Pit hin a PERE bP = pou 3 “¥ ml z “a = <¥. —s = moot = 3 Ste = ba bane? oh vat et elg tee $s ida Creerrs thei he ree rere 256 ote atria: bay ied ci] ary SALin hater, el MEP Thad le hes bbs PO DeTINP MEM aE be. , Mu SSCMat ey ode hy eaed ata! ye Maton ep ateett gat nay “ee =) ete b Ge hand & F< Pm oar nel 7 Cero eneqene tediale a Se} ie ssehee rear . . shite wed 8607 tt Pate pops AS eee et tor \ He Pen) wyatt erietaig a yD Balas be nL ys hy ohn Ste dedege ” t. yea 4s Wade} oy dO beheld he oeet Sey biemeu tt Th ot ¢ erin) Sa semetns Wace 1 TE Vis =) * Ae bedeg PA | Oe Ames ode 5,140 tea pubtican ee Tete Complexity of Social Evolution . : 12 oes the doctrine of Heredity support Aeeroeracey = 1 oes the Evolution Theory support Lazssez faire ?_ Struggle between ideas for survival : Conscious- ness as a factor in Evolution: Testimony of Prof. Huxley and Strauss: Ambiguity of “ Na- ture :” Conscious “ Variations” . : ; “20 § 6. Why fix ideas in institutions? Custom—its use and abuse: Institutions and ‘‘the social factor” generally are neglected in the popular accepta- tion of the doctrine of Heredity: Mr. Galton’s views considered : Darwin’s own opinion . es § 7. The Law of Social Progress . : ; . iv 55 § 8. Applications : (1) The Labour Question. ; ; : 58 (2) The Position of Women : : : Oz (3) The Population Question. : : rae (e yil Vili CONTENTS. PAGE NATURAL SELECTION AND THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. § 1. Darwinism complete and incomplete: Mr. A. R. Wallace’s exclusive advocacy of Natural Selec- tion and desertion of it . : é G7, § 2. The Evolution of Morality and fie it fees Utilitarianism vindicated and corrected _.. . 6 § 3. Intellectual Evolution : Mathematics, music, meta- physics, wit . : : ; 3° 607 § 4. Conclusion : the true “ eeuat ok? 4 ; Fae NATURAL SELECTION AND THE HISTORY OF INSTITU- TIONS. § 1. Historian versus Evolutionist . : : : Blab ( — The phrase “struggle for existence,” as it came from the pages of Malthus, had a dreary enough sound; but, when this struggle for existence is shown to lead_to the “survival of the fittest, and when it is seen to be the ex- planation of all the marvellous adaptations and of all the beauty of the living things in the world, it seems to gain a force and even a ————— DARWINISM AND POLITICS. : sanctity which makes _ it idable opponent to have to reckon with in any political or ethical controversy. It is easy to see how the evolutionary, watch-word can be applied. In Malthus the idea of struggle for existence was a very uncomfortable _one; but, when it comes back to economics after passing through biology, it makes a very comfortable doctrine indeed for all those who are quite satisfied with things as they are. 1e support of scientific opinion can be plausibly claimed for the defence of_the inequalities in the social organism ; these inequalities, it can be urged, are only part of what exist inevitably throughout the physical world. “Alhe creed of Liberty, Equality; Fra- temmity’ can be ‘discarded as a me sical fiction of the unscientific eighteenth ce ntury. The aspirations of socialism as the foolish denial competition which is sanctioned Ke 7 nature as only one phase _of the general struggle for existence. —— Let us suppose, for a moment, that our bio- logical politicians are correct in their view of social evolution: they ought, at least, to cease talking to us of “the beneficent working of the 4 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. survival of the fittest,” or. “the beneficent private war, which makes one man strive to climb on the shoulders of another.”’ This talk of PR cncheence woud anes seer! not of the fittest, but of the ‘ theological” belief in a God who wills the happiness of his creatures— the attenuated creed of the English Deists—or , of the “metaphysical” belief in a Nature which, can be secured by any interference of man. That was the type of thinking in the days of Rousseau and Adam Smith: and our evolu- tionary enthusiasts, when they talk of benefi- cence, are, after all, but repeatine the creed er the despised eighteenth century, or else they are only disguising under a hypocritical phrase the triumphant crowing of the successful fight- ing-cock, aloft on his own dung-heap, while his vanquished opponent slinks away battered and bleeding. From natural selection there have resulted wonderful adaptations, but how much of suffering by the way, how much of horrid cruelty in these adaptations themselves? The great Darwin himself speaks in a very different 1 H. Spencer, Zhe A/an versus the State, p. 69; Maine, Lopular Government, p. 50. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 5 tone from that of his jubilant disciples. Things do not look so clear to him. He marvels at this wonderful universe, and especially at the neavuire: of man, but ““T ‘cannot:see,” he says; “as plainly as others do, and as I should_wish to Pamenmiaicer of desien and: beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.”! “Tf plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design, Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?” asks Pope with the contented optimism of his easy-going age. And if the fratricidal morality of the bee-hive and the fiendish cunning of the Sphex are to be admired, is there not a similar justification for military despotism and tyranni- cal cruelty, or for the ingenious device of the sweating system ? “We dined, as a rule, on each other. What matter? the toughest survived.” * This is a sufficient morality in the mesozoic epoch for the ichthyosaurus, to whom the senti- ! From a letter to Dr. Asa Gray, in Zife and Letters, DE 2%. 2 May Kendall, Dreams to Sell, “Ballad of the Ich- thyosaurus.” 6 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. ment is ascribed by the poet; and it is a con- venient morality for some human animals in London to-day. Admirable, doubtless—this scheme of salvation for the elect by the damna- tion of the vast majority; but, pray, do_not let us hear anything more about its “beneficence.” ie ee al 82, THE EVOLUTION THEORY APPLIED TO HUMAN SOCIETY. I am not speaking at random about these ethical applications of the conception of struggle for existence. Darwin himself, as always, is most cautious and guarded in his reference to anything that hes outside his own special sp here of observation. He looks forward to the elimination of the lower races by the higher civilised races throughout the world.’ He points out how “a struggle for existence con- sequent on his rapid multiplication,” has ad- vanced man to his present high condition ; “and, if he is to advance still higher,.it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into _indo- lence, and_the more gifted men would_not be more successful in the battle of life thay the 1 Life and Letters, J. 316. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 7 fess eifted.”* This, doubtless, includes the old objection which Aristotle brought against Plato’s communism, that man needs a stimulus to exertion and industry. But there is no jubilation, no_exaltation of a_ natural law into an ethical ideal. And let us note how Darwin modifies this very statement in the words that follow :— “Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man’s nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or in- directly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense.” Darwin disclaims the connexion, which had been alleged in Germany, between the doctrine of natural selection and socialism.? ~.He sees clearly enough that his theory gives a prima facie support not to socialism, but to industrial competition; Yet he is amused at the idea of The Origin of Species having turned Sir Joseph 1 Descent of Man, p. 618. 2 Ee and Letters, VWs 227: — 8 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. "4 ¢ Primogeni- Hooker into “a jolly old Tory. ture,” he says, “is dreadfully opposed to selec- tion: suppose the first-born bull was necessarily made by each farmer the begetter of his stock!” Still, he admits that English peers have an ad- vantage in the selection of “beautiful and charm- ing women out of the lower ranks,” and thus eet some benefit from the principle. In answer- ing Mr. Galton’s questions, Darwin describes his own politics as “ Liberal or Radical :” * and this was in 1873, by which time Radicalism was no longer bound to out-and-out J/azssez faire. Evolution, as applied to the whole of the universe, means a great deal more than the principle of natural selection. In the wider sense it is professedly applied to the guidance of life by Strauss in his famous book, Zhe Old Faith and the New, where military conquest and social inequalit qualities are expressly defended a as right, because natural ; and nothing but con- tempt is reserved for those who venture to hope for the abolition of war, who look beyond the limits of the nation or who dream of a 1 Life and Letters, Il. 385. > Fp. Lrg. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. Q. better social order.’ It might be objected that in these passages we do not hear the voice of German science and philosophy, but of that re- actionary military spirit which has infected the new German nation; and [| think it could be shown that such sentiments are inconsistent with admissions that Strauss himself makes, although he and most German savants with him believe that they are a necessary conse- quence of the Evolutionist creed. Let us turn, however, to our English philo- sopher who is always protesting against every- thing that can on any pretext be ascribed to the revived militancy of the present day. In the name of Evolution and on behalf of the survival of the fittest >Mr. Herbert Spencer cries out les out against ‘* The Sins of Legislator ‘the Simsvom Legislators, (vin interfering with the beneficent operation « with the beneficent operation of th pitiless discipline which kills off the unsuccess- ful members of | members of socicty, and agat and against “ The Com- ing Pete | gle be ctippos which he supposes would Tdyaeonlt from socialistic attempts to diminish the misery of the world. Now, just as in Strauss’s case —— 1 See esp. secs. 78, 79, 82, 83, 84 in German (ed. 8. Be 75)— secs: 74, 7'5, 78; 79, 0.1m Eng. Tri (ed. 3; 1874): * See Zhe Man v. the State, esp. the two essays named. 10 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. the military spirit, so in Spencer's the_old- fashioned individualistic radicalism of his early days might be assigned as the true_source of such opinions ; but there can be no doubt that the formule of Evolution do supply an appa- rent justification to the defenders of unrestricted laissez faire and to the champions, more or less consistent and thorough-going, of existing in- nell is equalities of race, class and sex, and a plausible weapon of attack against those who look to something better than slavery or competition rejoices over the Liberty and Property Defence League, “largely consisting of Conservatives,” and the late Sir Henry Maine in the congenial pages of the Quarterly Review? rejoiced over Mr. ) Herbert “Spencer and elormifed © *“die beneficent private war” of economical competi- tion, which he considered the only alternative o “the daily task, enforced by the prison and the scourge.” ‘‘So far,” he says, ‘as we have any experience to teach us, we are driven -to the conclusion that every society of men must l The Man versus the State, p. 17. * Republished in Lopu/ar Government. See pp. 49, 50, 52. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. IP adopt one system or the other, or it will pass through penury to starvation.” Even those who are more full of hope for the future and more full of sympathy for human beings, are apt to adopt a similar mode of speaking. Thus, in his interesting little book, The Story of Creation, Mr. Edward Clodd, though he looks forward to “a goal, where might shall be subdued by right,” yet speaks as follows: :— eet “When the weeding process has done its utmost, there remains a sharp struggle for life between the survivors. Man’s normal state is therefore one of conflict; further back than we can trace, it impelled the defenceless bipeds from whom he spreng to unity, and the more so because of their relative inferiority in physique to many other animals. The range of that unity continued narrow long after he had gained lordship over the brute ; outside the small combi- nations for securing the primal needs of life the struggle was ferocious, and, under one form or another, rages along the line to this day. ‘There is no discharge in that war.’ (It may change its tactics and its weapons: among advanced nations the military method may be more or less superseded by the industrial, a man may be mercilessly starved instead | of being mercilessly slain ; but be it war of camp or mar- | kets, the ultimate appeal is to force of brain or muscle, and \ (the hardiest or craftiest win. In some respects the struggle — is waged more fiercely than in olden times, while it is un- xedeemed by any element of chivalry.” (pp. 211, 212.) — ¥2 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. It is thus of the extremest practical import- ance to see what is the real bearing of Evolu- tion on social problems. We must examine the relation between biological laws _and_ social faiths and hopes, if we would make our opinions self-consistent; and self -consistency is the negative test of truth. Such an examination is especially incumbent on those who profess to keep their minds open to all that science can teach, and at the same time to have at heart the cause of social reformation. We ought to havea reason for the faith that is in-us: -“Tie test our scattered opinions and beliefs by bring- ing them together is the main function of a sound philosophy. 83. “SURVIVAL OF THE Pies The phrase “survival of the fittest” is very apt to mislead, for it suggests the fittest or best in every sense or in the highest sense, whereas. it only means, as Prof. Huxley has pointed out, ‘those “best fitted to cope with their cjrcum- stances”’ in order to—-survive and_transmit ee 1 Art. on “The Struggle for Existence,” in Wineteentit Century for Feb., 1888, p. 165. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. I t Go offspring. Now when we come to consider society, we have to deal with _a_very complex pepe womenay and what_ is fittest im -one aspect may not be fittest_in_ another. But natural selection implies no further morality than ‘‘ Nothing succeeds like success.” If the strugele for food and mates be carried on on its lowest terms, the strongest and the strongest only would be selected. But cunning can doa great deal against strength. Now we cannot be sure that a good combination of strength and cunning will be selected: strength in some cases, cunning in others—this is what we find if we compare different species of animals and different races of men. Again, the strongest and largest and in many ways finest animals are not necessarily those most capable of adapt- ing themselves to changed circumstances. The insignificant may more easily find food and escape enemies.- We cannot. be ‘sure. that Evolution will always lead to what we should regard as the greatest perfection of any species. Degeneration enters in as well as progress/ The latest theory about the Aryan race makes it come from the north of Europe, conquer the feebler races of the south, and, having proved 14 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. its fitness in this way, prove its unfitness in another by being less capable of surviving in a warm climate than they; so that an Aryan language may be spoken, where there remains little or no Aryan blood.’. Are we entitled to maintain, with regard to human races and human individuals, that the fittest always sur- vive, except _in the sense in which the proposi- tion is the truism, that those survive who are most capable of surviving? et Weir iatee eee) Further, we must emphasize the fact that the~ struggle goes on not merely between individual and individual, but between race and race. el el Che struggle among plants and the lower animals is mainly between members of the same species ; and the individual competition between human beings, which is so much admired by Mr, Herbert Spencer, is of this primitive kind. When we come to the struggle between kinds, it is to .be noticed that it is fiercest between allied kinds; and so, as has been pointed out, the economic struggle be- tween Great Britain and the United States is fiercer than elsewhere between nations. But, ' See Art. by Prof. Rhys on “Race Theories and Euro- pean Politics,” in Mew Princeton Review, Jan., 1888. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 15 so soon as we pass to the struggle between race and race, we find new elements coming in. The race which is fittest to survive, z.e. most capable of surviving, will survive; but it does not therefore follow that the individuals there- by preserved will be fittest, either in the sense of being those who in a struggle between individual and individual would have survived, or in the sense of being those whom we should regard as the finest specimens of their kind. A race or a nation may succeed by crushing out the chances of the great majority of its individual members. The cruel polity of the, bees, the slave-holding propensities of certain species of ants have their analogues in human societies. The success of Sparta in the Hel- lenic world was obtained at the cost of a fright- ful oppression of her subject classes and with the result that Sparta never produced one really great man. How much more does the world owe to Athens which failed, than to Sparta which succeeded in the physical struggle for existence ? But human beings are not merely, like plants and animals, grouped into natural species or varieties. They have come to group them- 16 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. selves in very various ways. Thus an indi- vidual may, conceivably, belong by descent to one group, by political allegiance to another, by language, and all that language carries with it of tradition and culture, to a third, by re- ligion to a fourth, by occupation to a fifth— though in most cases two or more of these will coincide. Now between each of these groups and similar groups there are, as the doctrine of Evolution teaches us if we need to be taught, struggles constantly proceeding. Race struggles with race, nation with nation, lan- guage with language, religion with religion, and social castes based on occupation and on “economic status struggle with one another for pre-eminence, apart from the struggle going on between individuals and groups of individuals within each of them. Now, if in each of these cases the struggle were not complicated_by the that natural selection leads to the fittest always succeeding. But a defeated and subject race ep) may impose its language, its civilisation, or its religion upon its conquerors ; and the apparent failure of a race or a nation does not entitle us see at orice £0 pronayce it ore DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 7, cause its failure in warfare may be the prelude to a greater and more lasting success in peace. S44 08S THE DOCTRINE OF HEREDITY SUPPORL ARISTOCRACY? On the other hand, it is easy to see how the pre-eminence of a caste, based either on race or on occupation, may be maintained at the cost of the physical and intellectual advance of its members. Where noble may marry only noble and where marriages are “ arranged,” as the phrase runs (more truthful than most of those current in the fashionable world), the interests of the health and of the intelligence of the race may be sacrificed to the mainte- nance of a closely coherent class with large estates and social _ predominance. Such a type of nobility will in the long run inevitably lose power owing to its own internal decay through / continued intermarriage and lack of new blood. Yet superficially plausible arguments from the _doctrine of heredity are occasionally brought forward in its favour. The democrat is often told that he is very unscientific; but the evo- lutionist, who points to the aristocratic pre- ferences of history, errs greatly if he thinks the Cc 18 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. undoubted pre-eminence of a few great indi- viduals and even of a few famous families any sound argument in favour of a_ hereditary aristocratic caste. Darwin, as we have already seen, admits that the nobility in this country have a certain advantage in being able to select their wives more freely than most other men: yet, allowing their superiority in this matter to the nobilities of other countries and rejoicing that the institution of the peerage has saved us from the worse calamity of a “nobility” in the proper sense, we may be permitted to regret that these highly privileged persons, the peers and the peers’ eldest sons, do not always think sufficiently of their re- sponsibility to the future in the selection of their mates. Darwin, as we have also seen, inveighs against the folly of primogeniture : so that, after all, even the English nobility do not get much countenance from the theory of natural selection. It is strange to find the doctrine of heredity invoked by the defenders of the House of Lords: one would suspect that they have never looked into Mr. Galton’s interesting book. It is instructive to notice the way in which half-understood scientific DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 19 theories are misapplied to practical__matters. Mr. Galton declares most emphatically that he looks upon the peerage “as a disastrous insti- tution, owing to its destructive effects on our valuable races.” If an eminent man is elevated to the House of Lords, his eldest son is tempted to marry a wealthy heiress, in order to keep up the show required of a hereditary legislator ; but wealthy heiresses usually tend to be sterile, being the last representatives of dwindling families. On the other hand, owing to the custom of primogeniture, the younger sons are induced to remain unmarried: and thus the peerage appears to be an ingenious device for hindering the propagation of talent.’ Further Mr. Galton shows clearly enough the absurdity of expecting to find ability trans- mitted through a long line of descent: the older a man’s family, therefore, the less likely is he to have inherited any of the ability of its founder. I suppose there is still a pious Con- servative superstition that ‘our old nobility” can boast of its “Norman blood ”—a belief which a critical examination of a recent copy of the Peerage would do a good deal to weaken 1 See Galton’s Hereditary Genius, p. 140. 20 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. But even supposing the Norman blood were there, does it follow that it is now particularly worth having? ‘It is curious to remark,” says Mr. Galton, “how unimportant to modern civilisation has become the once famous and thoroughbred looking Norman. ‘The type of his features, which is, probably, in some degree correlated with his peculiar form of adventurous disposition, is no longer characteristic of our rulers, and is rarely found among celebrities of the present day; it is more often met with among the undistinguished members of highly born families, and especially among the less "1 JT have not conspicuous officers of the army. yet raised the question as to what kind of cha- racteristics can be transmitted from generation to generation and in what way: | have only tried to show that the scientific doctrine of heredity is a very treacherous ally of the de- fenders of aristocratic privilege. 85. DOES THE EVOLUTION TREORY SUPPORT. “LAISSEZ FALE = The doctrine of Evolution gives little support to the aristocratic Conservative. It may seem 1 Hereditary Genius, p. 348. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 21 to. give more to the “‘/azssez faire” Radical. The evolutionist politician is more likely to adopt the view that in the interests of the race we ought to remove every artificial restriction on the operation of natural and sexual selection. But the difficulty is—where are we to find a line between “natural” and “artificial,” if all the phenomena of society are, as the evolutionist is bound to hold, subject to the same laws of nature? If we are content to remove only some artificial restrictions, on what principle can we justify ourselves? If_we are to remove every artificial restriction that hampers the strugele for existence, are_we not going back to Kousseau’s “State of re; the primitive; uncivilised, pre-social condition of mankind ? If we expect the “State of Nature” to be better than the present condition, which is one of at least mitigated or inconsistent anarchy, are we not falling back into the “metaphysical” con- ception of Nature and ignoring the scientific conception of society ? The “State of Nature, z.e.the unsocial state, is more correctly described by Hobbes as “the war of all against all.” On the other hand, when we find the more tender- hearted preacher of evolutionist morality point- DARWINISM AND POLITICS. iS) tN ing out that, though the physical well-being of the race may have suffered through the mitiga- tion of the primitive struggle and the con- sequent preservation of weaklings, we have gained some intellectual advance through the occasional chance of a Newton and a moral advance through the cultivation of sympathy and tenderness,’ in such a position is there not some inconsistency, some sacrifice of natural selection in favour of human selection con- sciously or half-consciously directed to other ends than those of mere nature? Our attention is thus called to another factor in that universal strife which is the story of the universe. So soon as a Sufficient social development and a sufficiently advanced type of language make it possible, there begins a competition between zdeas. The age of conflict is, in Bagehot’s phrase,’ succeeded by “the age of discussion,” and the ideas, which rise in the minds of men with the same tendency to variation that we find throughout nature, compete with one another for sustenance and support. The conception of natural selection may be applied here also to 1 KE. Clodd, Story of Creation, p. 211. * Physics and Politics. — Sy nN a i NN Le v; = Bs <= S as) S tS SS NI >) H N Ge explain how certain ideas come to obtain that relatively fixed and definite character which belongs, for instance, to the moral principles currently accepted within a community at any given time. Thus such ideas as patriotism, respect of human life as such, self-control in regard to the bodily appetites, have won their way so as to become factors in the struggle and to conflict with the operation of natural selection as this prevails among the mere animals. Why then may not such ideas as Equality and Fraternity claim to hav ir_ chance in the struggle for existence? If they can win posses- sion of more and more minds in the world, they will become actual influences on conduct and_will from being mere ideals tend to bring about their own realisation," ‘‘ Opinions,” said— Lord Palmerston, “are stronger than armies.” One of the first conditions of any institution being altered is that people should come to imagine it as altered. The great difficulty of the reformer is to get people to exert their imagination to that extent. Now what does all this amount to except to ' Cp. Fouillée, Za Science Sociale Contemporaine, p Xii., etc. 24 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. a recognition of the difference introduced into: natural evolution by the appearance of cozsczous- ness? J shall not now attempt to work out all the philosophical implications involved in this. recognition of consciousness: nor, in order to show how through consciousness man becomes free from the tyranny of nature, shall I quote the words of any one whose evidence might be suspected because he might be called a mere metaphysician. I shall quote the words of a witness whom no scientific man would reject— Professor Huxley :— “Society, like art, isa part of nature. But it is convenient to distinguish those parts of nature in which man plays the: part of IRMEUINTE CANES ae Something apart v and, therefore, nature. It is the more desirable, and even necessary, to make this distinction, since society differs from nature in having a defini Object ; whence it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man—the member of society or citizen—necessarily runs counter to that which the rfon- ethical man—the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of the animal kingdom—tends to adopt. The_atter_fights out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any otheranimal; the former devotes his best eee to the object of setting limits t strugele. “The history of civilisation—that is of society—is the record of the attempts which the human race has made to ' ss OO Ww DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 2 escape from this position [7.e. the struggle for existence in which those who were best fitted to cope with their circum- stances, but not the best in any other sense, survived]. The first men who substituted the state of mutual peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step, created society. But in establishing peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle for existence. Between the members of that society, at any rate, it was not to be pursued @ ouwfrance. And of all the successive shapes which society has taken, that most nearly approaches perfection in which war of individual against individual is most strictly limited.” ! Professor Huxley then goes on to show how the struggle for existence appears in a new form through the zealous fulfilment of what we are told was the first commandment given to man— “Be fruitful and multiply.” But, instead of argu- ing, as before, that the further history of civilisa- tion must consist in putting a limit to this new economic struggle, he avoids drawing any such inference, and very lamely concludes that we must establish technical schools. These are most desirable and necessary institutions, but they might fulfil some better purpose than what he proposes—which is simply to sharpen our claws that we may fight our neighbours \ \ 1 Art. “ The Struggle for Existence,” in Wneteenth Century, Feb., 1888, pp. 165, 166.' 26 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. the more fiercely and destroy them the more successfully. Let us be grateful, however, to Professor Huxley for the scientific conclusions which he has drawn. As practical premises they will serve us for a wider syllogism than he ventures to construct. It is the same with Strauss. In spite of his excessive conservatism in practical matters, this is the way in which he formulates in general terms the “ Rule of ine “Ever remember that thou art human, not merely a natural production ; ever remember that all others are human also, and, with all individual differences, the same as thou, having the same needs and claims as thyself: this is the sum and substance of morality.” “Tn man Nature endeavoured not merely to exalt, but to transcend herself He must not therefore be-merely an animal repeated 7 HE-TUSE TS something more, someth , something better.” sie “Man not only can and should know Nature, but rule both external Nature, so far as his powers admit, and the natural within himself.” ? It is unnecessary here to raise the question how consciousness makes its appearance. It is enough that human beings are not only engaged 1 The Old Faith and the New. Eng. Transl. ii. pp. 54, 57, 58 (secs. 70, 71=secs. 74, 75 in German edit. 1875). os ae DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 27 in the struggle for existence, but £zow that they are so engaged, are capable of looking round o, of com- on what they are doing, of reflecting, paring results and considering some good, some bad, some to be desired and others to be avoided. If we distinguish—as_ Professor Huxley says it is convenient to do—between man and nature, then it is of extreme import- ance to us to discover the natural laws which operate in society, but it_does not follow that we owe them any allegiance. They are “laws” simply in the sense of being generalisations from experience of facts or hypotheses by which we find it possible to make the facts more intelligible to ourselves: and it is the merest ambiguity of Janguage that leads to the argu- ment that what can be called “an economic law” has any claim upon our reverence. It may tell us something convenient or something in- ‘convenient; but of itself it is, like nature, absolutely non-moral. On the other hand, if we use Nature (with a very big N) to include a// that goes on in human society, human institutions and human ideas must be included in this conception of Nature : else the scientific sociologist is assum- eee 28 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. ing a supernatural, or infranatural, region out- side human society. Governments are natural products, and it is inconsistent in Mr. Herbert. Spencer, while telling us that the maxim “ Con- stitutions are not made but grow” has become a truism, to go on to blame governments simply because they “interfere” with natural laws. Why, such ‘ interferences”” would on his own, . . Occ principles amount to a miracle! The realand significant distinction is not that between “« State-interference” and “ dazssez fazre,’ but between intelligent and scientific, ze. syste- side and that peddling kind_of playing at an. occasional and condescending providence in small matters, which is often much worse than doing nothing at all. The State which “ pro-]| tects” a few industries and doles out its alms. to a multitude of paupers is only yet half con- scious of its functions and may be doing unmi- tigated evil, except in so far as it is performing some interesting but rather cruel experiments. 1 RES for the benefit of sociological students. ‘‘ Pro- tection” and a bad poor-law (ze. any mode of | relief which breeds pauperism instead of dimin- ishing it) are just the kinds of State-action which DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 29 have eee all State-action into disrepute and make the arguments against it plausible. There are, however, many cases where the arguments against a partial State-action cease to hold against the same action if made more thoroughgoing: e.g. giving free education to some children may be objected to as pauper- ising; free education as the right of all would make none paupers. Yet even a partial State- action may often be welcomed, as a recognition that the State has duties towards its weaker members, however inefficiently it may discharge | them. The capacity for thinking constitutes man’s ieedome/ It is by thinking alone that he can rise above the position of nature’s slave. This does not amount to asserting the foolish dogma of arbitrary “free will”—as if every human being were Says Equally capable of choosing between any given course and_its appasite—a dogma which is not only foolish, but mischiev- ous, for it leads to the neglect of the way in /< which individual characters depend on their environment, and to the consequent neglect of| ' the moral importance of political and social in-| stitutions. Ideas are themselves the outcome 30 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. of institutions; and yet they constitute a factor that must be taken account of, if we are to form an adequate conception of social evolu- tion. What is effected by conscious effort is not necessarily in antagonism to what was going on in the unconscious stage. More often it isa continuation, an extension, an acceleration of a process already begun. In the higher organ- isms, even apart from consciousness, there is, at least according to Mr. Spencer’s generalisation, less waste than in the lower. Thus the plants that are fertilised by insects produce fewer pollen grains than those which have no conspicuous flowers. Those which have fruits that are attrac- tive to birds produce fewer seeds than crypto- gamous plants, whose germs fill the air in count- less myriads. The great mortality of savage life and the prevalence of infanticide are similar instances of waste which disappear more or less at higher stages in social evolution. It is very easy for the historian to show how much ser- vice has been rendered to mankind by fierce struggles, by war, civil dissension, economic competition. But does it therefore follow that equally good ends can never be attained at less ae DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 3k cost ? Strauss insists that it is as impossible to abolish war, as to abolish thunder-storms. To argue thus is to proceed like certain Indians who are said to cut down the fruit tree when they wish to pluck the fruit, or like Charles Lamb’s Chinaman, who burnt down his house every time he wanted to enjoy the luxury of roast pig. Are we to have so much more faith in the blind passions of human na n in what can be done by conscious effort? With these blind passions we must reckon, as with other forces in nature: but there is no reason why we should accord to them any special prestige, simply because they are natural. They are to be used or to be defeated accord- ing as our thinking decides. and nations, not in the sense of something which 44... ought to be. It has indeed contributed greatly to nation-making and to the development of the primitive virtues of courage and fidelity. Those tribes that were the bravest and the most coherent have been the most successful in the struggle for existence, and so these virtues have come to receive special respect. But let 32 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. us notice with what limitations—courage was limited to the courage shown in the battle-field, fidelity was limited to fidelity towards one’s own tribe. When reflection begins, and when imagination is developed, the sphere of courage and fidelity comes to be extended, at least in the minds of some of the more reflective and sympathetic individuals. It is precisely in this way that moral ideas, which are the product of social evolution, come to be capable of advance and progress. Customs—and customs are laws in their primitive form—are habits re- garded as right, because, having been adopted, they have proved conducive to the welfare and success of the tribe or nation ; but customs tend to survive long after the circumstances which called them into being have changed. If they become very hurtful, the people main- taining them will in the long run suffer in the struggle with nature or with other nations which have better customs, z.e. customs more favourable to success; but it is a gain toa people if its more far-sighted members discern the hurt- fulness of a custom in time, and persuade or force their fellows to discard it before it is too late. This isin all ages the function of the ree DARWINISM AND. POLITICS. 