Darwin and the humanities / [James Mark Baldwin].

  • Baldwin, James Mark, 1861-1934.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Darwin and the humanities / [James Mark Baldwin]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    conceptions become, then, the watchwords of our evolutionary social psychology and sociology respectively—the ' socius ’ and the ‘ social situation.’ The Socius. In the qualities of the socius or socialized individual, we have the type of personal fitness upon which the qualifications of the group for survival will depend. Only so far as the individuals of a group are ‘ socii,’ members cap- able of co-operation and willing to co-operate with their fellows, will the group ‘ hold together ’ effectively, in com- petition with other groups. The effect of further selection, therefore, must be to fix the social characters of the individual, and, through this effect, to perfect the organization within the group, which will, in turn, fit the group as a whole to survive in the competitions of group with group. This means that there are now two spheres of selection, one that of ‘ intra- group ’ selection, or ‘ social selection ’ proper, acting to social- ize or ‘ moralize ’ the individuals within the group ; the other that of ‘ intergroup ’ selection, acting to preserve the most socialized group in competition with other groups. In the former of these, working as it does to develop the ‘ socius,’ there is the gradual elimination of the more individ- ualistic characters, both physical and mental. The emphasis is now placed more and more on physical plasticity, with high brain endowment, and upon the corresponding social educability, with imitativeness, docility, and self-control. Thus the average man has become a fairly socialized, properly restrained, and competent member of the group. Even the processes of social elimination and destruction are handed over to the agents of society—the police, the courts, and the hangman. In fact, so far are the processes of direct physical competition superseded by the more intelligent, but, from the physical point of view, less effective, social agencies,