Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/504

 THE RACE-PRESERVATION DOGMA.

Among the many dogmas with which the philosophy of social life abounds, one of the most deeply rooted in the minds of men in general, and of philosophers in particular, is the dogma of the preservation of the species. It is usually taken for granted, as an axiomatic truth, that the perpetuation of the race is the supreme object of all organic existence, and that it must be, or "ought to be," the ultimate standard by which human actions, when ethically considered, are to be measured, and ethical theo- ries judged. Thus, Mr. Spencer, in order to justify his ethico- political doctrines, sets out with the "hypothetical postulate" that "the preservation of a particular species is a. desidera^Mm." From this postulate he concludes that, although the preserva- tion of the species is subservient to that of its various individu- als, yet the preservation of particular individuals must be subordinated to the preservation of all individuals, that is, of the species; and he speaks of the "ethical" and "quasi-ethical" (human and sub-human) "obligations" of the individuals to con- form to the consequences derived from that postulate, and of the "justification" of "sacrifices, partial or complete," of some of the individuals for the maintenance and prosperity of the species.'

Statements of this kind are open to the objection that they are likely to lead, through their indefiniteness, into very gross errors, when due attention is not paid, on the one hand, to the proper meaning of the words employed, and, on the other hand, to the difference between the real facts of nature, considered as concrete phenomena, and our formulation of them by means of conceptual terms. To this must be added that the intro- duction of the terminology of traditional ethics into the province of natural science is both illogical and dangerous. The personi- fication, or objectification, of the concept "race" often makes us reason as if the race, or the species, were really something

■ Spencer, Justice, chap, i, §4.