CHAPTER V 
NEO-DARWINIAN SOCIOLOGISTS 
Havinc made our approach through biological evolution espe- 
cially as interpreted by Darwin and his successors, we will take 
up in this chapter the contributions to our subject from some 
representative social philosophers who make use primarily of the 
neo-Darwinian formula, and to this extent of the principle of 
passive adaptation, considering here Nietzsche, Kidd, Galton, 
Pearson and Lapouge. 
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) 
Evolution of the Super-Man 
Although Nietzsche is not usually classed as a sociologist, his 
writings have had profound influence on modern social philosophy, 
especially as represented in drama, novel, magazine and news- 
paper. According to Mencken he reigns as king in the German 
universities.! 
Nietzsche’s philosophy, according to the same commentator, 
consists of the following propositions: 2— 
1. That the ever-dominant and only inherent impulse in all 
living beings, including man, is the will to remain alive, — the will, 
that is, to attain power over those forces which make life difficult 
or impossible. 
2. That all schemes of morality are nothing more than efforts 
to put into permanent codes the expedients found useful by some 
given race in the course of its successful endeavors to remain 
alive. 
3. That, despite the universal tendency to give these codes 
authority by crediting them to some god, they are essentially 
man-made and mutable, and so change, or should change, as the 
conditions of human existence in the world are modified. 
1 The Philosophy of Nietzsche, p. vii. 2 Ibid., pp. ix, x. 
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