176 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



interests between groups, robbery and warfare resulting in the 

 death or enslavement of the vanquished. 1 The fourth or stage of 

 warfare was characterized by the general practice of living by 

 plunder and war and by the development of social organizations 

 adapted to such a life, also by the rise of private property and by 

 the development of rights. In the fifth stage we have the ruling 

 classes struggling for the possession of the earth and the subject 

 classes struggling for better conditions of life, hence a conflict of 

 classes within the group, based on class interests. 2 In the sixth 

 stage we have the spread of capitalism, an era of discovery and 

 exploitation of new lands and the bloody conflicts between culture 

 groups for the possession of the earth. The extension of the capi- 

 talistic system necessitates the development of credit and leads 

 to the conflict between the capitalistic and laboring classes. It 

 leads also to the development and spread of culture 3 and to the 

 rise and rule of an aristocracy of wealth. 4 



A new age is coming, — an age of settled social life character- 

 ized by the harmonious organization of production. Every land 

 will eventually need all its territory for the support of its own 

 people so migration will cease, — except as carried on by force 

 by the stronger groups. Each group will produce those com- 

 modities for which it is best adapted, and the whole world will be 

 organized on a basis of free international exchange. The stronger 

 races will increasingly dominate the weaker. 



Finally, with geological changes in the earth and with the 

 waste of the ground materials of civilization which characterizes 

 our present age, will come a time of increasing difficulty of pro- 

 duction which will call for a new type of human life. 6 



This brief sketch shows how prominent is the doctrine of 

 adaptation in the social theory of Ratzenhofer, and how much he 

 has contributed to the development of this theory as a key to the 

 understanding of social evolution. We have passive material 

 adaptation by the direct influence of the environment on the 

 organism, leading eventually to changes in the germ plasm, 



1 Soziologie, p. 14. * Ibid., p. 16. 



2 Ibid., p. 15. 6 Ibid., p. 17. 



3 Ibid., p. 15. 



