Social Environment and Moral Progress

CHAPTER XV
THE LAWS OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

In dealing with the great problems of organic development there is probably no department in which so much error and misconception prevails as on the nature and limitations of Heredity. These misconceptions not only pervade most popular writings on the subject of evolution, but even those of men of science and of specialists in biology, and they are the more important and dangerous because their promulgators are able to quote Herbert Spencer, and to a less extent Darwin, as holding similar views.

The subject is of special importance here because it involves the question of whether the effects of the environment, including education and training, are in any degree transmitted from the individuals so modified to their progeny—whether they are or are not cumulative. It is, in fact, the much discussed and vitally important problem of the Heredity of Acquired Characters. The effects of use and disuse, another form of the same general phenomenon, were assumed by Lamarck to be inherited, and a large portion of his theory of evolution rested on this assumption; it seemed so probable, and was apparently supported by so many facts, that Darwin, like most other naturalists at the time, accepted it without any special inquiry, and when he worked out his theory of Pangenesis in order to explain the main facts of heredity, his suppositions were adapted to include such phenomena. Let us then first explain what is meant by the "acquired characters" which it was thought that a true theory of heredity must explain.

As a rule, the great majority of the peculiarities of any species of animal or plant are constantly reproduced in its offspring. The short tail of the wren, the much longer tail of the long-tailed tit, the crest of the crested tit and of innumerable other birds, always when full-grown exhibit the same characters as in their parents. These are said to be innate characters. In rare cases, however, offspring are born which differ materially from their parents, as when a white blackbird or a six-toed kitten appears, but these are equally innate, and are often strongly inherited. All these are subject to variation, and can therefore be modified by selection, whether natural or artificial, and the effects of such selection in the case of domestic animals is often enormous. Such are the pouters and tumblers among pigeons, the bull-dog and the greyhound, the numerous breeds of poultry, all of which are known to have been produced by artificial selections of favourable variations extending over many centuries; and the characters of these varieties are all strongly inherited.

Characters which are acquired during the life of the individual owing to differences in the use of certain organs or of exposure to light, heat, drought, wind, moisture, etc., are comparatively very slight, and are liable to be so combined with innate characters and with the effects of natural or artificial selection, that it is exceedingly difficult to ascertain, without such careful and long-continued experiments as have not yet been made, whether they are in any degree transmissible from parent to offspring, and therefore cumulative.

Almost every individual case of supposed inheritance of such characters, when carefully examined, has been found to be explicable in other ways; but there is a very large amount of general evidence, demonstrating that even if a certain small amount of such inheritance exists, it can certainly not be a factor of any importance in the process of organic evolution, all the factors of which must be universally present because the process itself is universal. I will therefore here limit myself to a short enumeration of a few of the very numerous cases in which the continued use of an organ does not strengthen or improve it, but often the reverse; and of others in which it cannot be asserted that the action of the environment can have had any part whatever in the continuous change or specialisation of the part or organ. The number, size, form, position, and composition of the teeth of all the mammalia are extremely varied, and throughout the whole class afford the best characters to distinguish family and generic groups; they are therefore of great value in determining the affinities of extinct forms, because the jaws and teeth, especially the latter, are most frequently preserved. But as the permanent teeth are always fully formed while buried in the jawbones and covered by the gums, it is quite certain that the special adaptation of the teeth of each species to seize, crush, tear, or grind up its particular food cannot possibly have been produced by the act of feeding, the effect of which is almost always to grind away the teeth and render them less serviceable. Such adaptation could not possibly have been produced by use alone, or any other direct action of the environment. Yet, as the adaptation is clear, and often very remarkable, some eminent palæontologists have declared it to be proved that the changes in them were produced by the changes in the environment, and that they constitute very strong evidence of the "inheritance of acquired characters"—a statement unsupported by any direct evidence.

The same objection applies to most of the special organs of sense. The internal organ of hearing is a highly complex series of bones and membranes, protected by the outer ear; but it cannot be even imagined to have been gradually developed by the action of the air waves the vibrations of which it conveys to the brain.

The eye is a still more striking case, as too much use injures or even destroys it; while specialities of vision, as long or short sight, are undoubtedly innate, and usually persist throughout life.

So the wonderfully varied bills of birds cannot be conceived as having been modified by use, and are, in fact, unchangeable when once formed. Yet, as they vary largely in every species, they are readily modified, so as to become adapted to new conditions by the "survival of the fittest."

