224 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
retrograde at all, but perish as they were, being simply crowded 
out of existence. What persist are the unspecialized forms of the 
same type that were contemporary with the specialized ones, but 
escaped competition because not specialized.” ! Ward goes on 
to show how this principle applies to races. 
Races and nations become overgrown and disappear. Peoples become 
over specialized and fall an easy prey to the more vigorous surrounding ones, 
and a high state of civilization is always precarious. Races and peoples are 
always giving off their most highly vitalized elements and being transplanted 
to new soil, leaving the parent country to decline or be swallowed up. .. . 
Race and national degeneration or decadence means nothing more than this 
pushing out of the vigorous branches or sympodes at the expense of the 
parent trunks. The organicists see in colonization the phenomenon of social 
reproduction. ‘This is at least a half truth. Colonization often means 
regeneration; it means race development; it means social evolution. 
Thus from England has grown the United States, Canada, 
Australia, South Africa. Even should England perish as a 
nation, her civilization, her ideals, her achievements would live 
on. With Ward this social process and social progress is more 
important than the continued existence of the sovereign group. 
2. Creative Synthesis. — This contribution of Professor Ward 
comes next in order in Pure Sociology and introduces us to his 
cosmic philosophy. He compares cosmic creation to chemical 
combination which results apparently in something different 
from a sum of the causes that enter into the compound. ‘“‘ The 
only rational or thinkable idea of creation,” he says, “ has always 
been that of putting previously existing things into new forms.” 3 
Ward assumes that the initial force differentiates and that later 
portions come together forming ever new combinations and that 
thus the cosmic order is ultimately evolved culminating in the 
free intelligence of man. 
The synthetic creations of nature have their characteristic properties or 
modes of acting, and it is through these that they produceeffects. Taken 
together these active properties constitute the forces of nature. These 
separate and apparently different forces are, however, only so many modali- 
ties of the one universal force, but it is not only convenient but practically 
correct to treat them as distinct. . . . Man possesses feeling in common with 
1 Pure Sociology, p. 78. Such analogical reasoning, while suggestive, turns the 
attention away from a study of the real social causes that produce the results. 
2 Tbid., p. 79. 3 Ibid., p. 81. 
