SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION BLF 
that kind of social life, social organization and social control 
which shall result eventually in the birth only of those who, when 
properly trained, will fit most effectively into the life of the 
group and of humanity at large.! 
These criticisms of the neo-Darwinian sociologists have forced 
us to introduce conclusions from later chapters, — and now to 
return to the progress of our investigation. We turned from this 
school to a consideration of passive socio-physical adaptation, or 
the development of social groups with reference to their physical 
environment, and concluded that geographical conditions “ set 
the life lines of groups,”’ condemning some to isolation and stagna- 
tion and opening up to others possibilities of enlarged life not 
only by affording better facilities for self-support but also by 
inducing inter-group contact. 
Up to this point emphasis had been chiefly on the physiological 
basis of race-progress with race conceived in biological terms, but 
anthropologists having assured us that there are at present no 
pure races and that ethnic groups must be defined with reference 
to cultural even more than to physical characteristics, it was 
necessary to turn to some writers who had developed the thought 
of society as a psychical unity, and the more so as the concept 
“ society ” had been used without definite content. 
Tn the discussion of Schaéffle, Mackenzie, Le Bon, Durkheim 
and other social psychologists, we deyeloped the concept of 
society as a psychical ‘ somewhat,” variously organized, in a 
sense over against the individual, molding his life and in turn 
modified by his reaction. This brought us to the phase of our 
subject characterized as passive spiritual adaptation and an ap- 
proach to social philosophy through social psychology, — though 
to a considerable extent of a deductive variety. We concluded 
that every group or social organization, united by common 
interests and co-operating for a common end was a psychical unity 
with the possibility that such a unity might at certain times and 
under certain conditions rise to such community of thought, 
1 For the most recent attempt to work out a social philosophy on the biologi- 
cal basis, using the terms variation, selection, transmission and adaptation as 
“‘key-words,”’ see the admirable book by Professor A. G. Keller of Yale, Societal 
Evolution. 
