ACTIVE SOCIAL ADAPTATION 29 1 



James has thus contributed to our subject by holding that the 

 relation of a man to his age and group is not wholly due to the 

 fact that he is produced by it, but even more by the fact that 

 rarely does a man have available energy to break away from 

 the conventions that repress him and attain new heights, and 

 further that though he himself gain a new vision of the true and 

 good, the spread of this depends on the sympathy he may be 

 able to secure in his social environment. 



He shows further that certain emotional experiences and certain 

 ideas have the power of tapping for man his ever-present reservoir 

 of energy, or to change the figure of " carrying him over the 

 dam." The true genius is the man who by heredity or by some 

 inner power is able to attain levels of efficiency-energy far beyond 

 those of the average of his group and inspire his fellow-men to like 

 attainment. Such a man is an example, an exponent, and leader 

 in active spiritual adaptation. 



Edward Alsworth Ross (1866- ) 

 The Psychology of Social Control 



Professor Ross has made contributions to our subject primarily 

 along two lines: first, in his criticism of the theories of other sociol- 

 ogists and second in his constructive analysis of social control. 



As a sociological critic he is perhaps without a peer among 

 American scholars in this field; yet brillant and suggestive as are 

 these criticisms he seems to lack the ability to " see life steadily 

 and see it whole," hence the many apparent inconsistencies in his 

 writings. 



As many of his criticisms have already been cited, and the rest 

 are easily accessible in his Foundations of Sociology, we will con- 

 sider here merely his distinction between change, adaptation and 

 progress, and then discuss his analysis of social control. 



Although Professor Ross denies any place to the term progress 

 in social science, 1 he makes large use of it in his Social Psychology 

 and Social Control, and defines it, now in terms of adaptation, as 

 where he says " Progress follows the line of advantage, substitut- 

 ing always the better adapted," 2 but again in terms of mere 

 1 Foundations of Sociology, pp. 75, 76. 2 Social Psychology, p. 94. 



