Chapter XVIII Anthropologic Sociology

Additional light upon the nature of sociological thought may be secured by consulting the anthropologists, and particularly, the students of social origins. The last mentioned group of scholars have been unusually successful in making valuable contributions to sociological thought, because they have used the psychological approach.

For more than a century the anthropologists have been searching for materials and advancing theories concerning the origin of man, of conflict and co-operative tendencies, and of the early ideas and institutions of the human race. They have been aided by the investigations of the geologists and especially of the paleontologists. The ethnographers and ethnologists have also discovered important data. The findings of all these groups of investigators, as far as they relate to the main thread of this book, will be here treated essentially as a unitary contribution. There is not space to deal specifically with the work of anthropologists, such as Tylor, Morgan, Pitt-Rivers, Haddon, Frazer, Goldenweiser, Keane, and a number of other prominent authorities.

Anthropological social thought will be indicated here under several headings. As far as possible the controversial and technical theories in anthropology will be avoided. Certain of the ideas that have been advanced by Sumner, Westermarck, Hobhouse, Wundt, Boas, and Thomas will receive special attention, because they are unusually pertinent to the main theme of this volume.

1. There is common agreement among anthropologists that man is the descendant of a branch of higher animal life, and that the creation of man took place by a slow, evolutionary process. The slowness of this developmental process does not necessarily lessen the mysterious or miraculous character of it. It places the origin of the human race at a much earlier date than was once supposed—perhaps from 200,000 to 500,000 years ago. The animal inheritance of man need not lead anyone to deny the correlative fact that man possesses spiritual qualities not common to the highest developed animals.XVIII-1

Even the psychic equipment of man can be traced in its origins to the primates with their individual and social instincts. The instinctive bases of human conduct are hundreds of thousands of years old. They are so intrinsically a part of human nature that no discussion of current social problems will neglect the imperiousness of the ancient instinct heritage of the human race.

2. There is extensive anthropologic evidence that mankind had a common origin. The remains of the earliest human beings are found in a region which extends through India from Java to England. From these geographic centers primitive man seems to have migrated in various directions—northeast, southwest, and finally to the Western Hemisphere. Different climatic and environmental conditions affected the migrating groups in different ways. Those who migrated into the tropical regions were retarded because of the enervating climatic factors. Those who reached the frigid zone were also retarded, or subjected to recidivism for a different reason—a harshness of living conditions and an excess of environmental obstacles. The north temperate zone with its fertile lands and its invigorating climate afforded the proper milieu for the development of the race.

3. An important question relates to the alleged potential equality of all races. The common origin of races is admitted, but the question remains open whether, for example, the African races possess the same innate mental abilities as the Caucasian races. The controversy here is sharply drawn between the environmentalists and the eugenists. Each side of the debate has collected a large body of evidence. In reality, the question apparently boils down to this: Have the many centuries of living under the enervating torrid zone conditions effected the African races so deeply that under favorable cultural circumstances they have become incapable of developing beyond a certain mental level which is lower than that attained by the Caucasian races? In the past the answer to this question has been a strong affirmative. The bulk of the evidence that has been collected in recent years indicates that the affirmative answer is incorrect.

4. It is becoming clear that every race is a composite of several races. Ethnological data show that the five grand divisions of the human race may be subdivided into racial stocks, and into races and sub-races, until more than 600 races may be described; and furthermore, that each of the 600 or more races represents an amalgamation of at least three or four races. It is evident that no clear line of racial demarcation can be drawn, and that purity of race may be a fictitious term.

5. Intermarriage of the representatives of races belonging to similar racial stocks seems advisable—according to the ethnologist. Pure bloods apparently die out. The strongest races today are those in which amalgamation has taken place recently—that is, within one thousand or two thousand years, for example, the English, or the Scotch-Irish.

A mooted question of world importance relates to the intermarriage of the representatives of races widely different, such as the white and the yellow races, or the white and the black races. No race has yet developed out of such combinations. Race prejudices and social distinctions have produced conflicts which thus far have prevented the formation of such a race. Very few scientific data are available regarding miscegenation.

Apparently, the interbreeding of whites and blacks leads ultimately to the elimination of the racial characteristics of the blacks and to the complete dominance of the whites. There are some writers who assert that this process takes place to the gain of the lower race and to the loss of the higher race. The last-mentioned point has not yet been proved. Miscegenation between whites and blacks occurs under such abnormal and vicious social conditions that the racial tendencies are definitely obscured.

