426 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



general, so is it also the tendency of social evolution in particular. 

 Just as the less-adapted organism succumbs in the struggle for 

 existence with the better-adapted organism, so does the society 

 which is less well adapted to its environment find itself at the 

 mercy of those other societies which have displayed greater 

 adaptability. This — i.e., greater adaptability — ^being the ten- 

 dency of social evolution, we may ask, What means does social 

 evolution employ in working this out ? 



In attempting to reply to this question we must be careful to 

 distinguish between the organic and the traditional factor in 

 social evolution. As Professor Ritchie has remarked : " Human 

 beings, besides sharing in the biological transmission of inherited 

 characteristics, have also other modes of transmitting sentiments 

 and customs ; they are not dependent merely on heredity in 

 the biological sense. They can ' inherit ' by means of language 

 and institutions the experience of their ancestors, which would 

 otherwise be lost and have to be acquired afresh. . . . This 

 capacity for social inheritance is the great advantage that mankind 

 possesses over the brutes, and the greater perfection in the 

 modes of transmitting experience constitutes the advantage 

 of civilised over uncivilised races. I have already suggested a 

 definition of civilisation as the ' sum of those contrivances which 

 enable human beings to advance independently of biological 

 heredity.' " ^ It is impossible to give a better definition of what 

 we term the traditional factor in race progress — the factor, 

 namely, which enables society to advance independently of 

 biological heredity. 



The traditional progress of society may be observed partly in 

 the evolution of its institutions ; partly in the evolution of its 

 unwritten laws, customs, and traditions, in so far as these are 

 not embodied in any institution which is their concrete expres- 

 sion ; and partly in the evolution of its thought and intellect. 



^ D. Ritchie, Darwinism and Politics, pp. 131, 132. Sonnenschein, 

 1901. 



