:ju6 appendix 



harsh, it is also more direct. JNIisfit ideas are expelled from the 

 social mind in the act of formal voting by any deliberative body 

 of human beings, whether at an election, in legislative assembly, 

 or by the popular initiative, referendum, and the recall of elected 

 officials. 



Assuming for the moment that this proposed terminology, 

 which I believe corresponds to real and significant distinctions, 

 meets with your approval, let me conclude with a brief examina- 

 tion of the types of adaptation attained by social as contrasted 

 with societal selection. If we consider social adaptation as such 

 a relationship between human individuals, social groups, or in- 

 stitutions as is favorable to existence and growth," then analysis 

 discloses the following facts. 



Social selection working on the physical plane exterminates the 

 antisocial and solves the problem of the social order so that it 

 stays solved. It works on instinct and evolves a human type with 

 inborn social tendencies. But the process is expensive. The 

 criteria of social selection are often set by blind social conditions 

 or accidentally and ignorantly attained. Unequable tax systems 

 and impediments upon the marriage of the intellectual discour- 

 age propagation of the best stock. The machinery of social se- 

 lection is rude. As often as not the innocent man is lynched, and 

 justice frequently miscarries. There is no racial gain from the 

 vicarious death penalty. Among the Tlingit Indians when a 

 murderer is not high caste enough to atone for the dead man, 

 an innocent man of the same caste who belongs to the kin of the 

 offender is killed.*^ Social selection is unduly harsh in case of 

 minor offenses. The primitive man who revealed tribal secrets or 

 married in violation of his class or totem rules was killed. Even 

 in England it was not until 1832 that the death penalty for 

 sheep, cattle, and horse stealing was abolished.*" Finally social 

 selection fails to recognize in certain types of psychic variation 

 a higher social usefulness than is apparent on the surface, and so 

 genius and origiiial ability have been ruthlessly crushed out. 



44 L. M. Bristol, Hocial Adaptation (Cambridfi^e, 1!)15), p. 8. 

 *^i Twenty-sixth Avniial Report, Bureau of American FAlinology, p. 449. 

 46 J. F. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, I (London, 

 1883), 474-75. 