6. Conflict between races is primordial; conflict between races today is illustrated in national wars and race persecutions. Weaker races have often combined against a stronger race; from these experiences there has come a growing sense of the value of co-operation. Nations with high moral principles have united against a powerful neighbor nation with bullying tendencies. Out of these temporary combinations there has arisen a sense of need for permanent forms of national co-operation. This common need will ultimately lead, undoubtedly, to a permanent association of nations.

The conflict between the grand divisions of the human race will probably continue for a long time to come. Sometimes it is concentrated in an antagonism between the white and yellow races; and again, it is expressed in the more fundamental struggle between Occidentalism and Orientalism.

7. The origin and development of primitive ways of doing constitute a well-cultivated field of study. Anthropologists have published an endless amount of materials on the origin of languages, religions, occupations, sex distinctions. A portion of this work has been done without an accurate understanding of the psychological principles that are involved, and hence has to be viewed with caution or neglected entirely.

W. G. Sumner, whose argument in favor of individualism and of a laissez faire governmental policy was given in Chapter XI, published in his Folkways a minute and extended account of the nature of primitive institutions.

In the development of his theories, Sumner began with the needs of primitive peoples and with the attempts to meet these needs. Repetition of these acts leads to established ways of doing, that is, to folkways. Folkways are “the widest, most fundamental, and most important operation by which the interests of men in groups are served.”XVIII-2 Societal life consists chiefly in making folkways and applying them. Even the science of society might be defined as the study of folkways. Folkways are the product of the trial and failure method of meeting needs. They tend to become firmly established and to be passed on from generation to generation. They become traditional. They acquire all the authority which is attached to the memory of respected ancestors. Even the ghosts of ancestors stalk the earth keeping guard over the folkways. The folkways carry with them the conviction that they are essential to human welfare. It is this conviction which gives them the force of mores. Thus the folkways are not purposeful methods of securing progress but unconscious ways of meeting current exigencies; they are blindly and rigorously forced upon successive generations.

8. Races are guilty of ethnocentrism.XVIII-3 Each race considers itself the center of mankind. It judges all other races by its own standards, and not by a higher standard that is determined by data that are representative of the best interests of all races. Ethocentrism compels each race to exaggerate the importance of its own folkways and to depreciate the folkways of other races. For example, the Romans and Greeks called all outsiders “barbarians.” The Jews considered themselves “the chosen people,” and the Romans and Greeks as “pagans.”

9. Sumner divided the chief motives of human action into four classes: Hunger, sex passion, vanity, and fear (of ghosts and spirits). Behind each of these motives there is a set of interests. (1) Hunger led primitive man to invent simple weapons and tools, such as arrows and hoes, and then to produce and hoard more complex forms of wealth. A strange peculiarity of wealth is its effect on its creator; it seems to be stronger than its creator. It often bears him down to a slavish, materialistic, and even selfish existence. Labor in the struggle for existence is irksome and painful. Wealth and labor, however, are both commendatory when they are used to increase human welfare. In this statement Sumner overlooked the fact that wealth in order to be commendable must also be produced under constructively social conditions, and that labor in order to be praiseworthy must in its exercise be individually helpful. In other words, Sumner’s test of the use to which wealth and labor are put is incomplete.

Sumner gave a new meaning to the term, slavery. He held that “men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the art.”XVIII-4 Sumner deplored the tendency to call whatever one does not like by the name of slavery. He felt that marriage slavery, rent slavery, sin slavery are terms which are coined by a too easily disgruntled people.

(2) The sex passion leads to sex mores which cover the relations of men and women to each other before marriage and in marriage, and the obligations of married persons to society. The sex mores determine the nature of marriage and of divorce. Sumner derided sex equality. Man has a more stable nervous system than woman, is more self-absorbed, more egoistic, less tactful. Since man has greater physical strength than woman, woman was educated by circumstances in primitive days to adapt herself to the stronger sex, and to win by developing charms where her lack of comparative strength rendered her helpless. Resignation and endurance thus became acquired traits of women.

Neither renunciation nor license is the proper method of control of the sex passions. Both produce unnecessary agony. License, for example, “stimulates desire without limit, and ends in impotent agony.” Sumner advocated temperance and regulation—a regulation which comes from knowledge and judgment.

