164 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
There are not now, he holds, and so far as we know there never 
have been any pure races, the so-called historical races being 
compounds formed by the amalgamation of separate ethnic 
groups and by cross-fertilization of cultures. 
As all social development has resulted primarily from inter- 
group struggle, there has been no opportunity for selection as a 
result of struggle between individuals, hence no increase in the 
innate mental capacity of man but only in knowledge due to 
social heredity. 
In discussing the origin of social classes Gumplowicz uses 
biological analogies but his interpretation of biological evolution 
is far from satisfactory. He makes heredity and adaptation 
(Erblichkeit und Anpassung) the two opposing methods of 
explaining the origin of species, or again, autogenesis and evolu- 
tion (Autogenismus und Evolutionismus).?_ By the first he seems 
to mean spontaneous variation and its hereditary transmission 
and by the latter physiological changes in the developing organ- 
ism to adapt it to its environment and the transmission of these 
slight variations to the offspring. Two other terms are used, the 
latter of which seems entirely out of place in biology: originality 
and imitation (Originalitét und Imitation). Applying these laws 
to the formation of social classes he says: — 
We have seen how some classes (the ruling, the peasant and the business 
classes) arose out of the union of heterogeneous ethnical elements; how their 
differences and individuality, original in each case, date from the time 
previous to the union and persist later when they form part of the state, 
because both the anthropological and moral peculiarities of each help to 
1 Grundriss, pp. 211 f., 222 f. 
2 Ibid., p. 135. The use of these terms by Gumplowicz is unfortunate and 
does not correspond to modern terminology. In biology we have spontaneous 
or inborn and acquired variations. The first are inherited, the latter probably 
not. In social evolution, however, these acquired variations or habits are handed 
on by so-called social heredity, but both processes may be explained by the 
principle of adaptation, for those variations which handicap the individual, species, 
class or group too much, prevent survival in the struggle for existence. 
3 “ Auf doppelte Art entstehen natiirliche Gebilde, originir und sekundar. Es 
gibt in der Natur sozusagen zwei entgegengesetzte Strémungen, die sich immer 
und iiberall begegnen, und die wir Originalitéat und Imitation nennen kénnten. 
“Was nimlich die Natur originell, auf eine uns unbekannte ‘ schépferische’ 
Art geschaffen hat, das entsteht auch haufig unter dem Einfluss dusserer, uns wohl 
