Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/730

 7 U THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

gence utilizes the materials and forces of nature. And as all economics rests primarily on production, it seems to follow that a science of economics must have a psychological basis. In fact the economics of mind and the economics of life are not merely different but the direct opposites of each other. The psychologic law strives to reverse the biologic law. The biologic law is that of the survival of structures best adapted to the environment. Those struc- tures that yield most readily to changes in the environment persist. It has therefore been aptly called the " survival of the plastic." The environment never changes to conform to the structures but always the reverse, and the only organic progress possible is that which accrues through improvements in structure tending to enable organic beings to cope with sterner and ever harder conditions. In any and every case it is the environment that works the changes and the organism that undergoes them.

But the most important factor in the environment of any species is its organic environment. The hardest pressure that is brought to bear upon it comes from other living things in the midst of which it lives. Any slight advantage which one species may gain from a favorable change of structure causes it to multiply and expand, and unless strenuously resisted, ultimately to acquire a complete monopoly of all things that are needed for its support. Any other species that consumes the same elements must, unless equally vigorous, soon be crowded out. This is the true meaning of the survival of the fittest. It is essentially a process of competition. The economics of nature consists therefore essentially in the operation of the law of competi- tion in its purest form. The prevailing idea, however, that it is the fittest possible that survive in this struggle is wholly false. The effect of competi- tion is to prevent any form from attaining its maximum development, and to maintain a certain comparatively low level for all forms that succeed in sur- viving. This is made clear by the fact that wherever competition is wholly removed, as through the agency of man, in the interest of any one form, that form immediately begins to make great strides and soon outstrips all those that depend upon competition. Such has been the case with all the cereals and fruit trees ; it is the case with domestic cattle and sheep, with horses, dogs, and all the forms of life that man has'excepted from the biologic law and subjected to the law of mind, and both the agricultural and the pastoral stages of society rest upon the successful resistance which rational man has offered to the law of nature in these departments. So that we have now to add to the waste of competition its influence in preventing the really fittest from surviving.

Hard as it seems to be for modern philosophers to understand this, it was one of the first truths that dawned upon the incipient mind of man. Con- sciously or unconsciously, it was felt from the very outset that the mission of mind was to grapple with the law of competition and, as far as possible, to overcome and destroy it. This iron law of nature, as it may be called, was