Professor Ellwood’s theory of social change is of a two-fold character: unconscious and conscious,--the former being characteristic of the lower stages of social evolution, and the latter, increasingly characteristic of the higher stages.[XXIII-52] The forms of unconscious social change are manifold. Natural selection tends to crush and destroy the weaker individuals and the weaker groups. Another type of unconscious social change is that which comes through a gradual disuse of certain cultural elements. One generation fails to copy the preceding in all particulars. Another set of sources of unconscious social change is found in the shifting relationships between individuals that is produced by “the increase of population, a new physical environment, a new cultural contact, a new discovery or a new invention.” In fact, Professor Ellwood states that all social changes start in an unconscious way.[XXIII-53] Conscious change begins with the awareness on the part of one or more individuals that some social habit is not functioning well. Through communication, this awareness spreads from individual to individual. Discussion ensues. At first, discussion is largely critical of the unsatisfactory social situation. The useless or harmful elements in the situation receive first attention. As discussion proceeds, it takes on a more constructive nature, that is, it becomes projective, planful, positive. It suggests a change to be made. It becomes transformed into a more or less stable public opinion, demanding a substitution of a proposed way of doing for the old. The chief elements in guaranteeing conscious readjustments are free communication, “free public criticism, free discussion, untrammeled formation of public opinion, free selection of social policies and social leaders.”[XXIII-54] The selective process in conscious social change is public opinion, whose social function it is to mediate in the transition from one social habit to another. Conscious social change in Western Civilization is endangered on one hand by an excessive individualism, and on the other by a socialism which threatens to suppress individual initiative and to underemphasize the rôle of mental and moral character. Professor Ellwood urges the importance of an education which will socialize the individual and at the same time develop a high type of personal character.