Women by necessity must bear an unequal share in the responsibilities of sex and reproduction. Likewise, men must bear an unequal share of the responsibilities of property, war, and politics. For the latter types of duties women are hampered by a delicately adjusted and cumbersome generative system which men do not possess.XVIII-5

Formerly women yielded to the will of men. Today, the marital state is one of endless discussion, a defeat for one party or the other, with unpleasant effects upon life and character. In ancient times women took pride in the supervision which their husbands exercised over them and valued themselves as hidden treasures.XVIII-6 This protected position was considered aristocratic. Under polygamy, women looked with pity and disgust upon the man who cannot, or is unwilling to, support more than one wife.

At this point it is interesting to note that W. I. Thomas has distinguished between the sexes on the basis of differences in metabolism—men being katabolic and women anabolic. Man consumes more energy than woman.XVIII-7 He is better fitted for bursts of energy, while woman possesses more endurance. Man’s structural variability is toward motion; woman’s, toward reproduction. Hence man seems to have been assigned in primitive society to tasks requiring violence and exertion, whereas to women fell the work requiring constant attention.

Civilization thus far has largely profited by the intelligence of man. If to this situation it will develop and add the intelligence of women, it will be supplanted by a higher type of civilization. Under these conditions a large percentage of marriages will represent “the true comradeship of like minds,” instead of being frequently, as now, an arrangement in which woman is treated as a pet.

(3) The motive of vanity is all-powerful. “One likes to be separated from the crowd by what is admired, and dislikes to be distinguished for what is not admired.”XVIII-8 To satisfy vanity, barbarian mothers “deform their babies toward an adopted type of bodily perfection.” Aristocracies grow up out of appeals to vanity. An aristocracy is a group of persons closely united who define the possession of things for which they are admired and which the masses do not possess. Vanity leads to all types of absurdities and indecencies in dress. Teeth are knocked out for the sake of appeasing vanity. An Indian woman puts a board on the forehead of her baby to make the forehead recede.

(4) Fear as a motive rules the lives of primitives. Fear of ghosts and spirits is peculiarly enslaving. Pestilence, defeat in war, bodily pain were all considered the result of the wrath of the gods.

The mass phenomena of fear are especially pitiful. Manias of various types rule whole masses. Witchcraft thrived for centuries on the strength of fear. Pilgrimages and crusades were partly due to fear; demonism was a product of fear. When fear became firmly established in the folkways, it acted as an ever-ruling tyrant. In the mores it became firmly entrenched and was a leading factor in moulding character. Through religious practices and dogmas it defined a “hell” and ruled with a fearful hand.

10. Upon simplest analyses, according to Sumner, four societal values stand out with clearness: intellectual, moral, economic, and physical.XVIII-9 Each of these, however, is composite. The highest societal value seems to result from a harmonious combination of the four values enumerated. The best member of society is he in whom the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical values are more or less equally and harmoniously represented.

11. Sumner divided society into five main classes.XVIII-10 (1) The masses represent social mediocrity. They are of average social usefulness. (2) Then there are the dependent and defective classes—a drag upon society but not harmful or vicious. (3) The delinquent classes are grossly harmful. They are anti-social and a grievous burden. (4) Above the masses there are the people of talent, and (5) above the talented are the geniuses. “A man of talent, practical sense, industry, perseverance, and moral principle is worth more to society than a genius who is not morally responsible, or not industrious.”XVIII-11

It is a mistake to think of the masses as being at the base of society; they are located at the core. They are traditional, conservative, and the bearers of the mores. The lowest sections of the masses are a dead weight of ignorance, disease, and crime.

12. A social institution is composed of an idea, notion, or interest, and a resultant structure. The primary institutions are property, marriage, and religion.XVIII-12 These began as folkways; they became customs. Social institutions can be modified only when the mores are changed; they develop rituals, which are ceremonious, solemn, and strongest when perfunctory and when exciting no thought.XVIII-13

Sumner boldly asserted that nothing but might has ever made right, and that nothing but might makes right now.XVIII-14 The fact that property began in force is not proof that property is an unjust institution. Marriage and religion also began in force, but the element of justice in the existence of these institutions is not seriously questioned today. Sumner, however, did not discriminate between force as an agent or a tool, and force as a primary cause. He did not distinguish clearly between hate and love as the dynamic factors behind action that is decisive. He did not set forth the distinction between harsh, material, immutable force and a kindly, spiritual, attracting love.