Equally impossible is it to connect any use or disuse, or environmental action, in the production, the gradual development, or complete adaptation to their conditions of life of the outer coverings of almost all living things—the hair of mammalia, the feathers of birds, the scales or horny skins or solid shields of reptiles, the solid shells of molluscs, wonderfully ribbed or spined, whorled, or turreted, and infinitely varied in surface colour and markings. Even more conclusive are the facts presented by the vast hosts of the insect world, from the massive armour of the ever-present beetle tribe, more varied in form, structure, ornament, and colour than any other comparable group of living things, to the widely different lepidoptera, equalling, or perhaps surpassing, the whole class of birds in their marvellous grace and beauty, yet all utterly beyond any possible direct action of the environment or of use and disuse in their development, and their close adaptation to that environment.

Organic nature is indisputably one and indivisible. It has been developed throughout by means of the fundamental forces of life, of growth and reproduction, and the equally fundamental laws of variation, heredity, and enormous increase, resulting in a perpetual adaptation in form, structure, colour, and habits to the slowly changing environment. These forces and laws are universal in their action; they are demonstrably adequate to the production of the whole of the phenomena we are now discussing. We see, then, that over by far the greater part of the whole world of life any modification of external structure, form, or colouring during the life of the individual is impossible; while in the remainder its action, if it exists at all, is of very limited range. No adequate proof of the inheritance of the slight changes thus caused has ever yet been given, and it is therefore wholly unnecessary and illogical to assume its existence and to adduce it as having any part in the ever-active and universal process of evolution.

Throughout the whole series of the animal world, and especially in the higher groups which approach nearest to ourselves, mental and physical characters are so inextricably intermixed in their relation to the laws of evolution and heredity, that either of them studied separately leads us to the same conclusions. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that breeders of animals of all kinds act upon the principle that all the qualities of the various stocks, whether bodily or mental, are innate and have been due to selection; while training, though necessary to bring out the good qualities of the individual, has had no part in the production of those qualities. When a horse or dog of good pedigree is accidentally injured so that it cannot be regularly trained, it is still used for breeding purposes without any doubt as to its conveying to its progeny the highest qualities of its parentage.

In the case of the human race, however, many writers thoughtlessly speak of the hereditary effects of strength or skill due to any mechanical work or special art being continued generation after generation in the same family, as among the castes of India. But of any progressive improvement there is no evidence whatever. Those children who had a natural aptitude for the work would, of course, form the successors of their parents, and there is no proof of anything hereditary except as regards this innate aptitude.

Many people are alarmed at the statement that the effects of education and training are not hereditary, and think that if that were really the case there would be no hope of improvement of the race; but closer consideration will show them that if the results of our education in the widest sense, in the home, in the shop, in the nation, and in the world at large, had really been hereditary, even in the slightest degree, then indeed there would be little hope for humanity; and there is no clearer proof of this than the fact that we have not all been made much worse—the wonder being that any fragment of morality, or humanity, or the love of truth or justice for their own sakes still exists among us.

If we glance through the past history of mankind we see an almost unbroken succession of aggression and combat between the various races, nations, and tribes. We can dimly see that this continual struggle did lead to a rather severe process of selection, as in the lower animal world. It can hardly be doubted that as a result of these struggles the strongest physically, the most ingenious in the use of weapons, and the best organised for war did survive, and that the weaker and lower were either exterminated or kept as slaves by the conquerors. This leads to alternation of success and failure. We see great conquerors and great material civilisations as a result of their accumulations of wealth and of slaves. Then, for a time, luxury and the arts flourished, and with them came rulers who encouraged degradation and vice at home, supported by more and more remote conquests. Then new conquerors arose, often lower in civilisation—barbarians, as they were termed—but higher in the simple domestic virtues and a more natural life of productive labour. These again, or some portions of them, rose to luxury and civilisation, to lives of gross sensuality and the most cruel despotism, till outraged humanity raised up new conquerors to go over again the old terrible routine.

The periods of culmination of these old civilisations, founded always on conquest, massacre, and slavery, are marked out for us by the ruins of great cities, temples, and palaces, often of wonderful grandeur, and with indications of arts, science, and literature which still excite our admiration in Egypt and India, Greece and Rome; and thence through the Middle Ages down to our own time. But the inhumanities and horrors of these periods are inconceivable. A gloomy picture of them is given in that powerful book, The Martyrdom of Man, by Winwood Reade; and they are summarised in Burns' fine lines:

 
"Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn."
 

Think of the horrors of war in the perpetual wars of those days before the "Red Cross" service did anything to alleviate them. Think of the old castles, many of which had besides the dungeons a salaried torturer and executioner. Think of the systematic tortures of the centuries, of the witchcraft mania and of the Inquisition. Think of the burnings in Smithfield and in every great city of Europe. Think of

 
"Truth for ever on the scaffold,
Wrong for ever on the throne."
 

