Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/89

 THE BASIS OF SOCIALITY 77

fact that its members act in such a manner that descendants are provided, and also provided for in some way or other. The goal of their activities is the young and their welfare. The young are heirs of all efforts directly or indirectly (Erziehung, eine Fortsetzung der Erzeugung] . In the highest mammalian species, 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. The rank of a species is determined by the degree of such care for the young. The survival of the fittest means the survival of the parental, and all efforts are to be judged according to a parental standard. The greatest good to the greatest number must also be interpreted in a similar manner, not as the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but as such parental conduct, direct or indirect, as will be most conducive to the propagation and welfare of the species. As Herbert Spencer says, the continued life of the species is in every case the end to which all other ends are secondary {Prin- ciples of Sociology, Vol. I, p. 591). Through many stages of provincial patriotism and group-exclusiveness we have forged on until on the not far distant sky-line we see a state outlined where all humanity is our fatherland. All conduct is judged by nature according to the standard of survival.

In an organism, to recur to the Spencerian analogy, the con- duct of the parts is determined by the welfare of the whole. That part which is detrimental to the whole organism is suicidal in tendency either immediately or mediately through the destruction of the whole organism. The safety of the parts lies in their general social efficiency. Their existence and perpetua- tion lie in their service to the general organization of which they form a part. To this extent an organism is similar to society, and to this extent is Spencer's analogy pertinent. Neither the science of sociology nor the science of ethical con- duct, it is evident, can be drawn from the individual as such. Plato, it seems, saw this when he endeavored to derive the true significance of justice and righteousness from the state, and not from the individual.

It seems plain, then, that the individual as such has no