ACTIVE SOCIAL ADAPTATION 293 
evolution is at work in society, and that in the struggle among 
“ views,” “ customs,” ‘“ methods” and “ civilizations”? some 
perish while others survive. ‘‘ The genesis of ethical elements,” 
he says, “as well as the genesis of customs and beliefs, is a 
process of selection and survival. Just as the development of 
Zuni or Lydian pottery is due to a competition which makes the 
handiest and handsomest form of pot the prevailing type, and to 
the renewal of this healthy competition whenever an inventive 
potter or a foreign art supplies a new pattern, so the improve- 
ment in the ethical standard of a civilization is due to the survival 
and ascendency of those elements which are best adapted to an 
orderly social life. . . . It is just this selection which explains the 
snug fit of early ethical elements to the needs of the group that 
develop them.” In this same connection he shows how certain 
conventions “‘ develop very naturally by a process of unconscious 
adaptation out of the mental contacts and long intercourse of 
associates.” ! 
This doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress seems 
to be the one thing lacking to make clear his interpretation of the 
“Vicissitudes of Social Control,” * where he shows how change in 
control is brought about by change in social need due largely to 
change in the economic condition of the people. In other words 
the vicissitudes of social control are due to society’s need of adapting 
itself to changed conditions of existence. 
There seem to be some features of social progress which, accord- 
ing to Ross, make the biological categories of struggle and sur- 
vival, or the principle of adaptation, inapplicable. Commenting 
on the struggle between civilizations, he says, ‘‘ This struggle of 
rival elements of culture is by no means the same thing as the 
struggle between persons. When one race has overrun and 
trampled down another, it is always interesting to see if the 
spiritual contest of the two civilizations has the same issue as the 
physical contest of the two races. Will the upper civilization 
smother the lower, as in the case of the Spaniards and the Aztecs, 
the Germans and the Wends, the Romans and the Etruscans, the 
Saracens and the Roman Africans; or will the one beneath grow 
1 Social Control, pp. 342-345. 2 Tbid., ch. XXIX. 