3 political, religious, or _sgcial reformer—to save his people from_destruction or decay by induc- ing them to change a custom which, however —_——————_ w beneficial once i respects, has now become mischievous. Such attempts imply no contradiction to the principle of modification by natural selection, but are themselves an illustra- tion of it. / Suppose an animal, whose ancestors lived on the land, takes to the water (or vice versa) because circumstances have changed, or in order to escape from excessive competition ; it may succeed better. When Themistocles made the Athenians into a naval power, this change was a quite analogous phenomenon. The difference is, that what Darwin called (con-, fessedly as a mode of expressing ignorance) the “spontaneous” variation in the habits of the animal is supplanted by the deliberate adgp- tion of a new habit among human beings. Now among all the more advanced societies we find this conscious, deliberate adaptation supplanting the unconscious and spontaneous, though in the beginnings of the most succegsful institutions. there is generally a very large element of unconsciousness in the procedure. Thus the great discovery of representative D 34 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. government, which constitutes the chief differ- ence between ancient and modern politics, which has made it possible for democracy to exist without slavery, and which has made it possible for large states to possess free institu- tions, came about mainly because Englishmen felt it inconvenient to attend personally when the King wished to obtain money : an irksome duty was readily transferred to others.’ But representative government, as maintained by civil war in the seventeenth century, and repre- sentative government as imitated in all the most advanced nations of the world, is some- thing consciously and deliberately chosen. It is a further and more complex application of the convenient principle of ‘counting heads to save the trouble of breaking them.” Federa- tion, in its modern sense,” is a still further and still more complex application of the same principle, though Strauss, with the prejudices of a German monarchist, thinks a federal state 1 See Hearn, Government of England, 2nd Edit. pp. 466 ff. * I add this qualification, because the Federations of ancient history appear not to have recognised, except in rudimentary form, the principle of representation, and thus belonged to a lower, not a higher, type of society than the city-state. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 35 inferior to a nation. We may feel dissatisfied enough with what representative institutions still are, even at their best and when honestly worked; but we should be indulging in a foolish paradox if we did not see that any such institutions are better than their absence, because of the possibilities they contain. Yet could any political thinker of the ancient world have believed such _ institutions possible? Would he have believed it possible for free citizens to delegate their functions, even for a time, without surrendering their democratic freedom ?' One can see in Strauss’s book how little understanding the cultured German may still have of this great condition of political | advance.” Does not the introduction of representative government, which has solved and will solve 1 Tn enumerating the different kinds of oligarchy, Aristotle gives what is practically a definition of representative government (/o/. iv. 14 § 8, 1298 @ 40); but this is merely put forward as a logical possibility. At least he gives no example, and this slight naming is the clearest proof of the absence of the zdea from the mind of the greatest political thinker of antiquity. 2 The Old Faith and the New, sec. 81 (German ed. 1875) sec, 77 Ene. Tr. 36 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. many problems, however many it leaves unsolved, hold out the promise that similar good may be done by the substitution of some more intelligent methods for military and in- dustrial competition? International arbitration and economic co-operation are as yet small beginnings, but not smaller than the first germs of representative government. So far as we have yet got, neither arbitration nor co-opera- tion have done for society what their advo- cates hoped, but they may be the first “ variations,’ which, if they prove their fitness, will bring into being a new species of civilised society. . Mr. Herbert Spencer considers that there are only two main types of society, the militant and the industrial: and in industrialism he com- prehends an absolute system_of Jdazssez farre, the extreme of individualism., It is strange that he Should forsee a aat the economic struggle is only a phase of the oldest form of struggle for existence—the struggle between individuals for subsistence, and that it therefore belongs to a lower type than the struggles between organised communities, where a Strict organisation mitiga e€ r1re t is ne = MR MN i 50) RE NN ee a = 4 ; ra DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 37 difficult to see whence Mr. Spencer and his fol- lowers derive their ardent faith in a beneficent result from this struggle, unless it be, as already sugg ea cient cael ot the old theological optimism or the_metaphysical idea of Nature. S96, ZOEAS AND INSTITUTIONS.—THE “SOCIAL. FACTOR.” But, it might be objected, the economic struggle is not unmitigated, for industrial com- petition is carried on amongst enlightened and educated people, who will consider one another and develop their altruistic tendencies, though not insexeess,. Yet) soy fearfulyis; Mrs Speneer of the interference of the State with his social ageregate of warring atoms, that he will not hear of any education except what each fami y education except what each family provides for its own members—a return to the patriarchal or ‘‘Cyclopic ” type of society—or what can be provided by free competition between private teachers, who will run the educational business _on__strict commercial principles, Thus I am afraid the educational influences to which he looks will not operate rapidly. But why, it will be said, not trust to 38 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. the spread of kindlier feelings among individuals to mitigate the harshness of inevitable natural laws? Why bring in the ponderous machinery of legislation? Why crystallise customs into codes, voluntary associations into definite political institutions ? I have already referred to the mischief and danger that may arise from customs which have uiived het use een hot has so admirably pointed out,’ are essential in keeping society together, and, as all scientific students of ethics have come to see, morality is dependent upon institutions. We may have to fight against custom to get a hearing for new ideas ; but we must make use of custom to get them realised. Ideas can only be productive of their full benefit, if they are fixed in institu- tions. Wecannot build up anything on a mere shifting basis of opinion. This principle is equally applicable asic eye same aie ean ote and to the introduction of new rights. Many kindly and enlightened persons here and there felt the evil of slavery, but their views were mere isolated private opinions till slavery was abolished by legal enactment in one country 1 Physics and Politics, p. 25 ff. i ie i DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 39 after another throughout the civilised world. Highly respectable and pious people in the last century had no objection even to the slave- trade. Now that slavery has been officially buried, it has not many friends left to shed tears over its grave. Certain eccentric indi- viduals were disposed to favour religious toleration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But even those who, being inclined to heresy themselves, like John Milton and John Locke, extended the bounds of liberty pretty far, had very distinct limits beyond which they would not go. There is always the risk of an outburst of the persecuting spirit, even in communities that are not as a rule fiercely fanatical. Hence_a great step is gained when in any country it is expressly and_ officially de- clared that distinctions of creed shall make no OE ————— difference in the rights of citizens. It is often argued that the possession of the suffrage is of very infinitesimal value to the poor man and will do very little good to the poor woman when she gets it. What is a vote to those who are in want of bread? A vote is not merely an occasional and indirect means of exerting a small fraction of political influence, but, what is 40 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. much more important, it is a stamp of full citizenship, of dignity and of responsibility. It is a distinct mark that the possessors of it can no longer be systematically ignored by govern- ments and can no longer shirk the duty of thinking about public and common interests. The slaves of a kindly master, the subjects of a kindly tyrant or ruling caste may be very comfortable animals : but the master or tyrant may become unkindly or impotent, and the poor wretches who have been dependent on him suffer without being able to help them- selves. It is always much easier to ignore an unuttered or feebly uttered claim than to revoke a right once granted. The same remark ap- plies to the acquisition of representative insti- tutions by a country or a locality: it marks a step gained which is not likely to be lost. Few persons, at least in this country, care so very much for the abstract advantage of a republic overa monarchy. A nominal republic may be less democratic than a nominal monarchy : and to change a state into a republic might in some cases be grasping the shadow and letting the substance go. But a republic has at least this advantage, that it does not call the DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 41 sovereign power by the name of a person or dynasty, but proclaims it before all the world “the commonwealth.” “ Modlesse oblige: and a republic sets up a higher standard of political morality and thus deserves to be more harshly judged, if it falls short even of a monarchy and imitates in any way the follies and vices that are hardly avoidable where there is a royal court. Another reason why ideas should be em- bodied in institutions, is that institutions exert so great an influence upon human character— an influence sometimes ignored on professedly scientific grounds. Perhaps the most popularly accepted part of the evolution theory is the’ doctrine of heredity ; but it may be questioned how far the popular view, nay, even the view of many who have been trained in science, is not in reality the survival of a very ancient super- stition,’ the belief in an inherited family destiny, a belief which was the natural product of a time when the family or tribe was the social and 1 In a notice of this essay in AZind, vol. xiv. p. 291, it is actually alleged that I say that “the doctrine of heredity may be nothing more than the survival of a very ancient superstition!” I say nothing of the kind. I suggest that the popular view of heredity may be a mixture of science and superstition. 42 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. moral unit. Plato, in the Zaws,' professes to regard robbers of temples as persons suffering from an incurable malady, “a madness _be- gotten in a man from ancient and unexpiated crimes of his race, destroying him when his time is come.” Aristotle uses the idea to make a quiet professorial joke, when he is speaking about certain abnormal moral tendencies: he tells of the man who excused himself for beating his father by saying that it was an inherited practice in his family for the son to beat the father, and of another family in which the sons used to drag their father to the door but no further.” There is indeed a singular fascination, horrible at times as it may be, in the idea that the experiences of ancestors survive as the feelings of the descendants; but a great part of the prevalent opinion about heredity seems to be only mythology or fiction masquerading ras science. Of course one who is not a biologist has no right to a private opinion in a biological controversy. But one must feel a keen interest in the discussion at present going on, as to whether acquired characteristics are transmitted or not. The negative opinion tax, 854, * Eth. Nic. vi. 6 § 2. >» get apap DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 43 appears to be on the increase, z.