Freedom of speech, even of thought, were everywhere crimes: how, then, did the love of truth survive as an ideal of to-day? To escape these horrors, the gentle, the good, the learned, and the peaceful had to seek refuge in monasteries and nunneries, while by means of the celibacy of the clergy the Church, as Galton tells us, "by a policy singularly unwise and suicidal, brutalised the breed of our forefathers."

Here was the actual education of the world as man rose from barbarism to civilisation, and it was accompanied by a certain amount of retrograde selection by the cruel punishments, confinement in dungeons, or torture and death of those who opposed the rulers, and by the survival of the worst tools of the lords and tyrants. Ought we not to be thankful that such education and custom, the varied influences of such an environment, were not hereditary? And is not the fact that the whole world has not become utterly degraded, and that anything good remains in our cruelly oppressed human nature, an overwhelming proof that such influences are not hereditary?

When we remember that many of these degrading laws and customs, oppressions, and punishments have extended down to our own times; that the terrible slave-trade and the equally terrible slavery have only been abolished within the memory of many of us; and that the system of wage-slavery, the distinction of classes, the gross inequality of the law, the overwork of our labouring millions, the immoral luxury and idleness of our upper-class thousands, while far more thousands die annually of want of the bare necessaries of life; that millions have their lives shortened by easily preventable causes, while other millions pass their whole lives in continuous and almost inhuman labour in order to provide means for the enjoyments and pernicious luxuries of the rich—we must be amazed at the fact that there is nevertheless so much real goodness, real humanity, among us as certainly exists, in spite of all the degrading influences that I have been compelled here to enumerate.

To myself, there seems only one explanation of the very remarkable and almost incredible result just stated. It is, that the Divine nature in us—that portion of our higher nature which raises us above the brutes, and the influx of which makes us men—cannot be lost, cannot even be permanently deteriorated by conditions however adverse, by training however senseless and bad. It ever remains in us, the central and essential portion of our human nature, ready to respond to every favourable opportunity that arises, to grasp and hold firm every fragment of high thought or noble action that has been brought to its notice, to oppose even to the death every falsehood in teaching, every tyranny in action. The ethics of Plato and of the great moralists of the Ciceronian epoch, together with those of Jesus and of His disciples and followers, kept alive the sacred flame of pure humanity, and their preservation constitutes perhaps the greatest service the monastic system rendered to the human race. This service is finely expressed by an almost unknown poet, J. H. Dell, in the prefatory to his volume, The Dawning Grey. Never has our indebtedness to the classical writers been more powerfully insisted on than in the following lines:—

 
"Hear ye not the measured footfalls echoing solemn and sublime,
From the groves of Academus down the avenues of Time;
See'st thou not the giant figures of the Sages of the Past,
Through the darken'd long perspective on the living foreground cast;
Feel'st thou not the thrilling rhythm of the grand old Grecian line,
Pulsing to the march of Progress, cadencing her hymn divine,
All the forces of the present by the subtle sparks controlled,
Of the quickening Grecian fire, of the mighty Lights of old.
 
 
"Through the dark and desolation of the centuries between,
Still 'The Porch's' glories glimmer, still 'The Garden's' wreaths are green.
Still the Zeno, still the Plato, still the Pyrrho points the page,
Still the Philip fears the pebble—still Melitus dreads the Sage,
Still the Dionysius trembles at the stylus of the age.
Still the dauntless ranks of Freedom kindle to Tyrtæus' song;
Still they bear aloft the symbol—bear the glorious torch along."⁶
 

If the Christian Church had done nothing for us but preserve in its monasteries and abbeys the finest examples of classic literature that have come down to us, and given us those glories of Gothic architecture which seem to express in stone the grandeur and sublimity, the peacefulness and the beauty of a pure religion, it would, notwithstanding its many defects, its cruelty and oppression, its opposition to the study of nature and to freedom of thought, have fully justified its existence as helping us to realise whatever more advanced and purer civilisation the immediate future may have in store for us.

Some Light on the Problem of Evil

Before passing on to another branch of my subject I feel it necessary to make a few suggestions in reply to the objection that will certainly and very properly be made, as to why, if our higher human nature is in its essence Divine, it has suffered such long and terrible eclipses—why has the lower so often and for so long prevailed over the higher? This is, of course, one of the many forms of the old problem of the origin of evil, which is no doubt insoluble by us. But as it is a fairly well-defined and limited portion of that problem it may be possible to obtain some idea of a possible solution, and as such an one has occurred to myself during the composition of the present volume, I will give it as briefly as possible in the hope that it may interest some of my readers.

