436 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



a law first — what kind of law is secondary ; a person or set of 

 persons to pay deference to, though who he is, or they are, by 

 comparison scarcely signifies." ^ But if a polity be indispensable 

 to these early groups, there is a risk that this polity may subse- 

 quently become a positive obstacle to further social progress. 

 As Bagehot says : " Either men had no law at aU, and lived in 

 confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had to obtaia 

 a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those who 

 surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in 

 their way who did not. And then they themselves were caught 

 in their own yoke. The customary discipline, which could only 

 be imposed on any early men by terrible sanctions, continued 

 with those sanctions, and killed out of the whole society the 

 propensities to variation which are the principle of progress." ^ 



Bagehot rightly sees in the breaking of this tyranny of 

 tradition the greatest event in the history of social progress, 

 although it be in a sense an unrecorded event. Certainly those 

 peoples who, having had the ability to create for themselves 

 what Bagehot calls a " cake of custom " — that is to say, those 

 peoples who were able to reach a stage of social Ufe sufficiently 

 integrated for fixed custom and tradition to exist ; and who 

 were subsequently able to escape being imprisoned by the force 

 of the customs and traditions which they had created, who were 

 able to break down that barrier of custom and tradition which 

 was their handiwork — ^these peoples were assuredly gifted with 

 a biological superiority which alone could render possible their 

 social adaptability. Those peoples who were able to sacrifice 

 old traditions and customs — ^the fruit of the ages, binding as such 

 traditions and customs always are, and as they alone can be — 

 in order to adapt themselves to new conditions incompatible 

 with these were biologically superior peoples. 



Adaptability is a primary necessity for the social as for the 



1 W. Bagehot, Physics and Politics, p. 50. Kegan Paul. 



2 Ihid., p. 57. 



