Social Environment and Moral Progress
TextRapid Increase of All Organisms
This is another fact of Nature which requires to be kept in mind in all discussions of the action of natural selection, yet it is often altogether ignored by critics of the theory. As an illustrative fact, a not uncommon European weed of the Cruciferæ family has been found to produce about 700,000 seeds on a single plant, whence it can be calculated that if every seed had room to grow for three successive years their produce would cover a space of about 2,000 times as large as the whole land surface of the globe. Some of the minute aquatic forms of life which increase by division in a few hours would, if they all had the means of living, in the same period occupy a space equal to that of the entire solar system. Even the largest and slowest breeding of all known mammals, i.e. the elephant, would, if allowed space to live and breed freely for 750 years, result in no less than nineteen million animals.
By far the larger part of the criticisms of Darwinism by popular writers are due to their continually forgetting these two great natural facts: enormous variability about a mean value of every part and organ; and such ever-present powers of multiplication that, even in the case of vertebrate animals, of those born every year only a small proportion—one-tenth to one-hundredth or thereabouts—live over the second year. If they all lived their numbers would go on continually increasing, which we know is not the case. Hence arises what has been termed "the struggle for existence," resulting in "the survival of the fittest."
This "struggle for life" is either against the forces of inorganic or those of organic nature. Among the former are storms, floods, intense cold, long-continued droughts, or violent blizzards, all of which take toll of the weaker or less wary individuals of each species—those that are less adapted to survive such conditions. In judging how this would act, we must always remember the enormous scale on which Nature works, and that although now and then a few of the weaker individuals may live and a few of the stronger be killed, yet when we deal with hundreds of millions, of which eighty or ninety millions inevitably die every year while about ten or twenty millions only survive, it is impossible to believe that those which survive, not one year only but year after year throughout the whole existence of each species, are not on the average better adapted to the complex conditions of their environment than those which succumb to it. It is a mere truism that the fittest survive.
Exactly the same thing occurs in the case of the organic environment, to which each species must also be well adapted in order to live. The two great essentials for animal existence are, to obtain abundant food through successive years, and to be able to escape from their various enemies. When food is scarce the strongest, or those who can feed quickest and digest more rapidly, or those that can detect food at greater distances or reach it more quickly, will have the advantage. Enemies are escaped by strength, by swiftness, by acute vision, by wariness, or by colours which conceal the various species in their natural surroundings; and those which possess these or any other advantages will in the long run survive. The weaker, the less well-defended, and the smaller species often have special protection, such as nocturnal habits, making burrows in the earth, possessing poisonous stings or fangs, being covered with protective armour; while great numbers are coloured or marked so as exactly to correspond with their surroundings, and are thus concealed from their chief enemies.
Natural Selection, or Survival of the Fittest
It may be here noted that the term "Natural Selection," which has often been misunderstood, was suggested to Darwin by the way in which almost all our varieties of cultivated plants and domestic animals have been obtained from wild forms continually improved for many generations. The method is to breed large quantities, and always preserve or "select" the best in each generation to be the parents of the next. This method, carried on by hundreds of farmers, gardeners, dog, horse or poultry breeders, and especially by pigeon-fanciers, has resulted in all those useful, beautiful and even wonderful varieties of fruits, vegetables and flowers, dray-horses and hunters, greyhounds, spaniels and bull-dogs, cows which give large quantities of the richest milk, and sheep with the greatest quantity and finest quality of wool. All these were produced gradually for the special purposes of mankind; but a similar result has been effected by Nature through rapid increase, great variability, and continual destruction of all the individuals less adapted to the conditions of their special environment, so that only the strongest or the swiftest, the best-concealed or the most wary, the best armed with teeth, horns, hoofs or claws, those who could swim best, or those that protected each other by keeping in flocks or herds—lived the longest and tended to improve still further the next generation. "Survival of the fittest" was suggested by Herbert Spencer as best describing exactly what happens, and it is a most useful descriptive term which should always be kept in mind when discussing or investigating the process by which the infinitely varied and beautiful productions of Nature have been developed. There is really not one single part or organ of any plant or animal that cannot have been derived by means of the fundamental facts of variability and reproduction from some allied plant or animal.
It is interesting here to note, that the two essential factors of the process of constant adaptation to the environment by great variability and rapid multiplication, formed no part of Lamarck's theory, which some people still think to be as good as Darwin's. Equally suggestive is the fact that, while extensive groups of life-phenomena, such as colour, weapons, hair, scales, and feathers, can hardly be conceived as having been produced or modified by effort or by the direct action of the environment, they are yet, every one of them, perfectly explained by the fundamental and necessary processes of variability and survival, acting slowly and continuously, but with intermittent periods of extreme activity at long intervals, on all living things.
