Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/568

 550 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

selection, but through artificial selection. For example, it does not altogether submit to the influences of climate and of alimen- tary environment. It acts in advance of these new conditions. It acclimatizes itself, it ameliorates its alimentary regime by substituting science for instinct and simple empiricism. It is not satisfied to conserve. It professes andjs able to make prog- ress, that is, to prepare better and better its adaptation, its equilibration against the most special, and even against the most unfavorable, variations by accommodating and gradually turning them to its advantage. Moreover, as every society has not only a physical and generally external social environment, but carries in itself also its own inorganic environment, this adaptation is not only extensive but intensive, or both at the same time.

It is this double character, at once natural or spontaneous and artificial, or, both, reflex and methodic, considering that the artificial process remains no less natural, that it is always neces- sary to take into account in studying the laws of the distribution of the human'species over the globe.

Let us state at the outset that if the astronomic bodies and geographical forms, the geological strata, and notably the upper crust of our planet, have relatively exactly determinable limits, this fixity in their frontiers and in the distribution of the masses is yet a little less inflexible for the limits and the distribution of vegetable masses, and still less especially for the most elevated of animal species. The natural limits in the distribution of humanity are even very much less fixed, so much so that human- ity constitutes a unique species whose varieties themselves seem to be^the result of natural selection and adaptation. Finally, if the human species, especially as regards origin, is formed and scattered into more or less distinct groups, nothing in nature nor in its own character is opposed in an irresistible manner to its sociological fusion. Certain of these varieties will surely continue to be more fitted to certain environments ; certain environments will also continue to be fitted to certain economic productions,"to[certain familiar forms, and even to certain morals ; but thejprogressivefmixture of the human varieties among them- selves, ^the^exchange of their ideas and material products, as the