•SOS APPENDIX 



Adaptation attained by societal selcetioii lias the merit of beinji' 

 cheap. It is not wasteful of human life and s])ills no blood. Yet 

 the conformity of the browbeaten iiniovator who secretly muses 

 upon his grievance is far from wholesome. It is superficial adap- 

 tation often purchased at loss of self-respect. The wastes of 

 societal selection are in no track of blood, but in a trail of broken 

 spirits and festering hypocrisy. Happily- the increas^ing ration- 

 alization of societal selection has discovered a refined instrument 

 of social order in the form of individualization of punishment. 

 By this device the pressure of social ascendancy may be delicately 

 adjusted, and conformity may be secured without danger of un- 

 dermining the self -resource and self-respect of an offender. The 

 direct selection of ideas has been made more eificient by such 

 devices as parliamentary rules of procedure, and by the ma- 

 chinery of the popular initiative and referendum. 



Besides being cheap, another merit of societal selection is that 

 it secures quick results — adaptation is relatively immediate. The 

 young of one generation after* another are readil.y molded to type. 

 For this reason, when adaptation is at last attained it is more 

 nearh' adaptation to contemporary conditions than can ever be 

 the case with adaptation produced by social selection. In short, 

 the adaptation lag is less than that which follows social selection. 

 But even the rational form of societal selection is at best only a 

 hit-or-miss effort to solve the problems of the social order. It 

 must always remain largely the method of trial and error prac- 

 ticed collectively and necessarily accompanied by considerable 

 waste. Viewed in evolutionary perspective its lasting achieve- 

 ments are only those which natural selection working groupwise 

 has had time to confirm. IMcGee •'^" describes a curious case in 

 which the Seri taboo against the killing of smaller rodents has 

 permitted their multiplication in such numbers that hundreds 

 of square miles of territory round about Seriland have been 

 honeycombed with their burrows. "A special consequence of 

 the tabu is found in the fact that the myriad sqiiirrel tunnels 

 have rendered much of the territory impassable for horses and 



50 Seventeenth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Part I, p. 

 203. 



