these forms rearranged in adaptation to varying needs; the forms are related, both as to cause and effect, to the individuals who make up the society; they are thus factors that may never be left out of account in attempts to understand real life.2

Society is like an organism in that it grows; and as it grows the parts become unlike and their functions change. Hence there comes to be mutual interdependence of parts. Some great disaster may wipe the society out of existence, but barring this it lives longer than the individuals composing it. Societies begin in small units which grow. Growth is accompanied by increasing complexity of structure. The growth may be through the multiplication of groups or the increase by union of groups. As mass increases structure becomes more compound and with mutual dependence the parts become unlike. Like organisms, society must have a sustaining system which consists of the productive industries; a distributing system which embraces communication and commerce and a regulating system, i.e., government. Spencer thought that earlier society had been primarily military, that is, had been mainly concerned with the protection of the group or the acquisition of territory. He said there was a gradual change to an industrial society which necessitated larger coöperation and a consequent modification of the sustaining, regulating and distributing systems. This also meant a steady move from the simple to the complex in accord with his conception of evolution.

The man who broke away from the dominant influence of Spencer was a trained scientist, Lester F. Ward, who published in 1883 his "Dynamic Sociology." In this 2 SMALL, A. W. General Sociology, p. 153.

he undertook to make a sharp distinction between the evolution of the world of nature and the world of society. The latter is due to the great development of mind so that man in a sense becomes master of the universe and shapes it as he will through his power of achievement. While achievement through man's intellectual development is the key-note of Ward's philosophy, other men have not failed to bring out other of the psychic elements now so largely emphasized. Giddings has made "consciousness of kind” the basis of his system; Tarde has compelled recognition of the rôle played by "imitation," while Ross has emphasized the necessity of "social control."

Sumner and his successor Keller have broken away from the cruder comparisons of the older writers who emphasized the biological factors. They recognize that man is fundamentally an animal, that he is under natural laws, and that his attributes, emotions, passions are likely to remain what they are regardless of his social evolution. Thus Keller writes: "I shall be charged, doubtless, with 'reasoning from analogy,' but I do not feel that the charge is deserved. I find a something in the social field which is variation, whether or not it may be like what is called variation in the organic field; similarly social selection is selection and not merely like it. In the social field, also, there is a means of transmission having the essential attributes of heredity in nature; and adaptation occurs in one range of phenomena as in the other." 3

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We see that man possesses in the brain a sort of specialized adapting organ which relieves the rest of the body from the necessity of structural adaptation; that 3 KELLER, A. G. Societal Evolution, p. 15.

the human mode of adaptation is thus mental, and that it is also social; that the measure of human adaptation is the degree of civilization attained; that the story of human evolution thus becomes the story of the evolution of civilization in human society; and that the law of population must receive characteristic modifications when it is applied to man. The brain becomes the organ of adaptation. Looked at in one way it secures adaptation for man by transforming his environment; but in a broader and truer sense, by learning the laws of nature and devising ways of conformation to them. But the details of this new phase and mode of adaptation are no longer matters of biology; the reactions of the individual are cerebral and psychical. However, these reactions do not remain individual and isolated, but they become societal and so fall into the domain of sociological study." 4

What we really have, according to Keller, is the change from habits, folkways, into group-customs or mores. These are selected only in part on rational grounds, mainly on emotional. Some of them are better than others, the mores of one group may be much better than those of another. In times of trial the group with weak mores either discovers its weakness or, in extreme cases, is destroyed because of them. This revelation of weakness Keller thinks has always been one of the chief services of war.

A different application of biological principles, real or alleged, to social questions is to be found in a large number of writers, philosophers and statesmen who are advocating what they call "social Darwinism." Speaking in simplest terms, it is the application of the law 4 KELLER, A. G. o. c., pp. 39-41.

of struggle to human relations, particularly in international affairs. The stronger, abler race will survive, the weaker be destroyed. You may be sorry for the weaker but it has no claim to a place on earth unless it chances to accord with your own interests. Military necessity overrides all other considerations.

The first thing to attract our attention in this philosophy is that it was not held by Darwin, Wallace, Huxley and Kropotkin. Darwin believed in coöperation, not war. He wrote to Wallace that "the struggle between the races of man depended entirely upon intellectual and moral qualities." 5 "95 The ablest writer from this standpoint in recent years has been the Russian, Novicow, (to use the French form of his name). Into the merits of the controversy we need not go. It is sufficient to indicate the fact that some of the ablest natural scientists disown the very popular doctrine of force which political scientists have claimed as one of their cardinal beliefs. The object of man's struggles, say the former, should be the conquest of nature, not the overthrow of fellow man. In this struggle there should be division of labor and not ruthless competition. The enemies of man are not fellow men but the forms of life which live at his expense.

Whatever the final decision in these matters, there are certain dangers in the attempt to apply the laws of one science to the phenomena of another, of which one of the best living natural scientists, Professor J. A. Thomson, of Aberdeen, has written;

"The fallacy of regarding sociology as no more than a recondite branch of biology is not merely verbal, implying differences of opinion on the tedious question of the best definitions of these two sciences; it involves a mis

5 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, p. 271.

conception of what human society is, a misconception which is discredited by the facts of history and experience. No one doubts that the life of a social group is made up of a complex of activities of individual persons but these are integrated, harmonised, and regulated in a manner as far beyond present biological analysis as the integration, harmonization and regulation of the chemical and physical processes in the individual organisms are at present beyond mechanical analysis.

"To keep to the concept of selection for a moment; it was applied to plants and animals, it was illustrated, justified if not demonstrated and formulated; and now with the imprimatur of biology it comes back to sociology as a great law of life. That it is so we take for granted, but it is surely evident that in social affairs, from which it emanated as a suggestion to biology, it must be reverified and precisely tested. In any case, a formula borrowed from another science and applied to a new order of facts even to those in which it first arose as a suggestion must be rigorously tested. Otherwise, both organic and social sciences resolve themselves into sociomorphic illusions." 6

Personally, I have no doubt that we shall develop a science of society. This will involve the collection of much more and more accurate data than we now have. When that time comes, we shall be better able perhaps to compare the relative importance of the forces influencing society than is now possible, for all our explanations today are but guesses. The significant thing is that we are coming to believe in cause and effect in the social realm and to ask for evidence rather than dogma.

This development of a science of society is quite cer6 THOMSON, J. A. Heredity, pp. 510–512.