This leads us to emphasize the continued necessity of selection in
society. No doubt natural selection is often a brutal and wasteful means
of eliminating the weak in human societies, and no doubt human reason
might devise superior means of bringing about the selection of
individuals which society must maintain. To some extent it has done this
through systems of education and the like, which are, in the main,
selective processes for picking out the most competent individuals to
perform certain social functions. But the natural competition, or
struggle between individuals, has not been done away with, especially in
economic matters, and it is evidently impossible to do away with it
until some vast scheme of artificial selection can take its place. Such
a scheme is so far in the future that it is hardly worth talking about.
The best that society can apparently do at the present time is to
regulate the natural competition between individuals, and this it is
doing increasingly.

What people rightfully object to is, not competition, but unregulated or
unfair competition. In the interest of solidarity, that is, in the
interest of the life of the group as a whole, all forms of competition
in human society should be so regulated that the rules governing the
competition may be known and the competition itself public. It is
evident that in politics and in business we are very far from this ideal
as yet, although society is unquestionably moving toward it.

A word in conclusion about the nature of moral codes and standards from
the social point of view. It is evident that moral codes from the social
point of view are simply formulations of standards of conduct which
groups find it convenient or necessary to impose upon their members.
Even morality, in an idealistic sense, seems from a sociological