tions of very close inbreeding the physical results show no deterioration whatsoever but, on the contrary, the height and weight have increased over that of both parent stocks. He also informs me that he is convinced that there has been no mental deterioration. It should be remembered that the most diverse peoples have mingled since prehistoric times, and that these combinations have usually resulted in virile races.

Much has been written regarding the similarities between human and animal societies. Literature is full of the analogies between man and the animals. Democritus in the 154th fragment of his "Golden Sayings" writes: "In matters of great weight, go to school with the animals. Learn spinning and weaving from the spider, architecture from the swallow, singing from the swan and the nightingale." As one anonymous writer has pointed out, our forefathers sent the sluggard to the ant, a popinjay to the worm, a clown to the cow, and a fool to the owl. Even the flowers are drawn upon for human virtues: the violets are modest, the lilies are pure, and the roses passionate.

Professor Wheeler states in his book on Social Life Among the Insects: "The social insects. . . represent Nature's most startling efforts in communal organization and have therefore been held up to us since the days of Solomon as eminently worth imitating." He then goes on to draw some very striking parallels between human society and that of the social insects, they bequeath real estate, nests, pastures, and hunting grounds; they use their larvæ as shuttles in weaving the walls of their nests, a suggestion, at least, of a parallel for the tools of man; they perform marvelous engineering feats: "our close rivals in controlling the inorganic

environment. They are the only animals besides ourselves that have succeeded in domesticating other animals and enslaving their kind."7

These parallels, it must be confessed, are dramatic and appeal to the imagination; but they do not mean very much when the acquired characteristics of human society are considered.

The ants are social only in the biological sense. Their activities are indeed marvelous, their industry stupendous, but each movement is predestined by their organic constitution. They learn nothing new, their "culture" has been the same for at least fifty million years, with no additions or changes. No influences of a non-organic nature are ever felt. Human society is of an entirely different order. "Take a couple of ant eggs of the right sex-unhatched eggs, freshly laid. Blot out every individual and every other egg of the species. Give the pair a little attention as regards warmth, moisture, protection, and food. The whole of ant 'society,' every one of the abilities, powers, accomplishments, and activities of the species, each 'thought' that it has ever had, will be reproduced, and reproduced without diminution, in one generation." Hear what Graham Wallas has to say regarding the supposition that human culture be blotted out: "If the earth were struck by one of Mr. Wells's comets, and if, in consequence, every human being now alive were to lose all the knowledge and habits which he had acquired from preceding generations (though retaining unchanged all his own powers of invention and memory and habituation), nine-tenths of the inhabitants of London or New York would be dead in a month, and 99 per cent. of the remaining tenth would be dead in six months. They would have no language to

express their thoughts. . . . They could not read notices, or drive motors or horses. They would wander about, led by the inarticulate cries of a few naturally dominant individuals, drowning themselves, as thirst came on, . . . looting those shops where the smell of decaying food attracted them, and perhaps at the end stumbling on the expedient of cannibalism. Even in the country districts, men could not invent, in time to preserve their lives, methods of growing food, or taming animals, or making fire, or so clothing themselves as to endure a northern winter. . . . We have become, one may say, biologically parasitic upon our social heritage."

The social insects are a purely biological group, and nothing more; man is a biological group and something so much more that the purely physical, outside the needs. for perpetuation and preservation, is of comparatively little importance in his cultural life.

MONOTYPICAL EVOLUTION

Granting the thesis that the nature of physical and cultural changes is entirely distinct, have we any right to speak of cultural evolution? This is possible if we understand by this term successions of forms, one leading to another, but we should also recognize the fact that there is no single line in the evolution of culture.

Many attempts have been made, however, to classify society into a number of distinct stages. This can be done only in a most general way. It is perhaps possible to say that man first developed tools, then domesticated his food supply in the animal and plant world, and finally domesticated power,-steam, electricity, and chemical elements. But there is often a failure to make a sharp distinction between the organic and the cultural

in the attempt to explain social changes on the basis of a single evolutionary theory.

It was quite natural for sociologists of the last half of the last century to conclude that, as the physical forms of man and of animals were thought to be linked together in a single series, so the social life of animals and of man was a single line of advance. We have in this, the single evolutionary series for the cultural stages of man, a single stairway up which all mankind is ascending. If a people find themselves on the third step, for example, it is because they have climbed the first two and are about to ascend to step four in the series. This evolutionary point of view is reflected in the works of authors on art and industries, religion and language, as well as on man's social life. According to this idea, man begins with realistic art and passes in definite stages through conventionalized to geometric forms. It can easily be shown that this movement may be in the opposite direction, a geometric figure changing into a realistic one. The desire to humanize makes a man's face in the circular moon, a skin tepee out of a triangle. Man, according to the monotypical evolutionary theory, is first a hunter, then a pastoral nomad, and finally an agriculturist. Basketry always preceded pottery in the order of industrial development. Take the social side: first we have promiscuity, followed by polyandry, polygyny or polygamy, with monogamy at the end of the series; or, again, promiscuity and polyandry with mother-right, followed by polygyny and father-right. There is always a definite series of stopping-places which the traveller passes in succession with no shortcuts and no detours.

Before attempting to show that this monotypical evo

lutionary theory cannot be reconciled to the facts as we find them, let us consider one final point advanced to substantiate this theory. Tylor calls it the "geological argument." Just as the strata of the earth succeed each other in a definite series, so the strata of human society follow one another in an orderly manner. This is in spite of differences in race and language. Morgan, using the geological parallel, subdivides each of his terms Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization, into lower, middle, and upper groups. Thus Middle Savagery begins with the acquisition of fire, Upper Savagery with the use of the bow and arrow. A Barbarian is distinguished from a Savage by his use of pottery, a Barbarian in the middle stratum has domestic animals if he lives in the Old World, or cultivates maize if he happens to live on this continent. Iron puts a people into the upper grade of Barbarism, and an alphabet takes them out of the Barbarian class and places them in the category of civilized peoples."

By these criteria a Polynesian and an Australian would be placed in the same group. In reality, they are at opposite poles of primitive society. The use of iron as a test would push the West African ahead of the Cretan of Minoan times. It is needless to enlarge upon the artificiality of this method of classification. Many other authors have followed the same line of reasoning; each stage of advance is marked by a definite correlation with a complex of material and social ideas; each variety of environment produces more or less definite characteristics appearing in a precise series.

There is no attempt here to deny that there are important changes of culture, evolutions of culture, if you will; but not a single typical line of advance. Culture