One of the weakest and most foolish of all the objections to the Darwinian theory is, that it does not explain variation, and is therefore worthless. We might as well say that Newton's discovery of the laws of gravitation was worthless because its cause was not and has not yet been discovered; or that the undulatory theory of light and heat is worthless, because the origin of the ether, the thing that undulates, is not known. The beginnings of things can never be known; and, as Darwin well said, it is foolish to waste time in speculation about them. I think I have shown in my World of Life that infinite variability is a basic law of Nature, and have suggested its probable purpose. That purpose seems to have been the development of a life-world culminating in Man—a being capable of studying, and enjoying, and to some extent comprehending, the vast universe around him, from the microscopic life in almost every drop of water to the whirling nebulæ of the glittering star-depths extending to almost unimaginable distances around him.
Looking at him thus, man is as much above, and as different from, the beasts that perish as they are above and beyond the inanimate masses of meteoritic matter which, as we now know, occupy the apparently vacant spaces of our solar system, and from which comets and stars are in all probability the aggregations due to the action of the various cosmic forces which everywhere seem capable of producing variety and order out of a more uniform but less orderly chaos.
But besides this lofty intellect, man is gifted with what we term a moral sense: an insistent perception of justice and injustice, of right and wrong, of order and beauty and truth, which as a whole constitute his moral and æsthetic nature, the origin and progress of which I have endeavoured to throw some light upon in the present volume. The long course of human history leads us to the conclusion that this higher nature of man arose at some far distant epoch, and though it has developed in various directions, does not seem yet to have elevated the whole race much above its earliest condition, at the time when, by the influx of some portion of the spirit of the Deity, man became "a living soul."
We will now consider some of the changes which this higher nature of man has produced in the action of the laws of variation and natural selection. These are very important, and are so little understood that almost all popular writers on the subject of the future of mankind are led into stating as scientific conclusions what are wholly opposed to the actual teaching of evolution.
CHAPTER XIV
SELECTION AS MODIFIED BY MIND
The theory of natural selection as expounded by Darwin was so completely successful in explaining the origin of the almost infinitely varied forms of the organic world, step by step, during the long succession of the geological ages, that it was naturally supposed to be equally applicable to mankind. This was thought to be almost certain when, in his later work, The Descent of Man, Darwin proved by a series of converging facts and convincing arguments that the physical structure of man was in all its parts and organs so extremely similar to that of the anthropoid apes as to demonstrate the descent of both from some common ancestor.
So close is this resemblance that every bone and muscle in the human body has its counterpart in that of the apes, the only differences being slight modifications in their shape and position; yet these differences lead to external forms, attitudes, and modes of life so divergent that we can hardly recognise the close affinity that really exists. This affinity is so real and unmistakable that such a great and conservative zoologist as the late Sir Richard Owen declared that to discover and define any important differences between them was the anatomist's difficulty. It was in the dimensions, the shape, and the proportions of the brain that Owen found a sufficient amount of distinctive characters to enable him to place Man in a separate order of mammals—Bimana, or two-handed—while the remainder of the whole monkey tribe—including the apes, baboons, monkeys, and lemurs—formed the order Quadrumana, or four-handed animals. This classification has been rejected by most modern biologists, who consider man to form a distinct family only—Hominidæ—of the order Primates, which order includes all four-handed animals as well as man.
But if we recognise the brain as the organ of the mind, and give due weight to the complete distinctness and enormous superiority of the mind of man as compared with that of all other mammals, we shall be inclined to accept Owen's view as the most natural; and this becomes almost certain when we realise the enormous effect his mind has produced, in modifying and almost neutralising the action of that great law of natural selection which has held supreme sway in every other portion of the organic world.
We have seen in the preceding chapter how every form of organic life during all the vast extent of geological time has been subject to the law of natural selection, which has incessantly moulded their bodily form and structure, external and internal, in strict adaptation to the successive changes of the world around them; while that world was itself hardly, if at all, modified by them. A few isolated cases—such as the formation of islands by the coral-forming zoophytes, or the damming of a few rivers by the rude though very remarkable labours of the beaver—can hardly be considered as forming exceptions to this law.
But so soon as man appeared upon the earth, even in the earliest periods at which we have any proofs of his existence, or in the lowest state of barbarism in which we are now able to study him, we find him able to use and act upon the forces of Nature, and to modify his environment, both inorganic and organic, in ways which formed a completely new departure in the entire organic world.
Among the very rudest of modern savages the wounded or the sick are assisted, at least with food and shelter, and often in other ways, so that they recover under circumstances that to most of the higher animals would be fatal. Neither does less robust health or vigour, or even the loss of a limb or of eyesight, necessarily entail death. The less fit are therefore not eliminated as among all other animals; and we behold, for the first time in the history of the world, the great law of natural selection by the survival only of "the fittest" to some extent neutralised.
But this is only the first and least important of the effects produced by the superior faculties of man. In the whole animal world, as we have seen, every species is preserved in harmony with the slowly changing environment by modifications of its own organs or faculties, thus gradually leading to the production of new species equally adapted to the new environment as its ancestor was before the change occurred.