¢. the Lamarck~ ian doctrine is tending to disappear from the evolution theory and the Darwinian principle of natural selection acting upon “ spontaneous ” variations is coming to be accepted as the sole factor in organic evolution.’ ‘Use and disuse” seem at first sight so much easier to understand than ‘natural selection,” that it will probably be some time before they lose their hold on the imagination, The temptation undoubtedly is to discuss the question at once in its applica- tion to human beings, but it can be more safely discussed with regard to the lower animals, both because the opportunities of experiment are better and because there is less risk of bias in forming inferences. In the case of human beings it is so very difficult to distinguish what is due to inheritance in the restricted sense of race-influence from what is due to imitation, early training, etc., which constitute inheritance certainly—but in a wider and a sociological, not a merely biological, sense. When people point to the remarkable way in which children re- semble their parents, they are apt to forget that children as arule are not merely the children 1 See below, pp. 87, 88. 44 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. of their parents, but spend all their earliest years with their parents. Even where a parent is dead, the child is told of his or her habits and ways of thought, and unconscious imitation of a father or mother, whose memory is re- garded as something sacred, may account for a great deal. Mr. Galton, in his work on flereditary Genius, admits that his investiga- tions altogether suffer from the defect that there is so great a “lack of reliable informa- tion” about the peculiarities of females (p. 63). We shall have to wait till public careers are more abundantly open to women before much can be learnt from family pedigrees. It is certainly striking that, in the two sets of cases where Mr. Galton considers the maternal influence to be strone g, viz., in the case of scien- tific men and in the case of pious divines (pp. 196, 276), his own explanation turns upon in- fluence in early years and not upon mere birth. The clever mother encourages and does not discourage the inquiring child; the pious mother, if she manages to influence her son at all, directs all his thoughts and emotions into one channel. It seems very doubtful whether, except in fairy tales or romances, the child DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 45 brought up away from its parents and in com- plete ignorance of them (for this also is essential to a fair experiment) would present any of their moral characteristics in a definite form. May we say that a certain amount of psychical energy is inherited, but the direction it takes is mostly determined by circumstances ?— though we must admit that it may be of a kind which more readily takes to certain occupations than to others. Individuals start with inherited tendencies or capacities (quctcat duvauers, opuat), not with fully formed habits (adwoirmevat é&eLs). An energetic or an apathetic temperament, a cool or a nervous temperament is transmitted ; but it seems very doubtful how far mere in- heritance gaes beyond that, apart from the external influences in early life, which generally act along with it. As we see so often, the son of people who have pushed themselves up in the world and made their fortune, may inherit the energy of his ancestors but not their busi- ness habits, and so he may only go to thé devil more vehemently than others who come of a race longer accustomed to prosperity and who get an early training in the more elegant squandering of wealth. 46 DARWINISM AND POLITICS, On this subject of heredity, though Darwin was too modest to urge his own discovery of natural selection to its full length, he is much more cautious in his statements than many who are fond of using his name. In his Autobio- graphy, it is true, he says :—“I am inclined to agree with Francis Galton in believing that education and environment produce only a small effect on the mind of any one, and that most of our qualities are innate.” ? But in the Descent of Man? his position is much more guarded, and he seems generally to allow early influence to account for more than inheritance, in respect of virtuous habits, etc. With regard to himself he says that he owed his “humanity” to the instruction and example of his sisters.’ His statement that ‘handwriting is certainly inherited ” seems a very doubtful one.& In his 1 Life and Letters, I. 22. 2 eg. pp. 122-125. On p. 123 he says :—“ There is not the least inherent improbability, it seems to me, in virtuous tendencies being more or less strongly inherited.” This is a very negative and cautious position. 3 Life and Letters, 1. 29. ‘1 doubt indeed whether humanity is a natural or innate quality.” * Descent of Man, p. 88. He refers to Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. Il. p. 6. [See I, p. 449 in edition 2.] Cet or ie. DARWINTSM, AND POLITICS. 47 Life of Erasmus Darwin he says that his uncle Charles Darwin “ inherited stammering ” from his father, Erasmus. ‘ With the hope of curing him his father sent him to France, when about eight years old, with a private tutor, thinking that if he was not allowed to speak English for a time, the habit of stammering might be lost . and it is a curious fact, that in after years, when speaking French he never stammered.” Is not this “ curious fact” an zzs¢antza cructs which proves that his stammering was zo¢ inherited ? If it had been, he must have stammered in every language. The lower down we go in the scale of animal intelligence the more seems due to inherited instincts: the higher we go the more is due to imitation and to the training rendered possible by the greater size and complexity of the brain and necessary by the prolongation of infancy. In the lower animals any habit which is useful to the preservation of the species can only be transmitted as an instinct. In the higher animals much can be done by imitation and instruction. Among human beings, lan- guage and social institutions make it possible to 1 p. 80, quoted in Life and Letters, 1. 7 ie 48 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. transmit experience quite independently of the continuity of race, so that even if a family or a race dies out altogether, its intellectual and moral acquirements and culture are not neces- sarily lost to the world. An individual or a nation ma for mankind by handing on ideas great example than Caving numerous offspring. | Darwin~fiimself fully Bamits this == «A man who was not impelled by any deep instinctive feeling to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such action by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admira- tion. He might 10re good to his tribe than by begetting offspring with a tendency to inherit_his own high character. Descent of Alan, p. 132. “Great lawgivers, the founders of beneficent religions, great philosophers and discoverers in science, aid the pro- gress of mankind ina far higher degree b their workstian by leaving a numerous progeny.” (7d. p. 136.) What Darwin says here of the greatest of men is also in a less degree true of men generally. Most certainly we inherit from those who have gone before us: but the “inheritance” in any advanced civilisation is far more in the intellectual and moral environment—in the DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 49 spiritual air we breathe, than in the blood that runs in our veins.' Mr. Galton’s investigations on heredity do not appear to commit him to the Lamarckian or Spencerian view that @cguired intellectual or moral characteristi inherited ; and, as we have already seen, he in some cases fully recognises how much the environment of the individual in early years affects his course in life. But it cannot be denied that Mr. Galton seezzs to lend countenance to a sort of fatalism about the influence of race, and to a too contented acquiescence in existing social arrangements. I say advisedly “seems,” because I do not think Mr. Galton’s book is quite as comforting to the opponents of change, if they come to read it carefully, instead of merely claiming its authority on their side. Let us consider a few passages in detail. “It is in the most un- qualihed manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. . . . I acknowledge freely the great power of education and social influences in developing the active powers of 1 Cp, Lewes, Zhe Study of Psychology, pp. 78-80, where it is urged that the operation of ‘the social factor” consti- tutes the difference between man and the lower animals. IDG 1 E ixe) DARWINISM AND POLITICS. the mind, just as I acknowledge the effect of use in developing the muscles of a blacksmith’s arm, and no further.” There is a definite limit to the muscular [and intellectual] power of every man, which he cannot by any educa- tion or exertion over-pass.’ If this is the dictum of science, it might seem for a moment to deal a fatal blow to the aspirations of demo- cracy. But does it? Equality, we need to be reminded, is not a fact, but an ideal—something at which we have to aim. And one of the main things we may hope for in a_ better organised society is that the world will not lose or waste so much of the intellectual genius in its midst. We need all the eminence, intel- lectual, moral, artistic, that we can get—not that the eminent individual may amass a fortune or receive the fatal gift of the peerage (as for those that care for such things—verily they have their reward), but that he may exer- cise his gifts, as all the world’s greatest men would wish to exercise them, for the benefit of his fellow-men. Mr. Galton seems indeed to suggest that eminent men generally do come to the front as it is; but his statement is a little 1 Hereditary Genius, p. 14. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 51 rash, and he hardly counts the cost of the strugele. “Tf the ‘eminent’ men of any period had been change- lings when babies, a very fair proportion [what does he consider such?] of those who survived and retained their health up to fifty years of age, would, notwithstanding their altered circumstances, have equally risen to eminence. Thus—to take a strong case—it is incredible that any combination of circumstances could have repressed Lord Brougham to the level of undistinguished mediocrity.” (p. 38.) Mr. Galton’s example is well chosen for his purpose. Lord Brougham was just the kind of man who would anywhere have pushed himself into notoriety of some kind. But those social hindrances which “form a system of natural selection” may allow a great many Lord Broughams to come to the front in different disguises and yet may repress some who might do the world more service than an indefinite array of Lord Broughams. Supposing Mr. Darwin had had to pass his life as an over- worked and over-worried country surgeon or had been a factory hand in a huge manufactur- ing town, he might conceivably have been a noted man in a small naturalists’ club and been laughed at by his neighbours for collecting 52 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. beetles; but would he have discovered the origin of species and proved his discovery by long years of continuous research? It is per- fectly true that ‘social hindrances cannot im- pede men of high ability from eminence,” and that “social advantages are incompetent to give that status to a man of moderate ability.” But “social hindrances” may exhaust all the energy of the ablest in the bare struggle for existence, and may direct the energy of those who do succeed into wrong and mischievous channels. We cannot invent a social machine for manu- facturing genius, but we might do something to eliminate the waste and misapplication of genius that goes on at present. Commercial competition and the fight for social pre- eminence offer terrible temptations to the scientific worker, the writer of books, the artist. Mr. Galton himself proposes what would amount to a very considerable reorganisation of society, and suggests some principles which consistency and practical necessities might oblige us to carry a little further :— “The best form of civilisation in respect to the improve- ment of the race, would be one in which society was not DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 53 costly ; where incomes were chiefly derived from _profes- sional sources, and not much through inheritance; where every lad had a chance of showing his abilities, and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education and entrance into professional life, by the liberal help of the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in his early youth ; where marriage was held in as high honour as in ancient Jewish times; where the pride of race was encouraged (of course I do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the present day, that goes under that name) ; where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods ; and lastly, where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed, and their descendants naturalized.” (p. 362.) On almost the last page of Mr. Galton’s book we have these words :—‘‘ The human race can gradually modify its own nature.” (p. 375.) Take along with this a conclusion of Darwin's :—‘“ It may be doubted whether any character can be named that is distinctive of a ”1 and I do not think there race and is constant, remains much excuse for the conclusions of fatalism and Jdazssez faire that are often drawn from the doctrine of heredity. Especially, if we cannot trust to acquired habits being trans- mitted merely by descent, have we additional 1 Descent of Man, p. 174. 