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 720 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

from one trade benefit to another should be provided for, and when the change to another trade has become more than merely temporary, the credit for premiums already made should be transferred to the out-of-work benefit fund of the trade to which the worker has gone. (7) There should be gradation of "benefit" groups from local groups with their local treasuries to one central society with its general treasury. (8) The state should give such a workingman's organization legal recog- nition and standing. This was done in Belgium by the law of March 31, 1898. M. L'ABB E. VOSSEN, " L'assurance contre le chomage involontaire par les syndicats ouvriers," in La rfforme sociale, January, 1903. T. J. R.

The Law of Future Specific 1 and Social Efficiency. One of the most striking, and yet at the same time one of the least observed, facts about specific action is the pre-eminence of the specific as such. The individual is secondary to the species. Instincts, which are characteristically the grand trunk line of transmission and con- tinuity in the lower orders or the zoological series, are peculiar and very important in this, that they are always, in their origin and bloom, for the benefit of the species to which the animal may belong which possesses the instinct. They are of benefit to the individual only secondarily, in so far as that individual may be of benefit to the species. The instincts of self-preservation and sexual love play subservient roles in the paramountcy of the species. Duration of life in the individuals of any species is determined by the advantage to the species, and not by that of the individuals.

Individual provision and prevision is increased, corrected, and enlarged in scope by social or state provision. Taxation is being remodeled on this basis. Municipal improvements bear the imprint of the paternal. Large projects, such as transisth- mian canals, national irrigation, transcontinental railroads, subsidizing a merchant marine, protection of growing industries, all bear witness of the fact that the nations are now doing consciously what formerly they did in more or less haphazard fashion.

Many sociologists manifest their alarm at the decreasing birth rate throughout the world. But when it is remembered that the individual is not so hopelessly isolated as formerly; that he is provided by tradition with the lessons of the past, with a rich store of extra-organic apparatus ; that he is supported on all hands by social institu- tions ; when it is considered that civilization in the last analysis is a sum total of adaptations whereby the forces of nature are utilized by man for the greater safety of the species it may be that the members of the small family may acquire and accom- plish more than the family of larger members. In man, art, religion, and science are in the long run, directly or indirectly, means for more certain perpetuation of the species and the more certain welfare of the same.

This universal organic and social process explains many features of great interest in the various fields of human activity- In law we view the gradual surrender of so-called individual rights to the rights of the state, the growth of freedom, etc., the development of the individual in order that the service of the whole may be increased by the strength of the constituent parts, the subordination of individual caprice to collective wisdom as seen in representative gatherings of all kinds, the predominance of self-sacrifice in the great ethical and religious movements of the world, life insur- ance, city sanitation, and the many acts of public philanthropy.

The beyond-man, as the child of the future, is the goal and sanction of social effort. In securing the greatest happiness or welfare of the greatest number we now see that the " greatest number " refers not so much to the majority now living as to that still greater maiority the unborn. Society is not composed of those now living ; it repre- sents the living as the servants of posterity. And yet we see such writers as Huxley, Spencer, and others so thoroughly saturated with idea of competition, laissez-faire, and struggle for existence that they lose sight, very largely, if not wholly, of the great racial struggle for future social efficiency. ARTHUR ALLIN, "The Law of Future Specific and Social Efficiency," VR Journal of Pedagogy, December, 1902.

T. J. R.

i The term " specific " obviously refers here to species.