whether "natural" selection
may not be replaced by a rational selection in which "fitness for
survival" would at length achieve its legitimate meaning, and the
development of the race might be guided by reasoned conceptions of
social value. This is a fundamental change of attitude, and the new
doctrine of eugenics to which it has given rise requires careful
examination. Before proceeding to this examination, however, it will be
well to inquire into the causes of the contrast on which we have
insisted between biological evolution and social progress. Faced by this
contradiction, we ask ourselves whether social development may not be
something quite distinct from the organic changes known to biology, and
whether the life of society may not depend upon forces which never
appear in the individual when he is examined merely as an individual or
merely as a member of a race.

Take the latter point first. It is easily seen in the arguments of
biologists that they conceive social progress as consisting essentially
in an improvement of the stock to which individuals belong. This is a
way of looking at the matter intelligible enough in itself. Society
consists of so many thousand or so many million individuals, and if,
comparing any given generation with its ancestors, we could establish an
average improvement in physical, mental, or moral faculty, we should
certainly have cause to rejoice. There is progress so far. But there is
another point of view which we may take up. Society consists of
individual persons and nothing but individual persons, just as the body
consists of cells and the product of cells. But though the body may
consist exclusively of cells, we should never understand its life by
examining the lives of each of its cells as a separate unit. We must
equally take into account that organic interconnection whereby the
living processes of each separate cell co-operate together to maintain
the health of the organism which contains them all. So, again, to
understand the social order we have to take into account not only the
individuals with their capabilities and achievements but the social
organization in virtue of which these individuals act upon one another
and jointly produce what we call social results; and whatever may be
true of the physical organism, we can see that in society it is possible
that individuals of the very same potentialities may, with good
organization, produce good results, and, with bad organizat