54 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. reason for surrounding each successive genera- tion of individuals, from their youth upwards, with institutions and laws and customs that will promote good and _ hinder bad tendencies. The moral significance of the organisation of society can hardly be over-estimated. It is little use preaching kindliness and considera- tion for others and hoping that sympathetic feelings will gradually become innate, if the society into which individuals are born be openly and confessedly a ceaseless struggle and competition. For eighteen centuries a gospel of peace and brotherhood has been preached and ¢alked ; but the child plays with a toy gun and the youth sees the successful millionaire held up as his model for imitation—the man who boasts that he is ‘self-made,’ and who, as the American remarked, has by that boast “taken a great responsibility off the Almighty.” Not only education, but the very amusements and healthy exercises of school life are all in- fected and corrupted by this diseased spirit of competition. No wonder that those are scoffed at or denounced who venture to think that a society of rational beings might proceed more rationally. From the fact that human societies, DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 55 like natural organisms, grow and are not made, we have certainly to learn that every evil cannot be remedied in a day. But from the other, at least equally important fact, that human societies do not merely grow but are consciously altered by human effort, we have aise “to learn, that every evil, is not to be accepted as inevitable. The spread of ideas regarding a better organisation of society is itself a factor in the attainment of that better organisation—not, of course, that we can make out a complete plan, like an architect, and then get it put into practice. Time and experience alone can suggest the details. But the teach- ing of evolutionary science, rightly understood, gives us no excuse for putting aside all schemes of social reorganisation as merely foolish and dreamy idealism. A fair study of social evolu- tion will at least indicate the direction in which we have to move. Wilde LAW OF SOCTAL, PROGRESS. Hitherto in my argument I have accepted the formule of “struggle for existence” and “natural selection” as quite sufficient to ex- 56 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. press the evolution of human society. They are quite accurate, if applied with ogni- tion of the new elements which enter _into the struggle over and above those _o the biological sphere. But perhaps these eT though accur hardly express the whole truth. @r. Spencer’s-recognition of only two great types of society—the militant and the industrial—and_his theory that social evolution ends in complete individualism are scarcely con- sistent with his own insistence on the organic or super-organic nature of society. Sf Henry nine Tas only one ican Tommie society advances from status to contract—and sticks there or else goes backwards. Is there nota higher type of society beyond and above each of these onesided extremes—cohesion without individual liberty and individual liberty of the negative sort without social cohesion ? In human society thought or reflection, as we have seen, enters in as a factor, lifting it above the merely natural organism, and so perhaps we may look at the nature of thought in order to find out the way in which society progresses. On every subject we think about we begin with some rough opinion, either received from others DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 57 or the result of hasty observation. If we go on to think about this opinion, we have to question it, to examine it, and unless we come to a standstill at the stage of doubt or criticism, we go on to form some more adequate opinion, ~which may indeed be only the old opinion in a better form or may be something very different. But this new opinion may in its turn be ques- ‘tioned in order to be corrected, and so on, for the truth always proves itself more complex than at first appeared: and, unless we lazily acquiesce in dogmatic solutions, we cannot cease from the labour of thinking. It might indeed be more prudent to avoid mentioning Hegel’s name; but this very commonplace pro- ‘cess is his “ dialectic method” in its simplest and most familiar form. This “advance by negation” is the way we: have to think about ‘everything. And if we apply this dialectic method to society, what does it suggest ? That we cannot rest in the critical or negative stage of modern individualism. But does that imply a return to the medizval type of society ? to “the -good old days” of aristocratic and ecclesiastical ‘domination? By no means. It implies an advance to a stage in which all that is most 58 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. precious in individualism must be retained along with the stability of social conditions which in- dividualism has destroyed. And this new stage can be best described by the word ‘“ Social- ”» 1Sin. $6, “APPLICATIONS: By way of practical application, let us use the light gained in our study of the nature of social evolution generally to consider in detail three great parts of the social problem: (1): State interference with the condition of labour, (2) the position of women, (3) the population question, which is obviously connected with both the preceding. (1) Strauss, to whom I have referred before: as professedly applying the new faith of Evolu- tion to the practical guidance of life, objects. even to trade-unions agitating for a reduction of the hours of labour.» He is so hot upon the point that his patriotism, which ‘elsewhere seems to constitute the principal part of his. morality, deserts him here, and he suggests that 1 The Old Faith and the New, sec. 83 in German edit. 1875 =sec. 79 (ii. p. 98) in Eng. Transl. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 61 the employers of labour should “if necessary send to foreign countries for workmen and then let the refractory see who will be able to hold out longest.” This is the struggle @ outrance, though he makes no express reference to the evolutionary formula here. Few thoughtful Englishmen would now venture to go so far as that and deliberately to propose, as Strauss does, the complete suppression of the liberty of association among the workmen, however much they may envy autocratic methods and imitate them, when they get the chance, on a small scale and inafeeble way. But there are very many, even of our most Radical politicians, who, while allowing or encouraging trades-unions to struggle for higher wages and a reduction of the hours of labour, object to the State meddling at all in the matter, except in the case of women and children, or as J. S. Mill would have put it, except in the case of children only. Adults are to be left to shift for themselves. Well, we know what that means. It is needless to use any vivid or picturesque language. Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear can see and hear for themselves. This system of un- checked competition—one cannot repeat it too 58 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. often—means a prodigal and frightful waste. Some have to work too hard and too long: others cannot get any work to do at all or get it irregularly and uncertainly: others, who might work, do not and will not—the idlers at both ends of the social scale, the moral refuse produced by our economic system. This . system is exactly what we find in nature generally ; but one would think that human beings might use their reason to discover some less wasteful scheme. Water will find its own level; but how much mischief may it cause in so doing ?—mischief which can be avoided. We have beautiful flowers or miserable weeds in our gardens according asa skilful gardener “interferes” or not; and when he thins out an overcrowded bed, he need not throw away the plants: there are many who would be glad to have them. It is all one great problem of distribution. Here is so much work needing to be done and so many persons to do it. The organisation of labour is not an easy task ; but is it hopeless? At least we might diminish the disorganisation, which is the system of mere nature, as that appears to rational beings. Cannot human societies imitate the higher DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 61 forms of nature, not the lower, so as to contrive ) some scheme for the diminution of waste ? Strauss is afraid, because of the interests of civilisation. But the civilisation he thinks of is that of the antique type of society, a civilisation limited to the few a cultured minority, consol- ing themselves for the loss of old religious beliefs by reading poetry and hearing concerts and operas, amid a subject-multitude treated with some consideration, like dependent and useful lower animals, but left to poverty and supersti- tion. What can be worse for civilisation than that the more energetic and successful workers, managing to get constant employment, have, as at present, no sufficient leisure for the cultiva- tion of their faculties? And when in the case of the greatest number all available energy is used up in the struggle to feed the body, what wonder that the soul is neglected—‘ where a soul can be discerned” ? Leisure is necessary for culture : and a moderate amount of work is good for physical, mental and moral health— excess is bad for all three. Cannot leisure and work be better distributed, according to a rational instead of a hap-hazard system? In the attempt to substitute rational for non- 62 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. rational methods there is no denial of the scientific truth of evolution, and there is an application of the principle on which Strauss himself insists so strongly, that “man must not merely be an animal repeated, but must be something more, something better.” (2) The claim of women to an equal share with men in the advantages and responsibilities of education and citizenship is_very frequently met by the objection that to grant this claim is to fly in the face of nature. And the objection, when it comes from the evolutionist, has a certain plausibility. He points out, perhaps, how advance in organic life goes along with in- creasing differentiation of sex—a rash assertion n biology, but I have heard it made by a biolo- gist. And so, it is asked, are not the advocates of women’s rights trying to reverse all that, and to produce a morally asexual being? Again, if we limit ourselves to human society, it is urged that ‘the difference between the sexes, as regards the cranial cavity, increases with the development of the race, so that the male European excels much more the female, than the negro the negress” (quoted from Vogt by Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 566 2.,; but it is DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 63 admitted that more observations are yet requi- site before the fact can be positively asserted). It is argued from this fact, 7f sach zt de, that the progress of society has brought with it a still greater differentiation of sex, and, this having proved beneficial for the human race, it is folly to seek to reverse it. Let us take the last argument first. Because a certain method has led us up toa certain point, it does not follow that the same method continued will carry us on further. Races that have reached a certain stage may be hindered by extreme conservatism from making any further progress—like the Chinese. Again, at what degree of differentia- tion between the habits and lives of the sexes are we to draw the line ?- Englishmen, French- men, Turks would draw it very differently. And the Turk ought to please the biological Conservative best, because he has pushed the differentiation of the sexes to a logical issue. The persons who use this kind of argument fancy that they are influenced by scientific con- siderations, but they are really influenced by what they happen to have grown accustomed to. Dhirdly, zf there is this greater difference between the cranial cavities of savage and 64 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. civilised men than between those of savage and civilised women, to what must it be due ? (2) Those who believe that acquired cha- racteristics (z.