ish to say here is that the necessity of some
selective process is inherent in the conditions of social life.

It will be apparent that, in the sense in which I use the term,
competition is not necessarily a hostile contention, nor even something
of which the competing individual is always conscious. From our infancy
onward throughout life judgments are daily forming regarding us of which
we are unaware, but which go to determine our careers. "The world is
full of judgment days." A and B, for instance, are under consideration
for some appointment; the experience and personal qualifications of each
are duly weighed by those having the appointment to make, and A, we will
say, is chosen. Neither of the two need know anything about the matter
until the selection is made. It is eligibility to perform some social
function that makes a man a competitor, and he may or may not be aware
of it, or, if aware of it, he may or may not be consciously opposed to
others. I trust that the reader will bear in mind that I always use the
word competition in the sense here explained.

There is but one alternative to competition as a means of determining
the place of the individual in the social system, and that is some form
of status, some fixed, mechanical rule, usually a rule of inheritance,
which decides the function of the individual without reference to his
personal traits, and thus dispenses with any process of comparison. It
is possible to conceive of a society organized entirely upon the basis
of the inheritance of functions, and indeed societies exist which may be
said to approach this condition. In India, for example, the prevalent
idea regarding the social function of the individual is that it is
unalterably determined by his parentage, and the village blacksmith,
shoemaker, accountant, or priest has his place assigned to him by a rule
of descent as rigid as that which governs the transmission of one of the
crowns of Europe. If all functions were handed down in this way, if
there were never any deficiency or surplus of children to take the place
of their parents, if there were no progress or decay in the social
system making necessary new activities or dispensing with old ones, then
there would be no use for a selective process. But precisely in the
measure that a society departs from this condition, that individual
traits are recognized and made available, or social change of any sort
comes to pass, in that measure must there be