In the case of man, however, such bodily adaptations were unnecessary, because his greatly superior mind enabled him to meet all such difficulties in a new and different way. As soon as his specially human faculties were developed (and we have as yet no knowledge of him in any earlier condition), he would cease to be influenced by natural selection in his physical form and structure. Looked at as a mere animal he would remain almost stationary, the changes in the surrounding universe ceasing to produce in him that powerful modifying effect which they exercise over all other members of the entire organic world. In order to protect himself from the larger and fiercer of the mammalia he made use of weapons, such as stone-headed clubs, wooden spears, bows and arrows, and various kinds of traps and snares, all of which are exceedingly effective when families or larger groups combine in their use. Against the severity of the seasons he protected himself with a clothing of skins, and with some form of shelter or well-built house, in which he could rest securely at night, free from tempestuous rains or the attacks of wild beasts. By the use of fire he was enabled to render both roots and flesh more palatable and more digestible, thus increasing the variety and abundance of his food far beyond that of any species of the lower animals. Yet further, by the simplest forms of cultivation, he was able to increase the best of the fruits, the roots, the tubers, as well as the more nutritious of the seeds, such as those of rice and maize, of wheat and of barley, thus securing in convenient proximity to his dwelling-place an abundance of food to supply all his wants and render him almost always secure against scarcity or famine or disastrous droughts.
We see, then, that with the advent of Man there had come into existence a being in whom that subtle force we term mind became of far more importance than mere bodily structure. Though with a naked and unprotected body, this gave him clothing against the varied inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to compete with the deer in swiftness or with the wild bull in strength, this gave him weapons with which to capture or overcome both. Though less capable than most other animals of living on the herbs and the fruits that unaided Nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern and direct Nature to his own benefit, and compelled her to produce food for him almost where and when he pleased. From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist him in the chase, when fire was first used to cook his food, when the first seed was sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in Nature—a revolution which in all previous ages of the earth's history had had no parallel. A being had arisen who was no longer subject to bodily change with changes of the physical universe—a being who was in some degree superior to Nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not through any change in his body, but by means of his vast superiority in mind.
The view above expounded of the transference of the action of natural selection from the bodily structure to the mind of early man was my first original modification of that theory, having been communicated to the Anthropological Review in 1864. It received the approval both of Darwin himself and of Herbert Spencer, and I am not aware that anyone has shown any flaw in the reasoning by which it is established. It is certainly of high importance, since if true it renders impossible any important change in the external form of mankind, while it serves as an explanation of the complete identity of specific type of the three great races of man—the Caucasian or white, the Mongolian or yellow, and the Negroid or black—in every essential of human form and structure, while in their best examples they approach very nearly to the same ideal of symmetry and of beauty. Yet so little attention has been given to this view that most popular and even some scientific writers take it for granted that no such difference exists between man and the lower animals. They assume that we are destined to have our bodies modified in the remote future in some unknown way, and that the idea that there is anything approaching final perfection in the human form is a mere figment of the imagination.
Others are so imbued with the universality of natural selection as a beneficial law of Nature that they object to our interfering with its action in, as they urge, the elimination of the unfit by disease and death, even when such diseases are caused by the insanitary conditions of our modern cities or the misery and destitution due to our irrational and immoral social system. Such writers entirely ignore the undoubted fact that affection, sympathy, compassion form as essential a part of human nature as do the higher intellectual and moral faculties; that in the very earliest periods of history and among the very lowest of existing savages they are fully manifested, not merely between the members of the same family, but throughout the whole tribe, and also in most cases to every stranger who is not a known or imagined enemy. The earliest book of travels I remember hearing read by my father was that of Mungo Park, one of the first explorers of the Niger. He was once alone and sick there, and some negro women nursed him, fed him, and saved his life; and while lying in their hut he heard them singing about him as the poor white man, of whom they said:—
"He has no mother to give him milk,
No wife to grind his corn."
Hospitality is, in fact, one of the most general of all human virtues, and in some cases is almost a religion. It is an inherent part of what constitutes "human nature," and it is directly antagonistic to the rigid law of natural selection which has universally prevailed throughout the lower animal world. Those who advocate our allowing natural selection to have free play among ourselves on the ground that we are interfering with Nature, are totally ignorant of what they are talking about. It is Nature herself, untaught, unsophisticated human nature, which they are seeking to interfere with. They seek to degrade the higher nature to the level of the lower, to bring down Heaven-born humanity, in its essential characteristics only a little lower than the angels, to the infinitely lower level of the beasts that perish.
The conclusion reached in the earlier portion of this volume, that the higher intellectual and moral nature of man has been approximately stationary during the whole period of human history, and that the cause of the phenomenon has been the absence of any selective agency adequate to increase it, renders it necessary to give some further explanation as to the probable or possible origin of this higher nature, and also of that admirable human body which also appears to have reached a condition of permanent stability.