é. characteristics produced by agencies external to the organism) are trans- mitted, must explain this difference by the difference in institutions, laws and customs. Well, then—what these have done before in one direction they may do again in another. And the same education and the same responsi- bilities will, in course of time, put the average woman on the same level with the average man. (6) If use and disuse are not allowed as explanations, then this alleged brain in- feriority of women must be due either to natural or to sexual selection. (a) If to xatural selection, this would mean that in the struggle for existence those races or tribes have suc- ceeded best in which the males have on the average had better brains than the females. And this may have been so in times when constant fighting was necessary for existence, though in sucha case it would be the greater superiority of the male and not the greater relative inferiority of the female that had been the real cause of success. But this affords no DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 65 argument that, when many other conditions of success than fighting power become necessary, the process of natural selection will continue to act in the same way. A people, a// whose members become superior in mental qualities, will have the advantage over those peoples in which the development is partial and onesided ; for, certainly, it could not be argued that the (alleged) relatively greater inferiority of the civilised female brain had gone along with an increased capacity for the purely physical functions of maternity, as compared with what is found among savage races. (8) If, on the ether hand, the alleged difference is due.to sexual selection, this must mean, not merely that men as a rule have preferred women with inferior brain power to their own (which is likely enough), but women whose female chil- dren were also on the average inferior in this respect to their male children. Supposing such a kind of selection to be possible (one can only aamit it for the sake of argument), then, if men’s ideas about women come to be altered, sexual selection will work in an opposite manner. With a new ideal of woman, the clever would be preferred to the stupid, and the D. P. F 66 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. mother of clever daughters to the mother of stupid daughters. Thus, evex zf the assertion of Carl Vogt were true, it offers no conclusive argument against the political and social equal- isation of the sexes; because this equalisation would on azy recognised principles of evolution, bring about ultimately a natural equality. On the whole, however, one may fairly retain the suspicion that this alleged difference is not a fact, and that the greater average eminence (in the past) of men than of women in intellectual pursuits is entirely due (as on any theory it must be mostly due) to the effect of institutions and customs and ideas operating within the lifetime of the individual, and not to differences physically inherited. Little girls are certainly not on the average stupider than little boys : and, if on the average men sow more intel- lectual ability than women, may not this be due to the way in which the two sexes are respectively treated in the interval ? But, even if there were an average mental superiority in men due to sex-differentiation be- coming greater with the attainment of maturity (we have really no right to make definite asser- tions on the subject, because women have never DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 67 yet had a fair chance of showing their capaci- ties on a sufficiently large scale), Plato’s argu- ment would still hold that, though there may be a general superiority of men, yet there are many women superior to many men, and it is a pity that the State should lose the advantage of their services.! With regard to the argument from nature generally, even if we agree to the generalisation that advance implies increasing differentiation of sex and not the very reverse, it must be insisted that difference is not the same thing as zeguality (though the two are very apt to be confounded), and that the very difference between the sexes is a reason why the State should not disregard the opinions and the feel- ings of half, or in old countries more than half, the population. But the main point is really this : that society has enabled man to rise above the mere animal and, as has been pointed out, to be influenced not merely by natural pressure but by zdeas. The idea of equality has grown up—I shall not at present inquire how far it is due to the uni- versal citizenship of the Roman Empire and to 1 Republic, v. 455. 68 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. the widening conceptions of Roman Law, how far to the Stoic philosophy with its brotherhood of mankind, and how far to Christianity as an. inter-national or non-national religion, declaring the equality of all before God, though carrying with it the Judaic supremacy of the male sex. When this idea of equality was proclaimed in the American revolution, the negro slaves were conveniently overlooked; when it was proclaimed in the French revolution, the existence of a whole sex seemed to be forgotten by every one but Condorcet. And there are many old- fashioned Radicals still, who lack sufficient faith in their own creed to apply it in a thorough- going way. How often does one hear the argu- ment, “Oh, but women are naturally Conser- vative, and if they had political power, we should be governed by the priests.” It may rather be said that the instability of republican government in France has been very much due to its not having appealed to the sympathies of the mothers of the French people. If women are expressly and purposely kept in the patri- archal stage of social evolution, is it wonderful that their feelings and sympathies mostly correspond to an antique social type? It is DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 69 hypocritical to deny the political capacity of women, simply because their political zzcapacity has through long centuries been diligently culti- vated ; but this is always. the favourite sort of argument with the jealous champions of privi- lege :—first to prevent a race or class or sex from acquiring a capacity, and then to justify the refusal of rights on the grounds of this absence —to shut upa bird ina narrow cage and then pretend to argue with it that it is incapable of flying. What is the reason of the power which the Catholic Church possesses over the minds of women, except that the Church alone offers them any escape into a larger circle of interests than those of the patriarchal family ? They do not reflect that the Church brands them with a stamp of inferiority, that did not 1 Even the cult of the Madonna, which is a revival of the female element in deity, did not do away with the degrada- tion of the woman. There isa story (given in Grimm’s Flousehold Tales, Note to Tale 139) of St. Bernard, that he once went into a Cathedral to pay his devotions to the image of the Virgin. He fell twice on his knees before it, and full of fervour uttered the words, ‘ Oh, gracious, mild, and highly favoured mother of God.” Hereupon the image began to speak, and said, “‘ Welcome, my Bernard!” But the saint, who was displeased by this, reprimanded the Queen of Heaven for speaking, in these words, ‘Silence ! 70 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. exist in the old Aryan religions, which had their gods and goddesses, priests and priestesses. They do feel that the rule of the priest may be something higher than the rule of the house- hold despot. Religious teachers have under- stood that their success must depend on their winning the mothers of the race. When will political leaders come to recognise the same ? No woman is to speak in the congregation!” This is an admirable illustration of the ecclesiastical and sentimental theory of womanhood—a worship that professes to exalt woman—whether the Madonna or das Ewig-Wetbliche— above man, combined with a refusal of rationality that sinks her beneath him. The same thing appears in quarters where we should less expect it. Thus we find the late Mr. Laurence Oliphant, who with many protests against the cor- ruption of the Churches, builds up on a strangely unscien- tific foundation what professes to be a new “scientific ” religion, and who proclaims a higher code of morals, based mainly on the elevation of women, yet denouncing, like a Catholic or a Comtist priest, the agitation for ‘‘ women’s rights” and “the higher education of women,” and main- taining the very retrograde and (in these days) immoral doctrine that women have xo responsibility with regard to public affairs, (Scéentific Religion, pp. 316, 324.) In fact, the “Divine Femininé ” or ‘*‘ Woman”—with a very big capital— is one of the worse enemies that women have to contend with in their struggle towards recognition as complete and responsible human fersovs. DARWINISM AND -POLITICS: 71 Mr. Herbert Spencer! is afraid that women, if admitted now to political life, might do mis- chief by introducing the ethics of the family into the state, “ Under the ethies of the family the greatest benefits must be given where the merits are smallest, under the ethics of the State the benefits must be proportioned to the merits.” Mr. Spencer seems to have more confidence than most of us would in applying the strict principle of geometrical proportion to distribu- tive justice. Do people get benefits in propor- tion to their merits in any society we have ever seen or are likely to see? And would those persons whose merits are greatest care most for the greatest rewards? Is it right to separate the ethics of the family, in Mr. Spencer's favour- ite antithetic fashion, from the ethics of the State? If something is right ina family, it is difficult to see why it is ¢herefore, without any iirther: reason, wrong in the State, \lf’the participation of women in politics means that, as a good family educates all its members, so must a good State, what better issue could there be? The family ideal of the State may be difficult of attainment, but, as an ideal, it is * Soctology, PP. 793, 794 ~ ype DARWINISM AND POLITICS. better than the policeman theory., It would mean the moralisation of politics. The cultiva- 1 In the same notice in JZind to which I have referred,. above (page 41, zofe) the writer says this passage is incon- sistent with page 68, where I speak of the patriarchal stage of social evolution as already transcended. Does he really suppose the ethics of the family, in Mr. Spencer’s sense, to belong to the patriarchal stage of society? By the patri- archal stage I understand what Maine and all other writers. on the subject mean by it~the stage which is prior to political society in the proper sense. On page 68 I argue that to refuse to women the duties and responsibilities of full citizenship is injurious to the common weal, because half the adult population is thus kept (so far as institutions can keep them) in the mental and moral condition of “survivals” from a superseded stage of society. Here Iam arguing that Mr. Spencer is mistaken in making an absolute antithesis. between the ethics of the family and the ethics of the State. What is right in the smaller association cannot, I contend, be wtimately wrong in the larger, though it may be more difficult of attainment. I should indeed wish toamend Mr. Spencer’s formula for the ethics,of the family (‘greatest benefits where the merits are smallest ”), first of all by giving up the fallacious appearance of mathematical.exactness and,. secondly, by ceasing to talk about ‘ merits.” A baby may receive the greatest amount of care in a household, but not because its merits are smallest. I should prefer to say: “Every one to work according to capacity : every one to receive according to need, so far as compatible with the well-being of the family as a whole.” (Of course ‘‘capacity ” and “need” are not the same things as “‘ wishes.”) Js not this our zdea/ of family ethics? And, if it is a right ideal, DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 7 1 QW tion of separate sorts of virtues and separate ideals of duty in men and women has led to the whole social fabric being weaker and un- healthier than it need be. The history of the position of women is much more complex than is often represented. It is not true to say that the s¢atws of women has always improved in direct ratio to the general advance. The