In my recent works, Man's Place in the Universe and The World of Life, the conclusion was forced upon me, that the scheme of the development of the universe of stars and nebulæ with which we are acquainted, and especially of our sun and solar system, was such as to furnish the exact conditions on our earth, and there only, which should allow of the origin and evolution of the organic world culminating in man. Yet further, that the conditions should be such as to produce the maximum of diversity both of inorganic and organic products useful to man, and such as would aid in the development of the greatest possible diversity of character and especially of his higher mental and moral nature. What I have here termed the Divine influx, which at some definite epoch in his evolution at once raised man above the rest of the animals, creating as it were a new being with a continuous spiritual existence in a world or worlds where eternal progress was possible for him. To prepare him for this progress with ever-increasing diversity, faculties of enormous range were required, and these needed development in every direction which earthly conditions rendered possible. In order that this extreme diversity of character should be brought about, a great space of time, as measured by successive generations, was necessary, though utterly insignificant as compared with the preceding duration of organic life on the earth, and still more insignificant as compared with the spirit-life to succeed it. It is for this purpose, perhaps, that languages become so rapidly diverse and mutually unintelligible after a moderate period of isolation, binding together small or moderate communities in distinct tribes or nations, which each develop in their own way under the influence of special physical surroundings and originate peculiarities of habits, customs, and modes of thought. Antagonisms soon arise between adjacent tribes, leading each to protect itself against others by means of chiefs and some quasi-military combinations. This requires organisation and foresight, and after a time the most powerful conquers the weaker, they intermingle, and still greater diversity arises. By this constant struggle the less advanced suffer most, and the race as a whole takes a step forward in the march of civilisation.

We see the best example of this mode of progress by antagonism in the small States of Ancient Greece, where each little kingdom developed its peculiar form of art, of government, and of civilisation, which it transferred to all parts of Europe; and after two thousand years of degradation by Roman and Turkish conquest, its language still remains but little altered, while its ancient literature and art are still unsurpassed. In like manner Rome brought law, literature, and military discipline to an equally high level; and it too sank into a state of ruin and degradation, while its literature and its law continued to illuminate the civilised world during its long struggle towards freedom. Wherever conditions were favourable to progress in art or science, time was needed for its full growth and development; while perpetual war necessitated organisation and training against conquest or destruction. Even the cruelties and massacres by despotic rulers excited at last the uprising of the oppressed, and so developed the nobler attributes of patriotism, courage, and love of freedom. In the very worst of times there was an undercurrent of peaceful labour, art, and learning, slowly moulding nations towards a higher state of civilisation.

The point of view now suggested will perhaps be rendered somewhat more intelligible if we apply it to the nineteenth century, of which I have written in such condemnatory terms. The preceding eighteenth century was undoubtedly a somewhat stationary epoch, of a rather commonplace character alike in literature, in art, in science, and in social life. Its vices also were low, its government bad, its system of punishments cruel, and its recognition of slavery degrading. It was a kind of "dark age" between the literary and national brilliance of the Elizabethan age and the wonderful scientific and industrial advance of the Victorian age.

But this latter period was also a period of a great uprising of the specially human virtues of justice, of pity, of the love of freedom, and of the importance of education; and though the rapid increase of wealth through the utilisation of natural forces led to all the evils due to the unchecked growth of individual riches and power, yet these very evils in all their intensity and horror were perhaps necessary to excite in a sufficient number of minds the determination to get rid of them. Time was also required for the workers to learn their own power, and, very gradually, to learn how to use it. The rick-burning and machine-breaking of the early part of the century have been succeeded by combination and strikes; step by step political power has been gained by the masses; but only now, in the twentieth century, are they beginning to learn how to use their strength in an effective manner. There are, however, indications that the whole march of progress has been dangerously rapid, and it might have been safer if the great increases of knowledge and the vast accumulations of wealth had been spread over two centuries instead of one. In that case our higher nature might have been able to keep pace with the growing evils of superfluous wealth and increasing luxury, and it might have been possible to put a check upon them before they had attained the full power for evil they now possess.

Nevertheless, the omens for the future are good. The great body of the more intelligent workers are determined to have Justice. They insist upon the abolition of monopolies of the forces of nature, and upon the gradual admission of all to equal opportunities for labour by free access to their native soil. Thus may be initiated the birth of a new era of peaceful reform and moral advancement.