498 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1084 



surgical colleagues and fellow scientists knew, 

 admired and loved. G. W. Crile 



Cleveland, Ohio 



Societal Evolution: A Study of the Evolu- 

 tionary Basis of the Science of Society. By 

 Albert Galloway Keller, professor of the 

 Science of Society in Yale University. New 

 York, The Macmillan Co., 1915. Pp. 330. 

 $1.50. 



Some years ago when he was professor of 

 political and social science in Yale University, 

 William Graham Sumner introduced the term 

 " societal " into sociological terminology. His 

 purpose was to employ a word more definite 

 than " social " in order to emphasize the dis- 

 tinctively collective or group activities of indi- 

 viduals. " Social," he thought, had too many 

 meanings to be exact. Following this usage, 

 Sumner included in his remarkable book, 

 " Folkways," an interesting chapter on what 

 he termed " societal selection." In most con- 

 crete fashion did he therein show how by 

 group or " societal " action, various " folk- 

 ways " and " mores," as he termed them (i. e., 

 customs), whose origin is often obscure, are 

 more or less consciously and intelligently 

 chosen or " selected " by the group, become 

 authoritative and finally compel conformity. 



Professor Keller, modestly characterizing the 

 present volume " as an extension of Sumner's 

 work," employs " societal " in his title and 

 in the main accepts Sumner's conceptions as 

 a basis for his own contributions. The ex- 

 tension consists essentially in an endeavor 

 to show both that there is " societal " evolu- 

 tion and that the manner in which such evo- 

 lution occurs can advantageously be stated in 

 terms employed by Charles Darwin in the bio- 

 logical field. To use Professor Keller's own 

 language : " The question I have asked myself 

 is: can the evolutionary theory, according to 

 Darwin and his followers . . ., be carried over 

 into the social domain without losing all or 

 much of the significance it possesses as applied 

 in the field of natural science ? " He expressly 

 denies that the eugenists in their attempts to 

 prove the effectiveness of natural selection in 

 human society have really attacked this gen- 



eral issue. Professor Keller considers that nat- 

 ural selection is a term which in a very literal 

 sense can and ought to be applied in the theory 

 of social evolution not only with a strictly bio- 

 logical meaning, but also with a social, or, shaU 

 we say, "societal" meaning? He finds "a 

 something in the social field which is varia- 

 tion, whether or not it may be like what is 

 called variation in the organic field; similarly, 

 social selection is selection and not merely like 

 it." This " something " appears to be the 

 differences among those customs which Sumner 

 called folkways and mores. In conformity 

 with this conception there are chapters on 

 " variation," " automatic and rational selec- 

 tion," " counter selection," " transmission " and 

 " adaptation." In these chapters occur many 

 interesting instances of transformations in 

 customs interpreted as illustrations of the 

 processes just named. 



The author vigorously defends his applica- 

 tion of these Darwinian terms to social phe- 

 nomena. " I shall be charged, doubtless," he 

 says, " ' with reasoning from analogy,' but I 

 do not feel that the charge is deserved." To the 

 present reviewer, however, there is a question 

 raised by the use Professor Keller makes of 

 these terms and the manner in which he deals 

 with certain parts of his material, far more 

 important than a possible " reasoning by 

 analogy " of which he seems apprehensive. 

 " Eeasoning by analogy " is perfectly legiti- 

 mate if thereby the reasoner develops a hy- 

 pothesis that is capable of independent proof. 

 Thus the known refrangibility of light and 

 heat, Spencer tells us, produced the inquiry as 

 to whether sound is not also refrangible. On 

 investigation this proved to be the case. The 

 analogy led to discovery. If in the present 

 instance valuable discoveries had resulted from 

 a use of an analogy, no one could have ob- 

 jected. Such, however, does not appear to be 

 the fact. Many, if not practically all, of the 

 important actual social processes emphasized 

 by Professor Keller have been clearly discussed 

 at one time or another by various sociological 

 writers without unnecessary resort to biolog- 

 ical phraseology. Even Walter Bagehot in 

 " Physics and Politics," which he subtitled 



