ACTIVE SOCIAL ADAPTATION 293 



evolution is at work in society, and that in the struggle among 

 " views," " customs," " methods " and " civilizations " some 

 perish while others survive. " The genesis of ethical elements," 

 he says, " as well as the genesis of customs and beliefs, is a 

 process of selection and survival. Just as the development of 

 Zuni or Lydian pottery is due to a competition which makes the 

 handiest and handsomest form of pot the prevailing type, and to 

 the renewal of this healthy competition whenever an inventive 

 potter or a foreign art supplies a new pattern, so the improve- 

 ment in the ethical standard of a civilization is due to the survival 

 and ascendency of those elements which are best adapted to an 

 orderly social life. ... It is just this selection which explains the 

 snug fit of early ethical elements to the needs of the group that 

 develop them." In this same connection he shows how certain 

 conventions " develop very naturally by a process of unconscious 

 adaptation out of the mental contacts and long intercourse of 

 associates." x 



This doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress seems 

 to be the one thing lacking to make clear his interpretation of the 

 " Vicissitudes of Social Control," 2 where he shows how change in 

 control is brought about by change in social need due largely to 

 change in the economic condition of the people. In other words 

 the vicissitudes of social control are due to society' 's need of adapting 

 itself to changed conditions of existence. 



There seem to be some features of social progress which, accord- 

 ing to Ross, make the biological categories of struggle and sur- 

 vival, or the principle of adaptation, inapplicable. Commenting 

 on the struggle between civilizations, he says, " This struggle of 

 rival elements of culture is by no means the same thing as the 

 struggle between persons. When one race has overrun and 

 trampled down another, it is always interesting to see if the 

 spiritual contest of the two civilizations has the same issue as the 

 physical contest of the two races. Will the upper civilization 

 smother the lower, as in the case of the Spaniards and the Aztecs, 

 the Germans and the Wends, the Romans and the Etruscans, the 

 Saracens and the Roman Africans; or will the one beneath grow 

 1 Social Control, pp. 342-345. 2 Ibid., ch. XXIX. 



