176 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
interests between groups, robbery and warfare resulting in the 
death or enslavement of the vanquished.!. The fourth or stage of 
warfare was characterized by the general practice of living by 
plunder and war and by the development of social organizations 
adapted to such a life, also by the rise of private property and by 
the development of rights. In the fifth stage we have the ruling 
classes struggling for the possession of the earth and the subject 
classes struggling for better conditions of life, hence a conflict of 
classes within the group, based on class interests.? In the sixth 
stage we have the spread of capitalism, an era of discovery and 
exploitation of new lands and the bloody conflicts between culture 
groups for the possession of the earth. The extension of the capi- 
talistic system necessitates the development of credit and leads 
to the conflict between the capitalistic and laboring classes. It 
leads also to the development and spread of culture * and to the 
rise and rule of an aristocracy of wealth.* 
A new age is coming, — an age of settled social life character- 
ized by the harmonious organization of production. Every land 
will eventually need all its territory for the support of its own 
people so migration will cease, — except as carried on by force 
by the stronger groups. Each group will produce those com- 
modities for which it is best adapted, and the whole world will be 
organized on a basis of free international exchange. The stronger 
races will increasingly dominate the weaker. 
Finally, with geological changes in the earth and with the 
waste of the ground materials of civilization which characterizes 
our present age, will come a time of increasing difficulty of pro- 
duction which will call for a new type of human life.® 
This brief sketch shows how prominent is the doctrine of 
adaptation in the social theory of Ratzenhofer, and how much he 
has contributed to the development of this theory as a key to the 
understanding of social evolution. We have passive material 
adaptation by the direct influence of the environment on the 
organism, leading eventually to changes in the germ plasm, 
1 Soztologie, p. 14. 4 Ibid., p. 16. 
2 [bid., p. 15. 5 [bid., p. 17. 
3 Ibid., p. 15. 
