NEO-DARWINIAN SOCIOLOGISTS 99 



received from the lowest economic classes, for the results seemed 

 to indicate average intelligence. 1 So while the work of the Galton 

 Laboratory is to be commended in a general way, the results as 

 yet are by no means conclusive and the question of the relative 

 importance of " nature " and " nurture " is still open. 



Vacher de Lapouge (1854- ) 

 Societal Selections 



Professor Lapouge, in his Selectiones Sociales, takes very much 

 the same position as Galton and Pearson concerning the applica- 

 tion of biological formulae to social progress and the necessity 

 of a thorough-going system of eugenics to offset the present 

 tendency toward race degeneration. He pushes his theoretical 

 conclusions farther than they but has not done so much in the line 

 of original investigation. He makes more concessions than does 

 Pearson in his most recent writings to those who hold that many 

 influences may affect the germ plasm, 2 but like both Galton and 

 Pearson holds that social progress is by selective rather than by 

 collective evolution; 3 i. e., by selection within the group rather 

 than by any process of group transformation, and like them, too, 

 he emphasizes race far more than environment, 4 holding that the 

 reason for the short and brilliant career of Portugal was due to 

 the loss of her best blood and crossing with negro slaves, 6 and says 

 that " if the Greeks of the golden age could suddenly return to life, 

 in less than a century the center of civilization would have 

 returned to the Acropolis." 6 



With Lapouge a nation or race is not a permanent type but in 

 constant flux so that it is not able to accomplish at one time what 

 it had been able to accomplish at a previous period, 7 and indeed 

 differs so greatly in two epochs as to be equivalent to two distinct 

 races. 8 He points out the fatality which results to a superior 

 race that mixes with an inferior one that greatly exceeds it in 

 numbers as in the case of the Spaniards in South America. 



1 Survey, November 11, ion, p. 1188. Cf. Report Massachusetts Commission 

 on Increase of Crime, Insanity, etc., 1910; and especially Ward, Applied Sociology. 



2 Selectiones Sociales, p. 49- 3 Ibid., pp. 83 f. 4 Ibid., pp. 60 ff. 

 5 Ibid., p. 77. 6 Ibid., p. 69. 7 Ibid., p. 62. 8 Ibid., p. 66. 



