4M THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
seen in the resultant possibility of education. " Education is preeminently a social activity." " In social selection society enters between the individual and the physical environment, and, while slowly subordinating the latter, transforms its pressure upon the individual, and he alone survives who is fitted to bear the social pressure." " Per- sonality is the final outcome of social selection. When once liberated it becomes a new selective principle to which all others are subordinated."
"Social selection is partly natural and partly artificial. It originates artificially in the self-consciousness of dominant individuals. Struggle and conflict ensue, out of which private property survives in its various forms as an intended control over others. This control is then transmitted as the various social institutions to succeed- ing generations, and becomes for them natural and unintended. These social institu- tions then constitute a coercive environment, not over wholly unwilling subjects, but over those whose wills are shaped by education and social pressure to cooperate with the very institutions that suppress them."
"Social evolution .... is the evolution of freedom and opportunity on the one hand, and personality on the other. Without freedom and security there can be no free will and moral character. Without exalted personality there can be no enduring freedom. The educational environment, therefore, which develops personality must itself develop with freedom."
"With education and opportunity the higher forms of human character will nat- urally increase and survive. With the independence and education of women sexual selection becomes a refined and powerful agent of progress. With the right to work guaranteed the tramp and indiscriminate charity have no excuse, and the honest work- man becomes secure in the training and survival of his family."
"We hear much of scientific charity. There is also scientific justice. The aim of the former is to educate true character and self-reliance. The aim of the latter is to open the opportunities for free expression of character. Education and justice are methods of social selection. By their cooperation is shaped the moral environment where alone can survive that natural, yet supernatural, product, human personality. "- JOHN R. COMMONS, Arena, July 1897.
The Penal Question from the Ethical Point of View. I. From the moral point of view two objects are sought in dealing with an offense to protect the injured and to bring the offender to reason. Both have the same moral source the senti- ment of sympathy or compassion. The principle that we are brought into moral rela- tions with both parties is opposed by two sorts of adversaries : those who recognize only the rights of the injured to protection and redress (the popular opinion), and those who admit no form of violent dealing with the criminal. II. The doctrine of vengeance has a real historic explanation, Punishments actually employed present a transformation from the primitive principle of blood vengeance. Vengeance has been taken from the hands of the individual in turn by different social groups the family, gens, tribe, and finally the state. The state considers crime as social and takes ven- geance for the violation of its laws. III. The fact of historic development from primi- tive vengeance, however, furnishes no logical justification for the vengeance theories still in favor among many philosophers and jurists. It cannot be admitted that by injuring the criminal the negation of the crime is secured, since the crime is an accom- plished fact, and the mere succession of two negatives does not make a positive. IV. The absurdity of the doctrine is again evident when it is seen that, with few excep- tions, existing punishments bear no relations to their corresponding crimes. The cruelty of punishments is above all the immoral element. There is a manifest ten- dency in penal law to maintain cruel punishments. This tendency finds its empirical support in the principle of intimidation, which is fundamentally connected with ven- geance. If intimidation is maintained it carries with it logically all forms of torture according to their efficiency for the purpose. If not thus maintained it must be entirely renounced as immoral in its essence. V. While the moral point of view has penetrated the domain of law and removed the most efficient forms of intimidation, there still remain many useless cruelties in our penal systems. The moral law forbids making man merely a means for another's good. It is then an immoral act to punish
