40 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
diminishes social welfare and the competition that tends to de- 
velop and encourage the multiplication of the most efficient men 
and methods and increases social welfare. The one should be 
prevented, the other encouraged by social control.t 
5. Spencer failed to appreciate the function of intelligence in 
“short circuiting”? the normal processes of nature.? Intelligence 
has as one of its chief functions the economizing of time and 
energy. Man by “art” abridges the slow process of passive 
adjustment. 
6. Finally his failure to appreciate the functions of social con- 
trol was due in large measure to his extreme individualism, ex- 
pressed in religion in non-conformity and free-thought; in 
economics by laissez faire doctrines; in ethics by over-emphasis 
on egoism; in government, in his theory of decentralization and 
“negative regulation.” “Liberty, equality, justice and fra- 
ternity,”’ — these ideals were for him the interpreters of the social 
process in its final stages. This point of view led him to see only 
those acts of Parliament that were over-paternalistic and had 
proven a failure, and blinded him to the many successful meas- 
ures that had been passed. Despite these short-comings, how- 
ever, his doctrine of passive adaptation as developed in Social 
Statics and illustrated in his Principles of Sociology stands as one 
of the great principles of social progress, a process which was 
destined to be analyzed by more keenly analytic students in- 
spired by the more strictly scientific methods of men like Darwin. 
1 For development of this distinction see discussion of Professor Carver’s 
social philosophy. 
2 Cf. however, note 5, p. 38. 
