470 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGy 



solved, however, if we keep well in mind the fact that expansion 

 is the elementary condition of life. If a race can exist only on 

 condition that it expand, and that no obstacle be placed to its 

 expansion, it is more than probable that any such obstacles will 

 be removed as the result of intrasocial developments. If the 

 potentialities of Western society can no longer be contained 

 within the bounds of the restrictions placed on its further 

 expansion by economic conditions, Western society will overstep 

 the bounds and follow the path of expansion. If an individual 

 intelKgence, in its need of expansion, can no longer be contained 

 within the bounds of former beliefs, these bounds will be over- 

 stepped, and the road of free thought and unchecked expansion 

 will be followed thenceforth. If Western society arrives at a 

 point of economic, intellectual, and social development, when 

 it outgrows the hmits within which its need of expansion, suited 

 to a former phase of evolution, was satisfied ; then those limits 

 must be extended if society is not to be suffocated. And such 

 an extension results simply from the working of an irresistible 

 tendency inherent in all life, which impels every being and every 

 race to expand in such measure as its constitution allows. 



But we also reached the conclusion that the conflict so neces- 

 sary to progress is not at present being waged under the conditions 

 most likely to ensure benefit to the race. This conclusion 

 necessarily results from the arguments developed above. We 

 showed that the progress of a race must be judged from the 

 double point of view of its social fitness and of its organic or 

 biological fitness ; and neither the altruistic influences at present 

 at work, nor the individuahstic tendencies engendered by our 

 economic conditions, nor those economic conditions in themselves, 

 are favourable to the culture of either social or biological 

 superiority. 



The question then naturally arose as to the remedies for this 

 state of affairs. For even the development of which we spoke, 

 though it has brought about a distribution of social wealth among 