13. The persistency of folkways and mores is illustrated in a thousand ways by Sumner. He described (1) their slow variability under changed life conditions, (2) their sudden variability under revolutionary conditions, (3) the possibility of changing them by intelligent action, (4) the problems involved in adjusting one’s self to the mores of another group, (5) the conflicts between the mores of different groups.XVIII-15

The mores are powerful engines of societal selection. The most important fact about the mores is the power which they exert over the individual. He does not know their source. He is born into them. He accepts them in his early years uncritically. His habits and character are moulded by them. If in adult life he challenges them, he is ostracized by his group, labeled unpatriotic, and even trodden under foot.XVIII-16 The mores develop powerful watch-words, slogans, and even epithets of contempt and disapproval which only the most independent and courageous individuals dare to face.

14. Ideals are entirely unscientific, declared Sumner.XVIII-17 They are phantasies little connected with fact. They are often formed to pacify the restless, or to escape settling a question justly in the present. The “poor” are told to look to the next life for their rewards. The radicals are urged to accept the Christian virtues of meekness and lowliness. Ideals are useful, chiefly, in homiletics, in self-education via auto-suggestion, in satisfying vanity, in marriage. In these observations, Sumner undoubtedly pointed out genuine weaknesses in ideals. He underestimated the psychological fact that they spring from the very real affective phases of consciousness, and that they can be projected rationally. He was right, however, in deploring the chasm which exists between ideals and practices, and in showing how ideals may become encysted in literature although not in the mores. “The Greeks proved that people could sink very low while talking very nobly.”

Immorality is conduct contrary to the mores of the time and place.XVIII-18 Chastity is conformity to the current taboo on the sex relation. “Modesty is reserve of behavior and sentiment.” Even “nakedness is never shameful when it is unconscious,” that is, when there is no consciousness of a difference between fact and the rule set by the mores.

Sumner deduced an important principle when he asserted that the “mores can make anything right.” The mores give usages a certain order and form, and cover them with a protecting mantle of propriety. The sanction of the mores is utilized by the class in power in order to maintain the established régime, even though it be one of injustice.

Sumner decried the importance which is ordinarily attached to book learning,XVIII-19 because it is addressed to the intellect rather than to the feelings which are the springs of action. The real education is that which comes through personal influence and example. It is derived from “the habits and atmosphere of a school, not from the school textbooks.”

15. Despite Sumner’s failure to appreciate the significance of a thoroughgoing psychological approach to an analysis of folkways, his description of these societal phenomena constitutes a unique and valuable contribution to social thought. Sumner’s rigorous attitude toward social life did not permit him to enter into an extensive interpretation of the folkways in the light of folk ideals. He dealt with what is to the exclusion of what ought to be. He saw the past so clearly, and the present so much as a reflection of the past, that no enheartening forward look was possible. He rested his theories on the inexorable work of the laws of biological evolution, modified chiefly by his belief in a strong individualism.

Sumner’s fundamental theses have been developed and modified by A. G. Kellor. Professor Kellor has projected the Darwinian principles of variation, selection, transmission, and adaptation into societal concepts. In fact, he has done this so well that he has given the Darwinian principles full sway, not allowing sufficiently for the rise and operation of complex psychic principles. He has made the folkways the connecting link between organic and societal evolution, but has not noted fully the new, countless, and often intangible but powerful factors by which societal evolution is characterized.

16. The rôle that concepts of conduct have played in the evolution of society, has been analyzed by E. A. Westermarck and L. T. Hobhouse. The former is usually known as an anthropologist, and the latter as a sociologist. Professor Westermarck has shown that, strictly speaking, a custom is not merely the habit of a certain group of people; it also involves a rule of conduct.XVIII-21 It possesses two characteristics—habitualness and obligatoriness.

Not every public habit, however, is a custom, involving an obligation.XVIII-22 There may be certain practices which are more or less common in society, but which at the same time are generally condemned. The disapproval of these is as a rule not very deep or genuine.

Dr. Westermarck has indicated that there is a close similarity between the conscience of a community and of an individual.XVIII-23 If a group commits a sin twice, it is likely to be considered allowable. In order to get at the real nature of societal life, the “bad habits” as well as the professed opinions of groups must be examined.

