CHAPTER V 



NEO-DARWINIAN SOCIOLOGISTS 



Having made our approach through biological evolution espe- 

 cially as interpreted by Darwin and his successors, we will take 

 up in this chapter the contributions to our subject from some 

 representative social philosophers who make use primarily of the 

 neo-Darwinian formula, and to this extent of the principle of 

 passive adaptation, considering here Nietzsche, Kidd, Galton, 

 Pearson and Lapouge. 



Friedrich Nietzsche (i 844-1 900) 

 Evolution of the Super-Man 



Although Nietzsche is not usually classed as a sociologist, his 

 writings have had profound influence on modern social philosophy, 

 especially as represented in drama, novel, magazine and news- 

 paper. According to Mencken he reigns as king in the German 

 universities. 1 



Nietzsche's philosophy, according to the same commentator, 

 consists of the following propositions : 2 — 



1. That the ever-dominant and only inherent impulse in all 

 living beings, including man, is the will to remain alive, — the will, 

 that is, to attain power over those forces which make life difficult 

 or impossible. 



2. That all schemes of morality are nothing more than efforts 

 to put into permanent codes the expedients found useful by some 

 given race in the course of its successful endeavors to remain 

 alive. 



3. That, despite the universal tendency to give these codes 

 authority by crediting them to some god, they are essentially 

 man-made and mutable, and so change, or should change, as the 

 conditions of human existence in the world are modified. 



1 The Philosophy of Nietzsche, p. vii. 2 jjj^ pp j^ A 



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