection is sometimes rational and sometimes 

 automatic. It is automatic whenever the victim has met his fate 



■i" Social Control, ])]>. .32:{, 4."!7: FoiDulations of HocioJofiji, pp. 34.3-48. 

 *^ Societal Evolution, pp. 71-72. 8'). 



42 I proposed sul)slaiitially this teniiinolouy fcir tlicse types of social 

 selection in an article, "'i'lie Experiiin-ntal Mttliod and Sociologj'," Scien- 

 tific Monthly, Feliruaiy-March, 1!)17. 



43 Op. cit., chaps, iii, iv, and v. 