“Society” says Dr. Westermarck, “is the birthplace of the moral consciousness.”XVIII-24 Emotions which are felt by the community at large tend to take the form of conduct standards. The moral emotions lead to a variety of moral concepts. These fall into two main classes: concepts of disapproval, such as the concepts, bad, vice, wrong; and concepts of approval, such as good, virtue, and merit.

Professor Westermarck is convinced of the tremendous influence that religious beliefs have exerted upon the moral ideas of mankind.XVIII-25 This influence has been exceedingly varied. Religion has taught the principles of love and yet has indulged in cruel persecutions. It has condemned murder and yet been a party to child sacrifice. “It has emphasized the duty of truth-speaking, and has itself been a cause of pious fraud.” Professor Westermarck has contributed to social thought not only in his valuable descriptions of the rise and evolution of moral ideas, but also in his History of Human Marriage, to which reference will be made in Chapter XXIV.

The writings of L. T. Hobhouse reveal a thorough, comparative study of the conduct rules of mankind. Professor Hobhouse has described the evolution of ethical consciousness as displayed in the habits, customs, and principles that have arisen in human history for the regulation of human conduct. He has shown how, in the lowest forms of the organic world, behavior is regulated, and directed to some purpose.XVIII-27 This behavior is somewhat definitely determined by the structure of the organism itself.XVIII-28

There are three forces which may be called social, or which tend to keep society together. These social bonds are: (1) the principle of kinship, (2) the principle of authority, and (3) the principle of citizenship.XVIII-29 Kinship is the moving force in primitive society. The principle of authority becomes prominent when one tribe captures and enslaves a weaker group. This principle is also invoked in order to secure an integration of openly diverse attitudes within the group, even of modern national groups. It is exemplified in the various forms of absolutism in government. The principle of citizenship finds expression when certain individuals within the group are delegated to perform as servants and ministers of the public as a whole.XVIII-30 Personal rights and the common good are the two reigning ideals. Every individual is recognized as having a right to the conditions requisite for the full development of his social personality. The good in life consists “in the bringing out into full bloom of those capacities of each individual which help to maintain the common life.”XVIII-31 The third principle, that of citizenship, when carried to its conclusion reveals the possibility of a world state.XVIII-32

It is the contention of Professor Hobhouse that there is a close connection between the growth of law and justice and the prevalent forms of social organization. Organized law has developed out of a sense of community responsibility, which, however, has expressed itself as a rule in crude ways, and without distinguishing between accident and design. This sense of community responsibility in primitive groups tends to hold in check the spirit of anarchy and of self-redress. Sooner or later, the method of community self-redress yields to the authority of a chief or of a council representing the whole community.XVIII-33 Ultimately the community develops a special social organ for adjusting disputes and preventing crime. It is then that the ethical idea becomes separated from the conflicting passions of the collectivity. Thus, the foundations are laid for true judicial inquiry by evidence and genuine proof, and for a system of scientific public justice.

17. In applying the principles of folk psychology to the anthropologic field, William Wundt has developed a new method and new theories. Folk psychology is the study of “the relations which the intellectual, moral, and other mental characteristics of peoples sustain to one another.”XVIII-34 The term was originated by Lazarus and Steinthal, whose works will be referred to again in Chapter XXII. In the masterpiece on the Elements of Folk Psychology, Wundt has given a psychological description of the main processes and institutions in society, tracing them from their beginnings in the processes of nature; he has made a survey of human progress. His study opens with a discussion of the processes which produced the digging stick, the club, and the hammer; it ends with an analysis of world empire, world culture, world religions, and world history. The intervening ages are the totemic and the age of heroes and gods.

World empire affected primarily the material aspects of the life of peoples. It led to world intercourse, which in turn multiplied the needs of peoples. These multiplied needs were followed by exchanges of the means of satisfying the needs. The external and material phases of culture are survived by the spiritual phases—thus world culture is a sequence of world empire. It may be said that the vicissitudes of peoples under the rule of the world empire idea brings forth a unified history. World culture in turn creates a common mental heritage for mankind.XVIII-36

In the establishment of a world culture, world religions are the leading forces. They have been foremost in creating the idea of a universal human community. In particular, Christianity is based on a belief in a God who makes no distinction between race or class or occupation. Consequently, “it has regarded missionary activity among heathen peoples as a task whose purpose it is finally to unite the whole of mankind beneath the cross of Christ.”XVIII-37

For a long time in human history, religious development was considered to be the main connecting link—such was the contention of St. Augustine. In 1725, Vico argued that the development of language and jurisprudence is of universal import.XVIII-38 Finally, world history has become an account of the mental life of peoples—“a psychological account of the development of mankind.”

