492 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



you give to the sacrifice a supra-rational sanction. The mere 

 appeal, in the name of the higher interests of society, to the 

 social instincts of those compelled to do the unremimerative 

 work of society, will always eUcit the same reply : those higher 

 interests of society are not our interests, and our interests are 

 for us primary. 



Thus it seems to us that the appeal to the interests of society 

 as the basis of a social constitution in which full play is to be 

 allowed to that condition which we have termed primordial — 

 namely, the widening of the sphere of conflict — ^is wholly insuffi- 

 cient. For the conflict so necessary to social expansion implies 

 inequality, and inequality implies a corresponding division of 

 labour ; and this division of labour, which requires the sacrifice 

 of some in the interests of the whole, cannot be justified in the 

 eyes of those who sufier from it, unless a supra-rational sanction 

 be shown for this sacrifice. But the appeal to the interests of 

 society is an appeal to a purely rational principle, which can 

 possess no vahdity if its title-deeds be called in question by 

 those who find it irrational. 



We cannot, therefore, concur in the view which sees in society 

 itself the principle which assures the integration of the social 

 organism. The appeal to the social instincts by themselves is 

 like the appeal to individual reason ; neither the social instincts 

 alone, nor the individual reason alone, are capable of providing 

 a sanction for the conditions indispensable to social progress or 

 stability. These conditions, if they are to be efficient, must possess 

 a supra-rational sanction. Science, the late Professor Berthelot 

 has declared, claims the right to assume the moral, intellectual, 

 and material guidance of society. In other words, science alone 

 exists ; science alone is competent to provide for the welfare 

 ahke of the individual and of society, for the power which assumes 

 the moral, intellectual, and material direction of society must 

 needs assume that of the individual components of society ; 



