THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGISTS 177 
hence, to permanent ethnological characters.1 We have the 
environment working indirectly by compelling certain groups to 
certain kinds of industrial life and to the development of social 
institutions adapted to it. We have passive material adapta- 
tion, moreover, as a result of overpopulation in proportion to 
means of subsistence at the disposal of the individual and group 
leading to conflict of interests, struggle, and the survival of those 
best fitted for the particular environment and stage of civiliza- 
tion.2 We have passive spiritual adaptation by the operation of 
social pressure on the individual,‘ and in the evolution of higher 
civilizations and social institutions as a result of group conflict 
and cross-fertilization of cultures. Finally, we haveactivespiritual 
adaptation through the work of those few great thinkers who are 
able to attain a measure of real intellectual freedom * and become 
leaders to hasten, within limits, the process of natural evolution, 
also through organized social activity under the leadership of 
such rare individuals. In the latter case the result is usually 
attained by the organization of a new faction within the group as 
the center for the advancement of the desired reforms. 
WALTER BaGEHOT (1826-1877) 
Discussion and Animated Moderation 
Although Physics and Politics was published before many of 
the writings already discussed, and although Bagehot makes such 
large use of biological formulae ® that he might have been classed 
‘with that school of sociologists, his contribution is placed here 
because his chief interest is an inductive study of the social 
process,” and in this study he emphasizes two elements as all 
important in social progress, imitation ® and discussion.® The 
book thus forms a logical transition from the anthropological 
and historical schools to those sociologists who endeavor to dis- 
cover one all-important element as the key to the understanding 
1 Soziologie, pp. 37 £., 50 f. 4 Ibid., p. 159. 
2 Tbid., pp. 89 f. 5 Ibid., p. 184. 
3 [bid., p. 159. 
6 Physics and Politics (New York, 1873), ch. II, p. 24. 
7 Ibid., pp. 118 £. 8 Jbid., pp. 33, 100. 9 Tbid., ch. V. 