18. The work of Professor Wundt is similar in many ways, although characterized by a distinctive starting point and by many differences, to the contributions of Franz Boas and W. I. Thomas. Professor Boas has declared his belief in man’s ability to dominate the laws of organic evolution as expressed in human life. He has brought forward a large amount of evidence in support of the theory that environment has caused differences between races. He has pointed out that race prejudice is largely a product of social environment, and that under changed conditions of life it has little place in the world. Boas is a strong advocate of the theory, already advanced in this chapter, that all races are potentially equal in ability, and that they would demonstrate the truth of this statement, if given a common cultural background and social opportunities. He has advanced the idea that “the organization of mind is practically identical among all races of men.”XVIII-39

Professor Boas has amassed considerable evidence to show that in the matter of inhibition of impulses, of power of attention, of ability to do original thinking, primitive man compares favorably with civilized man. Inasmuch as the social environment is powerful and education is effective in making over social environments, education can raise all races to the same high level, and at the same time unify them upon the same knowledge bases. This contention is similar to the position that Professor Hobhouse has made clear, namely: “While race has been relatively stagnant, society has rapidly developed.” Moreover, social progress is determined not by alterations or racial type, but by modifications of social cultures.XVIII-40 These modifications are caused primarily by the interactions of social causes.

19. Noteworthy pioneering in the field of social anthropology and social origins has been done by W. I. Thomas. He has developed the theory that progress results from “crises.”XVIII-41 As long as life runs along smoothly, a lack of interest is likely to ensue. The result is ennui. But a crisis in any of the life processes arouses the attention, that is, produces a concentration of psychic energy. A disturbance of any habit is a crisis. When the exigences of the crisis are solved through a focalization of consciousness, the situation is said to be controlled by the individual, who again lapses into a state of disinterestedness until another disturbance of habit occurs. The new method of control will be imitated. If imitated widely, it will mark a rise in the level of civilization.

It will be observed at once that the power of attention to meet crises is largely an individual matter and that the rôle of the individual is very important. The group level of culture limits the power of the mind to meet crises and to make adjustments.XVIII-42 The mind is limited by the psychic fund which the group already possesses. If there is no knowledge of mathematics in the group, then a large banking system is impossible. Crises, attention, control—these are the three leading concepts in Thomas’ theory of social origins.

Control is the object of all purposeful activity.XVIII-43 It is the end, and attention is the means. An animal differs from a plant in that it has a superior control over a larger environment than does the plant. “It does not wait for food, but goes after it.” Man differs from an animal partly in the fact that his fore limbs are free to secure new and varied forms of control. Moreover, man through his mind has a superior instrument of control. By the use of knowledge, mind is effective in controlling factors that are present in neither time nor space. Through its inventions, such as language, religious creeds, mechanical appliances, forms of government, man has risen to a high level of civilization.

Thomas has analyzed the social process in terms of social attitude and social values. An attitude is a process of individual consciousness that determines “the real or possible activity of the individual in the social world.”XVIII-45 A social value, on the other hand, is any datum that has an empirical content accessible to the members of a social group and a meaning which may make it an object of activity. Activity is thus the bond between a social attitude and a social value. The value is the meaning which a material or spiritual datum may have. An attitude is a real or implied going out after value. Social psychology is the science of social attitudes. At this point anthropologic social thought has merged into social psychology.

Until twenty-five years ago, anthropology interpreted societary origins pretty largely in terms of the individual. With the use of a social psychology such as Cooley represents, “anthropology has given more accurate explanations and become essentially a social anthropology.”

Before we discuss the different phases of psycho-sociologic thought, it will be well to make clear the recent advances that have been made in the biologic phases of social thought. The center of attention in this field is the relation of the laws of heredity to human progress, which constitutes the problem in eugenics. A discussion of eugenic social thought will bring forward in a scientific way the chief elements of an intellectual situation that was left, in Chapter XVI, in the unsatisfactory Spencerian formulae. A presentation of eugenic social thought will give a valuable background to the discussion which follows concerning psycho-sociologic thought.