3 16 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
can be assured that the success of the winning group has been 
merely on the basis of native ability rather than on opportunity 
and training! This suggests as a definite criticism of the neo- 
Darwinian sociologists that just as the severity of competition 
among lower biological orders is in dispute, so among social 
groups it is by no means certain that inter-group competition is 
now or ever will be so acute as to eliminate all but the best 
adapted. 
The biological sociologists make much of societal selection as a 
method of improving native ability, — and well they may,— but 
at present we have little knowledge of value as a guide. Before 
agreement can be reached on many of the points involved we must 
await further evidence concerning the correlation between physical 
qualities on the one hand and intellectual and moral qualities on 
the other, for societal selection in so far as it is non-purposeful, like 
natural selection, works only by death or sterility. As to positive 
eugenics, we need to know more concerning the native qualities 
which, when trained, will make for the most efficient group life. 
We need to know more also concerning the various methods of 
societal selection and “ counter selection”? that we may en- 
courage those that are favorable to the production and preserva- 
tion of socially efficient individuals and prevent from operation 
those that are unfavorable. The goal, of course, is to work out 
1 If 1,000 babies born from the aristocracy of America, 1,000 babies from the 
proletariat class and 1,000 babies born from some primitive group could be reared 
under like conditions and at maturity brought into some kind of competition we 
would have the conditions for a sociological test of value in determining race-stock 
efficiency. But even in this case the test would not necessarily be physical vigor 
or military prowess except in so far as necessary for self-preservation, nor yet in- 
dustrial superiority except in so far as necessary for cultural achievement. While 
these tests would be valid in proportion as existence and growth of the groups 
were vitally involved, if the competition was no more severe than among civilized 
groups today the test might well be the ability to work out a corporate life so 
manifestly desirable that it would be copied, with variation, by the other groups 
and not only in one instance but continually, for the supreme test is “in the long 
run.” The supremely desirable thing is not only the immortality of achievement 
as the term is used by Ward, but the continuous achievement of an immortal 
group, and immortal because it continues to achieve that which is worthy of 
imitation. 
2 See A. G. Keller, Societal Evolution, ch. VI. 
3 Cf. Walter, Genetics, ch. XI. 