patriarchal stage repre- sents on the whole a higher type of civilisation than the matriarchal. But, it is to be observed, those societies which have exaggerated the patriarchal type and built all their civilisation upon it, seem to be incapable of advancing further. This is conspicuously the case with Mohammedan peoples. Just as war has ful- filled important functions in the progress of the human race, so the terrible powers of the house-father in certain ancient systems of law have had their use: but it does not follow that what once aided the race in its struggle with must it not come to be our ideal of social ethics generally, because it is the system which would involve the least waste of life and energy ? Of course the compromise of equality is frequently needed to save disputes, and so avoid waste in another way. 74 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. other races will continue to do so when the struggle becomes of a higher and more complex kind," The objection is sometimes made that, in countries where it is considered necessary to have compulsory military service for all males, it would be unjust and inexpedient that women should have a voice in political matters. This objection would be easily met by compelling all women physically fit for it to undergo training as nurses, and making them liable to be called upon to serve as such in time of war.” And this training would be more useful to them and, 1 «Such is the nature of men that, when they have reached their ends by a certain road, they cannot understand that, the times being different, success may be won by other methods and the old ways are no longer of use.” These words represent the theme of the 9th chap. of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, Bk. iii. * A probably reverend reviewer in the Guardian has un- derstood this passage, as if I imagined an army of “ four-and- twenty fighting men and five-and-twenty ”—nurses! In the very next sentence I suggest that nurses are useful elsewhere than in military hospitals. I quite admit, however, that until all service for the community, whether it be fighting the enemy in the field or fighting disease in the sick-room, come to be treated as “ public service,” we can have no genuine social equality. This is implied in the next paragraph. DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 75 to the whole community in time of peace than his military training is to the peasant or artisan. Of all the objections made to the equality of the sexes the only one that deserves very serious attention is that made by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen in his clever attack on J. S. Mill. He points out (in Lzderty, Equality, Fraternity,') that women may suffer more than they have done, if plunged into a nominally equal but really unequal contest in the already overcrowded labour market. The conclusion usually drawn from this argument is a senti- mental reaction in favour of the old family ideal (for instance in Mr. Besant’s books). ' There is another alternative, and that is the sucialistic. " Reich recognises a ,“final cause,” but 134 NATURAL SELECTION AND refuses to recognise an “efficient” or “material” , cause. Now, surely, a complete account of any institution would tell us not only what purpose - that institution now serves, but what it came from; we need a theory of origin as well as an explanation of present value. But Dr. Reich’s view of causation is peculiar in this respect. Thus he says (on p. 19): “ The Americans continue to observe their written constitution, not because it was once written, but because they are determined to revere it as their funda- mental law. It is their merit, not that of Jefferson or Washington.” Surely, if we are fully to understand the American constitution, we must take account of the makers of the constitution, its sources and the circumstances in which it came into existence, as well as of the present feelings of the law-abiding citizens of the United States. There is, indeed, an unfortunate quarrel between the “historical ” and the “analytic” methods of dealing with institutions. Voltaire ridiculed. Montesquieu for saying that the English constitution came from the forests of barbarous Germany. ‘I might as well say that the sermons of Tillotson and Smalridge were composed of old by Dame PISTORY OF INSTITOLIONS. 135 Teutonic witches who divined the success of a war by the way in which the blood ran from the veins of a sacrificed captive.” To say this may not seem quite so absurd to us as it did to Voltaire. A scientific student of religions might trace a connection between primitive magic and human sacrifice on the one hand and even tolerably advanced forms of Christian theology on the other. Professor Dicey does not think it necessary, like Mr. Freeman, to bring in the Landesgemeinden of Uri, the witness of Homer, the Germania of Tacitus, or the constitution of the Witenagemot, in explain- ing the British constitution as that now is.’ The constitutional lawyer has a different prob- lem from that of the historical antiquarian : and | it is well to have it pointed out that we must _ explain an institution by considering not only’ f what it came out of, but the way in which it now exists and the purposes it now serves. As we have said, a complete explanation requires both an investigation of origins (material and efficient causes) and an investigation of present nature and functions (formal and final causes). ° Let me take one other illustration of what I 1 Dicey, Law of the Constitution, pp. vill. 13 ff. (Ed. 3). 136 NATURAL SELECTION AND mean, as it is a very excellent one. How are we to explain the absence of the English sovereign from Cabinet Councils ? Of course it might be answered, and I imagine Dr. Reich would answer, that the present character of the English constitution requires that the sove- reign should have no personal responsibility for the policy adopted by the ministry. But the explanation is surely incomplete, if we do not take account of the fact that George I. could not speak English, and consequently left his ministers to deliberate by themselves. Here was an “accidental” variation, which, proving favourable, gave rise to what now forms an essential principle of the constitution. To come specially to “survivals.” If we were to allege e.g. the use of Norman-French in giving the royal assent to acts of Parliament as an example of a survival, Dr. Reich, I sup- pose, would answer that this is kept up for the sake of maintaining the dignity of the Crown. Use plain English and the monarchy would tumble to pieces. Let us. allow this to be the case: we know that it is generally risky to meddle with a very ancient piece of furniture. But surely a scientific explanation of this PHECISTORY (OF TINSTITOTIONS. 137 custom would require some reference to the Norman Conquest. Again, if we were to point to the shape of the academic dress worn in Oxford and Cambridge, Dr. Reich would answer that this is kept up for the sake of proctorial discipline. Granted that @ uniform is kept up for the purpose; but why this par- ticular uniform? A glance at an academic fashion-plate of the seventeenth century will supply an answer, so far as the square cap is concerned. There we see this cap in a shape exactly intermediate between the clerical berretta and its present form. In scientific explanation it is not enough to show why some sort of thing exists or is done : we must explain, if we can, why it is just ¢/zs and no other. The biologist does not merely say that colours of animals are useful to them, in the way of protection, etc.; if he says this, he is bound to show why this particular arrange- ment of stripes or spots is useful to this par- ticular species in its particular environment ; and if he calls anything a “ survival,” he must not be satisfied till he can show from what previous condition it is a survival. And so, it is not from a desire to take refuge in a vague 138 NATURAL SELECTION AND general term, but because we are looking for concrete particular explanations, that we insist on the reality of “survivals” in institutions. The fact that a custom occasionally outlives the conditions which originally favoured its growth, needs no explanation. The tendency of human beings is to go on doing what they have been accustomed to do, unless there is a very strong reason for giving it up; and frequently even then. Natural selection does not eliminate disadvantageous customs in coherent human societies as rapidly as it eliminates disadvanta- geous characteristics among the lower animals. The disappearance of the circumstances, which produced any particular custom originally, make It easy, of course, for the custom to die out; but, as a rule, some positive and considerable inconvenience is necessary to rouse people sufficiently to make them shake off any old habit. Occasionally something purely ‘“acci- dental” (“ accidental,” of course, only in the same sense in which we speak of “spon- taneous ” variations) is sufficient to put an end to an old custom: thus the death of the holder of some antiquated office may give the occasion for discontinuing it. If an old custom dies out PAE PaISTORY OFSINSTITOLTIONS. 129 gradually, because it has ceased to have a meaning and a value, that is an illustration of the cessation of natural selection: if it be- comes positively hurtful, it may lead to the destruction of the society that observes it, unless a wise change anticipates the operation of natural selection. Sedan Le ShEUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.” Most of what would fall to be said on this subject has already been discussed in the two preceding essays:’ and therefore a very brief summary of results must suffice here. First of all, the units engaged in that struggle which constitutes human history are not individuals < only, but aggregates of individuals, such as tribes, races, nations, classes, sects. Secondly, apart from the struggle between individual and individual, between race and race, nation and nation, there is a struggle between institutions, languages, ideas. From these differences, in degree of complexity, between the biological and the sociological meaning of “struggle for existence ” there follow two consequences: (1) The death of the individual organism is not Cp: ppr 13 fo 7 fe 140 NATURAL SELECTION AND always necessary in “sociological” natural selection. ‘Evolutionist theories,” says Dr. Reich, ‘draw most heavily on ‘death”; and so they must, because nature is “careless of the single life.” And in the case of social organisms death is at work too; but the indi- viduals of unsuccessful social organisms do not necessarily perish. The extinction of the in- dividual is not always required for the triumph of an idea!” ©(2) ‘On the’ ‘other “hand; 1deas and institutions may outlive individuals and societies. Roman law has outlived all the Roman lawyers and the Roman Empire itself. Thus it is no argument whatever against the applicability of the doctrine of natural selection to social institutions to suggest, as Dr. Reich does, that an evolutionist historian must always hold that every later stage must be superior to the preceding, simply because it has “survived.” 1 Cp. S. Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, p. 330. “Punishment in man corresponds to the struggle of the dominant variety with other varieties. . . . We punish in order to extirpate ideals which offend the dominant or general ideal. But in nature conflict means the extinction of individual animals: in punishment, it is sufficient that the false ideal is extinguished, and it is not necessary always that the person himself should be destroyed.” tee LES hORY OF ENSILTLU LIONS. 141 ‘Survival of the fittest” is a very ambiguous phrase ; and degeneration is often a condition of survival, instead of progress. I have thus tried to show that the ‘‘ concepts of Darwinism” are perfectly applicable to human society mutatis mutandis. The quali- fication is essential. The uncritical use of biological formule only leads to bad results in sociology and in practical politics. The genuinely scientific historian may never men- tion a single evolutionist catch-word, and yet be contributing to our knowledge of Evolution in its highest phase. The philosopher who saw a dialectic movement in human history and in the whole process of the universe was only reading back into the lower stages of Evolution what comes clearly to the surface in the highest, where the blind conflict of nature passes over | into the conscious conflict of ideas. Progress” comes only by struggle, though the struggle in its highest form may go on within the in- dividual soul and may cause no death but the death of partial truths that have become errors, and of customs that have outlived their use. 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