36 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
relation between the organism and its environment, the latter, the 
structure and functions of the organism. Now these two prin- 
ciples or tests are not always in agreement. Mention has already 
been made of Spencer’s exception in the case of government, 
turning aside from his universal principle in the interest of 
individual well-being, thus returning to his principle of adaptation. 
The same conflict is to be noted in his discussion of the family. 
He shows that there has not been any one line of development 
from promiscuity to monogamy but that the order has depended 
on economic conditions, i.e., on the principle of adaptation. 
That the individual and social goal is adaptation and survival 
rather than mere increasing complexity (if indeed we are war- 
ranted in speaking of a goal in a naturalistic system) is brought 
out in this same discussion: ‘‘ Family organizations of this or 
that kind have first to be judged by the degrees in which they 
help to preserve the social aggregate they occur in, for in relation 
to its component individuals, each social aggregate stands for the 
species. Mankind survives not through arrangements which 
refer to it as a whole, but by survival of its separate societies, 
each of which struggles to maintain its existence in presence of 
other societies. And survival of the race, achieved through sur- 
vival of its constituent societies, being the primary requirement, 
the domestic arrangements most conducive to survival in each 
society must be regarded as relatively appropriate.” 1 The 
standard of right thus expressed is not a final test, however, but 
such as belongs to the pre-perfect social state whereas under 
complete industrialism and world-federation, the standard of 
right is no longer group utility and survival but “the liberty 
of each limited only by like liberty of others.” The group 
ethics of the preliminary stages is thus very like that of Galton, 
Carver and others whom we shall consider later. 
Our author admits that survival may necessitate a return to a 
‘simpler form but this he considers retrogression, thus placing 
increasing complexity as a higher test of progress than adapta- 
tion. He never seems to have faced this problem squarely and 
thought it through. Increasing differentiation and integration is 
1 Sociology, i, p. 610. 
