NEO-DARWINIAN SOCIOLOGISTS 99 
received from the lowest economic classes, for the results seemed 
to indicate average intelligence.1_ So while the work of the Galton 
Laboratory is to be commended in a general way, the results as 
yet are by no means conclusive and the question of the relative 
importance of “ nature ” and “ nurture ”’ is still open. 
VACHER DE LAPOUGE (1854- _—+) 
Societal Selections 
Professor Lapouge, in his Sélectiones Sociales, takes very much 
the same position as Galton and Pearson concerning the applica- 
tion of biological formulae to social progress and the necessity 
of a thorough-going system of eugenics to offset the present 
tendency toward race degeneration. He pushes his theoretical 
conclusions farther than they but has not done so much in the line 
of original investigation. He makes more concessions than does 
Pearson in his most recent writings to those who hold that many 
influences may affect the germ plasm,? but like both Galton and 
Pearson holds that social progress is by selective rather than by 
collective evolution; * i.e., by selection within the group rather 
than by any process of group transformation, and like them, too, 
he emphasizes race far more than environment,‘ holding that the 
reason for the short and brilliant career of Portugal was due to 
the loss of her best blood and crossing with negro slaves,’ and says 
that ‘‘ if the Greeks of the golden age could suddenly return to life, 
in less than a century the center of civilization would have 
returned to the Acropolis.” ® 
With Lapouge a nation or race is not a permanent type but in 
constant flux so that it is not able to accomplish at one time what 
it had been able to accomplish at a previous period,’ and indeed 
differs so greatly in two epochs as to be equivalent to two distinct 
races. He points out the fatality which results to a superior 
race that mixes with an inferior one that greatly exceeds it in 
numbers as in the case of the Spaniards in South America. 
1 Survey, November 11, 1911, p. 1188. Cf. Report Massachusetis Commission 
on Increase of Crime, Insanity, etc., 1910; and especially Ward, A pplied Sociology. 
2 Sélectiones Sociales, p. 49. 3 Ibid., pp. 83 f. 4 Ibid., pp. 60 ff. 
5 Tbid., p. 77. 8 Ibid., p. 69. 7 Ibid., p. 62. 8 Ibid., p. 66. 
