36 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



relation between the organism and its environment, the latter, the 

 structure and functions of the organism. Now these two prin- 

 ciples or tests are not always in agreement. Mention has already 

 been made of Spencer's exception in the case of government, 

 turning aside from his universal principle in the interest of 

 individual well-being, thus returning to his principle of adaptation. 

 The same conflict is to be noted in his discussion of the family. 

 He shows that there has not been any one line of development 

 from promiscuity to monogamy but that the order has depended 

 on economic conditions, i. e., on the principle of adaptation. 

 That the individual and social goal is adaptation and survival 

 rather than mere increasing complexity (if indeed we are war- 

 ranted in speaking of a goal in a naturalistic system) is brought 

 out in this same discussion: " Family organizations of this or 

 that kind have first to be judged by the degrees in which they 

 help to preserve the social aggregate they occur in, for in relation 

 to its component individuals, each social aggregate stands for the 

 species. Mankind survives not through arrangements which 

 refer to it as a whole, but by survival of its separate societies, 

 each of which struggles to maintain its existence in presence of 

 other societies. And survival of the race, achieved through sur- 

 vival of its constituent societies, being the primary requirement, 

 the domestic arrangements most conducive to survival in each 

 society must be regarded as relatively appropriate." 1 The 

 standard of right thus expressed is not a final test, however, but 

 such as belongs to the pre-perfect social state whereas under 

 complete industrialism and world-federation, the standard of 

 right is no longer group utility and survival but "the liberty 

 of each limited only by like liberty of others." The group 

 ethics of the preliminary stages is thus very like that of Galton, 

 Carver and others whom we shall consider later. 



Our author admits that survival may necessitate a return to a 

 simpler form but this he considers retrogression, thus placing 

 increasing complexity as a higher test of progress than adapta- 

 tion. He never seems to have faced this problem squarely and 

 thought it through. Increasing differentiation and integration is 



1 Sociology, i, p. 610. 



