246 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



his view, has issued in man who is not merely the product of 

 passive adaptation, but who is able to react on that process and 

 guide it within certain limits in the interest of increased well- 

 being, his cosmology is anthropocentric, or better, perhaps, 

 socio-centric, for while recognizing that the individual has a 

 metaphysical reality such as cannot be posited of any other 

 creature or of society, yet with him the sovereign group is the 

 sociological unit and its success necessary to the well-being of the 

 individuals that constitute the group. 



His strong neo-Darwinism is indicated by the choice of selec- 

 tions in his Sociology and Social Progress and shown conclusively 

 in The Religion Worth Having 1 and Essays in Social Justice 2 in 

 which the biological doctrine of struggle and survival is applied 

 rigidly to human life and progress with emphasis, however, on the 

 struggle between sovereign groups. 



The key to Professor Carver's social philosophy as suggested in 

 our Introduction is the doctrine of adaptation, as set forth in the 

 following scheme: 3 — 



Environment 



Kind of ■ " - 



Adaptation Material Social 



_ . / Biological Moral development 



I Evolution Education 



, , . ! Industrial Social Control 



Active < _, 



I Progress 



Professor Carver follows Weismann closely in his interpretation 

 of the doctrine of selection, holding that the ill-adapted are 

 eliminated only " by-and-large and in the long run," and that the 

 struggle is chiefly between species. He believes with all biological 

 sociologists that the highest human powers and faculties and 

 institutions have been evolved by an analogous process. 



In social development the group corresponds to the biological 

 species and although the primordial struggle for existence pre- 

 vailed among primitive groups this has been supplanted by a 

 struggle between nations for the markets of the world. Within 

 the group there is struggle for wealth, place, power, etc., and this 



1 The Religion Worth Having, pp. 20 f., 42-45, 88 ff. 



2 Essays in Social Justice, ch. I. 



3 Class lectures; cf. Sociology and Social Progress, pp. 9, 10. 



