FORMULAE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 193 
As we noted in our discussion of biological evolution, Baldwin, 
with Osborn and Lloyd Morgan, formulated the doctrine of 
“ Organic Selection” according to which acquired characters are 
considered to affect the evolutionary process either by working 
through the central nervous system or by the preservation of 
these characters through habit and social heredity until they 
eventuate in an inborn variation which is transmitted by physical 
heredity.! 
Baldwin is a firm believer in the doctrine of natural selection 
and makes large use of it in his psychology and social philosophy, 
but he brings the social process into strong contrast to the 
biological, laying chief stress on invention, imitation, and “ social 
heredity,” and pointing out several ways in which the doctrine of 
natural selection fails when applied to social evolution.? 
The socio-psychical process or the ‘‘ modes of social or collective 
life ” are divided into three classes: (1) the instinctive or grega-+ 
rious; (2) the spontaneous or plastic; and (3) the reflective or 
social proper. The instinctive or gregarious group of collec- 
tive reactions are physically inherited by individual animals. 
Such modes of action, moreover, are fixed and unprogressive and 
are the product of biological laws. The spontaneous or plastic 
group of collective actions are “due to experience, habits of 
common or joint behavior which are not inherited, but learned... . 
These acquired modes of collective action illustrate social trans- 
mission rather than physical heredity. . . . The individual does 
not go by this method beyond what the group life has already 
acquired. . . All the individuals of the group learn the same things; 
and what they learn is the body of useful actions already estab- 
lished in the collective life of the group. The laws of this mode of 
collective action are, accordingly, psychological, not merely 
biological.” He calls this a “ mode of psychological solidarity.” 
1 Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 545 ff. 
2 Ibid., pp. 57 £., 459, 462 f. “‘ This is the great essential thing about social 
truth as opposed to biological fact: it leaps the bounds of physical heredity,” ibid., 
p- 462. 
3 The Individual and Society, p. 36. Baldwin quotes with approval Ténnies’ 
distinction between ‘‘ Gemeinschaft ” and “ Gesellschaft,” Social and Ethical 
Interpretations, p. 486. 
