XX HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



of organisms, we shall be able, also, to appreciate tbe action of 

 the same Naturziichtung in the life of societies. 



We have laid stress upon the importance of conflict in social 

 evolution, as being indispensable in order to ensure the efficacy 

 of the action of selection. Concerning the role of selection in 

 sociology, it is necessary to bear in mind that the efficiency of 

 any given society not only signifies the power of resistance which 

 that society is capable of manifesting with regard to other 

 societies, its competitors in the struggle for existence ; but also 

 the power of resistance which it is capable of manifesting -with 

 regard to the antagonisms, economic or otherwise, which arise 

 within its own ranks — ^between the difEerent strata, so to speak, 

 of its own population. The equilibrium necessary to the con- 

 tinuity of the life of a society is thus at once determined by 

 internal and external factors. A society weakened by internal 

 dissensions, by the absence of any principle capable of directing 

 the individual activities of its component members towards the 

 accompUshment of a common purpose, in which the different 

 individuals are as so many loose molecules without cohesion, is 

 a disintegrated society, incapable of defending its integrity 

 against assaults from without. Such a society must inevitably 

 succumb when confronted by stronger rival societies ; even as, 

 in the biological sphere, the weaker organisms are destroyed by 

 the stronger organisms. 



In treating of the question of heredity and selection in soci- 

 ology, we must beware of the tendency to consider society too 

 exclusively as an organism, or sociology as a mere branch of 

 biology. Social evolution is governed by laws sui generis. 

 That all the phenomena of social Ufe have their root in vital 

 phenomena is unquestionably true ; none the less are social 

 phenomena autonomous. All the phenomena of life, in their 

 turn, have physico-chemical laws as their basis ; yet because the 

 physico-chemical sphere embraces the biological sphere, the 

 science of biology is none the less a science sui generis, dealing 



